| April 22nd, 2005 07:58 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
The first one is on the Let It Bleed thread:
http://www.novogate.com/board/968/210728-1.html |
| April 22nd, 2005 08:03 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
Exile On Main Street
UK Chart: #1, 16 wks on chart - Sales: 400.000
US Chart: #1, 43 wks on chart - Sales: 1.500.000
Lenny Kaye (Rolling Stone, issue 112, 1972)
There are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, there are songs that'll become your favorites and others you'll probably lift the needle for when their time is due. But in the end, Exile On Main Street (Rolling Stones COC-2-2900) spends its four sides shading the same song in as many variations as there are Rolling Stone readymades to fill them, and if on the one hand they prove the group's eternal constancy and appeal, it's on the other that you can leave the album and still feel vaguely unsatisfied, not quite brought to the peaks that this band of bands has always held out as a special prize in the past.
The Stones have never set themselves in the forefront of any musical revolution, instead preferring to take what's already been laid down and then gear it to its highest most slashing level. Along this road they've displayed a succession of sneeringly - believable poses, in a tradition so grand that in lesser hands they could have become predictable, coupled with an acute sense of social perception and the kind of dynamism that often made everything else seem beside the point.
Through a spectral community alchemy, we've chosen the Stones to bring our darkness into light, in each case via a construct that fits the time and prevailing mood perfectly. And, as a result, they alone have become the last of the great hopes. If you can't bleed on the Stones, who can you bleed on?
In that light, Exile On Main Street is not just another album, a two-month binge for the rack-jobbers and then onto whoever's up next. Backed by an impending tour and a monumental picture-book, its mere presence in record stores makes a statement. And as a result, the group has been given a responsibility to their audience which can't be dropped by the wayside, nor should be, given the two-way street on which music always has to function. Performers should not let their public make career decisions for them, but the best artisans of any era have worked closely within their audience's expectations, either totally transcending them (the Beatles in their up-to-and-including Sgt. Pepper period) or manipulating them (Dylan, continually).
The Stones have prospered by making the classic assertion whenever it was demanded of them. Coming out of Satanic Majesties Request, the unholy trio of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Street Fighting Man" and "Sympathy For The Devil" were the blockbusters that brought them back in the running. After, through "Midnight Rambler," "Honky Tonk Women," "Brown Sugar," "Bitch" and those jagged edge opening bars of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," they've never failed to make that affirmation of their superiority when it was most needed, of the fact that others may come and go but the Rolling Stones will alway-ways be.
This continual topping of one's self can only go on for so long, after which one must sit back and sustain what has already been built. And with Exile On Main Street, the Stones have chosen to sustain for the moment, stabilizing their pasts and presenting few directions for their future. The fact that they do it so well is testament to one of the finest bands in the world. The fact that they take a minimum of chances, even given the room of their first double album set, tends to dull that finish a bit.
Exile On Main Street is the Rolling Stones at their most dense and impenetrable. In the tradition of Phil Spector, they've constructed a wash of sound in which to frame their songs, yet where Spector always aimed to create an impression of space and airiness, the Stones group everything together in one solid mass, providing a tangled jungle through which you have to move toward the meat of the material. Only occasionally does an instrument or voice break through to the surface, and even then it seems subordinate to the ongoing mix, and without the impact that a break in the sound should logically have.
One consequence of this style is that most of the hard-core action on the record revolves around Charlie Watts' snare drum. The sound gives him room not only to set the pace rhythmically but to also provide the bulk of the drive and magnetism. Another is that because Jagger's voice has been dropped to the level of just another instrument, burying him even more than usual, he has been freed from any restrictions the lyrics might have once imposed. The ulterior motives of mumbling aside, with much of the record completely unintelligible–though the words I could make out generally whetted my appetite to hear more–he's been left with something akin to pure singing, utilizing only his uncanny sense of style to carry him home from there. His performances here are among the finest he's graced us with in a long time, a virtual drama which amply proves to me that there's no other vocalist who can touch him, note for garbled note.
As for Keith, Bill and Mick T., their presence comes off as subdued, never overly apparent until you put your head between the speakers. In the case of the last two, this is perfectly understandable. Wyman has never been a front man, and his bass has never been recorded with an eye to clarity. He's the bottom, and he fulfills his support role with a grace that is unfailingly admirable. Mick Taylor falls about the same, chosen to take Brian's place as much because he could be counted on to stay in the background as for his perfect counterpoint guitar skills. With Keith, however, except for a couple of spectacular chording exhibitions and some lethal openings, his instrumental wizardry is practically nowhere to be seen, unless you happen to look particularly hard behind Nicky Hopkins' piano or the dual horns of Price/Keys. It hurts the album, as the bone earring has often provided the marker on which the Stones rise or fall.
Happily, though, Exile On Main Street has the Rolling Stones sounding like a full-fiedged five-into-one band. Much of the self-consciousness that marred Sticky Fingers has apparently vanished, as well as that album's tendency to touch every marker on the Hot 100. It's been replaced by a tight focus on basic components of the Stones' sound as we've always known it, knock-down rock and roll stemming from blues, backed with a pervading feeling of blackness that the Stones have seldom failed to handle well.
The album begins with "Rocks Off," a proto-typical Stones' opener whose impact is greatest in its first 15 seconds. Kicked off by one of Richards' patented guitar scratchings, a Jagger aside and Charlie's sharp crack, it moves into the kind of song the Stones have built a reputation on, great choruses and well-judged horn bursts, painlessly running you through the motions until you're out of the track and into the album. But if that's one of its assets, it also stands for one of its deficiencies–there's nothing distinctive about the tune. Stones' openers of the past have generally served to set the mood for the mayhem to follow; this one tells you that we're in for nothing new.
"Rip This Joint" is a stunner, getting down to the business at hand with the kind of music the Rolling Stones were born to play. It starts at a pace that yanks you into its locomotion full tilt, and never lets up from there; the sax solo is the purest of rock and roll. Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips" mounts up as another plus, with a mild boogie tempo and a fine mannered vocal from Jagger. The guitars are the focal point here, and they work with each other like a pair of Corsican twins. "Casino Boogie" sounds at times as if it were a Seventies remake from the chord progression of "Spider and the Fly," and for what it's worth, I suppose I'd rather listen to "jump right ahead in my web" any day.
But it's left to "Tumbling Dice" to not just place a cherry on the first side, but to also provide one of the album's only real moves towards a classic. As the guitar figure slowly falls into Charlie's inevitable smack, the song builds to the kind of majesty the Stones at their best have always provided. Nothing is out of place here. Keith's simple guitar figure providing the nicest of bridges, the chorus touching the upper levels of heaven and spurring on Jagger, set up by an arrangement that is both unique and imaginative. It's definitely the cut that deserved the single, and the fact that it's not likely to touch number one shows we've perhaps come a little further than we originally intended.
Side two is the only side on Exile without a barrelhouse rocker, and drags as a result. I wish for once the Stones could do a country song in the way they've apparently always wanted, without feeling the need to hoke it up in some fashion. "Sweet Virginia" is a perfectly friendly lazy shuffle that gets hung on an overemphasized "shit" in the chorus. "Torn and Frayed" has trouble getting started, but as it inexorably rolls to its coda the Stones find their flow and relax back, allowing the tune to lovingly expand. "Sweet Black Angel," with its vaguely West Indian rhythm and Jagger playing Desmond Dekker, comes off as a pleasant experiment that works, while "Loving Cup" is curiously faceless, though it must be admitted the group works enough out-of-the-ordinary breaks and bridges to give it at least a fighting chance; the semi-soul fade on the end is rhythmically satisfying but basically undeveloped, adding to the cut's lack of impression.
The third side is perhaps the best organized of any on Exile. Beginning with the closest thing to a pop number Mick and Keith have written on the album, "Happy" lives up to its title from start to finish. It's a natural-born single, and its position as a side opener seems to suggest the group thinks so too. "Turd On The Run," even belying its gimmicky title, is a superb little hustler; if Keith can be said to have a showpiece on this album, this is it. Taking off from a jangly "Maybellene" rhythm guitar, he misses not a flick of the wrist, sitting behind the force of the instrumental and shoveling it along. "Ventilator Blues" is all Mick, spreading the guts of his voice all over the microphone, providing an entrance into the gumbo ya-ya of "I Just Want To See His Face," Jagger and the chorus sinuously wavering around a grand collection of jungle drums. "Let It Loose" closes out the side, and as befits the album's second claim to classic, is one beautiful song, both lyrically and melodically. Like on "Tumbling Dice," everything seems to work as a body here, the gospel chorus providing tension, the leslie'd guitar rounding the mysterious nature of the track, a great performance from Mick and just the right touch of backing instruments. Whoever that voice belongs to hanging off the fade in the end, I'd like to kiss her right now: she's that lovely.
Coming off "Let It Loose," you might expect side four to be the one to really put the album on the target. Not so. With the exception of an energy-ridden "All Down The Line" and about half of "Shine A Light," Exile starts a slide downward which happens so rapidly that you might be left a little dazed as to what exactly happened. "Stop Breaking Down" is such an overdone blues cliche that I'm surprised it wasn't placed on Jamming With Edward. "Shine A Light" starts with perhaps the best potential of any song on the album, a slow, moody piece with Mick singing in a way calculated to send chills up your spine. Then, out of nowhere, the band segues into the kind of shock gospel song that Tommy James has already done better. Then they move you back into the slow piece. Then back into shlock gospel again. It's enough to drive you crazy.
After four sides you begin to want some conclusion to the matters at hand, to let you off the hook so you can start all over fresh. "Soul Survivor," though a pretty decent and upright song in itself, can't provide the kind of kicker that is needed at this point. It's typicality, within the oeuvre of the Rolling Stones, means it could've been placed anywhere, and with "Let It Loose" just begging to seal the bottle, there's no reason why it should be the last thing left you by the album.
Still, talking about the pieces of Exile On Main Street is somewhat off the mark here, since individually the cuts seem to stand quite well. Only when they're taken together, as a lump sum of four sides, is their impact blunted. This would be all right if we were talking about any other group but the Stones. Yet when you've been given the best, it becomes hard to accept anything less, and if there are few moments that can be faulted on this album, it also must be said that the magic high spots don't come as rapidly.
