Will never forget watching this video on the Don Kirshner Rock Concert. My father had just told what he thought of my Bowie Space Oddity poster in my bedroom, "and now this" he said, this is no Benny Goodman. But he stayed and watch, and he laughed at the end when they were cover with foam.

This clip was the first one I 've seen on TV ,actually the 1st time I saw the Stones .

The sight of the skippy Jagger wiggling his bottom "like a duck shaking water from its tail", to use Philip Norman's memorable phrase, and clapping his hands like a flamenco dancer was a bit embarrassing at first sight .
I was first puzzled ,then petrify and finally hooked up by the sight and the sound of the band .
They said the bubbles filled the entire band and everyone had to pile out .



I am a Frenchie ,as Mick affectionately called them in the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 .

I don't know if I agree with all I read in here.

The Stones always had an "it's only rock and roll but I like it" attitude.

Think of the Have you seen your mother cover. That's the essence of the stones, people having fun, whose music is about having fun. I can't imagine Jagger being serious when he wared those jumpsuits in 72/73 ...

But it is true that for the world around the Stones, it was time for them to grow up and act their age.


C

liddas, the thing is that material from BB to Exile and into GHS wasn't only anything. It all mattered. It wasn't only R&R - it was (to quote Bill Shankly!) 'more important than that'. The Stones had been leaders and at one time their soundtrack was part of a social counter-culture - which mattered.

By 1973-4 tht had ahd evaporated - and with it th Stones' musical/social relevance. The Tax Exile. They'd been off the scene socially in the UK. The Faces were perhaps the most relevant R&R 'voice' in their absence during the Glam period.

I think IORR, the single, was an attempt by Jagger to stay on the scene. He was lowering the Stones' standards tp pander to popularism - because his/theirs was a business in which they now had to compete - and he wanted to keep market share with a young audience. He also wanted to show he could out-rock the Glams on their terms - hence ditties like If You Can't Rock Me. But out-rocking the Glams on their terms isn't an achievement - and wasn't really Rock and Roll. It was only a silly fad anyway, from which Bowie had adeptly passed on and by already. Bowie could change his terms of reference. The Stones were rather caught in a R&R image / cage of their own making.

There's a big difference between the way in which a jump-suited and glittered Jagger and the Stones triumphantly stormed Wembley in September '73 and the way he was (in my view rather pathetically) waggling his arse in a sailor's costume to a silly sing-a-long Faces'-type number nearly a year later.

In '73 they weren't only anything. They were still the GRRBTW.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-23 17:16 by Four Stone Walls.

wasn't this the only time in the whole year of '74 that they were even pictured together?

From what I've read, the only time the Stones were in the studio "knowing" they were doing something relevant or more important than just making plain rock and roll, was during the let it bleed sessions.

Seeing what the band did with the eyes of someone who got into the stones between the end of the 70s and the early 80s, I don't see their standards going down the hill, but rather the opposite. I see a band that always renewed itself and was always able to put on scene great shows and great LPs in the stores.

From what I read in STP books (or Bill's books), or saw in the CS movie, I don't see any difference in Jagger's attitude towards his job. And I can say that for me he stormed just as triumphantly in jump suit or in american football pants!


C

Quote
shortfatfanny

But also interesting he couldn´t resist the
"Time can tear down a building
Or destroy a womans face"
lines.

If he had known how soon his comrade´s face would age...

Or some day his own face.... "well, look at your face now, babe, look at yours, and look at mine..." I think he would re-think the edge of those lines these days...

- Doxa

Quote
Four Stone Walls

So, no gender in Finnish?! No difference between he and she? 'Anything goes', then?

I can't remember the Language gfamily name to which it belongs (Ugaric?) - but I think it's non-Indo \europaean, isn't it?

Well, we have some word-endings to mark the genre like "actor" vs. "actress", but basically there is no genre differentation at all. We have a big heart, you know

Finnish is one path of what we call Finnish-Ugaric-languages (or is it the word 'Ugrian' in English, not sure). The only European language somehow, but very distantly related to us (and for Estonians whose language is very close to us) is Hungarian. For the rest of the world what we speak sounds totally non-sensical uttering. As it mostly is... (especially three promilles drunk - not such a rare condition for us Finns...)

Sorry OT, everybody... lets' get back to the Stones...

- Doxa

"From what I've read, the only time the Stones were in the studio "knowing" they were doing something relevant or more important than just making plain rock and roll, was during the let it bleed sessions."
liddas

---

what on earth have you read that leads you to that assumption??? Like the stones sat around saying, "yeah, make this a good take--remember, this is a relevant album, unlike all that plain rock and roll we've been doing lately"

they're a freaking rock and roll band, not a ponderous political outfit like (FILL IN THE BLANK)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-23 19:27 by hbwriter.

I remember a quote by Mick Taylor at the time in Rolling Stone. he desribed the title track on IORR as "That was Mick and Keith trying to write a song in the classic Stones style". (as if it was forced). I remember thinking 1.) He has a lot of cheek to say that and 2) He's right!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-23 20:34 by 71Tele.

