Gathering Moss Gabe King

Gabe King

He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld.

—James Joyce

The rooftop of Union Station St. Louis’s headhouse burns a most magnificent crimson at the golden hour. A series of darkly gleaming arches umbrella the entryways and the clock tower that protrudes sharply from its western end seems to stretch itself upwards forever. The limestone facade has visibly aged, not into ruin but into a stately elegance found in all great, old buildings. Upon its grand opening in 1894, it was the world’s busiest rail station, moving more people and more freight than any other. Its construction coincided with the closing of the West, as brick by brick and tie by tie, the American empire spread itself to the coast. Now here at the seat of that invasion, we built this gargantuan tribute to our own decadence; shrouded under the grandest train shed anywhere on Earth. It is grand and beautiful and endlessly indulgent.

I sat across Market Street, in front of a Carl Milles sculpture entitled Meeting of the Waters, its name a reference to the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers that define the city’s sprawl. I was in town to see The Rolling Stones. And having done an appropriate amount of pregaming in the bar of the Pear Tree Inn, I set out across St. Louis’s downtown, toward the dome in search of Rock n’ Roll hedonism. The weather was perfect, with the sun dropping low in the sky to my back, spreading an orange grow all the way around the horizon. The sign in front of a bank informed me that it was 88 degrees out, but the sharp breeze coming down the street and the rare lack of humidity made it all feel warm and pleasant.

Swaggering my way down the street, I passed the Stifle Opera House with all its pomp and circumstance. The massive stone Greco-Roman columns mark a distinction from the gothic architecture of St. Louis’ other landmarks. In 1978, with the popular music landscape shifting underneath them, The Stones staved off obsolescence here, playing a classic, stripped down set to rapturous reviews. They focused not on extravagance that night, playing the music without added fanfare; a concert, not necessarily a performance. That summer night, enraged Rock n’ Roll fans, left outside without tickets, rioted on the street. However, because the controlling arm of authority is never too far away (the police headquarters are still only a block away) cops soon flooded the theater’s entryway, an army of billy clubs and toothy bloodhounds.

They had outgrown even this grand venue.

I had gone to see Bob Dylan roughly two years prior, at the Capital Theater in downtown Kansas City. The esteemed folk laureate, clad from head to town in black, appeared on stage at exactly 8:00pm, not a second early, not a second late. He played for exactly one hour then left without encore. He didn’t say a word that was not read off a teleprompter off the front of the stage, no jokes, no crowd work, nothing. That night, Dylan seemed irrevocably muted, a far cry from the freewheelin’ troubadour who commanded the Hawks to “play it fucking loud” in defiance of the Newport crowd’s unrelenting jeers. No, that night Dylan was a man collecting a check. He satisfied the contract between performer and audience but did no more. And walking eastward, deeper into St. Louis’ metropolitan underbelly, the specter of this past disappointment began to dampen my mood.

A man stood on the street corner, outside the downtown Hooters on the corner of Chestnut and 7th. He was wearing a tattered sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of patched canvas work pants. He was struggling to crush a can of cheap, domestic beer beneath his boot heel, his aim impaired by his stupor. At this point I had run into a mob of middle aged Stones’ fans ambling across downtown St. Louis, and as we stopped on the street corner, held in place by the authoritarian stop light, the man on the corner took a long drag from his cigarette.

“Mick Jagger has got everybody coming out for the night!” he proclaimed, his exclamation accompanied by a cloud of smoke. I had not paid him a second thought as we approached the intersection, but now I craned my neck to make eye contact. I nodded in approval.

“Mick Jagger!” the man repeated, “That’s one legendary motherfucker! Mick Jagger!”

At this point it was clear to me. This man was no drunken corner vagrant; he was a herald announcing the arrival of a most awesome god. A rock god, and perhaps the most supreme among that pantheon. Not a benevolent god, but a debaucherous one. It was He who pushed the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll lifestyle to the very limits, who on a strung-out, twisted bender somewhere along the line must have laughed in the face of Death himself. He who famously looked upon the Devil not with terror or even envy but pity. The Devil was a small-timer. Satan did not have His knowledge of earthly sin and vice; of flesh and wine. He was in fact one legendary motherfucker.

“Mick Jagger!” He repeated again. “Mick Jagger!” The proclamation was fanfare, like the sharp brass tones of a royal horn line. What reservations I had dissipated in the face of the herald’s recurrent announcement. The mass of pilgrims, all sporting the classic lips and tongue logo, lurched slowly along down the street.

The stadium in question is currently known as the Dome at America’s Center, although it’s been known as the Edward Jones Dome or the Transworld Dome over the years. It was constructed in the late 1990s in the hope of seducing an oh-so-lucrative NFL franchise back to the city. After 21 seasons of pro football that averaged out to an uninspiring .422 winning percentage, the now Los Angeles Rams packed up shop and left for the coast. Westward, like the men and women who once hustled across Union Station’s great hall late for a train.

The stadium now sits largely abandoned. It has also fallen into near disrepair. The concourse displays appear unchanged since the building’s opening, with faded paint and missing letters. Every surface is sticky as if a thick layer of cola and piss covers the entire venue. Peppered throughout are hints as to its past such as a sign on the lower level that still reads: “Welcome to the Edward Jones

I passed under this sign on my way to my seat. Section 128. Seat Q24. I sat down next to a pair of late-middle aged women. They wore matching blue fleece vests and Rolling Stones baseball caps that I had seen advertised in the concourse. My first impression was that they both looked like Hillary Clinton. They promptly informed me that they were sisters and had traveled from Phoenix and Minneapolis, respectively. I never caught their names.

“I’m very excited,” I told Minneapolis, the sister sitting closest to me.