Exile On Main Street appears to take up where Sticky Fingers left off, with the Stones attempting to deal with their problems and once again slightly missing the mark. They've progressed to the other side of the extreme, wiping out one set of solutions only to be confronted with another. With few exceptions, this has meant that they've stuck close to home, doing the sort of things that come naturally, not stepping out of the realm in which they feel most comfortable. Undeniably it makes for some fine music, and it surely is a good sign to see them recording so prolifically again; but I still think that the great Stones album of their mature period is yet to come. Hopefully, Exile On Main Street will give them the solid footing they need to open up, and with a little horizon-expanding (perhaps honed by two months on the road), they might even deliver it to us the next time around.
|
| April 22nd, 2005 08:21 PM |
|
|
| Mel Belli |
I find it hard to believe that "Exile" has sold only 1.5 million copies, given the '94 reissues. When's the last time it was recertified? |
| April 22nd, 2005 08:50 PM |
|
|
| Riffhard |
It's important to remember that Exile was actully reviewed about a year arter this initial review by Rolling Stone. Making it the only album to ever be reviewed twice by the magazine. The second review was considerably better than that ridiculous review printed above. In fact the magazine basically retracted that first review and stated that Exile was,in fact,the Stones best album ever. The word masterpeice was bandied about freely in the second more spot on review.
Riffhard |
| April 22nd, 2005 09:04 PM |
|
|
| time is on my side |
I remember reading this review when it first came out as I was a regular subscriber to Rolling Stone (Exile on Main St was being viewed as a disappointment by the reviewer from Rolling Stone along with a few others that I read). It really pissed me off at the time as I used to place a lot of emphasis on these type of reviews. Here I am, thinking I had just heard one of the greatest records of all time; where I think the Stones had taken their music to another level; and this reviewer from Rolling Stone says it's disappointing (I didn't remember it at the time but rereading this review, I also notice he's taking a shot at Sticky Fingers). I've grown up since then and, it's been over 30 years, but you know what, I'm still pissed off.
[Edited by time is on my side] |
| April 22nd, 2005 09:23 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
quote:
Mel Belli wrote:
I find it hard to believe that "Exile" has sold only 1.5 million copies, given the '94 reissues. When's the last time it was recertified?
Last certification: May 2000 (3x Platinum)
Exile is a double album, that means 1.5 x 2.
|
| April 23rd, 2005 09:32 AM |
|
|
| corgi37 |
That is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous review i have read about Exile (Mind you, anyone got the NME review to post?).
I wont go into it all, 'cept to say, on let it loose, or is it shine a light???? - I dont think its a guitar through a Leslie amp, i am pretty fucking sure it is one Mr/Sir/Dr. Billy Preston on keyboards.
And, how can any human not adore Soul Survivor? I mean, its a perfect song, and a perfect ending to this harrowing and majestic album. |
| April 23rd, 2005 10:44 AM |
|
|
| Prodigal Son |
Well Corgi, the guitar arpeggio in "Let it Loose" actually is a guitar played through a Leslie organ speaker. Nowadays amps can provide that sound, rotary speaker or something to that extent. Anyway, stupid review. |
| April 23rd, 2005 01:45 PM |
|
|
| time is on my side |
quote:
Making it the only album to ever be reviewed twice by the magazine.
I could be wrong on this as I'm going strictly by memory but didn't Some Girls get similiarly trashed by a reviewer from Rolling Stone???? It seems to me that Jann Wenner himself wrote the rebuttal not only for Some Girls but for Dylan's Street Legal (both albums got really negative reviews again, if my memory serves me correct, the chief felt the need to set the record straight).
[Edited by time is on my side] |
| April 23rd, 2005 02:35 PM |
|
|
| Child of the Moon |
Yeah, that Exile review has always bugged me. Poor bastard just didn't get it. Funny enough, he was later Patti Smith's guitar player. I'll bet Patti probably got it. |
| April 23rd, 2005 03:01 PM |
|
|
| Bruno Stone |
quote:
corgi37 wrote:
That is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous review i have read about Exile (Mind you, anyone got the NME review to post?).
And, how can any human not adore Soul Survivor? I mean, its a perfect song, and a perfect ending to this harrowing and majestic album.
Yeah. Somebody who doesn`t adore Soul Survivor is not a normal person. |
| April 24th, 2005 02:52 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
Sticky Fingers
UK Chart: #1, 26 wks on chart - Sales: 500.000
US Chart: #1, 62 wks on chart - Sales: 3.000.000
Jon Landau (Rolling Stone, issue 84; June 10, 1971)
SIDE ONE
"Brown Sugar:" It begins with some magical raunch chords on the right channel. In the tradition of great guitar intros ("All Day and All of the Night," "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown," and "Satisfaction" itself) it transfixes you: instant recognition, instant connection. Suddenly the electric guitar is joined by an acoustic guitar on the left channel, an acoustic that is merely strumming the chords that the electric is spitting out with such fury. It washes over the electric to no apparent purpose, stripping it momentarily of its authority and intensity. and so, in the first 15 seconds of the albums first cut we are presented with its major conflict: driving, intense, wide-open rock versus a controlled and manipulative musical conception determined to fill every whole and touch every base.
As soon as the voices come on, the acoustic recedes into inaudibility: on "Brown Sugar" wide open rock wins by a hair, but it is a hollow victory. Opening cuts on Stones albums have always been special, fro the early ones - "Not Fade Away," "Around and Around," and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love: - with their promise of rock and roll to come, to the tour de force openings of the later albums - "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Gimme Shelter" - which served as overwhelming entrances into a more complex musical world view.
At their best these opening cuts were statements of themes that transcended both the theme itself and the music that was to follow. As I listened to "Sticky Fingers," for the first time I thought "Brown Sugar" was good, but not that good. I certainly hoped it wasn't the best thing on the album. As it turns out, there are a few moments that surpass it but it still sets the tone for the album perfectly: middle-level Rolling Stones competence. The lowpoints aren't that low, but the high points, with one exception, aren't that high.
As to the performance itself, the chords, harmony, and song are powerful stuff. The instrumentation however, is too diffuse, occasionally undermining the vocals instead of supporting them. But when Richards joins Jagger for the last chorus they finally make it home free.
"Sway:" Vaguely reminiscent of "Stray Cat Blues" but not nearly so powerful. The sound is characteristic Rolling Stones messiness enhanced by the unusual degree of separation in the mix. Charlie Watts bashes away with the smirking abandon that made him such a delight on songs like "Get Off Of My Cloud" and "All Sold Out." But unlike early Stones messiness, "Sway" lacks intensity. It never reaches a goal because it doesn't seem to have one. Rather, it remains a series of riffs whose lack of content is obscured by prolonged and indifferent guitar semi-solos and a fine string arrangement that suddenly enters towards the end.
"Wild Horses:" A good song with lots of good things in it that doesn't quite come off. The acoustic 12-string stands out over everything else in the arrangement - perhaps a little too far out, as the rest of the instruments sound like mere fragments, wandering in and out of the track at arbitrary intervals.
Jagger's vocal is clearly audible for the first time on the album and I don't care for it. It is mannered, striving for intensity without being wholly convincing. Musically, the more complex the Stones get the m ore inadequate he sometimes sounds. The man is a stylist as opposed to a singer. He has always lacked power and range: on 15 albums he has never really grabbed hold of a note and let it ring. At his best, he sings around the notes - plays with them - dancing in and out with precision.
Or, he can let himself go entirely, with no attempt at stylistic posturing and thereby achieving an almost incredibly naturalism. But, on "Wild Horses," there is a pint in which the only thing that will work is a good note, well sung, sustained and sufficient to stand on its own. It is not to be found. A musical attitude is not a replacement for a musical style and style is not a replacement for essential technique, which is what is missing here.
The longing of the song's lyrics coupled with its ultimate hope constitute as much of a theme a there is on this record. Typically (since "Between the Buttons") the Stones' statement alternates between aggressive sexuality and warmer, more subtly erotic statements of emotional dependence and openness. The flirtation with social significance of the last two albums has been almost wholly abandoned in what appears to be something of a recommitment to more personal subject matter.
"Can't You Hear Me Knocking:" Years ago, when I first heard that the Stones had recorded something 11 minutes long, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it, thinking it was sure to be the definitive rave-up and hoping it would finally put the Yardbirds and Them in their place. When I finally heard "Going Home" I realized the Stones couldn't conceive of a long cut as anything but a vehicle for Jagger to project through. Given the time to stretch out, they went for the mellow down easy side with the emphasis on the voice rather than the instruments.
Now they have done something with a long instrumental break in it and it ain't bad. On the other hand, I can't see what it really has to do with the Rolling Stones. The song is good but once into the solos there is a touch of R&B, a touch of Santana, but nothing to really identify with. So maybe they had the right idea the first time. For old times sake I do hope that the really boring guitar solo is by Mick Taylor and that those great surging chords in the background are by Keith Richards, the original Sixties rock and roll guitarist, and mast of Chuck Berry music, and the soul of the Rolling Stones.
"You Gotta Move:" Anyway, for the present, Mick Taylor's electric slide guitar is absolutely exquisite. Combined with Richard's fine work on the acoustic they create one of the album's few real moments. Charlie Watts' bass drum holds it together perfectly, while Richard's harmony smoothes off the more outrageous edges of Jagger's lead vocal. In the end, all the pieces fit. A small but important triumph.
SIDE TWO
"Bitch:" Jagger in one of his most popular poses: demonic. here he flaunts naughty words and naughty thoughts as if he still thought they were naughty. The arrangement is straight-ahead. The horns sound great here as they are used primarily for purposes of syncopation and rhythm. The bass and drums - the Rolling Stones bottom that has driven its way through over 200 cuts and which is the true instrumental trademark of the group - burns like a bitch.
"I Got the Blues:" In the tradition of the earlier R&B Imitations such as "Pain In My Heart," "You Better Move On," "If You Need Me," and best of all their great "That's How Strong My Love Is." However, this is the first time they actually added Stax horns. It's good as far as it goes, but lacks the feeling of the earlier imitations. It all seems pro forma. The worst cut the Rolling Stones ever released was "I've Been Lovin' You Too Long" (which sounds very much like a studio recording even though it showed up on "Got Live I You Want It"). Jagger couldn't sing it. Here he almost sings up a storm, but in the end its the part he didn't sing that stays in mind. Somehow, it isn't complete.
