| August 12th, 2005 04:25 PM |
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| charlotte |
08.12.05 The Rolling Stones go back to basics, get political on the rough-edged 'A Bigger Bang'
Rolling Stone Magazine Reports
'No F#@*ing About'
By David Fricke
Mick Jagger had a simple plan for making A Bigger Bang, the Rolling Stones' first new studio album in eight years: "Concentrate on what you're doing. No fucking about or jamming for days," Jagger says bluntly in his dressing room in Toronto during a break in the Stones' rehearsals there for their upcoming world tour. "I thought, 'We can't do this album the way we've been doing them, spending months in a studio with hundreds of people. It's difficult, expensive and not much fun.'"
Instead, it was a bare-bones Stones - Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, drummer Charlie Watts, guitarist Ron Wood and bassist Darryl Jones - that cut the bulk of the sixteen new Jagger-Richards songs on A Bigger Bang, which will be released by Virgin on September 6th. There are no special guests on the record - which runs the gamut from the old-school-Stones raunch of "Rough Justice" and "Oh No, Not You Again" to the country-soul ballad "Biggest Mistake" and the bleak R&B of "Laugh, I Nearly Died" - and there is only occasional piano and organ from touring keyboardist Chuck Leavell and the album's co-producer Don Was. On three tracks - the crunch blues "Back of My Hand," the slow, hard strut "Dangerous Beauty" and the topical stomp "Sweet Neo Con," which takes dead aim at the Bush administration with lines like "You say you are a patriot/I think that you're a crock of shit" - the entire band is the founding trio of Jagger, Richards and Watts, now fully recovered from his battle with throat cancer last year.
"It's not just a lineup," Richards says of the Stones with a rusty chuckle. "It's a feeling - what the musicians who are playing can do when they have to. Mick would not have played the bass (on some tracks) for any other reason than we didn't have a bass player around at the time. And I guess we were feeling that if there's no Charlie, we had to rethink what we could do, even if it was just because he wasn't there for now."
Jagger and Richards were only a couple of days into writing together for the album at Jagger's home in France when they got the news of Watts' diagnosis. The drummer told Jagger that he had been given excellent prospects for a complete recovery following surgery and chemotherapy. "So I didn't go into a total tailspin," Jagger says. "I just carried on making a record." But Richards says that waiting for Watts to get well "made Mick and I play together more on that basic level of putting songs together. For the blues 'Back of My Hand,' we just went, 'Let's start with where we started.' It was a beauty to play."
The Stones are so pleased with A Bigger Bang that, according to Wood, they have rehearsed a dozen of the new songs for the tour, which opens on August 21st at Boston's Fenway Park and, like the 2002-03 jaunt, will include stadium, theater and arena productions with different set lists. "A lot of our studio stuff is too overdubbed," says Watts. But A Bigger Bang "is a very basic record, and I hope people like it," he adds, smiling hopefully, "because it will make us do another one like it."
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| August 12th, 2005 04:32 PM |
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| The Wick |
Thanks for the report. You know if Charlie Watts is on board for another record, there will hopefully be one, and hopefully sooner rather than later.
[Edited by The Wick] |
| August 12th, 2005 04:36 PM |
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| Poplar |
this tour: all about Charlie. |
| August 12th, 2005 04:58 PM |
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| beer |
quote:
charlotte wrote:
"A lot of our studio stuff is too overdubbed," says Watts. But A Bigger Bang "is a very basic record, and I hope people like it," he adds, smiling hopefully, "because it will make us do another one like it."
Gotta love Charlie!
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| August 12th, 2005 07:18 PM |
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| Soldatti |
quote:
charlotte wrote:
"A lot of our studio stuff is too overdubbed," says Watts. But A Bigger Bang "is a very basic record, and I hope people like it," he adds, smiling hopefully, "because it will make us do another one like it."
Thanks Charlie.
We always want more, don't you worry. |
| August 12th, 2005 08:56 PM |
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| Surround Sister |
Well, along the 80´s Keith used to have some four-five people (and in the 70´s he had Spanish Tony & all his likes) carrying Micawber & stuff & runnin his gear & guitars... Jagger had his little pacemeters & the faggots from the synth-, disco-worlds etc etc whatever-was-cool...
A good thing to make it less, and with focus.
[Edited by Surround Sister] |
| August 12th, 2005 09:03 PM |
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| John Wood |
Let's hope the people like it because I know I want more and I haven't even heard it yet! |
| August 12th, 2005 10:55 PM |
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| Daethgod |
"and there is only occasional piano and organ from touring keyboardist Chuck Leavell"
yer baby !!
'bout fricken time...
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| August 13th, 2005 12:23 AM |
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| Steel Wheels |
I love Charlie Watts, in case anyone missed that fact. This record sounds like the best thing ever! |
| August 13th, 2005 05:20 AM |
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| corgi37 |
SOunds like they are in a great frame of mind. |
| August 13th, 2005 07:36 AM |
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| jb |
Charlie will no longer tour after this...it too much to ask from him. |
| August 13th, 2005 08:48 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
jb wrote:
Charlie will no longer tour after this...it too much to ask from him.
How do you know? |
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