Prole Hole vs 1970's Rolling Stones

*rubs hands*

This is an excellent set of albums - it includes three of their absolute best, from the greatest four album run anyone has ever done, and only one that's a little so-so (all right, maybe two). So here's hoping it isn't too much of a hardship to get through them. Rest assured, I will have thoughts as we go along.

I insist you carry over "What percentage of this film album could be cut?" and "2019 Cringe Factor" from your Bond reviews.

Let It Bleed (1969) 



And so we start our journey into the 1970’s Rolling Stones catalogue in 1969. Obviously. Let It Bleed will be our gateway drug, but will a band who never seemed all that natural a fit with the hippy and psychedelic trappings of the 60’s be able to produce a compelling album as the decade draws its last breath?

If I’m To Be A Camera: The front cover is a kind of modern sculpture – a platter made up of a cake (I know this was made by Delia Smith, simply because it’s become part of rock lore), a (bicycle?) tyre, a pancake, a clock-face, a metal tape can and a plate all on a spindle, underneath which sits the LP and an old-fashioned gramophone needle. There’s little itty-bitty models of the band on the cake part, like you’d find on a wedding cake. While faintly surreal it elucidates next to nothing about the album it fronts. The back cover contains a horizontal track listing at the top and the same sculpture ruined – the record is smashed, there is a wedge out of the cake and the band members have fallen over. A metaphor for the death of the 60’s? Mmm. I also know – from my MC Escher fandom, not Stones fandom – that Escher was asked to design a cover for this album but diplomatically turned down the opportunity.

Pre-existing prejudices: Well obviously I know “Gimme Shelter” (because is there any single Earthling alive that doesn’t?) and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, which was one of the earliest songs I ever learned to play on guitar despite the fact I’ve never been a Stones fan. Beyond that I don’t think I have heard or even recognise the title of a single song on this album. What an adventure!

Songs:
“Gimme Shelter”
Ah yes, that rambling, slightly sloppy guitar intro. Lovely. Then everything tightens up and in comes Jagger, but he’s not the most impressive voice here – hello Merry Clayton! There’s such an urgency about this song, it’s so damned important to everyone. Love the harmonica – not words I thought I’d ever type – being followed by Richards’s guitar into the instrumental. Wow, listen to Clayton go! “Raaaaaape! Muuuuurder!” What a fucking great performance.

“Love In Vain”
Much cooler, much more measured. Some really great work from Keith Richards here, a straightforward and simple song but very heartfelt. Touching, almost. Jagger’s doing his best blues swagger and more or less landing it. Yes, this could have been a car crash but it works really well. Mick Taylor’s slide work really is terrific.

“Country Honk”
Oh hey this is “Honky Tonk Woman”, sort of! It’s not great though. Oh dear. Sloppy-sloppy rather than sloppy-disciplined, this just sounds like a rehearsal take that nobody bothered to finish. Scratchy fiddle brings back worrying moments of “Don’t Pass Me By” by The Beatles. This could do with a little Ringo actually. The song is decent but this just seems lazy and unfulfilled.

“Live With Me”
Some good bass work going on here from Keith Richards, but this song is all about My Man Charlie. Listen to Watts on this, he’s incredible! What a fantastic work-out from him – Jagger’s working so hard to make this all about him and he’s doing a good job of it, but Our Charlie takes the award for Most Valuable Stone this time out. Sleazy and winking lyric, somewhere between Carry On and outright sleaze, but Jagger makes it work. Very very 1969 without the blues or country feel that’s dominated the album up till now.

“Let It Bleed”
Delightful! What an absolutely great song, completely infectious and a great work-out from all involved. Jagger is playful and teasing, Richards has some great guitar work going on and it’s all just very hard to listen to without grinning. The overall mood puts me in mind of the similarly-infectious “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll But I Like It” but this is a stronger song (and “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll” is great!). The cheeky lyric work from the last song is carried over here by Jagger to great effect. Yeah, love this, what a brilliant song!

(Side 2)

“Midnight Rambler”
Tricky one, this. Some really great musicianship on show here. Again, Our Charlie’s really a powerhouse here, slipping between speeds. Lovely moment when the song essentially stops dead – “Did you hear about the Boston, honey” – and the band are really tight. Vocal is just a little indistinct, but that kind of fits the song as well. It’s not a song that lends itself to clarity either in subject or delivery, but it’s also hard not to wish Jagger was just a little more distinct at the same time. Some great chugging work on “oh, don’t do that” creating a real sense of momentum. Yeah, a really interesting song that lends itself to multiple re-listens, which I shall enjoy doing.

“You Got The Silver”
Quick palette-cleanser with Richards on vocals rather than Jagger. It’s surprisingly great, and he carries the song in a way I don’t think Jagger quite would. There’s always a degree of affectation to the way Jagger sings but Richards just delivers this straight and it’s a bit more effective for that delivery. Some good guitar work going on, and apparently Brian Jones’s last contribution to a Stones record, not that you’d know it if it wasn’t pointed out. This is fine, but it’s just a transitional song.

