FEATURE:
Mick Jagger at Eighty: Like a Rolling Stone
IN THIS PHOTO: The Rolling Stones in 1971 (in a promotional image for Sticky Fingers)/PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Webb
1968-1972: Highlighting the Legendary Band’s Phenomenal Run of Masterpieces
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I guess that…
IN THIS PHOTO: Keith Richards, Mick Taylor, Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts photographed on 20th October, 1969 departing for America from London for their first tour in three years (three weeks, fourteen cities - from L.A. to Miami)/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
a lot of artists put together a string of albums that you can see as a golden period. Whether it is Prince’s run of albums between 1981’s Controversy and 1988’s Lovesexy, or David Bowie’s 1971 through 1973 (from Hunky Dory to Aladdin Sane) and 1975 through to 1977 (from Young Americans to “Heroes”), there is something that captures their imagination and leads to these wonderful albums. The momentum then keeps going. There are plenty of other acts that this applies to. Some who have made an entire career of genius albums. In the case of The Rolling Stones, they scored their first real masterpiece with 1968’s Beggars Banquet. That four-album purple batch and golden run ended with 1972’s Exile on Main St. Some feel that this album was an implosion. Even though it got mixed reviews upon its release, it is now considered to be one of The Rolling Stones’ very best albums. I often wonder whether there was that competition with The Beatles. The Rolling Stones released their debut the year after The Beatles’. If the Liverpool band peaked early and then created a work of brilliance, Abbey Road, as the last album they recorded (which was released in 1969), The Rolling Stones took a little longer to get started up. They then continued to make exceptional music after The Beatles broke up. In fact, 1972’s Exile on Main St. could be considered their best work. Perhaps that responsibility of being Britain’s biggest band. Perhaps there was a momentum from 1968 that kept on going. Whatever the reason, there are these four albums that stand out from the rest. As Mick Jagger is eighty on 26th July, I wanted to spend time with The Rolling Stones four albums released during this stunning run. In each case, I will introduce a review, select the best tracks, and I will embed all of the albums for people to listen to. Let’s go back almost fifty-five years to when The Rolling Stones were about to release their finest album to that date. After Beggars Banquet, they then gave us Let It Bleed in 1969; 1972’s Sticky Fingers came a year before the final of that awesome quartet, Exile on Main St. To honour Mick Jagger ahead of his eightieth birthday, let’s step back and take a look inside…
FOUR world-class albums from The Rolling Stones.
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Beggars Banquet
Release Date: 6th December, 1968
Label: Decca
Producer: Jimmy Miller
Standout Tracks: No Expectations/Street Fighting Man/Stray Cat Blues
Review:
“On Beggar’s Banquet the Stones try to come to terms with violence more explicitly than before and in so doing are forced to take up the subject of politics. The result is the most sophisticated and meaningful statement we can expect to hear concerning the two themes — violence and politics — that will probably dominate the rock of 1969.
Politics has not been fashionable since Dylan left it among musicians. There have always been the few hold-outs left over from the folk music period, but despite the mass media’s continually mistaken references to rock and roll as “protest music,” rock musicians have done remarkably little protesting. Protest is a hallmark of the liberal. It is an appeal to the conscience of the majority to remedy some injustice being done to the minority. It presupposes a belief that meaningful change can be worked out within the system. Rock and roll musicians, for the most part, don’t buy that. They don’t take things like government seriously unless they are forced to. They find the whole political process something worthy of contempt.
Protest singers in the past were most often ideologues who set pallid verse to semi-musical melodies. The idea that it is the music that should convey the brunt of their meaning never occurred to them. There were words and there were notes but there wasn’t any music.
The people who are turning to political themes in their music now are different. They don’t do it a as luxury, or for moral reasons. They are doing it because it is part of their lives and they have to express themselves in terms of how what is happening in the streets is affecting their lives.
Beggar’s Banquet is not a polemic or manifesto. It doesn’t advocate anything. It is a reflection of what goes on at the Stones house, with a few pictures of the house itself thrown in for good measure. Part of what that house looks like has to do with what it’s surrounded by and the most startling songs on the album are the ones that deal with the Stones environment: “Salt of the Earth,” “Street Fighting Man,” and “Sympathy for the Devil.” Each is characterized lyrically by a schizoid ambiguity. The Stones are cognizant of the explosions of youthful energy that are going on all around them. They recognize the violence inherent in these struggles. They see them as movements for fundamental change and are deeply sympathetic. Yet they are too cynical to really go along themselves. After all, they are rock and roll musicians, not politicians, and London is such a “sleepy town.”