>> he desribed the title track on IORR as "That was Mick and Keith trying to write a song in the classic Stones style" <<

... IORR was quite famously written by Jagger and Wood
(and it's more like "classic Bolan style" anyway :E )



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-23 20:44 by with sssoul.

Quote
hbwriter
"From what I've read, the only time the Stones were in the studio "knowing" they were doing something relevant or more important than just making plain rock and roll, was during the let it bleed sessions."
liddas

---

what on earth have you read that leads you to that assumption??? Like the stones sat around saying, "yeah, make this a good take--remember, this is a relevant album, unlike all that plain rock and roll we've been doing lately"

they're a freaking rock and roll band, not a ponderous political outfit like (FILL IN THE BLANK)

I think you read too much in my lines. Nothing to do with politics. Only that the band for many reasons was particularly involved in the making of that album. The book I was referring to was Sean Egan's Let it Bleed. Could be all bullshit, but that is what I understood from reading it.

So if you go back to my post, you will see that basically we are saying the same thing!

C

Quote
with sssoul
>> he desribed the title track on IORR as "That was Mick and Keith trying to write a song in the classic Stones style" <<

... IORR was quite famously written by Jagger and Wood
(and it's more like "classic Bolan style" anyway :E )

what with sssoul says is literally true, but - to make sense of Taylor's point - I think we should view the track going through the Jagger/Richards 'control policy' - no matter who actually was involved in the writing process - to make any track really a Stones track, and with this case, a profilic Stones track (the title song of the album and the first single). Seemingly, Keith took the song quite seriously, and infamously re-recorded Ronnie's parts (expect perhaps one but I wouldn't count on it) - perhaps HE (Keith) wanted it to sound it like 'classical Stones style'; I mean how is that possible without Keith Richards touch, huh? Perhaps that was the thing Taylor was wittnessing and commenting. I guess he saw how much Mick and Keith put effort into it, but it didn't quite match with the expectations. It wasn't any smash hit at all.

- Doxa



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-24 00:06 by Doxa.

Quote
Doxa
For them it was "only rock'n'roll"; The Stones had cemented that point in EXILE, and I think they felt that that was as good as as they can get by their given gifts. Jagger choose to ridicule himself, and he took that attitude very clearly into their 1975 tour. I think part of that the decandent feeling of that tour is the realization that they cannot get any better, and that the days are numbered, boys getting too old to their roles, but what a hec, let's have fun one more time!!! Let's play sloppy because WE CAN!!! In another words, the band was not so serious with their music anymore. The drive to conquer the world with that music - jumpingjackflashes and honkytonkwomens and gimmeshelters and brownsugars etc. was alreadty satisfied. The mission accomplished. They didn't need to prove anything.

- Doxa

Yes, very well put (as was the rest of your post). It's interesting also because I remember a Mick Jagger interview done about ten years ago by the Swedish music program Musikbyrån*. The interviewer asked Jagger if he had any thoughts about why the Stones' mid-70s output wasn't as good as their earlier stuff. Jagger replied something like "I don't know ... I guess we didn't care about making hit records ...". Fits perfectly with what you wrote, Doxa. Although it definitely doesn't make sense if you think about Exile, which isn't a typical hit record at all. But that's Jagger for ya...



*) Also interviewed was Paul McCartney, although probably not on the same occasion.

Quote
hbwriter
Who else could pull this off but the Rolling Stones?

Aerosmith? New York Dolls?


IORR............but I like it!

SNC-I dunno--the bubbles? So over the top--much as I love the dolls and aerosmith--I still think maybe they took themselves too seriously to lose it in the bubbles like the stones did--in its own weird way it was sort of bold, I think

watching it now, it's hard to believe it's just two years removed from the rootsey, r-n-r revue flavor of the '72 tour

Quote
hbwriter
SNC-I dunno--the bubbles? So over the top--much as I love the dolls and aerosmith--I still think maybe they took themselves too seriously to lose it in the bubbles like the stones did--in its own weird way it was sort of bold, I think

watching it now, it's hard to believe it's just two years removed from the rootsey, r-n-r revue flavor of the '72 tour

maybe...
i know your question was rhetorical...i was just having fun.
you're probably right.......

a more accurate answer might be Spinal Tap...but even THEY took themselves too seriously.


IORR............but I like it!

not bold - an accident (the bubbles0

correct - how far they'd slid - lost the plot - since the 'rock, roots. rebel' aura of two years earlier. Pantomome stuff by comparison.

4 stone--an accident? how do you figure?

and all the other stuff is objective of course--i like the album a lot--fingerprint, time waits, iorr, if you can't--I think are all classics.

luxury is good, next goodbye is nice, if you really want to be my friend is sort of sweet--ain't too proud holds up--solid stuff--no exile or some girls--but solid nonetheless, in my opinion



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-24 02:03 by hbwriter.