“Monkey Man”
Is that a vibraphone on the introduction? Why yes it is! Hurrah! Yeah, this is a solid rock workout with everyone delivering. Jagger's yelping and screaming at the end of the song are quite something and it’s great to hear him really stretch his vocal chords. Lyrically there’s a lot of self-pity going on here and “I’ve been bit and I’ve been tossed around / by every she-rat in this town” is definitely straying into yikes territory. But the lyric feels fairly tossed off, despite more drug references and it’s a solid rock jam. Neither the best nor worst on the album.

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
Man, I hate that choral introduction. So terrible. The song itself is fantastic though, love the French horn before Jagger’s weary vocal kicks in. Great clatter of instruments before “… you get what you need!” and the song kicks up a gear. Great lyric, by turns personal and political and somewhat resigned but not defeated, some really deft work there from Jagger. It’s pleasingly multi-dimensional. There’s a slight hint of the “Hey Jude”’s about the song’s ending but overall this is a great end to the album.

In Conclusion:
There’s an inherent contradiction that lies at the heart of Let It Bleed. It’s an album that is simultaneously exhausted and burned out, and also deeply involved in the world around it. That produces some fantastic suspense and pressure throughout the album, as the desire to comment on and observe the increasingly apocalyptic-seeming end of the 60’s mixes with the flamed-out nature of those making the album. “Gimme Shelter” may be an an inescapable cliché these days (thanks, Martin Scorsese!) but it’s still a phenomenal piece of music in its own right, and indeed one of the best album-openers that’s ever been penned. It’s both observational and critical, both global and personal, and it’s the mixing together of perspectives that helps give the song such power and launches the album in such an incredible way. Merry Clayton – drafted in at the last moment to add some of the best contributions to rock music ever with a stunning performance – really makes the song here, giving it extra dimension and force, yet after the rage of the track it’s Jagger’s almost tender “it’s just a kiss away” at the end that brings everything back down to the personal level and completes the song’s perspective. It’s a completely captivating piece of music – and that’s just the first song on the album. If that’s what the first song is capable of – personal and political, contemporary and timeless, powerful and vulnerable – what could the rest of the album deliver?

Honestly, nothing quite as good, though that’s not really a criticism as such because “Gimme Shelter” is such a stunning piece of music. The album is bookended by “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” which flips “Gimme Shelter”’s perspective – while “Gimme Shelter” is vastly political but taps into the personal, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is deeply invested in the personal and limits its politics to one verse, though there’s a political implication to the other topics the song discusses. The sequencing of tracks on Let It Bleed is an absolute masterclass of how to arrange an album, and in bookending the album with these two songs shows a real understanding of how to construct an album that makes it a coherent whole. Putting “Let It Bleed” as the centrepiece of the album obviously works – it is the title track, after all – but that allows side one to build up to it (“Love In Vain”’s stab at authentic blues, the country meanderings of “Country Honk” and the briskly contemporaneous “Live With Me”) and allows breathing space to come down from it (the threatening, slinky “Midnight Rambler”, the Richards-sung blues of “You Got The Silver” and the rock-out of “Monkey Man”). That the title track itself is so brilliant – a blend of blues-style chord progressions, Jagger in cheeky over-exaggerated-vocals mode (“well we awwwwllllla need sommmmmmeone we can-a leeeeeen owwwn” etc) and a stupendously infectious sense of fun that everyone gets in on – means the tracks on one side really do all build to something worthwhile. Sequencing albums isn’t something that tends to get much focus, but when you see it done as well as it is on Let It Bleed then it really deserves to be drawn attention to.

Importantly, though, everyone in the band gets their chance to shine – Jagger is on fine voice here (“Monkey Man” in particular) but this isn’t simply Jagger-and-also-some-musicians, but instead everyone gets to really hammer home how important they are to the band. New boy Mick Taylor makes an immediate impression on slide guitar, adding real dimension to “Love In Vain” and generally fleshing out the band’s sound in all sorts of interesting ways, but just listen to how Charlie Watts is able to to hold together “Live With Me” – it’s his song through and through, and try though they might, nobody in the band can come close to matching his contribution. That’s not a swipe at the rest of the band – you can hear them fighting to match Watts and everyone ups their game appropriately, delivering an absolutely barnstorming track. He’s the key player on “Midnight Rambler” too, a song which also demonstrates just what good musicians the Stones are. Shifting time signatures and keys mean that, as a band, you have to be tight and Watts sits at the middle of the song, positively motoric at some points, fluidly shifting speed at others, and providing exactly the anchor Jagger and Richards need to hang their strange serial-killer tale off of. Richards himself is on fine form here as a guitarist – that hardly needs to be said, really – but also gets to contribute a surprisingly great vocal on “You Got The Silver”, a refreshingly straightforward blues number that acts as an excellent palette-cleanser between “Midnight Rambler” and the rock yelpings of “Monkey Man”. The tension between Richards’s continued straightforward but evolving evocation of the blues and Jagger’s investment in the now produce some of Let It Bleed’s finest moments.