They make it perfectly clear that they are sickened by contemporary society. But it is not their role to tell people what to do. Instead, they use their musical abilities like a seismograph to record the intensity of feelings, the violence, that is so prevalent now. From the beginning they themselves have been exponents of emotional violence and it’s hard to imagine any group more suited to voicing the feelings of discontent we all share in these most violent of times. Wherever they wind up themselves, they are writing songs of revolution because they are giving powerful expression to the feelings that are causing it.
Musically the Stones express themselves through three basic elements: rhythm, tension, and energy. “Street Fighting Man” is prototypical of the approach. Drummer Charlie Watts lays down an elementary drum pattern, the same one he has been using since “Route 66.” He strikes the high-hat with a near compulsive regularity and hits the snare drum with such a wallop it’s hard to believe the sound is coming out of only one drum. The rhythm guitar is layed over the drum and is characterized by a violent attack which emphasizes the “on” beat. The bass pattern is simple and restrained. Like the guitar it serves to magnify the impact of the beat. The collective effect of the instrumental track is of fantastic thrust forward.
The beat is constantly being pushed, the guitars constantly re-emphasizing the basic movement of the song, the bass providing the perfect floor to the arrangement. And then the voice: Jagger is the source of the tension. At his best (definitely on this track) he sounds like he’s fighting for control, fighting to be heard over the din of the instruments. For all its simplicity it is an amazingly complex style of arranging and a perfect vehicle for expressing the lyrics.
The words are beautiful. Notice how Jagger emphasizes them: “Ev-ry where I hear the sound of charg-ing, march-ing peo-ple.” The Stones obviously revel in the images of charging people: they’ve sure seen enough of them at their concerts. But they are too mature and too realistic to fall into the trap of slogans and easy answers. All they can really do is sing in a rock and roll band.
“Salt of the Earth” continues in the same vein and serves as Jagger’s tribute to the “other half.” Lyrically, the song’s point of view is again ambiguous. Jagger obviously wants to empasize with the “common foot soldier,” the working man, the man who is forced to throw his life away on “back-breaking work” without ever achieving satisfaction. On the other hand, when he looks into their “faceless crowds,” they look “strange.” He has gotten to a point where he can’t really come to terms with their way of thinking. Nonetheless, the tribute goes on and begins to sound a bit like a drinking song. At one point I expect them to all be standing around the bar toasting the veterans of the Spanish Civil War. The double time at the end pushes the song past that stage and helps it regain its movement and vitality. It is typical of Jagger’s honesty that he was unafraid to use a soldier as symbol of “The Salt of the Earth.” They are as much victims as anyone else.
“Sympathy for the Devil” rounds out the group of ambiguous, socially aware songs. To me, it is the most distinguished song and performance of the year. Lyrically, it is a striking picture of a world gone mad. Cops are criminals. Saints are sinners. God is the devil. Whoever is on top makes whoever is beneath him the enemy; actually, it is always the men on top who are the enemy. Those who claim righteousness for themselves are only interested in perpetuating their own power. Those they vilify are really the righteous ones, until they achieve power for themselves. Then they imitate their predecessors and the process repeats itself through history. The narrator, Lucifer, was there when “Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt, of pain.” He was there when “the blitzkreig raged and the bodies stank.” And he lays “traps for troubadors who get killed before they reach Bombay.” And who is telling us all this? A man of wealth and taste. Sounds like what a lot of people would like to become.
The music is brilliant. The cut opens with just the percussion—a sort of syncopated Bo Diddley, precisely the kind of thing Watts excells at. Then they add Nicky Hopkins’ rhythm piano, perfectly understated. Wyman’s simple bass line matches Watts syncopation perfectly. Throughout the cut he adds color to the basic rhythm pattern by throwing in some very pretty, loopy bass lines. After two verses of Jagger’s singing, the background voices add that ultra simple “oo-oo” accompaniment which continues to grow for the duration of the cut. By the time they reach the end, they sound like a plane taking off, accelerating at an inexorable pace until it finally reaches its normal flight speed, at which point it levels itself off.
