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Redhotcarpet

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24FPS
It all reminds me of the Some Girls tour and the absolute blasting the group was getting in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. The album had gotten an awful review and the headline for the tour was SHATTERED, and not in a good way. Reports came back that Jagger was pissed and refusing Rolling Stone reporters access. Suddenly there was a reassessment of the album in the magazine and things smoothed out. It's almost like there was a punk rebellion by the younger staff against the Stones and Jann had to step in and kiss a little ass to get back in the good graces of the group.

The Stones were still enduring the nightmare of Keith's heroin bust in Toronto and things were very fragile. It was probably the massive sales of the album and the worldwide smash of 'Miss You' and the surprising popularity of 'Beast of Burden' that got the band through the summer of '78. Then they almost blew it with Jagger's terrible, croaked out performance on Saturday Night Live, that left people cold with his creepy licking of Ron Wood's face. Wood looked obviously uncomfortable. Allegedly Jagger sounded so bad because he partied all week with the likes of Belushi. (Coke is notoriously bad on the throat). Anyone who has seen the rehearsals on bootleg know they band sounded great earlier in the week.

The whole stress of that time with Keith seems to have laid the foundation for the Jagger/Richards split. You can still see the closeness on the '75 and '76 tours, but after the group stood by Keith through the '77 bust until the '79 Concert For the Blind in Canada, it looks like a real distancing took place between Mick and Keith. And, with the subsequent good reviews the Stones always got in Rolling Stone afterward, it looks like Mick and Jann got a lot closer.

Interesting interview, used to find it boring but I was wrong. I think the split came in 1980 when Keith quit heroin. The bust in Toronto probably sealed the deal for Mick but the real split (probably) came later due to Keiths change - coke and heroin to coke and booze.

Thanks for that info...didn't know about Rolling Stone bashing Some Girls when it came out. Seems to be some revisionist history on their part, plus apologizing for it ever since. I don't recall any of the reviewed albums from the Stones or Mick or Keith every getting below 4 stars, and in fact there are a lot of 5 or 4 1/2 stars amongst them.

I agree as well with the idea that the 'rift' between them, which evolved over time for sure, really had it's roots with Keith 'getting off the horse' so to speak back in the beginning of the 80's.

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Max'sKansasCity

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treaclefingers
Great article from 1995, the Jan Wenner interview:

[www.jannswenner.com]

Interesting reading this so many years later, particularly when hearing what he says then and how things don't seem that much different than now.

Nice online find, thanks for sharing treacle

Thanks Max!

Great read!!

Thanks for posting!

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24FPS
It all reminds me of the Some Girls tour and the absolute blasting the group was getting in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. The album had gotten an awful review and the headline for the tour was SHATTERED, and not in a good way. Reports came back that Jagger was pissed and refusing Rolling Stone reporters access. Suddenly there was a reassessment of the album in the magazine and things smoothed out. It's almost like there was a punk rebellion by the younger staff against the Stones and Jann had to step in and kiss a little ass to get back in the good graces of the group.

Some Girls had a GREAT review by Rolling Stone, the BAD ONE was for Emotional Rescue, it had a 2 star review, the worst ever for a Rolling Stones album in RS.

That is a bit of a famous interview in that it is one of the few times that I know of where Jagger talks about Taylor, such as it is. There are plenty of instances where the rapport between the two is evident and he touches on that here. But when it comes to why Taylor left...he abruptly cuts off the subject. By many accounts Jagger held a grudge over the years. That is why the PMS session is so significant. But again, not much was said about the session on a personal level. For all that has been written about the band over the many years, I find the Jagger-Richards-Taylor dynamic to be the most interesting and least satisfying of subjects.

Was that the best version of the band? Well, he cannot say that, but...wink, wink.

Didn't Wenner disavow (on behalf of the magazine) the SF review by whatshisname? I believe he had to smooth some ruffled Jagger feathers on that one.

If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

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treaclefingers
If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

Harrison did that in the Beatles Anthology, the bonus scene where they're listening to Abbey Road. All the others laughed. I though that he had to be joking. There may be something to them being "detached and uninterested." Makes it sound more romantic. However, my band put out an album about 10 years ago, and I was talking to my wife about about it and I'll be damned, I couldn't remember one of the songs on it.

