The Rolling Stones and the Challenge of Being a Legacy Brand

How does a well-established brand appeal to its loyal customer base while courting a new audience? This is a question that the Rolling Stones are trying to solve as the band gears up for a U.S. stadium tour in 2024 to support their latest album, Hackney Diamonds, released on October 20. On the one hand, the Stones continue to appeal to a loyal Baby Boomer fan base. But like most rock bands and solo artists who achieved fame during rock’s glory years decades ago, they want to be as relevant to newer generations of listeners, too. Whether the Stones achieve any satisfaction remains to be seen.

A Band with an Aging Fan Base

From the moment the Stones began performing in 1962 and throughout that tumultuous decade of social and political turmoil, the Stones appealed to the burgeoning youth market, which (at the time) was composed of the surging Baby Boomer population, the oldest of whom were about 17 years old in 1962. The band’s music and image — dangerous and rebellious — were perfectly suited to their times and their audience. In the ensuing decades, as the band aged, so did their fan base. In the mid-1980s, the introduction of the Classic Rock radio format was well timed for the Baby Boomer audience, which would become the largest demographic until Millennials surpassed them in the 2000s. Classic Rock on the radio ensured that the Stones vast catalog of music would remain popular — but Classic Rock also pigeonholed the band as a legacy act. And this is probably when the Stones lost currency with younger audiences.

Fast forward to 2023. Their two founding members, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, are now 80 and 79 years old (Richards turns 80 on December 18). Guitarist Ron Wood, who joined the group in the 1970s and is now considered to be part of the Stones core triad, is 76 years old.

The Stones are still rolling, despite losing key members to death by misadventure (founder Brian Jones in 1969), death by illness (founder Charlie Watts in 2021), and resignation (founder Bill Wyman quit the band in 1993, and guitarist Mick Taylor, who had replaced Brian Jones, left in 1974). It can be argued that today they are more relevant to a diverse, multicultural world, for the 2023 Stones are a multiracial band, with Black drummer Steve Jordan having replaced Charlie Watts, and Black Bassist Daryl Jones having replaced Wyman years ago (even though Jordan and Jones are not featured in the band’s promotional materials). They continue to record new albums (although not as many as they used), and there remains a strong audience for their music: Hackney Diamonds debuted on at Number 3 on the Billboard 200, making the Stones the first act with Billboard 200 Top 10 Albums each decade Since the 1960s. Their tours are always lucrative. In 2022, they ranked Number 7 on Forbes’s list of highest paid entertainers, pulling down $98 million and earning $8.5 million per night on a 15-city tour across Europe that summer.

And the Stones continue to appeal to an audience of Baby Boomers. This much was made clear when the band announced that their 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour was being sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).

The Significance of the AARP Sponsorship

It’s common for musicians to land corporate sponsorship deals to defray the costs of touring. Even still, the news about the AARP sponsorship raised eyebrows. On the one hand, the Rolling Stones aligning their brand with AARP seemed fitting at a time when “authentic” is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year and the youngest member of the Stones is 62 years old. But the Stones for years have avoided a blatant admission that their fan base is aging. Mick Jagger in particular has been protective of his image as he grows older. (In 2001, he became publicly irate when he agreed to be interviewed by a journalist only to see the story appear in a magazine geared toward people in their 50s.) The partnership with AARP is evidence that the Stones are finally being honest about who their fans really are.

The AARP sponsorship also pointed to a fundamental disconnect between the mythology of rock and roll (it’s music made for young people) and the reality (rock music appeals to an older audience while hip-hop, K-pop, electronic dance music, and Latin music appeal to youth). A Stones/AARP relationship officially signified that rock’s glory years, fueled by the values of youth, are over.

How Do the Rolling Stones Remain Relevant?

So, how do rock stars who achieved fame during rock’s golden years in the 20th Century remain relevant amid changing tastes and younger audiences? It’s not easy. Most older rock stars try to do so by recording with younger musicians and producers who have more cross-generational appeal (as Paul McCartney often does); appearing at youth-oriented venues (Coachella is a popular destination for older acts such as AC/DC); being active on social media; licensing their music in games and movies (as Elvis Presley Enterprises did with Disney’s Lilo and Stitch); or all of the above.

The Stones have checked the boxes with mixed results. You can find them on social channels such as TikTok and their music is on Spotify, but their followings come nowhere near those for younger stars. (The Stones have 551,000 followers on TikTok; Post Malone has 15 million. They have 28.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Olivia Rodrigo, who has been recording music for only a few years, already has 58.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify). When they released Hackney Diamonds, they included a song recorded with Lady Gaga and livestreamed a release event with Jimmy Fallon. And while Fallon and Lady Gaga are not exactly a direct hit with Gen Z, he’s at least they are more appealing to Millennials. The album’s lead single, “Angry,” featured Euphoria actor Sydney Sweeney cavorting in a promotional video, in an obvious attempt to pander to younger audiences.

The band’s music continues to get featured in contemporary movies such Avengers: End Game and Knives Out. They’ve also enjoyed an occasional bump in prominence and sales thanks to wise licensing of their music in ads, such as having “Gimme Shelter” used in an promotion for a release of the popular game Call of Duty. But they’ve not experienced the huge breakthrough moment that reintroduces their music to younger audiences as many legacy artists enjoyed when their music was used in the Guardians of the Galaxysoundtrack.

Some of the Stones’s more controversial songs from years ago, notably “Brown Sugar” and “Stray Cat Blues,” have not aged well, especially with contemporary audiences. But by and large their biggest hits remain iconic. Their most famous songs, such as “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” have been sampled and covered by contemporary musicians, and they appear routinely on round-up lists of the greatest rock songs of all time. Their role in shaping to modern music is impossible to overstate.

The Problem with Rock Mythology

So what gives? Well, for one thing, we live in an ageist society. When Mick Jagger received a heart valve replacement in 2019, news coverage called out his age repeatedly, when in fact Jagger’s health issue could have happened to anyone at any age (and does). But the bigger problem comes down to that mythology of rock and roll that I cited. Rock is supposed to be the music of youth. That’s the mythology handed down from one generation to the next. Rock stars aren’t supposed to be living in the limelight this long. As Pete Townsend of The Who famously wrote in 1965 when he was 20, “I hope I die before I get old” (news flash: he is alive and well at age 78). Rock stars are supposed to either fade away after they’re done rebelling or die young and leave a beautiful corpse as Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison did.

The Stones are sailing into unchartered waters. They’re rewriting the rule book for how rock stars are “supposed” to behave. Keith Richards was on the perennial list of rock stars most likely to die for years because of his drug problems, but he’s beaten the odds and become a grandfather. Mick Jagger continues to burn up the stage, dancing vigorously and convincingly. The entire band is making fresh music and preparing to embark on a grueling experience for anyone at any age: a rock tour. But the problem is that each time they show their faces in public, everyone, young people included, see them growing older, and we struggle to reconcile the mythology of rock versus the reality.

Put another way, there is a disconnect between the band and their brand.

On the other hand, the famous rock stars who died young are forever frozen in time. Their youthful images will never age. This is why Jim Morrison, the sexy Lizard King of the 1960s, will never abdicate that title because he never had the chance to be redefined as a middle-aged man. But Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, by remaining alive in the public eye, no longer define sexuality and youthful rebellion as they once did. To younger audiences growing up in an ageist society, they are literally old men playing music, not the rock gods of yore.

During their lifetime, the Rolling Stones may never get what they want: fan love from younger listeners. But long after the original band members are gone, and future generations get a chance to re-evaluate their music on its own terms, they will get what they need: an enduring legacy.