SOME GIRLS



Recorded:

October 10-November 25, 1977: Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris, France
December 5-21, 1977: Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris, France
January 5-March 2, 1978: Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris, France

Mixed:

March 15-Mid-April 1978: Atlantic Studios, New York City, USA

Producers: The Glimmer Twins
Chief engineer: Chris Kimsey
Mixer: Chris Kimsey
Released: June 1978
Original label: Rolling Stones Records (on WEA & EMI)


Contributing musicians:

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Ron Wood, Ian McLagan, Sugar Blue, Mel Collins, Simon Kirke, Hassan.

Miss You
When the Whip Comes Down
Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
Some Girls
Lies
Far Away Eyes
Respectable
Before They Make Me Run
Beast of Burden
Shattered

What are your thoughts on this album?

Ahh, Dandy's favorite. I love it too.

One of my favourite albums, some lovely playing from Charlies & Bill. Respectable is very much "Stones by numbers" but I can't help but like it, its got its own raw energy and character.

Interesting...as I look at the list of songs on Some Girles I'm immediately
struck that all tunes with the exception of one (lies) are not uncommon to
the Rolling Stones concert setlist's of the last couple years.

Ithought 'Just my imagination' and 'Faraway Eyes' were marvellous...the rest so and so...

2 1 2 0

Yes, a classic one, Miss You is the compromise for the disco-generation following the (commercial) zeitgeist. But all other tracks are very good or even excellent like Some Girls and Beast of Burden. A new highlight in their career, but not as brillant as BB, LIB, SF, EOMS, IORR. Ronnie's influence contributes some roughness and rawness to Respectable, Whip Comes Down, Lies. The blues patterns are still working, but we are now rather on the heavy side of the spectrum, in some cases at least.

My soundtrack to the wild summer of '78. Yes, some girls, indeed! Love very tune on this record except for Miss You, which is just "ok" in my book. Rich Stadium on July 4 was a gas, albeit a short show. Man, the memories....they're a great thing to have!

With the deluxe set Some Girls is as good as it gets. It really is a double album!!

It was an important release for the Stones, and whilst it is certainly a very strong set of songs, the album has always fallen short of being a favourite of mine. Stones-wise, it's just not an era that grabs me particularly.

Great songs. So many (potentially) good songs left undone from those sessions, of which only 2 made the deluxe reissue (No Spare Parts and Do You Think I Really Care).

Faves: Some Girls, Lies, Shattered

Definately a good record and I loved the companion disc too. The Deluxe re-release was a great one.

My favorite track on the record has always been Beast of Burden, the double stop, Mayfield-esque playing of both Keith and Ronnie was a stand out performance, punctuated by great Jagger vocals and lyrics. Weaving or whatever, this song demonstrated how much fun two guitars could be playing off each other without conforming to the traditional lead/rhythm formula. Sweet!

I also really dig the title track, Sugar Blues harmonica intro is so perfect I never get tired of listening to it. Far Away Eyes is also so well done it is still compelling after all these years.

Some of the other tracks like Lies, Shattered and Respectable represented a shift in the sound and feel of Stones music that I was less quick to accept and never really liked. I know these tunes are loved by many but I think it represented a flippant less serious about the music approach characterized by Ronnie and his party boy attitude and detracted from the deeper Mick and Keith writing kick ass songs that permeated earlier records. Perhaps they just captured the rather superficial nature of the New York party scene a bit too well. Miss You obviously fits in this list in a slightly different way.

Anyway it's pretty obvious what a huge influence New York City had on this record, I imagine people who lived through that period can help but be reminded of those times listening to SG....they obviously made a big impact on Mick. Before Some Girls it was Chicago and the South that seemed to seep into Stones music, with the exception of Far Away Eyes this record is all Big Apple.

Like others, I recognize it as a good album, but apart from Beast of Burden, which is an all time top 10 for me, and a couple others, it's not one that I care to listen to over and over. The basic plow through the track, punkish feel is not something that I like in the Stones. After awhile it gets kind of repetitive. From SG thru to some of Tattoo You, there's tunes like Lies, Respectable, Where The Boys Go, Neighbors, etc etc. that are slight variations on the same tempo and just get old real quick, at least to my ears. The interesting thing about this era of the Stones was the dancier, funkier material that they did from the mid 70s thru Undercover.