Are there any down sides here then? Well yes, and it’s unsurprisingly “Country Honk”, a tossed-off sounding version of “Honky Tonk Woman” that feels more like it belongs in “shit, we need a B-side, stick that out” territory than it does on the album proper. It’s not really bad as such, but it’s noticeably lacking the same spark that’s shot through the rest of the album, and that’s a bit of a pity when there’s a much better version of the song sitting right there. The 60’s practice of sticking out singles separate from albums resulted in a few real injustices – the absence of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” from Sgt Pepper, most obviously – and here that injustice feels especially sharp because Let It Bleed is so near to being perfect only to be let down by one track that just can’t carry the weight that it feels almost unfair. But, aside from that, it’s hard to see Let It Bleed as anything other than a triumph. It’s not the most celebrated of albums in the Stones back catalogue – see the next two instalments for that – but it’s an incredibly strong set of songs from a band that still clearly have a huge amount to offer in terms of writing and performance. And it’s a bracing reminder of just how talented all these musicians really are – the Stones rarely get much credit for being good musicians rather than songwriters or performers, but the sometimes-sloppy sounding work absolutely belies just how tight and disciplined a band they could be and Let it Bleed highlights that wonderfully. This is, in short, a terrific album that makes full use of everyone’s talents to turn in an absolute belter – and you can’t ask for a lot more than that really, can you?

How Much Of This Movie Album Can Be Cut?
Not so much cut as substituted. “Country Honk” is in every way inferior to the completed version of the song – “Honky Tonk Woman” – and a straight-out swap would strengthen Let It Bleed. The country scratchings of “Country Honk” do provide a bridge between the straight-up blues of “Love In Vain” and the more modern “Live With Me” but no more than “Honky Tonk Woman” would be able to do and the single version of the song is just obviously superior. Elsewhere I’d drop the choral intro to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – the song itself is obviously amazing but the choir intro is cheesy as hell and ultimately distracts. Having the quiet acoustic guitar, the lonely French horn then Jagger’s exhausted vocal come in is far more affecting and allows the song to build better – the choral work at the end is a terrific, restrained addition but the opening just feels out of place. So let’s say 2%.

2019 Cringe Factor 2019 Observations
Not a vast amount in terms of cringe, hence the shift to Observations. Most obvious, really, is how explicit the album is when it comes to discussing sex (“then you can cream on me”) and drugs (“coke and sympathy”, both lines (heh) from “Let It Bleed”). And “Live With Me” contains not-exactly-cryptic references to “nasty habits” and asking if there’s a place for the subject of the song “in-between the sheets”, and that’s before we get to a butler enjoying a maid “behind the pantry door”. Subtle it is not, though it’s never really cringe-worthy – Jagger’s got a light enough touch here to make things feel titillating, and possibly even scandalous, without just becoming unpleasant. It’s cheeky for the most part, though there’s also a slight air of desperation about it, the desire to persuade the song’s subject to stay as much proof that the singer can persuade them rather than because he needs or desires it in a romantic sense. That air of desperation feeds into the drained, depleted feel much of Let It Bleed exhibits, and though that makes the album easy to read as a whole “death of the 60’s” piece it’s also obvious is just how much Jagger still has to say. References to Vietnam (“Gimme Shelter”) and civil protests (“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”) lock the album in time but belie the idea that Let It Bleed is only about the end of the 60’s dream. That’s certainly a part of it, but by no means the whole, and the striking relevance of much of what Jagger chooses to write about shows someone who may be burning out (emotionally and chemically) but who is still extremely invested in the world around him. Aside from Jagger the deep commitment the album has towards country and blues demonstrates Richards’s ongoing obsessions but there’s a real engagement to them – this isn’t off-the-peg three-chords-and-done blues work, and “Love In Vain” and “You Got The Silver” show Richards still fully committed to the form in more than just straightforward replication. White guys singing blues always has the potential for cringe and embarrassment, but everything is executed so well here it’s pretty tough to argue with.

What Else Happened Musically In 1969?
It was quite the year, as it turns out. The Rolling Stones themselves had a brush with infamy when a fan was stabbed by a member of Hells Angels and died at a concert in Altamont, California. The Beatles release their final album, meisterwerk and undisputed classic Abbey Road (and then one year later released the exact opposite of that). Johnny Cash released San Quentin, Elvis had his big Vegas comeback, both Led Zeppelin and The Stooges released their debuts, and a little-known artist called David Bowie scored a hit with “Space Oddity”, a novelty song from a one-hit-wonder that I can’t imagine will be troubling this section much further going forwards. Oh and The Who have their stab at a meisterwerk as well, releasing Tommy. And does it even need saying that this was the year of Woodstock? Because it was. And in December, the same month as Let It Bleed was released, The Jackson 5’s debut album is released with the catchy title Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5.

Best Track: I mean, obviously it’s “Gimme Shelter”. But that’s just such a crashingly predictable answer, so I’m going for “Let It Bleed”.

Worst Track: “Country Honk”

Number Of Songs Added To My Rolling Stones Playlist: 2 - "Let It Bleed" of course, and "Love In Vain", to my surprise.

Fan though I am of Charlie Watts, I always had a sense that "You Can't Always Get What You Want" would have been diminished with his behind-the-beat shuffle (background: Watts "couldn't get the groove right," so producer/session guy Jimmy Miller sat in on the track). 