"Sister Morphine:" This was supposed to be stark, intense and realistic. Some hear it that way. I find it lyrically convincing, but labored to the point of being unlistenable musically. Perhaps that is part of the conception: obviously, a song about morphine should not be pleasant to hear. The question is, is the song unpleasant because it makes us uncomfortable emotionally, or simply because it is an awkward and unsuccessful attempt to depict reality through music?
"Dead Flowers:" I suppose somewhere along the line they thought of calling the album "Dead Flowers," which would have justified this cut's presence at some level. Despite its parodistic intentions, the mere thought of the Stones doing straight country music is simply appalling. And they do it so poorly, especially the lead guitar. The cut is ordinary without being either definitive or original.
"Moonlight Mile:" From "Brown Sugar" we had to wait all the way to here to get a masterpiece. The semi-oriental touch seems to heighten the song's intense expression of desire, which is the purest and most engaging emotion present on the record. The sense of personal commitment and emotional spontaneity immediately liberate Jagger's (double-tracked) singing: it's limitations become irrelevant and he rises to the occasion by turning in his best performance on the album - the only thing that compares with his singing of "Gimme Shelter."
There is something soulful here, something deeply felt: "I've got silence on the radio, let the airwaves flow, let the airwaves flow." Paul Buckmaster, Elton John's arranger, does the best job with strings I can remember in a long, long time, while Charlie Watts only goes through the motions of loosening up his style, as he comes down hard on the nearly magical line, "Just about a moonlight mile."
The cut contains that rave-up they never gave us on "Goin Home"; perhaps it is just a filling out of the intensely erotic climax that came towards the end of that song ("Sha-la-la," and all of that). When Jagger finally says "Here we go, now" as Mick Taylor's guitar (Richard is inexplicably absent) falls perfectly into place with a hypnotic chord pattern, it's as if he is taking our hand and is literally going to walk us down his dream road. As the strings push the intensity level constantly upwards and Charlie emphasizes the development with fabulous cymbal crashes, the energy becomes unmistakably erotic - erotic as opposed to merely sexual, erotic in a way that the entire rest of the album is not. The expression of need that dominates so much of the record is transformed from a hostile statement into a plea and a statement of warmth and receptiveness.
This cut really does sway and when Jagger's voice re-enters, it is with none of the forced attempts at style and control present on the rest of the album, but with the kind of abandon that he seems uniquely capable of. And unique is the best word to describe the cut as a whole: after nine songs that hover around the middle, they finally hit the high note and make a statement that is not just original but that could have only come from them.
At least it gives me hope for the future.
AFTER THE BUTTONS
The early Stones were adolescent rockers. They were self-conscious in an obvious and unpretentious way. And they were committed to a musical style that needed no justification because it came so naturally to them. As they grew musically the mere repetition of old rock and blues tunes became increasingly less satisfying. They went from doing other people's material to doing their own. From doing their own, basic rock & roll material they began to strive for a more contemporary feeling and approach at all levels, especially production (first on Between the Buttons and then on Their Satanic Majesties Request). After the artistic failure of Satanic Majesties they went back to rock & roll to recharge themselves, mixed it with contemporary themes and production styles, and come up with Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed.
Those two albums are responsible for the Stones' reputation with most of their current audience and comprised the bulk of their material on their tour of America. The darker side of those albums was all but ignored. Where the early Stones had been, if anything, too anarchic and too abandoned, they now became too controlled and manipulative. At their best, on Gimme Shelter, they could use the production to break through conventions into pure feeling. But on cuts like Salt of the Earth and You Can't Always Get What You Want they showed insufficient versatility to handle the demands of production. They plodded instead of rocking, seemingly mired down by their conception of what they were supposed to do rather than being involved with what they wanted to do.
On Sticky Fingers, it doesn't really sound like they are doing what they want to. Play Brown Sugar and then play any opening cut from the first five albums. The early ones are sloppy, messy, and vulgar. They are brash and almost ruthless in their energy. And they sound real. By comparison Brown Sugar, for all its formal correctness is an artifice. Ultimately they sound detached from it, as they do from all but a few things on Sticky Fingers. The two million hours they joke about spending on this record must have surely resulted from uncertainty about what it was they wanted to hear when they were through. On the other hand, those early records always sounded (whether they were is irrelevant) as if they were recorded in a day, without any overdubbing, comprised mainly of first takes. They reverberated with off the wall spunk and spontaneity.
Obviously the Stones can't go back to that: it would be redundant and incredibly limiting for them. But perhaps they have now gone too far the other way. If Sticky Fingers suffers from any one thing it's its own self-defeating calculating nature. Its moments of openness and feeling are too few: its moments where I know I should be enjoying it but am not, too great.
[Edited by Soldatti] |
| April 24th, 2005 03:39 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!
UK Chart: #1, 16 wks on chart - Sales: 300.000
US Chart: #6, 23 wks on chart - Sales: 1.200.000
Lester Bangs (Rolling Stone, Issue 70; November 12, 1970)
As much as the recorded product, the rock and roll concert scene seems mighty unhealthy these days. I hardly ever go to see name bands anymore myself, because most of them are so incredibly boring. Standards of performance are very low, and those few artists with enough talent or interest to put on a credible show often end up turning in performances so professionally, predictably competent that you walk out with the palest satisfaction and few memories. In the past year I have watched Ten Years After stumble through a set equal parts plodding monotone and splintered noise, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young invoke Woodstock to compensate for boring everyone to tears, and the Band and Creedence Clearwater recite their albums to such perfection that I fidgeted. I had to draw the line of most resistance when Led Zeppelin hit town last month for a 2 1/2 hour tour-de-force. But I asked a friend with more fortitude how it was, and he raved: "Oh, shit. I took eight reds and just sat there thinkin' the Zep was gonna play forever—man, I felt so good!"
Into this depressing scene ripped the Rolling Stones barnstorming their way across America last fall for a tour which left most audiences satisfied and well-nigh spent, but got reviews mixed and ultimately perplexed because few of us were sure what to expect or, once the hysteria of the actual performance had drained away, how to react. In 1965, caught up in a hurricane of bopper shrieks, we accepted the whole thing as sort of a supernatural visitation, a cataclysmic experience of Wagnerian power that transcended music. In 1969 they were expected to prove themselves as a stage act, but the force of their personalities and the tides of hype and our expectations cancelled all our cynical reservations the moment Mick strode out and drawled hello to each home town. There they were in the flesh, the Rolling Stones, ultimate personification of all our notions and fantasies and hopes for rock and roll, and we were enthralled, but the nagging question that remained was whether the show we had seen was really that brilliant, or if we had not been to some degree set up, pavlov'd by years of absence and rock scribes and 45 minute delays into a kind of injection delirium in which a show which was perfectly ordinary in terms of what the Stones might have been capable of would seem like some ultimate rock apocalypse. Sure, the Stones put on what was almost undoubtedly the best show of the year, but did that say more about their own involvement or about the almost uniform lameness of the competition? Some folks never did decide.
Liver Than You'll Ever Be, appearing last spring, provided a partial answer. It was a good album, as live rock albums go—"Carol" and "Midnight Rambler" especially shone. Some people were enthralled by it, but I found the musical interest of most of the songs mighty, ephemeral, and in general preferred the clattering thunder of Got Live If You Want It, which in terms of looseness, energy and general right-on shagginess could make a fair bid for being the rock concert album of all time. There are more important things than playing on-beat and on-key, and that fine line between slam-bang exorcism and unedifying noise is what would seem to make a great live LP.
All of which is why Get Your Ya-Ya's Out is such an unfettered delight. This album, at last, proves the fears of those who cared to fear groundless. More than just the soundtrack for a Rolling Stones concert, it's a truly inspired session, as intimate an experience as sitting in while the Stones jam for sheer joy in the basement. It proves once and for all that this band does not merely play the audience, it plays music whose essential crudeness is so highly refined that it becomes a kind of absolute distillation of raunch, that element which seems to be seeping out of Seventies rock at a disturbing rate. Where most live efforts seem almost embarrassing in their posturings and excesses, and even The Who Live At Leeds held tinges of the Art Statement, Ya-Ya's at its best just rocks and socks you right out of your chair. You can not only love it for what it is, you can like it for what it isn't.
The set opens with a brief collage of MC introductions from all their tour stops, and then rolls right into a solid, methodical "Jumpin' Jack Flash." Neither it nor the next three songs on side one quite match the energy level reached in "Midnight Rambler" and sustained through all of side two, but subsequent playings reveal the live "Jack Flash" to have a certain fierce precision which the studio single lacked and which makes the latter sound almost plodding by comparison. Here the bottom is full and brooding and the group as a whole has a bite as sharp as a pair of wire cutters.
Next comes Mick, teasing the little chickies: "Uh oh, I think I bust a button on mah trousahs ... you do' want mah trousahs to fall down, now do ya?" I had a friend once who nearly provoked me to fisticuffs when he remarked that Mick's appeal was "perverted." Now, the thing that strikes me here is how essentially positive and even wholesome, in terms of what's in the wind in 1970, Mick's onstage stud-strut is. Jim Morrison makes like The Flasher and screams "Love your brother!," Iggy practically turns the mike into a dildo, but Mick just flaps his lips, grinds his hips and chortles: "This is me, honeys—yearn!"
"Carol" is fine but definitely weaker than the version of Liver, and for me "Stray Cat Blues" and "Love in Vain" provide the low points of the album, the former by a certain clutter and the latter by not being that inspiring a vehicle in the first place.
But all traces of disinterest or disappointment skedaddle with the first swaggering chords of "Midnight Rambler." Mick can hardly wait to get started, flinging out rippling harp riffs and muttering lyrics before the others even begin, and certainly this great song made to be done live, has never been rendered with more purging viciousness. Every riff in it is so pristinely simple, yet so directly and deliberately placed that its locomotive rushes and icy invective take on more power the closer you come to learning them by heart. Let It Bleed's version seemed sinuous, somehow cool and detached in its violence, like one of Norman Mailer's Fifties hipsters. Here the song's celebratory rage comes bursting with a juggernaut wallop, Mick wrenching inchoate nonverbal vocalisms from his throat in the stop-time middle section, the audience roaring back (one crazed cat hollering "God damn!" in between), and the final frosting some wiry, lunging new riffs from Keith that build magnificently to the crashing climax.
