HOTTEST TO LEAST HOT: The Rolling Stones

WORDS BY LAURA JANE/ ILLUSTRATION BY JEN

Hi! Welcome to HOTTEST TO LEAST HOT, a new feature on Strawberry Fields Whatever where we rank members of different bands from hottest to least hot. I know double standards are a generally shitty thing or whatever, but I'm personally really into the double standard that allows me to rank mens' attractiveness levels in a public forum and not have it be completely revolting. I've been blogging for six years and have always done my best to use it to bring joy and laughter into the world; I would like to carry on in this wonderful tradition for years and years to come! There are so many groups of attractive-to-not-so-attractive men that I feel would benefit from being ranked by me. For instance, Bob Dylan is the hottest and least-hot Bob Dylan. And then there's the Clash! Let's face it, ladies. Topper Headon is really ugs compared to Paul, Mick and Joe. Somebody needs to disseminate that information and then riff on it. 

I started out by ranking the Rolling Stones from least to most attractive because the Beatles are all perfectly and equally beautiful (except Ringo; he's a little uglier), and the Rolling Stones have obviously said a lot of sexist shit in their time and this is their punishment for saying it. So there I go proving karma is real yet again. 

LEAST HOT: Bill Wyman 

Bill Wyman looks like a grandmother. He was born a grandmother, and he'll die a grandmother. He also has one of those weird muscly faces that forces you to super-consider that old adage of "It takes x amount of muscles to smile, and x+100 muscles to frown," but not in the way the adage intended. It's not positive. 

But he has his moments. But I have terrible taste in men. Once, when I was eighteen and lived in a dormitory, I forced my friend Chelsea to watch this video on The Strokes' official website of Nikolai Fraiture wheeling a suitcase through an airport. That video was literally my favorite thing on the entire Internet at that point in my life. I was making her watch it because I was trying to prove to her how beautiful Nikolai is, which he is. But only I think that! Only I, and Nikolai's wife maybe, think that Nikolai is the most beautiful man in the world.

Point is, Chelsea said: "You're attracted to awkwardness, and that's really sweet," and it's true, and it's sweet, I like that fact about myself, and Bill Wyman is totally the Nikolai Fraiture of the Rolling Stones. He'd probably be #3 on this list if he hadn't married an 18-year-old when he was 52, which is revolting. Sorry! He didn't marry that woman for love; he married her so he could have sex with her. There, Bill Wyman. I said it. Also, Keith Richards shit-talks the fuck out of him in Life, and I'll take Keith RIchards' word for just about anything. I trust Keith Richards in a very deep and important way. There's this part where he talks about how Bill Wyman makes a very weak cup of tea, it's barely even tea, just a cup of hot water that he dips a teabag into, and Keith's so disgusted by Bill's stupid approach to tea-making, and I think about that part of Life almost every single day of mine. It rings so true! I know exactly what it feels like to hate a person so much that even the way they take their tea makes you squirm. 

That being said, I think it would be really fun to drive down the Autobahn while listening to "I Wanna Get Me A Gun." 

2nd-LEAST HOT: Brian Jones

Brian Jones is a clayface, and that's a shame. A clayface is my new name I just made up for people whose faces look like they are made out of clay. Brian "Clayface" Jones. (That's a Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds joke). He also has no neck. However, one July evening three summers ago, my friend Ally and I were drinking sangria on a patio. We ended up sitting next to this wacky old semi-homeless woman named Monica. Monica and I formed a very deep connection in a very intense and important way. She told me that her soul used to belong to the Rolling Stones but then she realized that Mick and Keith were Satanists who killed Brian Jones, which I definitely don't agree with. But while she was explaining her crazy Satanism conspiracy theory she happened to utter the sentence, "I always try to err on the side of God," which is easily one of the top 5 most life-changing sentences that have ever been spoken in my presence. So yeah, Brian Jones was definitely short and had oddly pronounced bags under his eyes and really bad bangs, but for the entire rest of my life every time I ever think of him I'll think of trying to err on the side of God, and for that reason in my mind he's become an angel. A hotter-than-Bill-Wyman angel. 

3rd-LEAST HOT: Mick Taylor

My favorite thing about Mick Taylor is that once when I was nineteen years old I was sitting on my fire escape talking to this dude I had a crush on, and I asked him who he'd be if he were a member of the Rolling Stones and he said "Mick Taylor," and it was such a weird and surprising answer. I was like "Dude! You are so worth having a crush on!", only in real life I didn't say anything because I was nineteen and I wasn't confident.  

There's not very much to say about Mick Taylor, is there? He was in the band for about five seconds, and he didn't make much of an impression on anybody except for that guy from my fire escape. He's a very fresh-faced, corn-fed sort of cute, and his hair really goes there- 

His hotness is undeniable but bland. It doesn't really mean anything. And then he got really gross and broke and bloated in his old age, 

and if that doesn't bum you out, you've got no soul. But then I found this one photo of "interim Mick Taylor" where he's just a little bit chubs and he's wearing a velvet blazer and he looks like he should be in The Pastels; he's fucking perfect:

I want him to be named Evan or Jim and I want to get high with him and I want him to be extremely fucking funny, and I want us to drive through drive-thrus. I want to eat chicken with him, chicken dipped in a sauce. 