Wow! All of Prole Hole 's additional context, as well as songstarliner , pantsgoblin , and Dellarigg doing their part of revealing interesting morsels, lends this record some really nice flavour. Well done, folks. Given songstarliner 's deep cut info, that does make me feel strange and sad about her later solo version on her own record. 

I have no idea what any of this means...

Thanks Superb Owl 🦉!

Man, I can't wait for Prole to get to "Far Away Eyes."

Let It Bleed (1971)




Let It Bleed turned out to be really something of a triumph, but few albums carry the reputation of Sticky Fingers. Will this be able to live up to its predecessor’s high standards? Will it deserve its place in the pantheon of classic rock albums? Will I ever stop asking rhetorical questions?

If I’m To Be A Camera: Album cover…
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OF COCK

But that’s basically it – a pair of jeans, a great big stiffy and a pun. And the album name not-exactly-discreetly positioned for maximum eyebrow-waggling. See? See what we did? We’re such rotters! The back – or in this case, rear – cover is a picture of, presumably, the same model’s posterior, along with the tracklisting. It’s all playful and funny in almost exactly the way the album isn’t. Oh and, small point though it is, this is the first Stones album to feature the lips-and-tongue logo, being as it is the first album to be released on Rolling Stones Records.

Pre-existing Prejudices: I mean, it’s pretty tough to know anything about music and not have some idea of the reputation both this and the next album have. But I’ve never listened to it all the way though – I know “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” of course, and I know the title, but not the song, “Sister Morphine”. For the rest it’s a blank sheet.

Songs:
“Brown Sugar” – Like everyone I’ve heard it about a bazillion and one times but it’s still a great song, and a fantastic album opener. Playful, raunchy and walking right up to the line of being too much but not quite falling over it. Love Mick’s vocal here, full of texture and emphasis (“English blood runs hawwt!”). It ought to be incredibly offensive but it’s Mick’s cheekiness that gets it over the line. Mick Taylor’s having a good’un as well, and - a feature of this album – sexophone all over the place. Irrepressibly great.

“Sway”
Well this is just the Mick Taylor Shows Off Power Hour. Ever-so-slightly stodgy blues doesn’t just quite land, Mick’s Taylor and Jagger are doing their best but something’s not quite there… It’s not Charlie Watt’s finest hour either. Dad rock, mostly. A little piano and string helps give a lift but there’s a note of desperation here that isn’t very appealing.

“Wild Horses”
Eh, it’s “Wild Horses”. It’s great and all, and it’s one of Jagger’s best vocals. Keith’s back on guitar having sat the last one out, and it makes a difference. This sounds like the Stones in a way that “Sway” just slightly doesn’t. Charlie’s found his groove again, that helps too. Anyway, you know this song – it’s terrific.

“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”
A song of two halves (well, one-quarter, three-quarters). The first bit a fairly straightforward Rolling Stones song, the second an extended instrumental riff where Mick Taylor again gets to strut his stuff. Some good Charlie Watts here, but this isn’t really my bag, daddy-o – technically proficient rock jams just Aren’t My Thing. Good, but not something I’m going to love. Still, I’d recognise that Billy Preston Awesome Rock Organ anywhere, and it’s great (good sexophoning too).

“You Gotta Move”
Sliding from Rock Jam^tm to White Guys Do Gospel, this is wildly unconvincing. Some nice slide guitar work, but eesh, hearing Mick Jagger do Southern slang has not aged well. Mick Taylor (again) holds things together but this is mostly inessential, and occasionally actively bad. Nope.

(Side Two)

“Bitch”
Well someone’s been to see the odd Blaxploitation movie or two. Some great guitar/sax work going on here, and a generally fantastic riff. This sounds properly energised in a way no track on Sticky Fingers has since “Brown Sugar” – the passion here sounds genuine, without a keening edge of desperation. I’d much rather it was this song that ran to seven minutes instead of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”.

“I Got The Blues”
Um. I mean, it’s all there in the title. It’s a perfectly sold Rolling Stones blues song. Good vocal from Jagger, some nice background sax going on. Reminds me slightly of something Stax might have put out were this not fronted by a middle-class English bloke. Nice rock organ though, no getting away from that, but you’d be hard-pressed to call this essential.

“Sister Morphine”
The Rolling Stones Do The Velvet Underground But Not As Good As The Velvet Underground Do The Velvet Underground. Makes the barely-implicit theme of the album – drugs – exceeding explicit. A worn-out, broken, exhausted drag which likely captures the burned-out junkie experience very well, though it’s little fun to listen to. Not quite as powerful as it thinks it is, though Jagger does his best, and the relative simplicity helps a lot.

“Dead Flowers”
Country pastiche which, astonishingly, is rather great. There’s a real shot of humour through this that seems mischievous rather than the overriding tone of this album, which has been desperation. That’s not just in the lyric, but a laconic honky-tonk feel from the musicians in the band give it a nice swing. Even here drugs can’t be escaped – “needle and a spoon” – but this is by far the most delightful surprise of the album.

“Moonlight Mile”
Rather pretty, though it seems to have little connection to the rest of the album. Is this a road song, maybe? Or more drugs? (“head full of snow”) Or… erm, something? Unusually oblique lyric from Mr Jagger, though it’s relatively effective. It doesn’t feel of a piece with anything but it’s a decent song on its own. I don’t have a lot more to say about it really.

