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drewmaster
Oh my god, what to say about one of the greatest tracks in rock and roll history, the track that electrified the world with those glorious crunching guitar chords that announced that the Stones were back, with a swagger and brilliance that no one else could touch.
Start Me Up is perhaps the archetypal example of what it means to rock and roll. Its rhythmic propulsion is amazing … how it swings with the force of a cyclone from start to finish. And those lyrics … so deliciously bawdy and yet so utterly sublime. And equally astounding, beyond the quality of the songwriting, is how perfectly in sync all five core band-members are, and how each of them shines so brilliantly.
The quality of the production on Start Me Up is extraordinary, too … it just leaps out of the speakers with stunning force and clarity.
Three minutes and thirty-three sparkling seconds of sonic, rhythmic perfection.
Drew
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barbabang
Just LISTEN to the Start Me Up "1"! It is the Pathe Marconi Studio (room) sound and Chris Kimsey sound. Very much 1977. Unbelievable people still think it is from 1975.
There may still be an unreleased earlier jam from 1975 though, but that is uncirculating.
The rock version comes from 1977, when its working title became Start It Up. The reggae version, the demo, is the original version.
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slew
Keith's last great signature riff.
And his first signature riff if memory serves. Amazing how many great Stones songs are based on that one, Start Me Up included.
Yep. I guess "Start Me Up" riff, reincornation of his old ideas, is the last one he would make a bigger impact, that is, it would create the basis and most memorable and recognizable thing of a Rolling Stones classic.
In the end, it is nothing but "Honky Tonk Women", "Brown Sugar" riff recontextualized. Maybe the last time that recontextualization creates actual magic.
- Doxa
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slew
Keith's last great signature riff.
And his first signature riff if memory serves. Amazing how many great Stones songs are based on that one, Start Me Up included.
Yep. I guess "Start Me Up" riff, reincornation of his old ideas, is the last one he would make a bigger impact, that is, it would create the basis and most memorable and recognizable thing of a Rolling Stones classic.
In the end, it is nothing but "Honky Tonk Women", "Brown Sugar" riff recontextualized. Maybe the last time that recontextualization creates actual magic.
- Doxa
Actually that riff goes back as far as 19 Nervous Breakdown, or maybe even earlier, when the open G wasn't yet invented in Stones land. Keith seemed to have an appetite for this kind of rock guitar sound.
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barbabang
Just LISTEN to the Start Me Up "1"! It is the Pathe Marconi Studio (room) sound and Chris Kimsey sound. Very much 1977. Unbelievable people still think it is from 1975.
There may still be an unreleased earlier jam from 1975 though, but that is uncirculating.
The rock version comes from 1977, when its working title became Start It Up. The reggae version, the demo, is the original version.
No, ALL versions are from late 1977 or, more likely, early 1978. There's three reggea 'Never Stop' versions that I know off, 1 circulating and two not. The two non-circulating versions are more deep reggea than the circulating one, with a more heavy 'Feel on Baby' kind of bass. Then there's a rock 'Never Stop' version, and 4 or 5 different versions of the final released version, all in different stages of overdubbing.
ALL versions have the same instrumentation, and especially the short scale Travis Bean bass sound is a giveaway for the time period it was recorded in. Wyman received the bass in January 1978 most likely.
Mathijs
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barbabang
Just LISTEN to the Start Me Up "1"! It is the Pathe Marconi Studio (room) sound and Chris Kimsey sound. Very much 1977. Unbelievable people still think it is from 1975.
There may still be an unreleased earlier jam from 1975 though, but that is uncirculating.
The rock version comes from 1977, when its working title became Start It Up. The reggae version, the demo, is the original version.
No, ALL versions are from late 1977 or, more likely, early 1978. There's three reggea 'Never Stop' versions that I know off, 1 circulating and two not. The two non-circulating versions are more deep reggea than the circulating one, with a more heavy 'Feel on Baby' kind of bass. Then there's a rock 'Never Stop' version, and 4 or 5 different versions of the final released version, all in different stages of overdubbing.
ALL versions have the same instrumentation, and especially the short scale Travis Bean bass sound is a giveaway for the time period it was recorded in. Wyman received the bass in January 1978 most likely.