The second side opens with another great audience riff—an insistent chick yells "'Paint It Black,' you devils!" and the Stones answer with an airborne "Sympathy For the Devil" that beats the rather cut-and-dried rendition on Beggar's Banquet all hollow, and spotlights a ringing Richard solo that's undoubtedly one of his best on record.
From there on out the energy level of the proceedings seems to soar straight up. "Live With Me" is just great ribald jive, but "Little Queenie" as done here is all time classic Stones. Just strutting along, leering and shuffling, the song has all the loose, lipsmacking glee its lyrics ever implied. This kind of gutty, almost offhand, seemingly effortless funk is where the Stones have traditionally left all competitors in the dust, and here they outdo themselves. I even think that this is one of those rare instances (most of the others are on their first album) where they cut Chuck Berry with one of his own songs.
"Honky Tonk Women" is just a joy, after Liver's half-realized runthrough and Joe Cocker's hack job, gutbucket rock and roll flowing out fine and raucous as a river of beer, but "Street Fighting Man" takes the show out on a level of stratospheric intensity that simply rises above the rest of the album and sums it all up. Keith's work here is a special delight, great surging riffs reminiscent of some of the best lines on the first Moby Grape album, or the golden lead in Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made to Love Her." I don't think there's a song on Ya-Ya's where the Stones didn't cut their original studio jobs. and this one leaps perhaps farthest ahead of all.
The Seventies may not have started with bright prospects for the future of rock, and so many hacks are reciting the litany of doom that it's beginning to annoy like an inane survey hit. The form may be in trouble, and we listeners may ourselves be in trouble, so jaded it gets harder each month to even hear what we're listening to. But the Rolling Stones are most assuredly not in trouble, and are looking like an even greater force in the years ahead than they have been. It's still too soon to tell, but I'm beginning to think Ya-Ya's just might be the best album they ever made. I have no doubt that it's the best rock concert ever put on record. The Stones, alone among their generation of groups, are not about to fall by the wayside. And as long as they continue to thrive this way, the era of true rock and roll music will remain alive and kicking with them.
|
| April 24th, 2005 05:44 PM |
|
|
| Mel Belli |
I guess Bangs wasn't a Taylorite ... Not one mention of the Other Mick, which is kind of astonishing in a review of "Ya Yas." |
| April 24th, 2005 06:45 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
I'm trying to post reviews from the moment of the release date for the record. It's interesting to see reviews like this and not Exile or Ya Ya's reviews from 2005. |
| April 24th, 2005 08:18 PM |
|
|
| texile |
exile is great BECAUSE it was misunderstood at the time it was released...........it didn't become the legend that it is now until the 80s.........
my favorite review is lester's re-evaluation of his earlier negative review of exile. in 74 - he completely reversed his intitial assessment and wrote: "it may be the stones finest moment" i'm paraphrasing but he finally saw the light like the rest of the world eventually would.
exile is like religion - at first its confusing, muddled, unapproachable - you just can't get a feeling for it and then.........like a bolt of lightening from god - it kicks your ass out of orbit and changes your life.
|
| April 25th, 2005 09:59 AM |
|
|
| corgi37 |
Holy shit, i thought the Exile review was bad! hahaha, SF gets it through the clacker. What an absolute piece of dross writing. What a fucking idiot!
Damn hippies. |
| April 25th, 2005 10:10 AM |
|
|
| Doxa |
Soldatti, you do a good work! It's really interesting to read those 'original' reviews at the time those classic albums were released; how did the contemporary musical press view the stuff without having the knowledge that they were 'really' discussing the golden period of the Stones and their peak albums (the same goes for their concert reviews at the time) 
It is also funny to recognize that those two classic albums, Sticky Fingers and Exile, are having quite negative reviews; they are so much compared to the 60's stuff, and seem to fail in this comparison. Heh, now compare this highly critical acclaim to any Rolling Stone reviews of their post-80's stuff, their solo work included, and all you find is five-star reviews with comparisons to a great Exile, etc...
- Doxa
[Edited by Doxa] |
| April 25th, 2005 01:05 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
quote:
Doxa wrote:
Heh, now compare this highly critical acclaim to any Rolling Stone reviews of their post-80's stuff, their solo work included, and all you find is five-star reviews with comparisons to a great Exile, etc...
The next review will post this 80's album to the level of the big 4. |
| April 25th, 2005 01:11 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
Undercover
UK Chart: #3, 18 wks on chart - Sales: 150.000
US Chart: #4, 23 wks on chart - Sales: 1.200.000
Kurt Loder (Rolling Stone, issue 410; December 7, 1983)
By now, the Rolling Stones have assumed something of the status of the blues in popular music – a vital force beyond time and fashion. Undercover, their twenty-third album (not counting anthologies and outtakes), reassembles, in the manner of mature masters of every art, familiar elements into exciting new forms. It is a perfect candidate for inclusion in a cultural time capsule: should future generations wonder why the Stones endured so long at the very top of their field, this record offers just about every explanation. Here we have the world's greatest rock & roll rhythm section putting out at maximum power; the reeling, roller-derby guitars at full roar; riffs that stick in the viscera, songs that seize the hips and even the heart; a singer who sounds serious again. Undercover is rock & roll without apologies.
There is a moment early on in "Too Tough," a terrific song on the second side, that sums up all of the Stones' extraordinary powers. With the guitars locked into a headlong riff and Mick Jagger hoarsely berating the woman who "screwed me down with kindness" and "suffocating love," the track is already off to a hot start; but then Charlie Watts comes barreling in on tom-toms and boots the tune onto a whole new level of gut-punching brilliance. That the Stones are still capable of such exhilarating energy is cause enough for wondrous comment; that they are able to sustain such musical force over the course of an entire LP is rather astonishing. Undercover is the most impressive of the albums the group has released since its mid-Seventies career slump (the others being Some Girls, Emotional Rescue and 1981's remarkable Tattoo You) because, within the band's R&B-based limits, it is the most consistently and energetically inventive.
Although the hard-rock numbers that make up the bulk of the record have the Rolling Stones' stamp all over them, they are also distinguished by a heightened creative freshness that recalls their song-rich 1967 LP. Between the Buttons (from which such numbers as "Too Tough" and the sentimentally salacious "She Was Hot" could almost pass as outtakes). The raw vitality of the performances is matched by the thorniness of the lyrics, which glimmer with all the usual veiled allusions and inscrutable ambiguities.
When Jagger sings in "Tie You Up (the Pain of Love)" that "You get a rise from it Feel the hot come dripping on your thighs from it," and that "Women will die for it," you might conclude that he's just being provocative (or, alternatively, that he's still the pathetic sexist asshole you always figured him for). But the song isn't simply about male domination of women; it's about the omnisexual oppressiveness of romantic obsession. Similarly, the black woman at the center of "She Was Hot" turns out to have been more than just a great lay–the simple sincerity of the singer's "I hope we meet again" adds a sudden emotional resonance to what at first appears an empty-headed sex anthem – while the title of the sinuously slippery "Pretty Beat Up" refers not to the song's female subject but to the singer's condition since she left him. And in between the shout-along choruses of "All the Way Down," where Jagger looks back on his beginnings and says, "I was king. Mr. Cool, just a snotty little fool"–and then slyly adds, "Like kids are now" – he sounds more self-aware than his detractors have ever given him credit for being.
This admission of emotional vulnerability, so far removed from the usual phallic strutting of most hard rock, is a familiar theme from at least the last two Stones albums. And while it coexists here with the indomitable self-assertion of "Too Tough" ("But in the end, you spat me out You could not chew me up"), it also achieves its most childlike expression in Keith Richards' unadorned declaration of love and hope, "Wanna Hold You."
One suspects the Stones wouldn't approve of all this rummaging around in their lyrics – they've never bothered to pose as poets, and their words have always melded with the music quite well. On Undercover, the music offers continuing proof of the band's commitment to black music. There are numerous young performers in Britain today who are lauded for adopting the trappings of Tamla-Motown or the dance-tested beat of black disco and pop reggae, but the Stones have been covering this turf (and more originally, at that) for years. It is a happy irony that at least two of the central songs on this album are prime examples of their commitment to the now-resurgent notion of black pop primacy.
On the flamboyantly grisly "Too Much Blood," they bring in Sugar Hill Records' former horn section (a four-man unit called Chops) for a rough and rambling rap tune that shows they've been listening to more than the occasional Grand Master Flash twelve-inch. The horns, coupled with the rampant clatter of Moroccan percussionists Moustapha Cisse and Brahms Condoul, plus reggae stalwart Sly Dunbar on electronic drums, churn up a marvelous, murky funk. And when David Sanborn comes screaming up on solo sax and Jagger rides in on a descending riff, singing. "I wanna dance, I wanna sing, I wanna bust up everything," the track transcends MTV-style racial considerations and emerges as a colorblind dance-floor hit.
And while there is a dark Jamaican dub groove running through "Feel on Baby," a somewhat poignant lament, the dub sensibility crops up most strikingly on the title track and single, "Undercover of the Night," a dance mix of which appears on the album instead of the less expansive 45 version. Like the careening "It Must Be Hell," "Undercover" exhibits a sense of political scorn that seems fueled by more genuine disgust than the Stones have spewed up in years. Rich in repugnant detail, the latter cut chronicles current Latin American political agonies, and its music, resounding with coproducer Chris Kimsey's sirenlike dub echoes, slams the message home with inarguable power.
If there are disappointments on Undercover, they can only be claimed in comparison to past Stones triumphs. If the album lacks the epochal impact of, say, Sticky Fingers, then perhaps it's because the mythic years of pop are past–by now, even the Stones have long since bade them goodbye. But Undercover seems to be more felicitously concentrated than Exile on Main Street, and while it may lack that album's dark power and desperate atmosphere, it does deliver nonstop, unabashed rock & roll crafted to the highest standards in the business. And that, rest assured, will do just fine. |
| April 25th, 2005 04:51 PM |
|
|
| tomk |
Indeed, RS mag did trash Some Girls. ER, too, I believe.
