Tattoo You
Music: Waiting on a Friend
Artist: The Rolling Stones
Shared by: Matthew for Alex
“I got my first tattoo aged 55. A line of music that runs along the inside of my left arm. The things you do for your kids. ”
I got my first tattoo aged 55. A line of music that runs along the inside of my left arm. The things you do for your kids.
Our son Alex was a truffle-hound for great music. Everyone who knew him has songs that he turned them on to that we couldn't live without. He was like a pro bono PR guy for Parcels, Tom Misch, Mac Demarco, Fred Again…, so many.
We lost him last year aged 22 in a car crash. The Thursday of that last week we spent time trading songs while he cooked dinner. I played some Yellow Magic Orchestra, he played Every 1's a Winner by Hot Chocolate. On Friday evening, we stopped in the hallway for a beat to listen to To Build a Home by Cinematic Orchestra together before he headed out to a baseball game. Until that home disappeared from view. He didn't come back.
But that's not the song on my arm. We both loved the Stones and one song above all others. Waiting on a Friend from the album Tattoo You. He broke the ice with his college roommates by playing it while they did the washing up. We'd watch the video over and over and never got tired of Mick and Keith just hanging out on a brownstone stoop, Ronnie greeting Keith ("hello mate") and their sloppy miming in a Greenwich Village dive bar.
My tattoo is the music — no words — to the line: "A smile relieves a heart that grieves." The chords are A and F — Alex's initials. His ashes are in the ink. And I didn't see until I got home that there's a "slur", musical notation for two notes that need to stay together. It looks like two eyes over a wide smile.
Alex had bought a ticket to see The Stones when they came through town last May. Friends and family came for his funeral so we all went instead. The PA played tunes while we waited for the show to start and when Hot Chocolate's Every 1's a Winner came on I breathed out for the first time in weeks.