Mathijs
Mathijs
I am not good at these kind of speculations, but everything is possible. I agree that the "reggae" - in fact not very reggae - version that I know (the circulating one) very likely was recorded during the Some Girls sessions.
But it could be that the original "reggae" recording is not circulating. Maybe it was nothing more than a sketch on tape, and was redone in studio with the whole band, at first with the original reggae feel.
What I find hard to believe is that Keith came up with that riff in a reggae context. The timing just doesn't fit.
C
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stonehearted
<<Isn't there a version dating back to the Black & Blue sessions>>
Under the working title of Never Stop.
Let's try to set the record straight for the umpteenth time...
There is no 1975 version of SMU. All basic tracks of Never Stop/SMU where recorded at Pathe Marconi in late 1977 and early 1978, overdubs where recorded in April 1981. This Never Stop version from Youtube is one of 3 versions, the other two being longer and in much better quality, bit only circulating among tape traders and not released on bootleg.
All available versions have the same sound/instruments: Boogie MKI amps, Travis Bean Bass, Charlie's new cymbals, the Chris Kimsey production.
Mathijs
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RomanCandle
Am I the only one who doesn't like this song?
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stonehearted
<<Isn't there a version dating back to the Black & Blue sessions>>
Under the working title of Never Stop.
Let's try to set the record straight for the umpteenth time...
There is no 1975 version of SMU. All basic tracks of Never Stop/SMU where recorded at Pathe Marconi in late 1977 and early 1978, overdubs where recorded in April 1981. This Never Stop version from Youtube is one of 3 versions, the other two being longer and in much better quality, bit only circulating among tape traders and not released on bootleg.
All available versions have the same sound/instruments: Boogie MKI amps, Travis Bean Bass, Charlie's new cymbals, the Chris Kimsey production.
Mathijs
The track in this YT version is pre-China crash, which is from the first SOME GIRLS sessions, as we all should know, the same day they cut the bottom for Miss You.
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Mathijs
The track in this YT version is pre-China crash, which is from the first SOME GIRLS sessions, as we all should know, the same day they cut the bottom for Miss You.
Did Watts use the China at all on the Some Girls sessions?
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Doxa
Drewmaster really nails it. A thumbs up from this direction, too! The song was back then a perfect introduction of the unique charm of this band to young fresh ears, and I think it still is like a school example of a typical Stones sound, all cylinders on.
But some more reflection of this important song.
We were discussing "Star Star" last week, and I think one of the discoveries was that it was a kind of land mark song in the sense that the dangers of self caricature and 'Stones by numbers' attitude were there seen for the first time. I think "Start Me Up" is another land mark song. There is a lot of same features as in "Star Star" but they function differently, and with different effect.
Most likely the song derives from SOME GIRLS sessions (I believe in Mathijs' arguments based on ear testimony, and the circulated stuff, but I don't count out the possibility that they might have tried it alraedy during BLACK & BLUE sessions). Like noted here, the riff is a signature one by Keith. That is to say, it is based on 'airy' Open G, like so many classical riffs he had written during the years since introducing it in "Honky Tonk Women", peaking in EXILE. However, what is noteworthy in those Pathe Marconi sessions, and the new sound they created there, was that of not using the old riff pattern and OpenG as much as before. In SOME GIRLS, is there actually only one OpenG song? This is to say that to an extent Keith was probably got a bit tired of it, or thought that he had gotten everything he could get out of it creatively. (The last is my interpretation, but I need to give credit to DandelionPowderman for pointing out this development out of OpenG during the late 70's - a development that is not seen widely these days, if not at all). The danger of non-inspired repitition could be heard, for example, in some IT'S ONLY ROCK'N*ROLL tracks, such as "If You Can't Rock Me". The only track that offers a signature riff in BLACK&BLUE is "Hand of Fate" - only reminder in the album of a 'traditional' Stones rocker.
So my guess is that the rock version of "Never Stop" was something they probably they didn't find that inspiring at all when they tried it during SOME GIRLS sessions. It was 'just another' typical exercise on a signature riff/Open G they could do half-asleep by then, 'Stones by numbers' indeed. Yesterday's Papers. If they really cut "Miss You" in the same session, like is argued somewhere, the contrast in novelty was a huge one.