You should also find Dave MArsh's review of
the JFK '78 show. Boy, did he let them have it.
I like tie boot of that show. I like the sloppiness.
Anyway, if you were reviewing a show and you found
out the singer had the flu (as MJ did), wouldn't
you see and review another show? RS would do that for Springsteen, I'll bet.
That review of SF is a real hoot.
Landau became Springsteen's manager,
so what does that tell you? He's a horse's ass. |
| April 26th, 2005 11:03 PM |
|
|
| texile |
sed; how did the contemporary musical press view the stuff without having the knowledge that they were 'really' discussing the golden period of the Stones and their peak albums (the same goes for their concert reviews at the time)
It is also funny to recognize that those two classic albums, Sticky Fingers and Exile, are having quite negative reviews; they are so much compared to the 60's stuff, and seem to fail in this comparison. Heh, now compare this highly critical acclaim to any Rolling Stone reviews of their post-80's stuff, their solo work included, and all you find is five-star reviews with comparisons to a great Exile, etc...
- Doxa
[Edited by Doxa]
yup doxa.
assholes! yes corgi - damn hippies talking out of there cynical, smug asses........ |
| April 27th, 2005 10:27 AM |
|
|
| corgi37 |
NME gave ER a very average review, and i actually agreed and still do.
The review of Undecover i find really spot on. I loved that record when it came out. Beats the pants off the 2 that followed. And, not a ballad on it!
Production was impressive (for them) and they were willing to experiment with the technology and the trends of the times. I think it is still a very good record. I mean, even the title track was a departure, both aurally and lyrically, YET IT WAS UNMISTAKEABLY THE STONES! It was fairly popular here, too. I mean, really biting, distorted guitar. Electro drums, with a tympany as a back-beat for God's sake!
I recall reading that members of Duran Duran popped into the studio (I think Woody invited them) and they were amazed the Stones still recorded together. Even i believed the "i'll Fed-ex my bass line in the morning" line.
And, later, Woody gave his bendy guitar from SHE WAS HOT clip to John Taylor.
I might also add that this LP was the 1st time the band really covered all bases. The album was beautifully produced. They adopted (in my opinion, finally) some modern trickery and effects, without stuffing everything up, they put more effort into their clips than they had ever done, including the release of REWIND later on. Though, i was spewing they didnt do a tour.
Nope. I love this record. I still play it quite a lot. Loder was on the money with his review.
Fave tracks are:
Undercover, pain of love, hold on baby and Soul Survivor Pt 2 - Must be hell. I might add, Rock and a hard place is Soul Survivor pt 3 - hahaha. |
| April 27th, 2005 10:40 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
I always loved Undercover, it's underrated like hell with great tracks like She Was Hot, Too Tough or It Must Be Hell.
Corgi: Duran Duran were with the Stones during the Dirty Work sessions in April 1985. |
| April 27th, 2005 10:47 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
Some Girls
UK Chart: #2, 25 wks on chart - Sales: 250.000
US Chart: #1, 82 wks on chart - Sales: 6.500.000
Paul Nelson (Rolling Stone, issue 271 ; August 10, 1978)
Q: Do you think the music of the Rolling Stones has an overall theme?
A: Yeah. Women.
–Keith Richards
With Bob Dylan no longer bringing it all back home, Elvis Presley dead and the Beatles already harmlessly cloned in the wax-museum nostalgia of a Broadway musical, it's no wonder the Rolling Stones decided to make a serious record. Not particularly ambitious, mind you, but serious. These guys aren't dumb, and when the handwriting on the wall starts to smell like formaldehyde and that age-old claim, "the greatest rock & roll band in the world," suddenly sounds less laudatory than laughable–well, if you want to survive the Seventies and enter the Eighties with something more than your bankbook and dignity intact, you'd better dredge up your leftover pride, bite the bullet and try like hell to sweat out some good music. Which is exactly what the Stones have done. Though time may not exactly be on their side, with Some Girls they've at least managed to stop the clock for a while.
This is no small accomplishment. It's not a big one either. Thus far, the critical line claims that Some Girls is the band's finest LP since its certified masterpiece, Exile on Main Street, and I'll buy that gladly. What I won't buy is that the two albums deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. (Listen to "Tumbling Dice" or, better yet, "Let It Loose" from the earlier record, and then to the exemplary "Beast of Burden" or "When the Whip Comes Down" from this year's model, and tell me that the passion, power and near-awesome completeness of the 1972 performances are in any way matched by the new ones.) Instead, Some Girls is like a marriage of convenience: when it works–which is often–it can be meaningful, memorable and quite moving, but it rarely sends the arrow straight through the heart. "It took me a long time to discover that the key to acting is honesty," an actor told the anthropologist Edmund Carpenter. "Once you know how to fake that, you've got it made."
For the most part, the Stones "act" superbly on the new LP. They've stripped down to the archetypal sound of two or three guitars, bass and drums (and, more importantly, ditched the vacuousness of Billy Preston), and it's wonderful to hear the group blazing away again with little more than the basics to protect them. Everything's apparently been recorded as close to live as we'd want it, and the overdubbing and extra musicians have been kept to a minimum. But at their best, the Rolling Stones used to play and sing a brand of rock & rollnoir as moody, smoke-filled and ambiguous as the steamy and harmful atmosphere of such film noir classics as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. Where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were once a pair of Humphrey Bogarts (or, in keeping with Some Girls' imagery, Lauren Bacalls), they're now more like–who?–Warren Beatty and Robert Blake. Gone is the black and white murk, and the vocals are way up in a nicely messy but pastel mix. While the Stones may have gone back a dozen or more years for the sound and style of the current album, what they've really done is to reshoot Rebel without a Cause as a scaled-down, made-for-TV movie. The rebellion–with the exception of Richards' powerful "Before They Make Me Run"–lacks a certain credibility, and the cause is simply survival. (If you don't think that credibility is a major issue here, you haven't seen any of the band's recent concerts, most of which have been poor.)
With their eerie dual commitment to irony and ecstasy, the Stones, as rock critic Robert Christgau has pointed out, have always been obsessed with distance. On Some Girls, however, the distances are too great, and it would take a far better singer than Mick Jagger to bridge the gap between the notoriety of his jet-set lifestyle and the straightforward, one-man/one-woman sentiments of true love he expresses in "Miss You" and the Temptations' "Imagination." Or to make convincing his despair in "Shattered," a fine, scathing song about New York City–a locale that figures prominently on this record. (Rod Stewart has a similar problem now, and punk rockers like Johnny Rotten and the Clash are correct to bring it to our attention.) Because Jagger is such an excellent singer, he almost makes you believe everything he says, but it's that "almost"–which wouldn't matter at all if he weren't a Rolling Stone, i.e., the best–that keeps Some Girls from going right over the top. Too often, we're faced with a question that goes well beyond the usual some-tension-within-the-material-is-necessary argument and into the area of, why is this man lying when he's obviously pleased as punch with himself and is getting roomfuls of satisfaction? After all, if you don't believe that Jay Gatsby really loves Daisy in his divinely crazy way, what good is it?
That said, Some Girls has more than its share of highs and only one real low (the condescending and silly "Far Away Eyes," which makes even the country-rock of Firefall seem swell). "Respectable" takes a close look at the peculiar position of the Stones, circa 1978, and boasts lines like these:
We're talking heroin with the President
Yes it's a problem sir, but it can be bent...
You're a rag trade girl, you're the queen of porn
You're the easiest lay on the White House lawn...
before it inexplicably begins to lose interest in itself. "When the Whip Comes Down" and "Lies" are a neat combination of white heat and old hat, while "Miss You," "Imagination" and "Shattered" are a good deal better than that. And the title track is every bit as outrageous ("Black girls just want to get fucked all night/I just don't have that much jam") as everyone says. This song may be a sexist and racist horror, but it's also terrifically funny and strangely desperate in a manner that gets under your skin and makes you care. On "Some Girls," Mick Jagger sounds like he's not only singing like Bob Dylan, but about Bob Dylan: "I'll give ya a house back in Zuma Beach/And give you half of what I owe."
"Before They Make Me Run" and "Beast of Burden," Some Girls' hardest-hitting songs, are sandwiched between "Respectable" and "Shattered" on side two. It's probably presumptuous to suggest that these four tracks are about the present predicament of this stormy band, but I think they are. When Keith Richards sings, "Well after all is said and done/Gotta move while it's still fun/But let me walk before they make me run," there's no doubt he's talking about the music, his drug bust and the possible end of the road, about which he writes brilliantly ("Watch my taillights fading/There ain't a dry eye in the house..."). And when Mick Jagger implores,
Ain't I rough enough
Ain't I tough enough
Ain't I rich enough
In love enough
Oooo, oo please.
he's got to be thinking about himself and the Rolling Stones, among other things. It's too bad the answer to all his questions isn't an unqualified yes. In a better world, it should be. |
| April 28th, 2005 01:22 AM |
|
|
| Bloozehound |
great great shit Soldatti, nice read, keep the reviews coming amigo
bTW
who the fuck is Jon Landau, what a fag! Talk about reviewing Stones albums twice, this horseshit review of SF deserved a retraction from the magazine, look at this crap about WH:
"Jagger's vocal is clearly audible for the first time on the album and I don't care for it. It is mannered, striving for intensity without being wholly convincing"
didja read that, Jagger's vocals are clearly audible for the first time on the record, but HE "didn't care for it" plus it wasn't "convincing" enough
Get the fuck outta here, what kind of prissy pants, pseudo dicknosed, high falutin' art-house hack faggot dishes out this kinda diatribe with a straight face ? (mind you one with a cock on it)
How do you go about dishing anything out in life with a straight face when you got a dick danglin off of it ?
what a joke
Landau should've been made like spam in the can canned, and burned at the stake for this BS and I ain't just talkin' BS/Barbara Streisand
|
| April 29th, 2005 11:41 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
Hot Rocks
UK Chart: #3, 24 wks on chart - Sales: 700.000 *
US Chart: #4, 243 wks on chart - Sales: 6.500.000
* UK release: June 1990
Rolling Stone (Lester Bangs, issue 102; February 17, 1972)
It would be nice to be able to call it something like The Rolling Stones' Golden Decade, for the Stones have been the most enduringly prolific highwire act of their time, both reflecting and surpassing the era with a deadly accuracy that can make them seem more dangerous than they really are. But somehow this album merely falls into that venerable Stones tradition of supra-throwaway albums, collections like December's Children and Flowers that by their very slapdash cynicism validate themselves and charm us into feeling that they're as sure a representation of the Stones ethos as brand-new and more unified efforts like Let It Bleed.