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tomk

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treaclefingers
If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

Harrison did that in the Beatles Anthology, the bonus scene where they're listening to Abbey Road. All the others laughed. I though that he had to be joking. There may be something to them being "detached and uninterested." Makes it sound more romantic. However, my band put out an album about 10 years ago, and I was talking to my wife about about it and I'll be damned, I couldn't remember one of the songs on it.

Well, and not to be offensive, but how often do you play your album, and is it Let it Bleed?

People forget, but come on!

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tomk

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treaclefingers
If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

Harrison did that in the Beatles Anthology, the bonus scene where they're listening to Abbey Road. All the others laughed. I though that he had to be joking. There may be something to them being "detached and uninterested." Makes it sound more romantic. However, my band put out an album about 10 years ago, and I was talking to my wife about about it and I'll be damned, I couldn't remember one of the songs on it.

Me neither >< (Joking). Can one listen to the album, and did it sell? Your album I mean.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-08-26 09:44 by Redhotcarpet.

Without a doubt one of the best Jagger interviews. He actually sheds his persona and gives some very insightful and honest answers. And he seems so at peace with himself and the Stones. Some very honest and detailed answers from a guy who likes to pretend he doesn't know the past. It is actually nice to read his pride in some of the songs he wrote, and the albums he made. Thanks for posting.

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georgelicks

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24FPS
It all reminds me of the Some Girls tour and the absolute blasting the group was getting in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. The album had gotten an awful review and the headline for the tour was SHATTERED, and not in a good way. Reports came back that Jagger was pissed and refusing Rolling Stone reporters access. Suddenly there was a reassessment of the album in the magazine and things smoothed out. It's almost like there was a punk rebellion by the younger staff against the Stones and Jann had to step in and kiss a little ass to get back in the good graces of the group.

Some Girls had a GREAT review by Rolling Stone, the BAD ONE was for Emotional Rescue, it had a 2 star review, the worst ever for a Rolling Stones album in RS.

Does anyone have a copy of it? I certainly don't remember it being a good review. And the magazine slagged the Some Girls tour.

Well, here it is. Judge for yourself, and notice the little dig at the tour.

SOME GIRLS review

By Paul Nelson
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 @#$%& 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, ooh 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.

(I didn't add the little smiley faces, they came with wherever I downloaded this from).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-08-26 17:57 by 24FPS.

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treaclefingers

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tomk

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treaclefingers
If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

Harrison did that in the Beatles Anthology, the bonus scene where they're listening to Abbey Road. All the others laughed. I though that he had to be joking. There may be something to them being "detached and uninterested." Makes it sound more romantic. However, my band put out an album about 10 years ago, and I was talking to my wife about about it and I'll be damned, I couldn't remember one of the songs on it.

Well, and not to be offensive, but how often do you play your album, and is it Let it Bleed?

People forget, but come on!

When I said "one of the songs" I was referring to one of the 10 that are on there, not all of them. How often do I play the record? Never. How often does Jagger listen to Let It Bleed?

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Redhotcarpet

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tomk

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treaclefingers
If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

Harrison did that in the Beatles Anthology, the bonus scene where they're listening to Abbey Road. All the others laughed. I though that he had to be joking. There may be something to them being "detached and uninterested." Makes it sound more romantic. However, my band put out an album about 10 years ago, and I was talking to my wife about about it and I'll be damned, I couldn't remember one of the songs on it.

Me neither >< (Joking). Can one listen to the album, and did it sell? Your album I mean.

That's ok, nobody did. It's actually older than 10 years now, holy smokes, closer to 20! I should put the songs up on YouTube or something.
The band split after a tour of Texas and some TV work. Bryan MacLean of Love is on it, singing a counter-melody on one song.

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tomk

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Redhotcarpet

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tomk

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treaclefingers
If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

Harrison did that in the Beatles Anthology, the bonus scene where they're listening to Abbey Road. All the others laughed. I though that he had to be joking. There may be something to them being "detached and uninterested." Makes it sound more romantic. However, my band put out an album about 10 years ago, and I was talking to my wife about about it and I'll be damned, I couldn't remember one of the songs on it.

Me neither >< (Joking). Can one listen to the album, and did it sell? Your album I mean.

That's ok, nobody did. It's actually older than 10 years now, holy smokes, closer to 20! I should put the songs up on YouTube or something.
The band split after a tour of Texas and some TV work. Bryan MacLean of Love is on it, singing a counter-melody on one song.

OK, that does not sound like the typical "I had a band-thing" at all (which applies to me - no record, no tour, no TV). You guys had a real band and even had Mac Lean on the record. The joke's on me then.
Always nice to hear what other iorrians have recorded so if you decide to put it on youtube or myspace...

