Yep love this song..it's very catchy..the more you hear it the more you like it...cool guitar sound aswell...

Regards,

Ian.

Rolling Stones Tribute

Play Rolling Stones

Further verification:

I don't have it handy, but I think in the 25x5 video Charlie, discussing the early days, says something like "Mick, Keith, and Brian were living in this ridiculous household with garbage all over the floor". He also says something about there being no door or a door that was off its hinges.

How Stonesian that Mick would write about those early days and not only do without a whiff of sentimentality, but disguise it as a simple funkified tale of urban decay AND go to great lengths to try to let us know what it's about anyway by inserting little hidden clues. At least he didn't get maudlin about it, you know? I mean, you wouldn't want them to do a Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and write a whole goddam concept album about the early days, would you? I think that would make any self-respecting Stones fan vomit.

I wonder if any PROFESSIONAL journalist who has reviewed the album has picked up on this. If would be pretty funny if they ALL missed it and it took a fan on a website forum to figure it out!

One last (possibly inadvertant) clue:

"All was spick and span"

Spick and Span means immaculately clean. It was also the brand name of a household cleaning product that existed in the 60s.

Still don't believe this song describes events that took place in 1962-63? Ask yourself this: Why would 62-year-old, multimillionaire, SIR Mick Jagger be going to see some woman who lives in a slum? Do you think he might be slumming in search of new and interesting experiences to write about? Please. He's an artist, but he ain't THAT much of an artist!

First line of the very next song:

"You're awful bright, you're awful smart"

Did you know that Paul McCartney died in 1966?

It was a filthy block of flats
Trash was on the floor
The stink was in my nose
Hinges off the door

The address was 102 Edith Grove, Chelsea.

"The two-room apartment was basically unheated, with a bathtub in the kitchen and a communal toilet two flights up. A single light-bulb dangled from the ceiling. Paint and plaster flaked off the smoke-smudged ceilings; the walls and floors were green with mildew. The tenants (Mick, Keith, and Brian) made themselves rigtht at home. Before long the rooms were strewn with putrid, half-eaten sandwiches, grimy clothes, and shards of glass and smashed crockery. Rats skittered across the floor which was covered by a carpet of cigarrete butts. By way of decoration, Jagger, Richards, and Jones smeared excrement on the walls and signed it. "If somebody had thrown a bomb in the place" Keith's mother Doris said "it couldn't have been worse." "The atomosphere was fetid" recalled Dick Taylor "I thought, DO PEOPLE REALLY LIVE LIKE THIS?"

----From JAGGER. UNAUTHORIZED

"It's a song about London"

---Mick Jagger, ROLLING STONE, Issue 983



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-09-11 16:45 by tatters.

"The bankers are @#$%& every Thursday night, they just vomit on the ground"

The Stones had a gig, a "residency" at the Marquee on Thursday nights. Don't know anything about the "bankers". Maybe some 1962 version of Yuppies who didn't pay any attention to the music, just got drunk and puked their guts out. Come to think of it, there's people like that who go to Stones concerts NOW!

The woman in the song is probably Cleo Sylvestre, a black, sixteen-year-old schoolgirl that the nineteen-year-old Mick was dating at the time.

Teenagers in love ....

I really think I should at least get a pair of Superbowl tickets for figuring this thing out, don't you? I'm just kiddding .... no I'm not.

The weird thing seems to be the transition from the first to the second couplet. If you read them after eachother, it seems that the woman that takes him in her room keeps her appartment spick and span, in an otherwise filthy block of flats.

Now if the first verses describe 102 Edith Grove, the woman must have lived nearby. Otherwise it's like a description of their own appartment, followed by an event quite unrelated. That would leave the word "It" in the first verse unreffered to which would lyrically be clumsy.

So it's either a woman living in somewhere in their block,
or it's not about Edith Grove, just another dirty part of town where she, by contrast, happened to keep a nice and comfy place.

I absolutely love the lyrics. This whole flashback idea just works. Imagine some video with it, little blurry, Performance style in black and white. The music adds a remarkable sence of relativity to it, and although funky, it's peaceful.

Limbostone Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The weird thing seems to be the transition from
> the first to the second couplet. If you read them
> after eachother, it seems that the woman that
> takes him in her room keeps her appartment spick
> and span, in an otherwise filthy block of flats.
>
> Now if the first verses describe 102 Edith Grove,
> the woman must have lived nearby. Otherwise it's
> like a description of their own appartment,
> followed by an event quite unrelated. That would
> leave the word "It" in the first verse unreffered
> to which would lyrically be clumsy.
>
> So it's either a woman living in somewhere in
> their block,
> or it's not about Edith Grove, just another dirty
> part of town where she, by contrast, happened to
> keep a nice and comfy place.
>
> I absolutely love the lyrics. This whole flashback
> idea just works. Imagine some video with it,
> little blurry, Performance style in black and
> white. The music adds a remarkable sence of
> relativity to it, and although funky, it's
> peaceful.
>

Yeah, her place has got to in the same block of flats or even in the same building. There's a story in JAGGER: UNAUTHORIZED about him going to see a fortune teller who lived in the very same buidling, who read Mick's palm and told him he was destined for greatness, and the others laughed their asses off, but Mick took it very seriously. Maybe it's her, but he writes about making "sweet love" instead of getting his fortune read.