Hot Rocks (London 2PS 606-7) is even crasser than Flowers and Children, because it's the first Stones album on which every track has been represented on albums previously released in this country. Some of them, in fact, like "Let's Spend the Night Together," are on their fourth go-round. So in part Hot Rocks is, however beautifully packaged, a purely mercenary item put together by the Stones' former record company to cash in on the Christmas season and wring some more bucks out in the name of the Mod Princes they once owned.
As historical document of Greatest Hits culling, Hot Rocks takes almost no chances, and if the Stones or London sometimes display an unexpected sense of what may be the band's most important statements (as in the inclusion of "You Can't Always Get What You Want"), there is also much left out. The absence of "Lady Jane" makes sense in the light of its being on three albums already and not that good in the first place, and considerations of space make "Not Fade Away's" freezeout seem reasonable until you reflect on how severely the derivative but vital R&B (their best work, really, until Let It Bleed) of their first five albums has been under-represented here. Maybe it's sensible to cut "The Last Time" in favor of its flip side "Play With Fire," but the absence of "It's All Over Now" fairly glares at you.
Either "She's a Rainbow" or the great, roaring "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow" would have been more fun than the always lame "As Tears Go By" and the socially incisive but musically slight "Mother's Little Helper," both of which were included. And "We Love You," the brilliant "jail-single" of the summer of '67" which may be the most musically adventurous thing the Stones have ever recorded, has never been on an album released in this country (There are also the great B sides like "Who's Drivin' My Plane," "Child of the Moon" and "Sad Day," but they deserve a different sort of album. Maybe someday they'll get it.)
So when we look past the magnificent cover depicting the Stones in their numerous roles as ragtag rougues of Merrie Olde. Tangierian travellers, fashion plates, etc., what do we find? I he evolution of a rock & roll band from superlative interpreters of mostly borrow J R&B in a style that was never far from pop, to being pop artists, philosophers and social commentators couching their vision and fantasies in a style that seldom gets all that far away from R&B
The Stones have never been far from Chuck Berry stylistically, and in the beginning he was as predominant an influence as Ray Charles was for the early Frie Burdon and Joe Cocker. But the Berry-Diddley-Jimmy Reed phase of the Stones' genesis is overlooked in favor of two songs deriving much more from the traditions of uptown soul and pop. Nevertheless, "Time is on My Side" and "Heart of Stone" are vintage Stones, with the arrogant persona that is largely the subject of the first half of their career and the first half of this album already emerging unmistakably, and cemented in "Play With Fire," first entry in the Stones' continuing sometime dalliance with the folk traditions of their native land. "As Tears Go By" derives from those traditions too, but in much more cornball fashion, and one imagines the Stones could have only recorded it to prove they could carry it off, Delsey tissue strings and all.
The crucial thread running through almost all of the Stones' early work, and much of what has followed, is the tension in the alternation of themes of utter arrogance and disdain, and of the sense of ennui and frustration deriving from living, however highly, in these desperate times. "Get Off Of My Cloud" brought the former razzberry to a pinnacle of derisive noise that many, including Jagger himself, found excessive, while "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" was, of course, the primal and perhaps still definitive statement of the latter condition. The balancing of these two senses is at once the strength and limitation of the Stones: strength, because nothing is more universal now than boredom and dissatisfaction and the Stones' particular brand of charismatic swagger has been affected by more adolescents than any other posture of the generation: limitation, since yesterday's outrageous strut is today's cornball signal to get the hook, and keeping a sure grasp on the shifting modes in malaise o' the day is one of the most difficult feats for any artist to maintain in this fast-mutating era.
The Stones have maintained, of course, radiating a semblance of constant change while mainly just reworking the most tried-and-true elements in their arsenal. Along the way, they've juiced up the process by turning now and then from their narcissistic role to cast a caustic eye at the society around them, as in "Mother's Little Helper," and borrowing whatever was handily trendy, from the sitar in "Paint It Black" to the Memphis horns in "Brown Sugar" and Sticky Fingers, to garnish their basic sound. And, in "Let's Spend the Night Together" they brought the stud role to a double-entendre–whether the song is actually about sex or about being too wired to make it and knowing that nothing needs to be proved anyway–as brilliant as the utter sexist dominance of "Under My Thumb" is devastating. "Let's Spend the Night Together" also represented the apotheosis of noise evolved into an arrangement of perfect clarity and unorthodox form, and effortlessly pushing, pulsating, almost mechanical sound that could go on forever.
It's on the second record of Hot Rocks, however, that the big thematic shift in the Stones' music becomes unmistakable. Almost all of the previous songs had been in a more or less tangible sense autobiographical, but now the ongoing persona ballooned into something at once stranger, more surrealistic and yet perhaps more universal. "Jumping Jack Flash" was unmistakably Mick Jagger, but also a creature of myth, a new mask to wear. "Sympathy For the Devil" cemented this process, of course, and helped give the Stones the "bad-vibes" patina which led so many to lay the blame for Altamont solely at their feet.
Always theatrical, the Stones had found a way of molding their basic profile into and out of various synonymous figures. We always sensed that they were basically lower-class street-punks who used to get out and mix it up on Friday nights, even if it may not have been entirely true, but not until "Street Fighting Man" did they take the trouble to play out the role in the most overt fashion possible, and what was even better was that the time was ripe for them to do it in the fashionable context of revolution. They can hardly be blamed for not following through politically, since, just like Dylan and most of the other giants in this business, they are basteally involved in finding roles, playing them out and projecting them, and then moving on to new ones. And at least they never pretended, as Lennon does today, to be doing more than that. Listening to "Midnight Rambler" still gives me chills today, but I hardly think Mick Jagger thinks of himself as "a proud Black Panther."
So the Stones, beginning with Beggar's Banquet, moved into a strong new phase where they are beginning to let their fantasies run free, and, if something like "Memo From Turner" from Performance is any indication, Jagger may have even darker dreams than "Midnight Rambler" in store. Unhealthy, perhaps, but undeniably pertinent.
The other, and even more important, recent phase is the Stones' interest in songs, the kind of triumphs hinted at in "Satisfaction" and "Mother's Little Helper," that deal in searingly explicit terms not just with sexual conceits and power fantasies, but with the conditions under which all of us are living today. "Gimme Shelter" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" may be the two most crucial and enduring things ever laid on wax by this band; certainly they demonstrated an unprecedented maturity, a view of the world as it is and a promise that the Stones' most vital work may well lie ahead of them. And even the much maligned "Brown Sugar" is an almost perfect crossbreed song in the new Stones vocabulary, combining a forceful picture of colonial racism with another Jagger fantasy which has offended some people but strikes with undeniable power.
The direction of the Stones' future is clear, though perhaps less predictable than ever before. I doubt if they'll ever stop writing songs like "Bitch" and "Live With Me" any more than they'll ever stop copping licks from Chuck Berry. It doesn't matter. They are the most creative and self-sustaining rock & roll band in history, and, despite what some observers say, not tired at all yet. "Gimme Shelter." "You Can't Always Get What You Want," and "Brown Sugar" point the way, and if Jagger & Co. are perhaps the most decadent or even, in the words of some, evil of our heroes, they also have the surest grasp of who we are and where we are going. The Stones will not quail from reflecting it; it's up to us to do something about it.
|
| April 29th, 2005 11:57 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies)
UK chart: -
US Chart: #9, 29 wks on chart - Sales: 1.000.000
Bob Palmer (Rolling Stone, issue: 123; February 1, 1973)
More Hot Rocks is an exploitation reissue par excellence. The record sleeves feature out-takes from the Between the Buttons photo session, the notes are more of Andrew Oldham's Clockwork Orange icing, and all the "Big Hits" have all been heard before. The "Fazed Cookies" are more interesting. There are eight cuts never before released in the US, plus the seldom-heard "We Love You" and "Child of the Moon." All of the tunes included were cut before Brian Jones left the group and this world.
Jones was the unpredictable factor in the Stones equation, seeming to be everywhere at once. On these sides he played harp, acoustic and electric guitars, dulcimer, mellotron and whatever else was needed. His function within the band was a broad and comprehensive one, and he used all his instruments to create ringing harmonics around the tighter-in, rhythmicaly-oriented drive of the other players.
Jones seems to have been almost excessively concerned with bringing out harmonics to give his playing a full, ringing quality. His guitar on "The Last Time" is a good example; it fulfills the function of both rhythm guitar (chugging) and subliminal keyboard (filling). Similarly, his harmonica on "Money" is a reedy, diffuse sound that seems to haunt the spaces between the others' notes; it doesn't once step out for a personal blues statement the way Little Walter or Sonny Boy Williamson would have.
But unfortunately, Brian Jones blew it. His replacement, who came from a second generation of English rock and who arrived during the heyday of the rock/blues/virtuoso soloist, has taken the music in another direction. Keith Richard may well be the best rock lead player alive, but he is a band lead. Neither Richard nor Jones were soloists, and the beauty of the old Stones was that neither of them had to be.
Of the eight previously unreleased tracks, six are covers from the very beginning of the Stones' career. "Money" is cresting and distorted. Jagger strains and mumbles and the band track is blurred by an inordinate amount of echo. "Fortune Teller" is the Naomi Neville composition originally recorded by the Showmen on Minit, and later by the Stones on Got Live if You Want It. Jagger's vocal is much less self-assured on this earlier studio version but the band is solid and tough. "Poison Ivy" is laughable. Jagger sings so nasally that when he stretches out the word "around" he sounds like an amplified jew's harp. A scratchy percussion device adds to the carnival bumps-and-grinds ambience. The two Chuck Berry covers are much better. "Come On," the boys' first single, has a loping beat that curiously prefigures reggae. Jagger sounds timid in the studio and the key-change bridge is as corny as they come, but the tune moves along. "Bye Bye Johnny" is terrific. Richard and Jones mesh magnificently and the rhythm section unleashes its full force for the first time. Jagger was already a master of the Berry-inspired vocal idiom; his vocal caps a perfect performance that stands as a definition-in-action of rock & roll.