In Conclusion:
Sticky Fingers is a tough album to write about – even setting aside its reputation, it’s an album of contradictions. Let It Bleed was too, but there’s a tightness and focus to Let It Bleed that’s not quite the case here. Well – that’s not strictly accurate, but one of the things that holds Sticky Fingers together is Mick Taylor. He’s a gifted guitarist, that goes without saying, but there’s a difference between “gifted” and “right” and the increased role taken by Taylor mirrors the decreased role taken by Richards, and it’s not to the material’s benefit. Richards is probably not as technically proficient as Taylor, but I don’t give a hoot for technical proficiency – it’s the feel that matters, and that’s what Richards brings. “Brown Sugar” has it – “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” doesn’t. That’s not the say that the latter is a bad song, as such, but there’s just an indefinable something that’s missing from it, and it’s impossible not to bring this down to Richards’s decreased role.

What Sticky Fingers really is, though, is a drag. It’s banal to infinity and beyond to point out just how drug-drenched this album is, yet it’s clearly a key element of what’s going on here. It percolates absolutely every track, it seeps into absolutely every aspect of the album and absolutely none of it sounds fun. Even the ostensibly-fun country riff of “Dead Flowers” can’t escape heroin’s clutches, and of course “Sister Morphine” makes everything extremely unambiguous. Sticky Fingers is a junkie album, but there’s no pleasure here at all – the album is laced with desperation dressed up as liberation but it’s fooling no-one. This is someone trying to keep the party going long, long after it should have wrapped up but everyone involved seem unwilling or unable to stop. That desperation sucks much of the joy from the album – for all of “Brown Sugar”’s cheeky bad-boy riffing, it’s the exception here, not the rule, and most of the rest of the album is cycling through various ways of either addressing or avoiding addressing addiction. The punning album cover, the cheeky sense of getting away with something is, in the end, a feint. This is is an album about being worn out. That makes it a pretty exhausting listening experience, even though there are clearly some transcendent moments here. Jagger is mostly turning in very strong work – we’ll quietly place “You Gotta Move” to one side here – and though some of that energy he displays has the keening note of the desperate, there’s no doubt he’d doing some great things – there’s a reason “Wild Horses” is so well known, and it’s basically him. But in many ways he’s the exception here – Richard’s diminished role from Let It Bleed does the material here no favours, and Charlie Watts isn’t having his best outing either (despite some stellar work on “Bitch”). That gives the album a more fragmentary nature, beyond the clutches of mere chemistry. And speaking of which, “Sister Morphine” is… well, what exactly? It’s tough to say it’s an exorcism, and it’s certainly an admission, but really, what it comes down to is indulgence. “Oh woe is me, for I suffer,” is essentially the message, yet because it’s self-inflicted it’s tough to care. What Jagger’s going through sounds pretty harrowing – but perversely, not quite harrowing enough. Compare and contrast to Lou Reed covering similar territory on “Heroin” and the difference is clear. Jagger’s reaching for something, and there is some real power in a few moments, but much of “Sister Morphine” is pity-me and it just doesn’t carry the same punch. Good try, though.

Away from the chemical, and…. Well there really isn’t any “away from the chemical”. So much of the material here is obsessed and infused with drugs that there’s very little else to talk about. Everything is subservient to that so when there’s frustration expressed on the album (“Bitch”), it’s as a result of drugs. When there’s weariness on the album (“Sister Morphine”, “Sway”) it’s because of “that demon life” – it’s not exactly cryptic, is it? And so on. And that’s a lot of the problem with Sticky Fingers – it’s got one theme, and in the end just singing about that one thing gets boring. It’s the stoner in the corner who just can’t carry on a conversation about anything without telling you how great weed is, maaaan, just with heroin rather than pot. All the emotions on display here are tainted, and nobody either has the strength or the will to inject anything else (pun, sadly, intended). There’s craftsmanship, and no outright stinkers, but viewed from a certain angle “craftsmanship” can look a lot like “marking time”. One of the problems with Sticky Fingers is that so much here just sounds like knocked-off versions of Stuff Other People Do. Blaxpolitation grooves on “Bitch”, delta blues on “You Gotta Move”, faux-Velvet Underground on “Sister Morphine” and so on. It’s no co-incidence that the album’s two best songs – “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” – are also the two that sound most like actual Rolling Stones songs, not The Rolling Stones Do Something Other People Do, But Fractionally Less Well. It wouldn’t be right to call Sticky Fingers derivative, that would be terribly unfair, but listen to the soundtrack to Super-Fly, then listen to “Bitch” and the difference is stark (and, I do want to emphasize, “Bitch” is still a great song). Similarly with “Heroin” from The Velvet Underground and Nico. “Sister Morphine” just can’t compete, again good song though it is. On Let It Bleed, when the Stones wandered into other people’s musical territory they commanded it. Here, they simply exist within it. Blame apathy, blame drugs, blame personnel, in the end the results are the same, and they just don’t quite measure up.