But things were different three years later when they had this king idea that there are all these potential tracks in the can they could use and make an album out of them. The greatness of TATTOO YOU is that it does have a very little ambition in it. It doesn't even try to make a contemporary statement, to offer an updated version of the band or anything like that. Just a collection of tracks from the vaults. And with that attitude it makes one of their strongest contemporary musical statements ever. A huge success by accident (or due to artistic lazyness). Lucky bastards...
"Start Me Up" was a perfect leading single for the campaign. After "Fool To Cry", "Miss You" and "Emotional Rescue", none of them representing 'typical' Stones at all, but trying to reach currents, "Start Me Up" sounded like "fresh air" as Silver Dagger described. It was simple, basic, classical sounding Stones, "Brown Sugar" updated. And worked damn well in the musical climate of 1981.
The success of TATTOO YOU album and especially retro-sounding "Start Me Up" single, I argue, gave a bit twisted signal for the band. Artistically speaking, it was a rather easy catch. Just do the same old thing, and that will do. With UNDERCOVER and its leading single, the title track, they still tried to do something different, actually update their sound, but unfortunately, it didn't do at all as good as did TATTOO YOU and "Start Me Up". There was a lesson there I guess as well.
The reason why I think that "Start Me Up", to go to my initial point, is a land mark song in their career, is not that it is probably their last huge song (a real classic), but as it offered a new template for the Stones music ever since. Their landmark sound is their best commercial weapon. If you like, the success of "Start Me Up" nailed the coffin in Stones' creative career, and they haven't much tried to get out of there. It is like an argument that 'the Stones sound and should sound like this'. Signature sound is there in, say, "Mixed Emotions", "Highwire", "Don't Stop", "Rough Justice", etc. etc. Lots of OpenG riffage.
So, in a way, I think "Start Me Up" works similarly as "Star Star" once did - going 'Stones-by-numbers', but this time the reference is not Chuck Berry, but their own musical heritage from the golden 1968-72 days, even though the music is a bit simplified caricature-like compared to those rich creative years.
The irony is that for a reason or other, they haven't been able to repeate the success of "Start Me Up", no matter how much they've tried. In a way, there is some originality in the song; probably because it is no manufactured to sound like The Stones, that is, "Start Me Up", but was still created out of inspiration. Its groove is so natural, breathing-like, all the components naturally at home. The band was still so juicy at the time that even their half-baked ideas had a potentiality to become smash hits.
- Doxa
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stonehearted
<<Isn't there a version dating back to the Black & Blue sessions>>
Under the working title of Never Stop.
Let's try to set the record straight for the umpteenth time...
There is no 1975 version of SMU. All basic tracks of Never Stop/SMU where recorded at Pathe Marconi in late 1977 and early 1978, overdubs where recorded in April 1981. This Never Stop version from Youtube is one of 3 versions, the other two being longer and in much better quality, bit only circulating among tape traders and not released on bootleg.
All available versions have the same sound/instruments: Boogie MKI amps, Travis Bean Bass, Charlie's new cymbals, the Chris Kimsey production.
Mathijs
The track in this YT version is pre-China crash, which is from the first SOME GIRLS sessions, as we all should know, the same day they cut the bottom for Miss You.
Did Watts use the China at all on the Some Girls sessions? It doesn't appear on the SG album, it's first appearance are the Woodstock rehearsals and the sessions for Emotional Resque.
Mathijs
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Mathijs
Let's try to set the record straight for the umpteenth time...
There is no 1975 version of SMU.
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stonehearted
Okay, let's. Here is a 2004 article and interview with Chris Kimsey published with Sound On Sound (SOS). SOS writer Richard Buskin actually sat down and talked with the actual Chris Kimsey and this is what he actually wrote in the actual article:
"The definitive latter-day Stones rocker, 'Start Me Up' is distinguished — like many of the band's other classic tracks — by an instantly recognisable opening guitar riff. However, it actually started life as a reggae song, committed to tape in March 1975 during the Black & Blue sessions ...