Great memories attached with this one.
The day it was released, my brother and I had an all night beer drinking/pot smoking/listening session ...from that day on it was ingrained.
Miss You was all over the radio that summer, and the entire album would become part of the 'soundtrack of 1978' for me.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Miss You
The Stones go Disco but are still The Stones. A big hit maybe and there were times I liked it. Never loved it, but liked it. Nowadays I can´t hear it anymore.
When the Whip Comes Down
Uninspired guitar mish-mash.
Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
Pretty good cover-version, but still no highlight.
Some Girls
Some sort of blues, maybe the best track on this subpar Album.
Lies
Unispired guitar mish-mash No2
Far Away Eyes
Never liked this song. It´s a country parody, too much over the top. Really awful.
Respectable
Uninspired guitar mish-mash No3, but slightly better than No1 & No2
Before They Make Me Run
Keith vocals are awful and make a wreck of an otherwise not too bad song.
Beast of Burden
This one is really great, love the intro and Micks singing and everything else. Outstanding.
Shattered
Hectic, chaotic and most of all superfluous.

This, imo of course, is maybe the most overrated Stones-album ever, maybe because of the smash hit Miss You. Compared to most other Stones-albums it is subpar. Two outstandig songs (Some Girls, Beast Of Burden) isn´t much for an album by the greatest Rock n Roll band in the world. Compared to IORR and B&B it is very weak and even the boring GHS offers more memorable moments. All in all a quite disappointing record, maybe the most disappointing album in their entire career.

From a musical point of view this album is the beginning of a new era for the Stones. They have a different sound, now. It's is the first real album with Ronnie Wood who also changed the sound of the band: now faster and happier than in the past. From the other hand B&B is the end of the MT's era. SG was a something that the band must do to survive.

I think that the bonus cd of the remastered edition has got some great blues tracks with a nice bass played by Bill.

Lovely album!

For me, the fast numbers pick up where rockers like Rip This Joint, She Said Yeah, I Wanna Be Your Man, Turd On The Run and Live With Me left.

It's simple three chord rock'n'roll, but we like it! It swings like hell, and some of that swing vanished on the albums between 1971-1974, with Exile as the exception. The swing was back in 1976 on BAB, but now with a more funky edge.

On SG the Stones became a rock'n'roll band again for me. But all the same, they were smart enough to make a balanced album full of different styles of music. And this collection of songs is simply amazing.

It's the Stones album I never grow tired of



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-08-28 18:20 by DandelionPowderman.

Far and away my favorite album.

It used to be my favorite 8-Track, but I wore that bad boy out!

Certainly one of their 10 best albums.

Before They Make Me Run and Beast of Burden are the songs I love the best on this album.

With BTTMR Keith's forthright declaration that the outlaw was turning in his spurs, reforming himself, and choosing heaven over hell is even more poignant today as we see the results - a grandfather recording and touring well into his 70s.

The context for this album must be the drug bust in 77 that seemed as though it could end the Rolling Stones and almost certainly Keith Richards. It's hard to wrap our heads around how serious it was at the time, and BTTMR is a incredible musical response to the bust and the circumstances of his life at the time.

Beast of Burden is certainly only of the last great Jagger/Richard collaborations, and features guitar weaving and the Stones rhythm section at its finest.

The album also showed Keith and Ronnie's vision for how the band would go forward as a guitar band with more focus on weaving than noodling, rhythm than melody and soloing.

one of my favorite albums of my lifetime . From When the whip comes down to Respectable ,to Shattered a triple punch to the face of good old up tempo Stones rockers that nobody does better than the Stones .Far away eyes is a brilliant gem that shines like nothing else which imho capteures the sound of Bakersfield best , to put it into context compare any drivel coming out of today's so called country artists (more like pop lite ) with it's great lyrics sung by Mick Jagger and Rocking Ronnie Woods awesome pedal steel fill ,there are not enough words to describe this gem .Keith's snarling guitar on Respectable with the Chuck Berry esq. fills punctated with the weaving of Ronnie's guitar was love at first listen to me so long ago. Beast of burden with Micks vocals is so much fun to listen to also. Lies another truly up tempo wonder of joy that really speaks to me .i could go on and on i think i really love this album and the deluxe reissue with the bonus tracks mined from the cutting room floor are priceless with Claudine my favorite .