So look, let’s be clear. Sticky Fingers is, obviously, a terrific album. It also feels like a clear, obvious step down from Let It Bleed, with none of the focus or tightness of that album, replacing skill and ability with chemicals and lethargy. The coherence, the sense of purpose has gone on Sticky Fingers, even while that absence is, in a way, what binds the album together. It’s easy to see why people might regard Sticky Fingers as an all-time classic, a straddling of the death of the 60’s and the birth of the 70’s. Jagger’s on great voice, that’s undeniable. Mick Taylor makes a huge impression (for better or worse). It’s slick, competent, has a couple of blistering tracks… and that’s it. So yes. A great album. Really. A great album.

I don’t think I’ll be listening to it again, though.


How Much Of This Album Can Be Cut?
I’d ditch “You Gotta Move”. It’s pretty cringe-inducing (see below) and just feels like self-indulgence. It also reminded me of the similarly unhelpful “Maggie Mae” from Let It Be, which isn’t the fault of “You Gotta Move”, obviously, but it’s disposable in exactly the same way.

2019 Cringe Factor 2019 Observations:
Well, let’s start with “Brown Sugar” shall we? I mean, that’s a whole box of yikes right there. How does the song get away with it? Well, an ever so slightly down-in-the-mix vocals helps slightly obscure the lyric, which probably helps. It’s hard to imagine, even in 1971, that “hear him whip the women just around midnight” would have passed muster on radio, but it obviously did. Of course, the fact that musically it’s one of the best things the Stones ever recorded obviously helps – because, really, it’s easy to forget just how brilliant the musicianship is here. It’s amazing. And Jagger just, just, just barely stays on the right side of raunchy, though it’s a close-run thing. “Just like a young girl should” doesn’t automatically mean something dodgy, though from a 2019 perspective it’s next-to-impossible to imagine it isn’t, and the line “and all her boyfriends were sweet sixteen”… well that is the age of consent for heterosexual sex in 1971 (and indeed today) in the UK, so…. Uh. You wouldn’t give it a pass, but it’s not quite a fail either. Yet that’s also what’s so great about “Brown Sugar” – it’s a bucket of contradiction, but the contradictions work for the song, not against it. Moving on… well, obviously we have the extremely explicit drug references in “Sister Morphine”, though it’s at least going for naked honesty – you could never claim that the song, nor indeed any part of the album, glamorises drug use. Indeed, quite the reverse – if this album is anything to go by it sounds unbearably awful. Ditto “Bitch” – the reality of addition is a long way from an endorsement of it. Then we have “Dead Flowers” which is appealingly bitchy – though again we have drugs as a substitute for a person, basically “fuck you, I’ll get high instead” (it’s muddy whether the “other girl” the song refers to is heroin or an actual person) – but at least it’s quite funny. And “You Gotta Move” is just cringe from start to finish, and I don’t have anything more to add about it.

What Else Happened Musically In 1971?
Davey Jones left the Monkees, which must have upset at least three people at the time. The first example of “modern rock charity”, a road that eventually leads to Live Aid, kicks off with the George Harrison-arranged Concert For Bangladesh, while Harrison himself releases “My Sweet Lord” and finds his way into legal history as he gets sued for unconscious plagiarism. Led Zeppelin release their untitled fourth album (“You haven’t lived until…” etc) which I guess means we have to mention “Stairway To Heaven”. So there it is. Cher gets her first solo hit with “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” and Bill Withers releases the beyond-glorious “Ain’t No Sunshine”. Simon and Garfunkel release their seminal (and rather boring) Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Who release Who’s Next, John Lennon gives us Imagine, and T Rex release Electric Warrior, ushering in the era of glam rock. There's also the very first Glastonbury festival which takes place in, um, Glastonbury. And in less joyful news, Rick Wakeman joins Yes, and Rod Stewart has a massive hit with “Maggie Mae” – get used to him, he ain’t going anywhere. Elton John also scores a hit with “Your Song”, so brace for endless terrible cover versions and terrible karaoke versions of an already-terrible song from now until eternity.

Best Track: Gonna have to go with “Brown Sugar”. Sorry, y’all.

Worst Track: “You Gotta Move”

NEW FEATURE: Number Of Songs Added To My Rolling Stones Playlist: 1 – “Dead Flowers”

Album Rankings:

1. Let It Bleed
2. Sticky Fingers

Exile On Main St (1972)



Sticky Fingers was an odd experience – an obviously-great album that was, nevertheless, just Not For Me. So how is this, arguably the most fêted album in the Stones’s back catalogue going to fare if their second-most-well-regarded left a decidedly mixed imprint?

If I’m To Be A Camera: A random collection of many, many (circus?) photos in black and white, with the band’s name and album title spelled out in a horrible red “hand-written” font that I’m sure there’s a name for but which I dislike too much to actually look up (or maybe it’s actually hand-writing – horrible either way). The overall effect is pretty ugly. The back cover? More of the same.

Pre-existing Prejudices: Not much really, beyond know that this is arguably the album with the best reputation in their back catalogue. I know “Shine A Light” and “Tumbling Dice”, neither of which would crack my Top Twenty Rolling Stones songs – fine, not remarkable – but the last album had a stellar reputation as well and didn’t do it for me. Guess it’s time to find out if this one’s any better!