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24FPS
Well, here it is. Judge for yourself, and notice the little dig at the tour.

SOME GIRLS review

By Paul Nelson
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 @#$%& 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, ooh 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.

(I didn't add the little smiley faces, they came with wherever I downloaded this from).

Thanks for the review...that was interesting. Overall thumbs up, but a fairly qualified one at that.

To me, it rings true as I think Some Girls is a little overrated.

Tattoo You is the better album of the two, with stronger songs and better production.

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tomk

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Redhotcarpet

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tomk

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treaclefingers
If there was one thing that did annoy me in the interview, it was the way Mick would feign to not actually 'know' what songs were on what albums, and had to ask Jan.

Seriously...he doesn't know the tracks on Let It Bleed?

Maybe the earlier albums...I get mixed up sometimes, on some of the tracks...but Let It Bleed?

I think he tries to hard to act 'detached' and uninterested, when I believe he is the opposite.

Harrison did that in the Beatles Anthology, the bonus scene where they're listening to Abbey Road. All the others laughed. I though that he had to be joking. There may be something to them being "detached and uninterested." Makes it sound more romantic. However, my band put out an album about 10 years ago, and I was talking to my wife about about it and I'll be damned, I couldn't remember one of the songs on it.

Me neither >< (Joking). Can one listen to the album, and did it sell? Your album I mean.

That's ok, nobody did. It's actually older than 10 years now, holy smokes, closer to 20! I should put the songs up on YouTube or something.
The band split after a tour of Texas and some TV work. Bryan MacLean of Love is on it, singing a counter-melody on one song.

@Tomk -post it brother, I'd gladly give a fresh listen. I come from a long line of great bands that are broken and scattered to the wind. It doesn't mean that the MUSIC was not just as magic as the Stones. They had good distribution and marketing. I'd love to hear your old stuff. peace.

Here's the Rolling Stone magazine review for Emotional Rescue. They're not too far off base here, either.

By Ariel Swartley
August 21, 1980

Like the thermographic photos of the Rolling Stones on the album cover, Emotional Rescue is a portfolio of burned-out cases and fire trails. High-contrast patterns of familiar outlines and blackened patches where the heat has burned and gone, these photographs — like pictures of corpses from some holocaust — are practically unrecognizable. As far as the music goes, familiar is an understatement. There's hardly a melody here you haven't heard from the Stones before. but then that's nothing new. Me. I'd rather be reminded of Between the Buttons by the venal, high-speed whine of "She's So Cold" than revisit "Miss You" outtakes by way of the interminable "Dance (Pt. 1)," but there are plenty of rooms available at the current memory motel.

Still, the Stones' sound is so identifiable that it's hard to remember how carefully they've developed it: the just-shrillenough blend of harmonica and sax, the similarly gruff treble in their forced high harmonies. And I should tell you about the changes. Mick Jagger sings in falsetto, someone who sounds like a bad Bob Dylan (my God. it's Keith Richards!) takes a snuffling lead vocal and special guest Max Romeo does a bird chant. But you know as well as I do that nobody talks about the musical innovations on a Stones or Dylan record unless the artists themselves have run out of things to say.

One thing's for sure: Emotional Rescue isn't the news-break that 1978's Some Girls was. The Rolling Stones haven't suddenly gone salsa (in spite of some south-of-the-border horns). Old hands haven't stepped out of early retirement to show cocky young punks exactly how best to offend, and radio censors won't have a case. In place of the ethnic and sexual slurs of the earlier LP's title tune (meant, I've always thought, as a sendup of liberal etiquette), Emotional Rescue extends an open invitation to foreigners: "She could be Roumanian/She could be Bulgarian/She could be Albanian.../Send her to me."

If the Stones have adopted a gentlemanly attitude these days, their prime concerns — sex and money — are the proletariat's, too. But when Mick Jagger is desperate enough to mail-order lovers wholesale, you can't help but wonder who's supposed to be rescuing whom. At least he has fun with the idea. "I will be your knight in shining armor," he intones at the end of the title track, sounding like a high-priced fantasy gigolo gone silly with the strain. After nearly eighteen years of well-paid nights and approximately twenty-seven albums of acted out desires, maybe these guys can't help getting lust and cash confused.