The rest of the album is made up of largely conventional Stones styled songs. There are some mediocre ones among them, but then that’s part of the Stones. Consistency is not their bag. Among the really fine cuts are “Doctor, Doctor,” “No Expectations,” “Factory Girl” and “Stray Cat Blues.” “No Expectations” is noteworthy for its sentimental melancholy. It has a lovely country feel to it, without actually being an attempt at country music. “Factory Girl” is more of the Stones interest in the working class (remember “Backstreet Girl”) and has a New Lost City Ramblers-type accompaniment, complete with old-timey styled fiddle.
“Stray Cat Blues” is easily the best of the lot and is pure Stones. It deals with their favorite subject: naughty boys and girls. The lyrics are about a groupie and Jagger comes up with some very tough lines: “I’ve heard you’re fifteen years old/But I don’t want your ID” and signs off with “I’ll bet your mother don’t know you can bite like that.”
Beggar’s Banquet is a complete album. While it does not attempt Sgt. Pepper-type unity it manages to touch all the bases. It derives its central motive and mood from the theme of “revolution” but isn’t limited to that. Over at the Stones house there’s plenty of room for groupies, doctors, jigsaw puzzles, factory girls, and broken hearts as well. Yet even these subjects are colored by the impact of “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man.” Beggar’s Banquet ought to convince us all that the Stones are right. By putting all these different themes on the same album the Stones are trying to tell us that they all belong together. They do” – Rolling Stone
Key Cut: Sympathy for the Devil
Let It Bleed
Release Date: 28th November, 1969
Label: Decca
Producer: Jimmy Miller
Standout Tracks: Gimme Shelter/Let It Bleed/Monkey Man
Review:
“After disparaging their self-produced 1967 album "Their Satanic Majesties Request" as a work of utter “nonsense,” the Rolling Stones turned to American sound man Jimmy Miller to set things right. And did he ever. Over the next several years, Miller produced a quintet of the band’s finest albums, ranging from "Beggars Banquet" (1968) and "Let It Bleed" (1969) through "Sticky Fingers" (1971), "Exile on Main St." (1972), and "Goats Head Soup" (1973).
In many ways, Miller’s extended collaboration with the Stones marks the pinnacle of their album-length recordings. Not surprisingly, these same records find the band making their finest contributions to the form. With the exception perhaps of "Goats Head Soup," any one of the Miller-produced Stones albums could easily vie to be the group’s prevailing masterwork.
Slated for release this on November 15 in a 50th-anniversary remastered edition, "Let It Bleed" may (pun intended, given the LP’s surrealistic cover art) take the cake. The deluxe version of the original mono and stereo recordings features a spate of goodies, including a set of lithographs, a commemorative book, and unpublished photos by Ethan Russell, the Stones’ tour photographer.
But the real star—as always, when it comes to these types of affairs—is the music. And in this regard, "Let It Bleed" doesn’t disappoint. Painstakingly remastered by Bob Ludwig, the album sounds as fresh and potent as ever. If anything, Ludwig’s efforts have paid off in terms of capturing the original record’s bizarre admixture of hyper-sexualized terror, ersatz-gospel, and terrifying lament.
Originally released in December 1969, "Let It Bleed" explodes into being with “Gimme Shelter.” Then, as now, the record is anchored by the fearsome sense of dread inherent in the song’s lyrics and even more chilling, cautionary music. In the remastered version of the song, “Gimme Shelter” takes on even darker hues, with Merry Clayton’s soaring backing vocals merging with Mick Jagger’s lead in perfect, panic-inducing unison.
For many listeners—in particular, esteemed rock critic Greil Marcus—“Gimme Shelter” already exists as the Stones’ finest moment, although to my ears, Beggars Banquet’s “Sympathy for the Devil” can’t be lagging too far behind. But with the remastered "Let It Bleed," it’s the lesser classics that really come alive under Ludwig’s tutelage. Take “Monkey Man,” with its madcap rock ‘n’ roll gusto or “Midnight Rambler,” Jagger’s fright-provoking retelling of the Boston Strangler’s “silk-stalking” spree murders.