Muddy Waters' "I Can't Be Satisfied" is the funkiest blues in the Stones discography. Jones was playing excellent bottleneck guitar as far back as 1964, and his use of the slide's harmonic potentials behind Jagger's unusually authoritative vocal is worth hearing again and again. He underlines the words with whooping washes of metallic sound while Richard plays a characteristically lean backup figure. "Long Long While" is an early Jagger-Richard soul ballad. It is uncharacteristically maudlin: "I was wrong girl and you were right." Here organ and piano fill out the track and Richard's punctuations recall his probing treble-string work on "Time Is on My Side." "What To Do" is from the English version of Aftermath. It's an excellent, well-paced performance, and probably the prototype of all the bored touring songs that have been inundating us lately. The extended tag gives Jagger a chance to rave at some length, and he makes the most of it.
"Child of the Moon" was the "Jumpin' Jack Flash" B side. It's one of the Stones' prettiest straight-ahead love songs. The blend of soaring guitars is as bracing as the words are lyrical. "We Love You" is a flower power curiosity that holds up remarkably well. It begins with a warden's footsteps and the clanking of a cell door. The voices are Lennonesque but the track is exciting and unusual. There's a taste of the backward-sounding guitar whines the Beatles were using then, but the barrelhouse piano and especially Jones' winding mellotron riff give the music an involving edge. The tag is particularly energetic: Watts thrashing at his cymbals, guitars and bass punching along while the mellotron describes endless arabesques. Better ten minutes of this sort of thing than the kind of grafted-on extension that sunk "Can't You Hear Me Knockin."
For the record, the rest of the tunes are "Tell Me," "Not Fade Away," "The Last Time," "It's All Over Now" (Richard's best-ever guitar break for my money), "Good Times Bad Times," "I'm Free," "Out of Time," "Lady Jane," "Sittin' on a Fence," "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby," "Dandelion," "She's a Rainbow," "2000 Light Years from Home," "No Expectations," and "Let It Bleed." And where are "I Want To Be Your Man" and "Who's Driving Your Plane"? They must be saving those for Still More Hot Rocks. I wonder who's sitting on the unreleased blues sides they cut in Chicago...
|
|
|
| Soldatti |
Goats Head Soup
UK Chart: #1, 14 wks on chart - Sales: 250.000
US Chart: #1, 37 wks on chart - Sales: 3.000.000
Bud Scoppa (Rolling Stone, issue: 147; October 6, 1973)
History has proven it unwise to jump to conclusions about Rolling Stones albums. At first Sticky Fingers seemed merely a statement of doper hipness on which the Stones (in Greil Marcus' elegant phrase) "rattled drugs as if they were maracas." But drugs wound up serving a figurative as well as a literal purpose and the album became broader and more ambiguous with each repeated listening.
At first, Exile on Main Street seemed a terrible disappointment, with its murky, mindless mixes and concentration on the trivial. Over time, it emerged as a masterful study in poetic vulgarity. And if neither of the albums had eventually grown on me thematically, the music would have finally won me over anyway.
Now Goat's Head Soup stands as the antithesis of Exile—the Stones never worry about contradicting themselves—and it is a wise move, for it would have been suicidal to Exile's conceits any further. Compared to the piling on of one raunchy number on top of another, Soup is a romantic work, with an unmistakable thread of life-affirming pragmatisms running through it. It is set apart not only from Exile, but every past Stones' LP, by its emphasis on the ballad. Its three key songs—"Angie," "Comin' Down Again," and "Winter"—are suffused with melancholy. But of the five rockers, only "Star Star" ("Starfucker") rings out with classic Stones sass. The others exist either more as changes of pace or as commentary on the album's larger mood, rather than as autonomous works.
And yet for all its differences, Soup sustains some significant continuities with its immediate predecessors. With all its rocker energy, it was the personal, subjective songs on Sticky Fingers, like "Wild Horses" and "Moonlight Mile," that finally lingered in my mind. And for all its thunder, Exile contained in whatever lyrics were audible, a very personal sense of weariness and confusion. "Tumbling Dice," "Let It Loose" and "Torn And Frayed" were sung with such pent-up emotion that their powerful band tracks flew outward from the vocal, as if the direct result of inspiration drawn from it.
As usual, on Soup the Stones continue to work within existing frameworks, redefining and personalizing everything they touch. In this case, they make brilliant use of the styles of some proteges—Van Morrison on "Winter" and Gram Parsons on "Comin' Down Again"—while picking up a few things from groups as disparate as the Allman Brothers Band and War. The string arrangements are again close in texture to Elton John's. But they use all of their influences in a fashion superior to the current recordings of their originators. Other artists have built careers on modes the Stones have kicked away without a backward look.
The Stones succeed because they rarely forget their purpose—the creation of rock & roll drama. It is for that reason that they can move from the snow-white Americana of "Comin' Down Again" into the urban R&B of "Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" without the batting of an eyelash—theirs or ours. When they are uncertain of their purpose—as on "Dancin' With Mr. D."—they can be hopelessly silly. That track is the weakest opener ever so positioned on one of their albums, and they've never performed with less conviction.
But it is strictly one of a kind, for after it Soup emerges as a consistent piece of work, even if its classic moments are confined to four songs. "100 Years Ago" is the album's real introduction and contains in equal portions the two basic strains of the album: the churning, repetitive R&B of the fast songs and the solemn melancholy of the ballads. In the song's linear structure, each element is consecutively isolated and focused on. The strains, like the album's songs, coexist without blending. The R&B eventually suggests violence and irrationality while the slow music suggests reason and vulnerability. In the process of juxtaposing opposites, the Stones make a partly practical and partly moral choice—one of survival over dissipation.
The first ballad, "Comin' Down Again," is closely related to "Wild Horses," from Keith's frayed but loving vocal to the Burritos-related broad metaphor at its center:
Comin' down again (sky fallin' down again)
Comin' down again (sky fallin' down again)
Where are all my friends?
Comin' down again,
On the ground again.
If there's a moment on the album in which sadness outweighs hope, it's in Keith's voice. This feeling, combined with the fact that his distinctive rhythm guitar—one of the seven wonders of rock & roll—is subdued, disguised or inaudible through much of the album, makes me uneasy.
Between "Comin' Down Again" and "Angie" sits "Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)," a broadly drawn third-person narrative in dramatic juxtaposition to the songs surrounding it. It relates an incident of big-city violence hardly uncommon in the real world, but jarring in this context. It works as both thematic and stylistic counterpoint. The agony resulting from a failed love relationship is still ultimately affirmative, and it's relatively easy to bear compared to the agony incurred by some random violent act emanating from a stranger.
There is a crucial substitution of vocal chorus for horn parts (although the latter are used in a different context) that is both an explicit rejection of Exile's mode and an attempt on the album's fiercest song to rehumanize the band through the substitution of voice for the mechanical force of instruments. As on several of the other fast songs, the lead is a Leslie-amplified wah-wah guitar (no track credits are offered—is it Mick Taylor?) that sounds both unearthly and more contemporary than classic Stones style and puts new stress on Mick T. He's not yet the master Richard is, but he can play in the traditional Stones manner ("Sway") and add a powerful new dimension to it (his solos on "Love In Vain" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" during the band's '72 concerts). On Soup, he relies more on discipline than imagination, except for his exquisite solo on "Winter." He is obviously coming into his own but I can't help missing Keith, even when I sense he must be around somewhere.
"Angie" will inevitably be the most durable and well-loved song on the album. There are several reasons for its significance: a vocal of practically unprecedented conviction by Jagger, the lovely interplay of strings and single electric guitar that dramatizes the romantic core of the song, and a consummate piano performance by Nicky Hopkins. But the key is in the tune itself, as emotionally complex as it is lyrically straightforward.
It contrasts the traditional view of romance (and its mystical principal of adoration), with the more recently conceived notion of pragmatism in relationships. The singer has a simultaneous and irreconcilable investment in both values, and they're at war within him. Haunted by Angie's image, he tells the mystic in him that the conditions for romance are still present. But reason patiently answers that despite their efforts, it won't work. It wins the struggle, but every so often the voice burns through the velvet lining.
The singer's lingering belief in mystery is manifested in brief moments of passion and in a sense of guilt that can't be rationalized. Thus, all his statements seem to come out questions and he asks them as much of himself as of Angie. The one stand he takes is shaky, indeed: "They can't say we never tried," is inevitably followed by the understood "Can they?"
The song's depth of feeling is enhanced by a barely audible second vocal that may have been a reference track they couldn't get rid of or purely intentional. It seems to come from a great void completely cut off from the rest of the song. The sense of separation it so subtly suggests is a perfectly apt comment on the theme. And every facet of the song is like that, making it one of the most completely satisfying of all Rolling Stones performances.
Side two begins modestly with "Silver Train," a rock & roll song with a pre-rock flavor. The Stones' approach is like their treatment of "Stop Breaking Down," one of Exile's sleepers: lots of whiny slide guitar and harp. They also emphasize, with their ragged ensemble shouts, the song's appealing chorus. "Train" is the best of the album's secondary songs.
"Hide Your Love," dominated by Jagger's crude piano and blackest vocal, continues the rustic blues flavor of "Train." It is the descendant of "Prodigal Son" and "You've Gotta Move," while "Winter" is the offspring of the incandescent "Moonlight Mile," although it seems also influenced by Van Morrison's "Listen to the Lion" and "Almost Independence Day." Morrison's ideas are in evidence in Jagger's vocal, which moves from a reading of patterned verses into improvisations. As he sings, the Oriental-styled guitar of "Moonlight" and an elegant string section swirl around him. And as Mick finds the crucial line to climax the piece with—"I'm gonna wrap my coat around you"—the surrounding track is blowing fierce, icy winds right across him.
After "Can You Hear the Music?," a philosophical song that expresses a belief in the mystical power of music from the Pipes of Pan right up to rock & roll, comes the fabulous "Star Star" as if to prove the point of its predecessor. "Starfucker"'s surface nastiness is belied by the sheer exultation with which it's played. The hallowed Chuck Berry riffs have never sounded fresher or more energetic. And those unswerving drums, ringing guitars and straining voices are all daring us to try and keep from moving to the music.