Given their recent releases few would have bet the Stones could release so vital an album in the era of punk and disco. Maybe the reason that it hasn't aged well in comparison to other 70's Stones' albums, is because it was so of its time.

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itsallovernow
My soundtrack to the wild summer of '78. Yes, some girls, indeed! Love very tune on this record except for Miss You, which is just "ok" in my book. Man, the memories....they're a great thing to have!

Mine too! And my thoughts exactly.....I love this album AND Miss you..... Especially the extended 8 minute 12 inch version.

What a drag it is gettin' old

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2000man
Given their recent releases few would have bet the Stones could release so vital an album in the era of punk and disco. Maybe the reason that it hasn't aged well in comparison to other 70's Stones' albums, is because it was so of its time.

But it has. Even the Stones seem to think so

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DandelionPowderman

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2000man
Given their recent releases few would have bet the Stones could release so vital an album in the era of punk and disco. Maybe the reason that it hasn't aged well in comparison to other 70's Stones' albums, is because it was so of its time.

But it has. Even the Stones seem to think so

Some Girls sounds much fresher and relevant to me than B&B,GHS, and IORR. Maybe even Sticky Fingers.

EOMS is timeless though.

It was their great return to form. David Marsh did a shitty review in Rolling Stone Magazine, and then Jann Wenner wrote a retract probably to please Jagger, but pretty much universally loved by the critics and the public when it came out. It's a great album, but I probably listen to this less then most others now. Side 2 of TATTOO YOU leaves me crying every time since its so goooood. But when you were a 16 year old boy starting to play with the ladies back in the summer of 1978, nothing beat SOME GIRLS. WBCN in Boston used to play it in its entirety, and I remember being on Cape Cod that summer and magic happened and it happened to Some Girls.

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Turner68
Some Girls sounds much fresher and relevant to me than ....

Fresh sounding maybe, but still loaded with mediocre, subpar songs.

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Bashlets
It was their great return to form. David Marsh did a shitty review in Rolling Stone Magazine, and then Jann Wenner wrote a retract probably to please Jagger, but pretty much universally loved by the critics and the public when it came out. It's a great album, but I probably listen to this less then most others now. Side 2 of TATTOO YOU leaves me crying every time since its so goooood. But when you were a 16 year old boy starting to play with the ladies back in the summer of 1978, nothing beat SOME GIRLS. WBCN in Boston used to play it in its entirety, and I remember being on Cape Cod that summer and magic happened and it happened to Some Girls.

that's hilarious, i did not know that.

david marsh's rolling stone record guide helped me find lots of great artists i never would have, i will remember it fondly, despite the stain on his reputation that he panned Some Girls and they had to retract his review! LOL.

This was my introduction to the Rolling Stones. I was just started to get into music in 78 and I had flirted with everybody from Kiss to Styx to the Beach Boys when Some Girls was released. As soon as I heard it played in full on the local rock radio station (CHOM FM) I was hooked. I immediately picked it up along with Hot Rocks and Love You Live and off I went. Great album that brings back great memories. I have played Beast of Burden in various bands and it is such a wonderful song to play as the groove is absolutely sublime. Good stuff all around. And I love Claudine on the extended version.

Mostly agree w HMS, in terms of an overall judgement; my track-by-track comments would vary slightly. Dig "Whip," "SG," "JMI," and "BoB."

Hard for me to separate this record from their dismal 78 tour. Saw the "shoe" concert at Anaheim Stadium and it could not have been more different from the stellar performance I'd seen in 72. They were listless, sloppy; crowd was alternately bored and semi-pissed at the lack of "hits" played.

Add in Jagger's Bob Hope/Johnny Rotten get-up and you have the icing on a big fat mess.

One last note, brought over from the "Hand of Fate" thread re: The Stones and punk:

I think there is nothing punk about anything on SOME GIRLS. There's nothing really punk, in my opinion, about any Stones track. "Punk" probably means something different for each one of us. For me, largely because The Stooges are my seminal punk band, punk is the collision between the chaos of the mechanized, industrial world and the human. One man attempting to howl into the teeth of modern technology. It's a matter of survival, it's a search for meaning in the midst of oppression, it's a scream of pain. That's NEVER what The Stones were about.

They were more ingenious, more calculated, more accessible, more about being entertainers. Just a different bag, man.