As with other recent remastered editions and remixes associated with rock’s legacy acts, "Let It Bleed" benefits from contemporary audio technology’s capacity for expanding the sound palette and affording half-century old tracks with greater sonic separation and definition. When it comes to "Let It Bleed," there is no better candidate for studio enhancement than the Stones’ epic masterwork “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
Intentionally composed by Jagger and Keith Richards as a grandiose rejoinder to the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” took on a life of its own in the studio. In Ludwig’s able hands, the song feels even more expansive, more symphonic—from its plaintive choral preface and Al Kooper’s horn solo through Jagger’s hep-cat vocals and the gospel outro.
While rock music consumers might understandably be overwhelmed by the sheer number of deluxe editions and box sets flooding the market over the past several years, the price of admission when it comes to LPs like the Stones’ "Let It Bleed" is more than justified by the audible results inherent in “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” With Ludwig’s superb rendering, you get exactly what you need” – Salon (50th Anniversary reissue)
Key Cut: You Can't Always Get What You Want
Sticky Fingers
Release Date: 23rd April, 1971
Label: Rolling Stones
Producer: Jimmy Miller
Standout Tracks: Wild Horses/Can't You Hear Me Knocking/Sister Morphine
Review:
“The story of the Baby Boomers, and their movement from adolescence to adulthood, has been documented and re-told endlessly. And few bands represent that story, and the move from the relative innocence of the mid-'60s into the hedonism and burnout of the '70s, better than the Rolling Stones. They started out as seemingly polite boys in jackets and ties and they grew and changed in front of the cameras and the microphones. Their music grew darker and more cynical, just like the times. At one of their shows, the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, held just as the '60s came to a close, a group of Hell's Angels, possibly enlisted as security, killed a man, and the event, along with the Charles Manson murders four months earlier, have long been held up as the symbolic end of the peace-and-love '60s. Seen in retrospect, the Stones were a Zelig-like band for a while there, somewhere in the mix whenever there was a cultural shift underway.
That post-Altamont moment was the setting for their 1971 album Sticky Fingers, an album reissued many times that was recently released in its most extensive re-packaging yet. From 1968's Beggars Banquet and the following year's Let It Bleed on through this album and 1972's Exile on Main St., the Rolling Stones had one of the great four-album runs in pop music history. This was a time when—on record, at least—they could do no wrong, and Sticky Fingers could reasonably be called their peak. Beggars and Let It Bleed might have had higher highs, but both also had their share of tossed-off tracks; Exile's tossed-off tracks, on the other hand, were pretty much the whole point—it's the underground music's fan's favorite, but it never had the broader cultural impact of its predecessor. Sticky Fingers is where the myth met the songwriting; Keith Richards' riffs and melodies were in full flower, Mick Jagger never sang better, their new guitarist, Mick Taylor, was upping the ante musically, and the whole thing was wrapped up in a brilliant packaging concept by Andy Warhol.
"Brown Sugar" launches the record with its quintessential blues-rock riff and lyrics that get more questionable the closer you listen (Jagger has since said it was a bit of a wind-up, "all the nasty subjects in one go"). But words were secondary for the band at this point—Sticky Fingers is about melody, and playing, and style. The Stones were always fascinated with American music, but after the death of Brian Jones in 1969 and their move away from psychedelia, their connection to blues, R&B, and country music grew even more intense. From the loping country-folk of "Wild Horses" and the tongue-in-cheek honky tonk of "Dead Flowers" to a Mississippi Fred McDowell cover ("You Gotta Move") to the swelling Otis Redding-style R&B of "I Got the Blues" to the crunchy boogie of "Bitch" to the Latin-flavored Santana jams of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking", Sticky Fingers is a love letter to these forms, the culmination of obsessions these musicians had had since childhood. But where they once sounded like English boys doing their version of the blues, now their songs felt as lived-in as their inspirations.
By this point, the Stones were so convincing playing rootsy American music it made little sense to compare them to their British peers. Musically at least, the Rolling Stones of 1971 had more in common with the Allman Brothers than they did the Who. Along with the barrelhouse piano, pedal steel, and Stax-like horns, Sticky Fingers was also only the second album to feature the guitar work of Mick Taylor, and his clean, fluid, and highly melodic leads bear a strong resemblance to Duane Allman's playing from this period.