Songs:
“Rocks Off”
Ok, we’re cantering straight out of the gate! Powerful, propulsive and actually engaging. Then the brass slides in simple but very effective. Weird, slightly psychedelic break (“feel so hypnotised…”) gives a change of feel but doesn’t derail the momentum. Our Charlie’s having a good ‘un! The mixing on this song is strange, voices coming and going all over the place. Lyric incredibly indistinct but I guess Jagger only gets his rocks off when he’s dreaming? Wet dream? Drug reference? Who knows, but a terrific album opener.

“Rip This Joint”
Terrific 50’s style rocker with huge brass line taking the lead, fab, honky-tonk piano and Jagger bellowing all over the place. Terrific. The lyric is again hard to discern thanks to the mix but this is a short, powerful stab of a song. Two for two!

“Shake Your Hips”
First cover of the album. Nice contrast after the first two stompers, slinky and incredibly infectious. Nice restrained guitar work (Richards? It doesn’t sound like Taylor’s brand of leadfuckery). Jagger’s much clearer in the mix, which is great because his performance gets space to breathe. Keeps the 50’s vibe, but more Bo Diddly than the rockabilly feel of “Rip This Joint”. Yeah, rather great in fact.

“Casino Boogie”
Another shift in style, this time to straightforward blues. Nice harmonies between Jagger and Richards, really expertly deployed. No idea what this song is about. A casino. And a boogie, I guess? Oh, here comes the big-ass raunchy brass section. Man I’m such a sucker for a saxophone when it’s used like this. Another terrific outing for Charlie, and great bass work too (is that Wyman? It doesn’t sound like it).

“Tumbling Dice”
Oh hey, it’s “Tumbling Dice”. I mean, it’s obvious why it’s the big hit, and it keeps the stylistic shifting of the album with it’s rambling tale of a gambler who just can't keep on the straight and narrow – bit clichéd lyrically, though the “gotta roll me” end works well enough. Jagger’s a bit squashed by the production but Taylor turns in a great lead that finally sounds like it’s in the song not on top of it. Not my favourite Stones song, but perfectly fine.

(Side 2)

“Sweet Virginia”
And here we go with another style, more country this time, and Jagger’s giving us (who knew?) some great harmonica. Simple, catchy acoustic twanging matched by Jagger slurring and swallowing his words stylistically but he’s up in the mix and giving terrific performance. Just a simple round on the chords as one by one instruments and voices come in. Impossible to dislike.

“Torn and Frayed”
Quick slide over into honky-tonk. Some nice backing vocals from Richards, though Jagger’s over-egging the faux-country annunciations a bit. Y’all. Some decent lead guitar work going on and again feels like its properly integrated into the song. This is alright and doesn’t derail the album or anything but it’s by far the weakest song so far.

“Sweet Black Angel”
OK this feels quite different. Weird, it reminds me of an R.E.M. song, “Final Straw”, though this also doesn’t feel like it’s an inspiration for it. More great harmonica from Jagger, great guitar from Richards and Taylor, and a really strong, understated bass from Wyman (confession – he’s not exactly my favourite bassist in the word, but he’s doing good here). Really terrific song, and nice to see a lyric that’s much more engaged with the real world.

“Loving Cup”
Sesame Street and/or Billy Joel pianos! Not especially spectacular, though I like the middle-eight as it pulls itself back to the main song. This is fine – a perfectly cromulent ending to the second side, but it’s lacking a special idea to elevate it. Charlie’s got some good fill work going on, and the brass section at the end works hard to convince us this is exciting but it can’t quite manage it. Solid but nothing more.

(Side 3)

“Happy”
They’ve let Keith sing again! Slide guitars all over this thing! Pretty standard lyric (don’t need money to keep me happy maaaaan, as long as I got love) is made up for by a terrific Richards performance, he sounds really invested. More brass on manoeuvres as it kicks in about halfway through and gives the song a lift. Ever so slightly runs out of ideas before the fade but mostly great.

“Turd On The Run”
Nice title. Rollicking blues number all over the place. Jagger’s doing really, really great work here, lots of whoops and hollers and really sounding fantastic. Terrific duelling guitars as well, and some really subtle well-used harmonica. Yup, this is great. Not much more to say about it.

“Ventilator Blues”
Ha, this is awesome. Lovely, loping rhythm, just listen to My Man Charlie go! Very funny, somehow, and everyone just sounds like they’re having a blast here. Jagger’s mixed a bit oddly again, but it kind of works for this song – everything feels ever so slightly “off” but it all contributes. Love the “don’t fight it” ending. Very restrained when it comes to deploying the piano and brass, the right approach. This song rules. Then we get cross-fade into…

“I Just Want To See His Face”
This song does not rule. Faux-gospel recorded by a bunch of whiter-than-white guys is not my thing at all. And Jagger vaguely rambling on about wanting to see Jesus is just weird. Ironically one of the best-produced songs on the whole album – the wordless falsetto is great, and the percussion sounds just fantastic, really well put together. But the song is kind of nothing.

“Let It Loose”
This sounds so like The Beatles Lennon and McCartney should sue. Specifically, The Beatles circa 1967, and I’d know a Leslie speaker anywhere. Like “Loving Cup” a solid ending to this side, if somewhat-derivative. Charlie’s fill before the brass comes in is so Ringo it’s actively painful. Jeff Lynne would be proud of this song. This is not a compliment. Jagger’s giving a good performance here, but he can’t overcome the imitative nature of the music.