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Turner68

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Bashlets
It was their great return to form. David Marsh did a shitty review in Rolling Stone Magazine, and then Jann Wenner wrote a retract probably to please Jagger, but pretty much universally loved by the critics and the public when it came out. It's a great album, but I probably listen to this less then most others now. Side 2 of TATTOO YOU leaves me crying every time since its so goooood. But when you were a 16 year old boy starting to play with the ladies back in the summer of 1978, nothing beat SOME GIRLS. WBCN in Boston used to play it in its entirety, and I remember being on Cape Cod that summer and magic happened and it happened to Some Girls.

that's hilarious, i did not know that.

david marsh's rolling stone record guide helped me find lots of great artists i never would have, i will remember it fondly, despite the stain on his reputation that he panned Some Girls and they had to retract his review! LOL.

This one?
[www.rollingstone.com]

The only LP review available at RS is by Paul Nelson:
[www.rollingstone.com]

From [rateyourmusic.com]

The Rolling Stones
Some Girls (1978)

Rating: Favorable
"More than any of their recent records, Some Girls is Mick Jagger's. He wrote most of the melodies, most of the lyrics, and the obsessions are his. Everything here fits with what I know about Jagger and what he's been through since the last LP: divorce, the reaffirmation of being a Rolling Stone and life in New York City. Some Girls is sensational...

...(It's interesting that these critics [Greil Marcus, Dave Marsh and Paul Nelson] extravagantly praised Bruce Springsteen, possibly to the point of hurting him, and that they spent enormous amounts of energy in their fascination with punk rock, calling it the "music of the Seventies," even though it probably won't make it to 1980.) I think they blew it with their reviews of Dylan and the Stones, which is why I'm putting my two cents in." (Jann S. Wenner, 9/21/78 Review)


While Rolling Stone had long published competing reviews of what Jann Wenner deemed to be "important" albums (and he even demanded a "second look" at Self Portrait a month and a half after Greil Marcus' what-is-this-shit treatise), here is the first documented case where the magazine's coverage of a band was actually the product of extortion.

Here's what happened: Paul Nelson originally reviewed Some Girls in the 8/10/78 issue of Rolling Stone, where he wrote a positive, but somewhat equivocal assessment of the album. ("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.") Meanwhile, Dave Marsh wrote an equally ambivalent one-page review of two Rolling Stones shows in the same issue. ("Onstage, as on record, the Rolling Stones (whatever they may have once been) are now just another good rock band, and it's no fairer to dismiss them as boring old farts - despite the fact that their show is frequently very dull - than it is to claim that they are still the greatest.")

As it happens, RS senior editor Chet Flippo was covering the '78 American tour that same summer. Flippo had already submitted one relatively short dispatch (entitled "The Rolling Stones Gather Momentum") in the 7/27/78 issue, and was working on a longer feature to run later in the fall. The piece was cut short, however, when Flippo was kicked out of the Stones' entourage shortly after the publication of RS no. 271 (which contained the Nelson and Marsh pieces). Flippo documented Mick Jagger's apoplectic reaction to these reviews in his second article (entitled "Shattered"), the cover story of the 9/7/78 issue:

"Mick gets on the line shouting, 'You're off. I'm not pissed at you personally, I'm @#$%& pissed off at Rolling Stone. I got real mad at this vicious shit that was printed. I've given all this great access. This is the end. No more interviews...

'I don't mind criticism, real criticism, but I don't expect this kind of bitchiness. I can smell it. It stinks. Rolling Stone will always say, 'the Stones are great' for four weeks and then knock us down. Set you up and then knock you down. That @#$%& of a boss of yours.'"

Jann Wenner, Chet's "@#$%& of a boss," certainly could have decided to let Mick go ahead and @#$%& off after this incident. But doing so risked alienating the band that constituted one-third of his magazine's namesake, so instead, he dutifully wrote a vapid puff piece in the very next issue of Rolling Stone that took his own critics to task.

In the end, Jagger was amply rewarded for his petulance. After this episode, it was clear that some bands were simply above criticism. Indeed, aside from Emotional Rescue, I can't think of a single instance where RS has given a less than rave review to "the new Stones record" since the release of Some Girls (and the "extravagant praise" for Bruce Springsteen that concerned Wenner so much in 1978 would soon be compulsory).

Some Girls was #269 on RS's 500 greatest albums list.