The thing that made me think it might be about a hooker is the line "She kissed me on the cheek" something a hooker might give a guy on his way out the door. I mean, she's not gonna kiss him full on the mouth and get all his damn germs, ya know? But it's also something very sweet and innocent that a very young girl might do after she's made love to her boyfriend.

In Rolling Stone, Mick mentions that the line "Feel like we're all living in a battleground" relates to London as it is today, but also goes on to say that he had that line BEFORE the terrorist attacks occurred. It DOES work as a song about London today, but that's the "song within a song" thing I mentioned in another thread. It's about London, all right, but it's really about London in 1962-63 .... when the Stones were at the center of the big bang of British Rock and Roll.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-09-11 21:08 by tatters.

I'd say it has a classic and
could prove to be a hit with
the contemporary crowd. Sounds
like a biggie to me.

I've had the riff stuck in my
head, and the lines about
the rain, and the girl.
Even heard it in a dream
a few nights ago! Hmmm........

> But it's also something very sweet and innocent that a very young girl might
> do after she's made love to her boyfriend.

This I think is more probable. Don't know if Jagger is one to visit a hooker, especially not if it's one of his neighbours. No, it's just two people living their modern depressed yet fancy life in (or as a result of) the worn out city they live in.

I absolutely agree with all of your above interpretations. But the fortune telleress interpretation seems a bit of I think. Perhaps it's just not as literal as we want to see it, and more associative, like Jagger associates the girl and her place with his place at the time, as they were living in the same kind of environments.

Good thread.

More from JAGGER: UNAUTHORIZED:

"By way of immersing himself in the low life Mick paid an occassional visit to his downstairs neighbors. "Allo, dahlin', 'ow are ya? All right?" they would ask each time Mick made his way up the rickety stairs. Keith described them as "real old boots" but in reality they were probably in their mid-thirties. More nursemaids than hookers, they brought barely soup and blankets when the boys were suffering through hangovers or the flu. Apalled at the conditions under which these young musicians were living, the even volunteered to do the cleaning. By way of compensation Mick, Keith and Brian would take turns having sex with the women"

Didnt like it in the beggining but now I think is a good song. The same for Biggest Mistake.

And this:

"The fortune-teller's long red fingernails traced the lines in Mick's palm for only a few seconds before she rendered her verdict, "You've got the star of fame!" she proclaimed. "It's all there!" Since this particular mystic was actually one of the downstairs neighbors who had taken up palmistry as a hobby, everyone at the flat laughed that night. Everyone but Mick"



Maybe the video should start off with the palm reading. Just need some kids who look like teenage versions of Mick, Keith and Brian. They could make their very own mini-Quadrophenia!

Bounce.

natural-born-stonesfan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They should have given us Rain Fall Down as
> Single, instead Streets of Love (here in Germany).


Does that prove the Stones read this board?

Here are a couple of alternative thoughts regarding this biographical reading of the lyrics:


Regarding

It was all the usual crap
All the usual sleaze
For ten thousand quid
Some bimbo spilled the beans, yeah

Keeler sold her Profumo story to the Express, a newspaper, not to a television show. The practice of "tabloid journalism" on television is a more recent practice that places the song in a contemporary Jerry Springer context, not in the past. Moreover, the sum of 10K quid would be the equivilent of 60k in 1963, a rather high (unlikely) sum for a story in those days. The character in the song could've as easily picked up her paper and made the similar comment if it were set in the early 60's, but he didn't.

Regarding

. . . the phone kept ringing.

As other have already pointed out, the verb "to ring" is still used to describe the sound a phone makes even if it's playing an mp3 of God Save The Queen, and the fact that it keeps ringing may refer to repeated calls rather than the notion that this is a time before answering machines were in common use, again as others have said.

Regarding

[T]his strange grey town
. . .
Feel like we're living in a battleground


The image of London as a battleground works as a contemporary one, particularly since the events of 9/11 and the Iraq invasion have resulted in increased security and the presence of armed police officers on the streets of London.

I don't have the source handy, but Jagger's referred to this line and London's post-tube bombings when he's talked about the song. Also note that he says "we're living" in a battleground, present tense, rather than we were living in a battleground. Perhaps its a contemporary visit to London that's recalled the other parts of the story? As in a flashback?


More generally,

I'd resist reading songs in a way that suggests Jagger himself is the character in the song. It leads to what's commonly called a biographical fallacy: a reading of a song, film, play, etc., that demands some strict correlation between the life of the writer/ performer and that of the characters in the piece.

In that context, I don't assume that Jagger actually ran twenty red lights near Bakersfield, or that Richards never kept a dollar past sunset (although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Keith wasn't looking to good but was feeling real well).