"Summer Romance" — a you've-heard-it-before, snotnosed schoolgirl version of "Maggie May" — starts out randy and ends up simply insolvent: "I need money so bad/ I can't be your mama/ I don't want to be your dad." In "Emotional Rescue," the distress that the waiting damsel feels is strictly financial ("... you can't get out/ You're just a poor girl in a rich man's house"). Even the blandly funky, mostly instrumental "Dance (Pt. 1)" pauses in mid-boogie for a couple of rich-man/poor-man jokes. Indeed, so much of this record is obsessed with having and not having that the rescue operation ostensibly taking place seems like it should be aimed at those whose emotions were exchanged for hard currency long ago.

Still, judging by Emotional Rescue's language, the Rolling Stones — Jagger and Richards at least — are feeling as vulnerable as zombies can. Never ones to be self-deprecating, they've translated that feeling into global terms. A jilted Jagger fools around (literally) with foreign affairs in "Send It to Me," proposing an energetic redevelopment program — a sort of self-help sexual capitalism: "She may work in a factory/Right next door to me." In "Indian Girl" (where the Stones meet mariachi), Central American political realities are seriously, if rather vaguely, considered: "Mister Gringo, my father he ain't no Ché Guevara/He's fighting the war in the streets of Masaya." And in the agonizingly slow blues. "Down in the Hole," the black markets, foreign zones and diplomatic immunities of modern rebellion merely become so much barbed wire in a private war of emotional imperialism: "You'll be...down in the gutter, begging for cigarettes, begging forgiveness ... / Down in the hole after digging the trenches, looking for comfort...."

You could legitimately writhe at the idea of a sleek and well-fed Mick Jagger preaching patience to a starving Nicaraguan child ("Life just goes on getting harder and harder" is the extent of his advice). But so much of Emotional Rescue seems vague and not quite real — life seen from very far away — that it's hard to take the LP seriously. Even when it comes to simple desire, the Stones act like tourists in a foreign country. "In the night, I was crying like a child," Jagger confesses in the middle of "Emotional Rescue," and his voice sounds as estranged and bewildered as the echoing horn.

People will tell you that even in the studio, the Stones have struck a nonalignment pact, entering and leaving separately on different days. Ships that pass in the night, it's said, seldom tootle in tune unless their radar is very, very good. Once, of course, the Rolling Stones' was the finest in the world. With each new album, you had the sense that they were looking over your shoulder, pointing an ironie finger at your most private fantasies. This was what made that devil pose so convincing, even to nonhallucinating brains. The Stones really did seem to have foreknowledge of our causes and concerns. And the my stique of their precognition made rock & roll seem — for a while — to be the intellectual and emotional collectivism that would rule the world.

That was a long time ago. But even two years back. Some Girls still had a good bit of impudent, anticipatory spark — or at least an experienced. I told-you-so air that was second best. With its fusion of tedneck rudeness and elegant, discofied languor (and its honking, conspicuous New York orientation). Some Girls placed itself near the front of the Old Guard. The stubborn self-respect of "Before They Make Me Run." the tough but good-humored sexual irony of "Beast of Burden" and the impeccable yet slightly melancholy arrogance of "Miss You" suggested a prime of life in which hearts and minds could survive against both power and possessions and continue to make rock & roll. These songs seemed to be saying that wit, anger and the ability to move fast would keep you alive. And Sugar Blue's harmonica gave you all the tenderness you needed.

Nowadays, Sugar Blue is buried in the mix, and there's a weird sort of powerlessness in even the funniest numbers. ("She's So Cold," "Send It to Me" and the title cut are Emotional Rescue's standouts.) Lovers leave or turn reluctant for no explicable reason. And for all the Stones' tongue-in-cheek insistence that ladies are commodities to be mail-ordered or tinkered with, it doesn't seem to make them any casier to control. ("I tried rewiring her," Mick Jagger sings in "She's So Cold." "I think her engine is permanently stalled.") Once I would have believed that such irony meant Jagger knew better, but now I think he's hoping his feelings of powerlessness will pass for cynicism.

Sometimes when I turn up the volume, looking for the connection I can't believe isn't there. I imagine that the Stones have actually died and this word-per feet, classic-sounding, spiritless record is a message from the grave. That would be the only irony that could save Emotional Rescue, the only vantage point that would explain the Rolling Stones' insulated view of wide horizons, their passionless disillusionment, their foreigner's confusion about sex, money and worldly possessions. Otherwise, unless the Stones are born again or something, I'm afraid that people won't be calling them survivors much longer.