“This is your first time seeing them?” she asked. I’m always a big hit at these concerts. The vast majority of attendees are either die-hard fans from the bands’ imperial periods or middle aged newcomers looking to break the quiet desperation of their lives, both of whom get a kick out of my youth. It’s a little patronizing.

“Yes,” I responded, “This is a big deal for me, I’m a big fan.” This was and remains the truth. I love the Stones.

“Ours too. She bought tickets and called me in Minnesota and told me we’re going to St. Louis,” Minneapolis responded. Phoenix craned her neck in our direction at her mention. She was clearly the older sibling, or at least the one in charge.

“I want to go see everyone before they die,” she shouted across her sister. “We went to go see Elton John and Paul Simon before COVID.” She was right to think this. Just months before the tour, the Rolling Stones’ longtime drummer Charlie Watts had died. This was the band’s first public concert since. After living through habitual heroin usage, alcoholism, throat cancer, and maintaining a working relationship with Keith Richards, Watts finally passed away of old age. The Stones had once laughed in the face of Death, but he is ever persistent. And as the rock and roll pantheon began to thin out, I had adopted a similar self-imposed mission.

“Me too. Last concert I went to was Bob Dylan, Springsteen before that.”

After a cloying and overlong opening set, the Stones were nowhere to be found. I was OK with this, figuring that being fashionably late was just part of the Rock n’ Roll experience. An army of roadies all dressed in black flew around the stage, which was lit by a row of massive, vertically oriented screens that stretched all the way up to the dome’s rafters. Every ruler needs a procession and His entourage were busying themselves preparing the venue for his arrival. Checking a microphone here, tuning a guitar there, dissonantly tapping the drum kit; the details of the preshow only built anticipation for their arrival. An hour and a half after the advertised downbeat, a man with a comically thick English accent approached the microphone that was situated at the front and center of the stage.

“Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome to the stage, the world’s greatest Rock and Roll band: The Rolling Stones!”

It was like a dream. Everything was turned way up and slowed way down so that even the people in the cheap seats could keep up. The sound of them was overwhelming. A turgid cacophony; without relent until the very end. They were the loudest things I had ever heard. Too loud, in fact, like the band was determined to beat us all into submission. Something was terribly wrong. It shouldn’t sound like this, like slow shrieking metal invading the palisade of my consciousness. The ballads were ear splitting, the anthems incomprehensible so. The new drummer, Steve Jordan, pummeled the kit, a blistering flash of limbs and sticks. His efforts were to no avail, there was no rhythm to the roar. So much noise coming at you for so long, you can only take so much. It didn’t sound so much like music at a point, just thundering, deafening noise that hit me with the blunt force of a very large truck again and again and again, never leaving first gear, determined to emphasize every painful tread of its tires. It was horribly unmusical, all sound, no fury.

The machines on stage spit excessive plums of fog into the stadium. The screens projected their hues into the mist, igniting the mist into hellish shades of orange and yellow and red. He pranced and twirled in slow motion. An exhausting display; the aluminum bleachers ringing at every howl and screech, enough to raddle the molars in the back of your mouth. It just seemed

sad to see an old man strain himself like this. Still choking out the lyrics with as much vigor as He could muster, His eyes glued to the teleprompter off the front of the stage. He removed his gaudy rhinestone-adorned jacket, all protruding ribs and hunched shoulders. In between numbers He took big gulps from a water bottle, clinging to every swallow as if his very life depended on it. A momentary reprieve from the exhaustion. Death was coming for him after all.

An obnoxiously drunk couple consisting of a middle aged man still clinging to what was left of his hair danced with a young, curly haired woman many years his junior. He had what was an oddly muscular physique for a man of his age, as if he had spent a great deal of time preening himself in order to keep up with his junior partner. They stumbled across rows of attendees, bumping and grinding their way up and down section Q. Passing by me, they wafted fumes of cheap perfume, cheap beer, stale sweat, hair grease, and bad pot in their wake. So this is what has become of the mighty Rolling Stones. A blown-out show for peacocking middle-aged Adonises and their mistresses.

I took the train back uptown, too twisted to navigate the pitch black streets and, having blown all my cash on marked-up stadium beer, too broke to hail a cab. I got off by myself at Union Station.

The interior of the train shed has been co-opted into a sort of budget amusement park. The rod-iron canopy that hangs over the place has been adored with gaudy, neon-colored lights and a flashing fluorescent sign off to the side advertises a cheap aquarium. A restaurant with the facade of a fairground tent boasts on its marquee that “A Historic Icon Has Never Felt So Modern!” The grand hall, situated at the center of the headhouse, is now the lobby of a Marriott branded hotel. A ferris wheel sits just outside the canopy with another sign that boasts of its size in comparison to the Statue of Liberty.

All of a sudden Lady Liberty didn’t seem so impressive.

I staggered around the open air train shed for a good forty-five minutes trying to find an exit

that wasn’t barricaded off. I kept thinking that someone must be coming to arrest me, detain me, or at least ask me what the hell I was doing, piss drunk and wandering around Union Station at one in the morning. Somewhere deep within the recesses of my brain I thought that getting detained for public intoxication inside a cultural landmark would at least provide me with the Rock n’ Roll story I was deprived of at the concert.

I eventually hopped a fence and I was free. Unbeknownst to me until I had thrown myself over the barricade, a cop was sitting at the end of the street, close enough to take in the spectacle. He totally ignored me as I walked past. There was no riot this time, no threat to authority, just me. 1978 was a long time ago indeed.

I eventually found my way back to the Pear Tree Inn. After ascending the sloped hill on which Market Street was paved, I turned back around. I gazed out at the St. Louis’s skyline, the towering skyscrapers all lit up against the night sky, with the imperial Arch at the very edge of the horizon. That’s when it struck me:

Here I was at the Gateway to the West, looking back east.