Finally,

Where does the hooker thing come from? It's a filthy block of flats, okay. But how or why is this woman a hooker? I find it odd that the narrator would speak of making sweet love with a hooker. I also find it odd that a hooker would be cooking up some eggs and making some tea. Now to be honest, I don't have any experiences with hookers so I may be out of my league on this point. But if we're describing a commercial enterprise here, a bed & breakfast comes to mind more readily than a hooker.

Cheers





On the internet nobody knows
you're Mick Jagger



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-11-25 20:46 by camper88.

Tatters,

In the same recent RS issue (#983) you quote above, Jagger also says this:

"It is a scary time. Since I wrote the song, London's gotten even scarier. "Rain Fall Down" is a song about London. It has a line, "Feel like we're living in a battleground/Everyone's jazzed." That was in my head already. There were so many armed police in the streets. Walking around, seeing machine guns, is not how you imagine London to be."

That's the quote that I remembered but couldn't find to cite in my earlier post. He doesn't say it's a song about the London I once knew or London in the sixties, just about London, and his examples are contemporary.

Now I'm the first to admit that you can't always trust the author in his or her interpretation of his or her work (they're notorious for misleading interpreters) yet I'm not sure how that puts the song in the early 1960's. But hey, I do like the creative interpretation you offer.

Regarding my earlier caution about reading songs with the writer's biography in minds, here's what Jagger said in the same RS article:

"autobiographical songs are cringe-y. Teenage girls love that shit. When Britney broke up with Justin and he did that tune ["Cry Me a River"], my daughter was explaining to me, "You see the scene in the video? That actually happened, Dad."

If I wrote about what my life is really about, directly and on the money, people would cringe."


On the internet nobody knows
you're Mick Jagger



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2005-11-25 22:10 by camper88.

I don't think it's set in the past. There were few if any beggars in England in the 60s - before the Thatcher/Reagan years of dismantling government services. The "crap, sleaze" sounds more like yes, Jerry Springer and that ilk.

The block of flats is filthy, run-down, but this woman keeps her space clean.

Part of the song's mood is the narrator's discomfort with his surroundings, which makes more sense with a contemporary sir mick persona. Someone concerned but out of touch with both today's youth culture and social problems. He's sympathetic but has no strategy for connecting, so he just loses himself in the sex. He even feels uncomfortable with the woman's hospitality and turns on the tv to deflect conversation. But gets more of the crap and sleaze, which reminds him of himself.

I love the scene... it reminds me of the cover of She's the Boss.

cc

Have you noticed that in recent performances, this song is immediately preceded by As Tears Go By?

"All I hear is the sound of rain falling on the ground"





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2006-01-24 08:19 by tatters.

I would love to have Mick read this thread and comment on it. It is somewhat intriguing.

Pity the melody gets a bit on your nerves when you've heard it a dozen times. But it still is a very good lyrical and musical composition.

I still backup the flashback idea tatters worked at, although I agree the situation explained might have struck Mick harder and more often than in the past, because it could be related again to a derelict present situation.

One of the worst songs of the album together with:
- Neo Con
- Laughed
- Streets

Somebody mentioned Rain is better than Hey Negrita and Hot Stuff.
Just can't believe such a statement.

tatters Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Have you noticed that in recent performances, this
> song is immediately preceded by As Tears Go By?
>
> "All I hear is the sound of rain falling on the
> ground"
>
>
> You've got to admit that the juxtaposition of these two songs is really interesting. A song that's over 40 years old that describes Mick's present situation (at 62, it really IS "the evening of the day") and a brand new song that describes Mick's situation over 40 years ago. What an artiste!

It might seem odd that Mick would write a song in 1964 about feeling old, but I guess you can feel old at any age. Macca wrote Yesterday when he was 22. Neil wrote Sugar Mountain when he was 19. I felt old when I turned 43. It was at that moment that I instictively KNEW that I had begun to "play the back 9" as they say ....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2006-01-24 19:41 by tatters.

I LOVE RAIN FALL DOWN!, glad to see it as regular set!

This (Rain Fall Down) is one of the 5 or so most solid songs on ABB. It's not too modern but filtered through a late 70s vibe. No cringe factors here.

I think Laugh I Nearly Died is almost great but needs some taming. Mick gets too carried away on the chorus (over singing) and the guitars are too power chord-y for me--too thuddy--what is this--AC/DC? The post chorus is incredible--the subtle wah and the chant vocals--should have carrried that through more. That's why they need a new producer--to bring out the good stuff and push back the not-so good bits.

love it.....great live in concert too....was surprised like i was with Out of Control and Saint of Me with the songs live...

Rain Fall Down has a kind of disco feel to it. It does grow on you for sure. Great tune! Up there with NeoCon and Oh no not you again as my favourites on ABB.

Charles Baudelaire
1821-1869

Bump. Just because.

A good modern day Stones song. Interesting guitar sound