>Some Girls had a GREAT review by Rolling Stone


SG received two reviews. After the initial underwhelmed review, Wenner himself re-reviewed the album, along w/Dylan's STREET-LEGAL, in an apparent bid to make amends to both Dylan & the Stones.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-08-30 04:32 by Glam Descendant.

The Stones didn't get a rave review from Rolling Stone for that matter in 1972 for Exile either....

By Lenny Kaye
July 6, 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 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.
.............that's just the first paragraph.

Quote
Rip This
The Stones didn't get a rave review from Rolling Stone for that matter in 1972 for Exile either....

By Lenny Kaye
July 6, 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 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.
.............that's just the first paragraph.

and it's true. First ten times I heard Exile it left me 100% unsatisfied. I wanted a hit, a good produced Stones number, Let it bleed, anything really but all I got was unfinished pieces without direction and muddy mixes that ruined hit songs like Happy. No bass, no distinct guitars. I felt embarrassed in front of my friends who knew I was a fan.
Then it happened one day. Exile is really a movie, or their great American novel. you have to hear it from start to finish. Suddenly it's a soundtrack, with you for the rest of your life.
But it is not like the reviews were wrong. Exile isnt anywhere near Let it bleed the first time/times you hear it.

Quote
24FPS
(I didn't add the little smiley faces, they came with wherever I downloaded this from).

Those smiley faces happen because of the end quote at the end of the parentheses. This here, only not spaced out - " )

Doing it the other way produced no smiley for some reason. One might think it would be a mirror image... ("

Here's where things got strange. A 4 and a half (out of 5) star review for Undercover. MTV's Kurt Loder lost his credibility on this date.

By Kurt Loder
December 8, 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 @#$%& 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.

Quote
24FPS
Here's where things got strange. A 4 and a half (out of 5) star review for Undercover. MTV's Kurt Loder lost his credibility on this date.

By Kurt Loder
December 8, 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 @#$%& 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.

Disagree...love this album, just a tad behind Tattoo You is accurate IMHO.

Last great Stones album and highly underrated. Stellar title track as well.

Stellar title track, worthless album. Still can't listen to it. One of very few Stones albums pre-90s that I do not keep in my collection.

>Disagree...love this album, just a tad behind Tattoo You is accurate IMHO.

>Last great Stones album and highly underrated. Stellar title track as well.


I totally agee with this assessment.

Quote
Glam Descendant
>Disagree...love this album, just a tad behind Tattoo You is accurate IMHO.

>Last great Stones album and highly underrated. Stellar title track as well.


I totally agee with this assessment.

+1

Interesting how BTB was mentioned in two of the three reviews. Though I'm not sure how the songs mentioned would've fit on BTB. They sound nothing like the type of Britpop/Brit Dancehall styles explored on that album.

Quote
24FPS
Stellar title track, worthless album. Still can't listen to it. One of very few Stones albums pre-90s that I do not keep in my collection.

Your taste is your taste, however I'd encourage you to 'struggle' through it if you haven't in some time. Maybe your taste will have changed?

Agreed though, I just love Undercover of the Night. I don't know of another song that uses the percussion so well juxtaposed against the razor sharp guitar. The vocal is excellent as well.

Loder must've been smokin' something when he wrote that. He totally ignored She Was Hot and Tie You Up. And how does this line make sense?

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)

Mid-70s career slump; the mid-70s release was Black And Blue (then again so could IORR if you want to lean on the other side of the quasi-half) so... the mid-70s career slump ended with Some Girls...so it's the most impressive album since...Tattoo You?

This sums up why Mick really didn't think Exile was that good of an album: it didn't sell enough.

WENNER:
After “Steel Wheels,” you took a couple of years off and came back with “Voodoo Lounge.” What were your goals going into the album? Is it a better album than “Steel Wheels”?
JAGGER:
I don’t know if “Steel Wheels” is better than “Voodoo Lounge,” actually. I don’t think there’s a huge difference of quality between the two albums. I wish there was, but I’m afraid, in the end, I don’t think there is.
WENNER:
On “Voodoo Lounge” it seems like you’ve got better, more distinctive songs.
JAGGER:
I don’t know. Perhaps if the “Voodoo Lounge” album had been more successful commercially, I might have agreed with you, because commercial success changes everything. It colors your opinions. If it had sold 5 million albums, I’d be saying to you, “It’s definitely better than ‘Steel Wheels.’”