But ultimately, this is Mick Jagger's album, the same way Exile is Keith's. Of all the iconic vocalists in '60s and '70s rock, Jagger remains the hardest to imitate, at least without sounding ridiculous. That's partly because he himself never minded sounding ridiculous, and he turned his almost cartoonish swagger into a form of performance art. Jagger's voice never sounded richer or fuller than it does here (Exile mostly buried it, to artful effect), but he's doing strange things with it, mimicking and exaggerating accents, mostly from the American South, with an almost religious fervor.
When the Stones were coming up, the line on British singers is that they sounded American because they grew up listening to those records; on Sticky Fingers, Jagger pushes that kind of mimicry to places that run just short of absurd. His twang on "Dead Flowers" is obviously played for laughs, but "You Gotta Move" is harder to get a bead on, partway between homage and parody and delivered with abandon. "I Got the Blues" is utterly sincere, with Jagger flinging every ounce of his skinny frame into it. Wherever he stands in relation to the material, Jagger is selling it, hard, and by extension selling himself as a new kind of vocalist. "Sister Morphine" and "Moonlight Mile" are the two songs that stray furthest from American music reverence, and they are highlights, showing how well the Stones could convey weariness and a weird kind of blown-out and wasted beauty.
With reissue culture in overdrive, we're seeing which classic bands kept the most in their vaults. The Stones, like Zeppelin, didn't keep much. The 2010 version of Exile on Main St. pretty much cleaned out the vault as far as music from this era, so what we have here are alternate mixes, an inferior but still interesting different take of "Brown Sugar" with Eric Clapton, the one true rarity that has long circulated but never been officially issued. There's also, depending on which version you get, a good deal of vintage live Stones, which is the main thing to get their fans excited. Selections from two 1971 gigs, both recorded well, capture the band in a peak year.
To my ears the Stones' live prowess has never quite translated to recordings. The best live records are about more: more heaviness, more jamming, more crowd noise, more energy. And their music didn't necessarily benefit from increasing any one of those things. Their songs were about a certain amount of balance between all of the elements, which is why their recordings sound so platonically perfect. With their live records, you can focus on the grooves and the riffs and the collective playing, but it's easier to notice moments of sloppiness and mistakes. Still, as far as live Stones on record, the material here is about as good as you will get.
The Stones entered the '70s still young and beautiful, but they'd have their share of problems just like everyone else; they got into disco and then in the '80s they dressed like they were on "Miami Vice" and then finally they fully understood what nostalgia for them was really worth and they discovered the power of corporate synergy. Given the weight of history behind it and its centrality to the story of both the Rolling Stones and rock music as a whole, it can be difficult to put on Sticky Fingers and try and hear it for what it was: the highly anticipated new album from one of the biggest bands in the world, a group that at the time hadn't released a new one in two years (in 1971, that was an eternity). They were called the World's Greatest Rock'n'Roll Band for entirely too long, but if that designation ever applied it was here” – Pitchfork
Key Cut: Brown Sugar
Exile on Main St.
Release Date: 12th May, 1972
Label: Rolling Stones
Producer: Jimmy Miller
Standout Tracks: Rocks Off/Rip This Join/Shine a Light
Review:
“Greeted with decidedly mixed reviews upon its original release, Exile on Main St. has become generally regarded as the Rolling Stones' finest album. Part of the reason why the record was initially greeted with hesitant reviews is that it takes a while to assimilate. A sprawling, weary double album encompassing rock & roll, blues, soul, and country, Exile doesn't try anything new on the surface, but the substance is new. Taking the bleakness that underpinned Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers to an extreme, Exile is a weary record, and not just lyrically. Jagger's vocals are buried in the mix, and the music is a series of dark, dense jams, with Keith Richards and Mick Taylor spinning off incredible riffs and solos. And the songs continue the breakthroughs of their three previous albums. No longer does their country sound forced or kitschy -- it's lived-in and complex, just like the group's forays into soul and gospel. While the songs, including the masterpieces "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," "Torn and Frayed," "Happy," "Let It Loose," and "Shine a Light," are all terrific, they blend together, with only certain lyrics and guitar lines emerging from the murk. It's the kind of record that's gripping on the very first listen, but each subsequent listen reveals something new. Few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and masterful as Exile on Main St., and it stands not only as one of the Stones' best records, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock” – AllMusic
Key Cut: Tumbling Dice