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stonehearted
Okay, let's. Here is a 2004 article and interview with Chris Kimsey published with Sound On Sound (SOS). SOS writer Richard Buskin actually sat down and talked with the actual Chris Kimsey and this is what he actually wrote in the actual article:
"The definitive latter-day Stones rocker, 'Start Me Up' is distinguished — like many of the band's other classic tracks — by an instantly recognisable opening guitar riff. However, it actually started life as a reggae song, committed to tape in March 1975 during the Black & Blue sessions ...
But that's what Bushkin wrote, not what Kimsey said. He may have been so sure he knew that
that he didn't even ask Kimsey. It happens. Keith's autobiography lists Satisfaction
among the examples of open-G tuning, but it sure as hell wasn't Keith who said that.
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stonehearted
Okay, let's. Here is a 2004 article and interview with Chris Kimsey published with Sound On Sound (SOS). SOS writer Richard Buskin actually sat down and talked with the actual Chris Kimsey and this is what he actually wrote in the actual article:
"The definitive latter-day Stones rocker, 'Start Me Up' is distinguished — like many of the band's other classic tracks — by an instantly recognisable opening guitar riff. However, it actually started life as a reggae song, committed to tape in March 1975 during the Black & Blue sessions ...
But that's what Bushkin wrote, not what Kimsey said. He may have been so sure he knew that
that he didn't even ask Kimsey. It happens. Keith's autobiography lists Satisfaction
among the examples of open-G tuning, but it sure as hell wasn't Keith who said that.
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Witness
One point in itself is that this song was not my beginning as a listener to the Stones, and was not what admitted me to the band and its music. The first song that presented itself as single on the radio, that was my first heard single as such, and then I already knew the first two albums and the compilation "AROUND AND AROUND quite well, even if I myself had no recordplayer yet, was "The Last Time".¨From then I have followed the band through all the years, maybe not with so deep understanding, but always with eager interest. Albums and singles. That approach supplies a rather contrasting background, from which to be confronted with "Start Me Up" as Stones issue than to begin with it.
Many years later then and having as listener gradually taken part in many periods of the Stones, I experienced "Start Me Up" as almost suspiciously catchy, as most Stones songs never have done to me, well the single B-side "You Can't Always Get What You Want" did, but obviously that as not an easy song. However, whatever it really is, "Start Me Up" appeared to me then as also now, as easy, too easy, even if it was quite, quite good, I don't contest that. But then not so interesting, not so important and not so impressive as so many songs especially before, but also later. And I did not have the term "Stones by numbers" in my vocabulary then, and I am reluctant to that term now that I know about it. My thinking at the time, however, was in a non-analytical way as always for me towards music, that "Start Me Up" emerged to me as a rather, if my say so, "cheap" sister song to some of their earlier characteristic songs of the band, I was not certain which, and almost without any of the substance I often have found in Stones songs. I have seldom been opposed to the pop aspect, sometimes more or less prevalent in the Stones songs. My objection is not of that sort. But even those songs have had more of substance than "Start Me Up".
So to me "Start Me Up" in some way is their very good pop song in a highly superficial way, without the importance or substance I, for instance, found in the song "Highwire". I don't want to knock "Start Me Up", though. The song has contributed to renew their fan base, with yourself as a prime individual example, which is a mighty important effect. And, besides, to me "Start Me Up" is one of the better songs of its album, where I don't want just now once again to say anything negative about that album. But as song of interest, "Start Me Up" can in no way to me rival later songs like "Love Is Strong" and many more in fact that to me strangely never are met with the same respect from so many posters. On the other hand, "Start Me Up" also to me is decidedly better than later songs like "You Got Me Rocking" or "I Go Wild", which both to me sound rather formulaic, but less good than "Start Me Up". However, I find it more legitimate for those songs to be that, as I thought VOODOO LOUNGE meant a necessary refinding of their identity, after they had gone astray in the studio album releases before that. That motive I don't find as to "Start Me Up". After all, I repeat that I do not find it bad, on the contrary, but somewhat limited in the said way.
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stonehearted
<<The only statement that comes close to 1975 is a statement by Richards from 1981 where he says that they recorded the track '5 years ago'.>>
Actually, I like that source even better. Thanks for clearing that up. Black and Blue sessions it is then. At least in terms of origins and such. So that's why so many think it originates from B&B--because one of its composers indeed confirmed it before too much time had passed to muddle the memory banks.