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DandelionPowderman
Happy belated birthday, Roll 73

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Munichhilton

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Mathijs

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michaelsavage

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Mathijs

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kleermaker
I simply love GHS. It defines the summer of 1973 for me. And after that the autumn in which I saw them play in Rotterdam, October 13. Good lord, what a sensation that was!

Even though I prefer the Stones live, GHS is one of my favourite studio albums, in the same league with Buttons, Fingers, Exile and Aftermath. Silver Train on a sunny summer day, man, it's as if you're going on a trip by train to unknown territory. Exciting!

And this is how it works of course -your memory to a great summer can make a lame album historic. That's just how it worked with me and Undercover. It's not so much about the quality of the music.

Mathijs

Right, it's "lame" because you said so.

Nope, because it is quite a lame record, with a bad sound (ever listened to the snare drum?) and half-baked songs that either don't work, or work much better live.

Mathijs

I don't think I've ever seen nor heard such a majestic piece of brilliance described as 'lame' until now...you seem to be absolutely puzzled by quality rock n roll...I've assessed you a 15 yard penalty

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Redhotcarpet




Off topic but what a great outtake.

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Redhotcarpet




Off topic but what a great outtake.

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loog droog

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Redhotcarpet




Off topic but what a great outtake.

This version sounds a million times better than what they threw in the original Soup.

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loog droog

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Redhotcarpet




Off topic but what a great outtake.

This version sounds a million times better than what they threw in the original Soup.

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LongBeachArena72
GHS was very likely the worst-reviewed Stones album up to that point in time. Time has been a little kinder to it, I think ... but it's still fun to remember what rock'n'roll anarchists like Lester Bangs thought about it at the time:

"Last year he was singing about what he looks like this year. It sounded better than it looks. Just like Jagger on the Goats Head Soup album cover, the filmy scarf or whatever it is making him look sorta like Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis... don't like that smile, it's just vacant... who is this guy anyway... and inside Charlie and Bill no longer likeable, but not even interestingly unpleasant... the whole thing is just pretentious, Mick Taylor is a big @#$%& obviously trying to look bad, amoral, like early Lou Reed or something.... But that's not their image anymore, Mick. What is? Nothing. Nondescript fabulousness... There is a sadness about the Stones now, because they amount to such an enormous So what? The sadness comes when you measure not just one album, but the whole sense they're putting across now against what they once meant... Just because the Stones have abdicated their responsibilities is no reason we have to sit still for this shit! Because there is just literally nothing new happening. Bowie is a style collector with almost no ideas of his own, Reed's basically just reworking his old Velvets ideas, people like Elton John are reaching back into nostalgia but that's a blind alley, and everybody else is playing the blues. So unless we get the Rolling Stones off their asses IT'S THE END OF ROCK 'N' ROLL!"

- Lester Bangs, Creem, December 1973

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Doxa
It is funny to read those old reviews from the 70's.... The rock critics were so damn critical and serious at the time... Now no one bothers any longer, since the 'dream is over', everything said and done, and nothing will get any better, it's all either cynical big business for big masses, or then some marginal 'indie' or 'trashbashhackdeath-subvided heavy/metal' stuff, for some devoted nerds, neither having an actual 'say' in the culture or the world, etc. But those old idealists in their mission, the self-acclaimed voices and commentators of rock and roll revolution, oh boy...

But that said, no matter how good album GOATS HEAD SOUP is (and aged damn well), it actully presents the moment when the Stones visibly turned out to "irrelevant old farts", and not any longer the voice of the day. It happened so damn quickly, and I guess not many even noticed clearly at the time. Just a few years later, they had released about the most relevant music of their generation with BEGGARS BEGGARS and LET IT BLEED, and STICKY FINGERS had showed how they still sound a damn contemporary and skillful rock band. But in two years - I claim - something happened. I think it has something to do with their most famous album ever. What was, arguably, their biggest artistic triumph, turned out to be their fate as well.

Namely, if anything, after the sophisticated, a claim to modern professionalism of STICKY FINGERS, EXILE ON MAIN STREET transformed the band into such a self-sufficient "universal" rock and roll mood, going beyond time and place (= into contextual irrelevance). It was also a kind of "mission accomplished" album - it gathered all the things the guys had learned since the London club days aping American blues artists, but sounding now arrogantly original. With its loosier feel, much more than more 'uptight' STICKY FINGERS did. But there was no any longer (like there was no in STICKY FINGERS either) "Satisfaction", no "Paint It Black", no "Street Fighting Man", no "Gimme Shelter" to put the time and place into music - but just a damn groovy rock and roll band speaking timeless language, mastering all kinds of forms of American "roots" music.

EXILE, trusting solely finally on their non-compromise instincts, was actually so strong statement that - I claim - it emptied their career-defining creative pockets. A kind of Pyrrho's win in creativewise. Namely, what there was for them, becoming from certain circumstances with certain ideals, to really add? How much more we can do of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters?

The significance of EXILE could only be seen afterwards. Funnily, the always trendy-reflective critics actually were right at the time - unlike the big audience who welcomed the album much better - in recognizing certain lack of relevance in the album, and that the band was way too 'self-satisfied" in their doings, and taking some way too easy or obvious routes. Some "discipline" or "ambition" should have been needed, they said. But in the long run that attitude of "fvck, we do an album kind of music we just love", turned out to be its lasting merit, and EXILE seemingly still fascinates the listeners needing a proof what a pure "rock and roll spirit" is in its highest form.

So funnily, EXILE's significance - its real originality - was more clearly seen as the band tried to construct followers to it. GOATS HEAD SOUP, IT'S ONLY ROCK'N'ROLL and BLACK AND BLUE, not being any bad albums at all, but compared to the past - or to the contemporary world then - what was their point? In GOATS HEAD SOUP we can clearly see where EXILE had put them - really 'exile on their own musical never-never-land' - and there was no way getting back to the nerve of the times. Little glam make-up in Jagger's face didn't do that. The years of coping with the trends - and not leading or being a front group of them - started from there, even though they never escaped far from their home vocabulary, manifested in EXILE (sometimes adapting new things better, sometimes worse).

But I think GOATS HEAD SOUP is a beautiful statement how the band was in self-reflective mood, and expressing nicely the sentiments they then were having. The feel of 'no direction' after a creative peak. They want to 'say' something different than in EXILE but not sure what, since they musically are still too bounded to the vocabulary of EXILE. As a result they end up fascinately 'tired', melancholic or even contemplative. But what is remarkable in GOATS HEAD SOUP is also that it starts to 'mean' something only as a part of their own artistic journey, and not how it communicates with the rest of the world. A Stones album only important as a Stones album per se. The band is not any longer a mirror of contemporary music world, but a project of its own.

That didn't mean that the band wasn't so popular any longer. They truely were, but they were "superstars", "big names", "legends" - but not any longer expressing and reflecting the surrounding world in music, but just wandering further their own created path. They were to the 70's as what Elvis was for the 60's.

Ugh, just tried to say a few sarcastic words about 70's rock journalism, but this turned out to be an essay (inspired by that!)

- Doxa

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LongBeachArena72
So unless we get the Rolling Stones off their asses IT'S THE END OF ROCK 'N' ROLL!"

- Lester Bangs, Creem, December 1973