4th-LEAST HOT/4th HOTTEST: Mick Jagger

I'm not going to sit around and make a big fuss about how I don't think Mick Jagger's hot because I think Mick Jagger's hot. But I don't think my thinking Mick Jagger's hot means anything about me except that I am occasionally susceptible to marketing initiatives; that is to say, I think Mick Jagger's hot in the same way I think a Prada dress is beautiful; that is to say, if you waggled a particularly beautiful Prada dress in front of my face and asked me, "Would you like to own this?" I'd have to say "Yes," but I'd feel a little bit gross about myself for having said it, and I never would have thought to say it on my own. 

Mick Jagger is a beautiful object. He is a vase. 

He's glamorous, and the last thing I ever want a dude to be is fucking glamorous. Are you kidding me? I'd rather jerk off a thousand frat boys than be caught dead holding hands with a good dancer. Can I make this any clearer? I'M INTO CHUBBY STONERS. (Or thin stoners with fast metabolisms! Or they don't even have to be stoners! Just as long as they're eating a ton of food that's bad for them constantly.) 

3rd HOTTEST: Ron Wood

Ron Wood is a Gemini, and his birthday is June 1st, which I think is absolutely the most perfect Gemini birthday for Ron Wood. He could be May 29th, or June 8th, or June 14th, and those days would all be fine, but something would be missing. It needs to be June 1st for him. And it is! 

The best part about Ron Wood is that he was in the fucking Faces, which is such a hot band to be in. I'm not a huge fan of the Small or regular Faces music-wise, but it's still just so severely sexy on every level to have been a part of such a cool institution. Like I love ELO more than literally every single other band that has ever existed out of all human history except for 5, and am mostly indif about the Faces except for I weirdly love this one Small Faces instrumental called "Collibosher," yet I would still fuck a member of the Faces over a member of the Electric Light Orchestra without any pause for consideration, except to consider what a lucky human being I am. Oh and one of the 5 bands I love more than ELO just happens to be the Rolling Stones, and I even think it's the hotter to be in the Faces than it is to be in the Rolling Stones! But what's hottest of all is to be in both of them.

And what's even hotter than being in the Faces and the Rolling Stones is being in the Faces and the Rolling Stones and having your wiry upper arms look as wildly hot in a muscle t as Ronnie Wood's do! Boom, Ronnie Wood! Boom! 

PS nice job having the best Old Man Style of all time homeboy

2nd HOTTEST: Keith Richards

Remember that episode of Mad Men when Don Draper told Peggy Olson that he sees her as an extension as himself? That's how I feel about Keith Richards, only in reverse: I'm Peggy, and Keith is Don. I see myself as an extension of Keith Richards. 

I think that if Keith Richards and I could have existed together under ideal circumstances we would have been born as twins from rural Louisiana during the 1920s or '30s. There'd be a lot of freckles and scrappiness involved. One of us would always have a black eye. We'd climb a lot of trees and build poorly-executed treehouses (but they'd have a lot of heart). We'd drink cream soda out of bottles and eat pie. So much pie! Almost exclusively pie. AND WE'D BOTH OWN SLINGSHOTS. We'd keep our slingshots in the back pockets of our overalls. We'd be so grubby. We'd be BAD. A tire swing. Calloused bare feet. Etc. 

I guess what I'm saying is that I'd rather be Keither's best friend than his girlfriend. He'd be annoying to date. Drug dramz. Ugh. My other big Keith-and-I as best pals fantasy is I'd go visit him at his house on the beach in Jamaica, and then we'd lie on hammocks holding two hollowed-out coconuts apiece. One coconut would be a bong, and the other would be a vessel for a pina colada. 

There's this part in Life where Keith talks about how Paul McCartney has a Jamaican beach house right down the road from his, and sometimes they hang out. One time, Paul and Keith were chilling and they came up with an idea for a line of inflatable dog beds where the print of the bed would match the dog's fur, i.e. dalmatian-print for dalmatians. That's my favorite thing that ever happened, Keith and Paul having that ridiculous conversation. And I think it's so cool that Keith felt it was worth putting in his book. His AUTOBIOGRAPHY. "Conceptualizing that dog bed idea was easily one of the defining moments of my life, yes. For sure." 

Last but not least, here's a cool story I wrote about how puking in my bathtub and unclogging hair from the drain relates to my loving Keith Richards. 

HOTTEST: Charlie Watts

All I want to say is that Charlie Watts has sketched every bed he's slept in on tour since 1968, because if you don't know that about Charlie Watts, it's time for you to start knowing that about Charlie Watts. Otherwise, I'm going to let Charlie "The Most Elegant Lurch" Watts speak for himself on this one:

God bless that unibrow.