There are too many secondary songs on Goat's Head Soup to rate it an ultimate Rolling Stones album. The content-defying title expresses the group's uncertainty about its performance. But those three great ballads place the album among their most intimate and emotionally absorbing work. At the same time, "Starfucker" maintains the stature of the Stones as grand masters of the rock & roll song. If they've played it safe this time, their caution has nevertheless reaped some rewards. Soup stands right next to Mott, the thematically similar LP of the Stones' brightest students, as the best album of 1973. For me, its deepening and unfolding over the coming months will no doubt rate as one of the year's richest musical experiences.
[Edited by Soldatti] |
|
|
| Soldatti |
It's Only Rock'n Roll
UK Chart: #2, 9 wks on chart - Sales: 100.000
US Chart: #1, 20 wks on chart - Sales: 1.500.000
Jon Landau (Rolling Stone, issue: 176; November 23, 1974)
It's Only Rock 'n Roll is a decadent album because it invites us to dance in the face of its own despair. It's a desperate album that warns at the end of one side that "... dreams of the nighttime will vanish by dawn," and on the other that a Kafkaesque "someone is listening, good night, sleep tight." It's a rock 'n' roll album because it's so goddamn violent.
At its simplest level the album deals with the psychosis of being in a rock 'n' roll band and having made it as a star—and it does that better than the Who's opus devoted exclusively to that subject, Quadrophenia. At another level it uses the relationship between a band and its audience as a metaphor for the parasitic relations between a man and a woman. At still another, in the best tradition of rock 'n' roll, it convincingly flaunts its own raunchiness.
The first cut sets the tone of the album by reminding us of pop's ancient double-entendre: that the word rock refers both to music and to sex. "If You Can't Rock Me" sounds like it ought to be about sex. But it starts with, "The band's onstage and it's one of those nights." Only the chorus turns it back into the anticipated and angry fuck song.
Their "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" is still a lover's plea but there's an undercurrent of resentment directed at the listener. By now, you can't tell whether the Stones are singing about people who watch them or people they live with. That confusion is enhanced by the tightness with which the album's producers, the Glimmer Twins, have welded it to the title track.
The verses to "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" sound like an assault on the audience. "If I could stick a pen in my heart/I'd spill it all over the stage ..." It's only when they get to the bridge that their real target comes into focus: "Do you think that you're the only girl around/I'll bet you think that you're the only woman in town." They've fused their many resentments into a single vitriolic statement.
But the song is more than an attack. Jagger sounds like he hates, but he also sounds convincing, not ironic, when he belts out, "I know it's only rock 'n roll but I like it." How can he? Because, in addition to desperation, the song reflects both the strength and vulnerability of someone who has earned the right to ask Bob Dylan's question, "What else can you show me?"
On the album's first three songs the band renews its claim to greatness. Instead of coming off like cynics they sound like they're still vulnerable, afraid, capable of being hurt and able to respond with aggressive energy. They've returned with a vengeance to the wildness of their early records and the fact that they are more self-conscious than ever about it doesn't detract from the album's impact.
The main focus of their aggressive instincts are, as has most often been the case, women. On the basis of "Stupid Girl," the Rolling Stones have been called sexists. On the basis of this album, they are plainly misogynists. Their antipathy to women comes across most bluntly in their blast at the woman waiting for Jagger to ". . . suicide right on the stage." But it's also there in an incidental line ("Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman's face") or an entire song ("Short and Curlies").
Jagger's tendency to see women and work as extensions of the same burden shows up in the weirdest places and in the funniest ways. On "Luxury" he plays the part of a Jamaican factory worker with two monkeys on his back: "I'm working so hard, I'm working for the company/I'm working so hard to keep you in the luxury."
His embittered view of the possibilities for men and women show up most powerfully on the extraordinary "If You Really Want to Be My Friend." In the first verse he takes the part of the man in a lover's quarrel, in the second verse, the part of the woman. And while he's doing it, he continues to use art as a metaphor:
I know you think life is a thriller
You play the vamp, I'll play the killer
Now, baby, what's the use of fighting
By the last reel we'll be crying
He leaves the lovers in a horrible, hopeless quagmire of their own making.
"If You Really Want to Be My Friend" is a tough ballad; "Till the Next Goodbye" is almost poignant. Jagger conveys his desperation by simply saying, "I can't go on like this," while the band smolders beneath him.
Jagger used his most violent images to deal with men and women. At one point he laughingly cries "... she's got you by the balls." During another, he talks about "... a vulture, a sore and a cancer culture," and asks someone to "get your nails outta my back, stop bleeding me."
When he's singing about more abstract subjects, he's more distant. "Fingerprint File" is a bit contrived, in the manner of "Dancing with Mr. D." on Goats Head Soup. He never quite convinces us that some nameless agent of a nameless power is really running him down.
But he sings "Time Waits for No One" with a controlled desperation that borders on acceptance but never quite becomes resignation. Given the rock star's inherent fear of aging, the song becomes an affirmation of Jagger's willingness to keep on trying in the face of inevitable doom.
For me, It's Only Rock 'n Roll is Mick Jagger's show. It seems like any time anyone writes about him it is either to analyze his appeal as a showman or to gossip about his private life. His role as the man who has done the most to define rock-band singing often (and amazingly) goes undiscussed.
Jagger started out with a mediocre voice, no training, an enthusiasm for black music and a passion to communicate. From the start he must have known instinctively what he only made explicit on December's Children: "I'm free to sing my song though it gets out of time."
He had a right to feel that way because he was singing in the only band that made a virtue of its drummer's tendency to lose the beat and its background voices' inability to sing on key. While the Beatles always had George Martin around to clean up their act, the Rolling Stones had Andrew Loog Oldham to coarsen theirs. (And it's the early Rolling Stones records that still get played while so much of the early Beatles music is now only of passing interest.) Jagger possessed style, control and originality from the beginning. His interpretations of Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness" and Bo Diddley's "Mona" were remarkably precocious and startlingly well focused.
By the time he cut "Satisfaction" Jagger had so well captured the spirit of black music that when singers of twice his ability covered the song, they never called into question his original. But beyond black music, Jagger gave an English voice to the adolescent rage that Bob Dylan was articulating in the United States.
And yet, while the Rolling Stones have always qualified as angry young men, they were never merely angry young men. Jagger swaggered through Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" ("My song's ... gonna save the whole world"), hammed his way through "Empty Heart," and sang a perfect version of Sam Cooke's difficult "Good Times," making it sound surprisingly easy.
Jagger somehow managed to continually deliver more than was promised. He found a broader emotional range on "Dandelion," "We Love You," "Let's Spend the Night Together," and, most surprisingly on the Got Live if You Want It! version of "Satisfaction."
At the end of the decade he began to produce a string of virtually undisputed rock gems including "Street Fighting Man," "Sympathy for the Devil," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Honky Tonk Women," "Gimmie Shelter," "Moonlight Mile" and "Tumbling Dice," the last two my own favorite Jagger performances.
From the beginning, the Rolling Stones have also made an extraordinary number of memorable albums including The Rolling Stones, Now!, Out of Our Heads, December's Children, Aftermath, Let It Bleed, and possibly their finest work to date, Exile on Main Street. But even their greatest fans have come to expect unevenness, with their low points ("As Tears Go By") sinking beneath the barely acceptable.
So It's Only Rock 'n Roll's consistency comes as a real surprise, especially after the occasional lameness of Goats Head Soup. Jagger justifies the loud mixing of his voice by singing almost everything to perfection and reaches a pinnacle on the title track and "If You Really Want to Be My Friend."
On the first, he uses and exaggerates all of his mannerisms until he finds a line he can blast us back with. And he finds one after another.
As for the second, I criticized Jagger's singing of Sticky Fingers's soul ballad, "I Got the Blues," because I believed there is a time when the only thing that will do is the right note, correctly sung, and that he couldn't deliver it. On "If You Really Want to Be My Friend," he doesn't bother with notes, whether rightly or wrongly sung. He sings it the way he sang the early soul ballads ("That's How Strong My Love Is," "Cry to Me") — in a mannered, contorted, violent and outrageous voice. In so doing, he immerses us in the emotional turmoil of the kind of quarrel that only takes place when there is nothing left to a relationship but endless arguing.
As for the rest of the Rolling Stones, they continue to prove their worth and their uniqueness. I loved them the first time I saw them tour in 1965 for their rambunctious arrogance and the simplicity of their music. I loved them the last time I saw them, at Madison Square Garden in 1972, for putting on the most accomplished and overwhelming rock performance I had yet seen.
During all that time I find Charlie Watts has barely changed. He plays what he always has, only better. By any reasonable definition, he is an ordinary musician. But when he plays with the Rolling Stones, his style takes on meaning and he becomes a fifth of an indivisible whole.
The guitars are flashier than they used to be. Keith Richard has never quite established the rapport with Mick Taylor, the band's best technician, that he had with its wildest anarchist, Brian Jones. But they do amazing things together on "Luxury," "Time Waits for No One" and "If You Can't Rock Me."
I once criticized the band for compromising the power of "Brown Sugar" by cluttering it up with acoustic rhythm guitars. They add the acoustics on "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" but this time it works, lending a stylized and distinctive aura to the sound of the track.
The album has its playful moments but its most characteristic instant is Charlie Watts's first drumbeat on "It's Only Rock 'n Roll." It resonates like the sound of a shotgun. That violence — transmitted through the singing, words and music—makes It's Only Rock 'n Roll one of the most intriguing and mysterious, as well as the darkest, of all Rolling Stones records. Time has become just one more reality to face and to deal with.
Guy Peellaert did the cover art. He also did the portraits of rock stars which make up the beautiful book Rock Dreams. There are five impressions of the Rolling Stones, but the one that best captures the feeling of It's Only Rock 'n Roll isn't of the Rolling Stones at all, but of Frank Sinatra. On the last page, Sinatra is standing in the dark shadows of stage lighting with a mike in one hand and a drink in the other. The caption says: "... Hope I die before I get old."
|
|
CHAT
ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [
RESTROOMS]