(Side 4)

“All Down The Line”
Picking up the pace again! Straightforward rock song at last that doesn’t feel like it’s paddling about in other people’s genres, and ties us back to Side One of the album. Some nice lead work (Taylor by the sounds of it) and Jagger’s on really fine voice here – he’s really got some grunt going. A road song basically, but a pretty damned good one. Great fun.

“Stop Breaking Down”
Delta blues time, but Jagger has gone some real strut going here – if you have to cover songs like this, well, this is how to do it. Much improved production really lets Jagger take centre stage, he’s doing great harmonica again, and there’s some serious slidewankery going on in the guitars – Tayler got it nailed down this time out, even with a really extended end-of-song show-off moment (and I like that the song stops, rather than fades out). Nicely compulsive.

“Shine A Light”
Jagger’s still front-and-centre, to great effect. Who’s on drums here, that’s not Charlie! They’re OK, a bit stiff – like listening to McCartney when he filled in for Ringo, competent but lacking a certain feel or flare. Look, I know this is one of The Great Rolling Stones Songs™, but it never quite gets its hooks into me. Gospel choice backing vocals are great, Jagger’s great, some nice organ work, but I dunno… it doesn’t quite do it for me – maybe it’s just trying a bit too hard. A perfectly solid album track.

“Soul Survivor”
Well, it’s kind of a soul-blues things, nicely up-tempo and feels much more relaxed and comfortable with what it is than “Shine A Light”. Solid way to end the album, “gonna be the death of me” and of course the title is a pun, so I am legally obliged to like it. I don’t really have a lot to say about this one – yeah it’s good, it ends Exile on a solid note, and feels like an appropriate coda.

In Conclusion:
I’m glad I started this project with Let It Bleed, because had I begun with Sticky Fingers it might well have derailed it before it even got started. I’m still not sold on that album, so there was some sense of dread coming to the other big titan of the Rolling Stones’ back catalogue, Exile On Main St. And that would have been a shame, because this really is a fantastic album more or less from start to finish. A million miles away from the dreary, self-defeating narcissistic solipsism that made Sticky Fingers such a slog, we instead have an album of pace, energy and momentum. There’s a crackling energy to Exile that makes is an absolute pleasure to listen to but it’s also a slyly constructed album, whereby there’s a sense of purpose to exploring the different sub-genres of blues, country, honky-tonk, soul and gospel, and where and how they overlap. Genre straddling is nothing new to the Rolling Stones, of course, but they’ve never managed it with quite the confidence, with quite the sense of purpose, that they delivery here. Side One, especially, is a masterclass of nudging genres by degrees, before artfully sliding into Side Two and its exploration of all things country. The shifts are sometimes subtle, and even slight – the move from the straightforward rock of “Rocks Off” to the 50’s-style rock’n’roll of “Rip This Joint” isn’t a huge leap, but it's one that nevertheless feels evolutionary (ironic, considering it ought really to be the other way round), and the movement between similar but overlapping genres helps give the album a real sense of pace. The move from “Rip This Joint” to “Shake Your Hips” keeps things rooted in a 50’s sensibility but allows the style to drift further afield, keeping that sense of development going, and it continues like that for more or less the whole album. It’s a cunning approach to playing around with genres, and it’s staggeringly effective. One thing you could never accuse Exile of doing is sitting still, even in the moments where it slows down. The important point here is that the Stones are really embracing these genres, rather than simply using them as an excuse to be lazy, as per the last outing.

One of the things that gets lost listening to music on a digital device (or even, sometimes, CD) is the idea of “sides” and I mention them quite deliberately in the last paragraph, because they’re important in the way that Exile On Main St is constructed. It’s not an album designed to be listened to straight through, as such, but rather one that has four distinct phases, and each phase supports and develops from the last. Side One is about rock (and roll), Side Two is about country and ballads, Side Three is about the blues, and Side Four is an effective summary of everything that’s gone before it. Listened to all in one sitting, with no break, this distinction tends to get rather lost, but listening to it with breaks to allow a disc to be turned over helps reveal just how invested each side is in its genre play. Side Four, in particular, does an amazing job of summarising everything that’s come before it without taking away from the preceding individual sides – and rather than the apparently-at-random selection of tracks that Sticky Fingers went for, here we see Exile really taking the time to devote chunks of the album to what it wants to explore. “Tumbling Dice” and “Shine A Light” aside, there aren’t any big “quick, name a song by the Rolling Stones!” hits on the album, but in a way that’s to the album’s advantage. Rather than getting bogged down in “here comes the Number One single in among the filler!” the album functions much more smoothly for being a single piece relatively undisturbed by big hits. Indeed, after this point in their careers the Rolling Stones will never again trouble the Number One spot in the UK singles charts, but if the pay-off to that is an album of the standard of Exile then that’s a trade more than worth making. And even when the album occasionally strays into territories it can’t quite own – The Beatles-alike of “Let It Loose”, the gospel of “I Just Want To See His Face” - it never feels like the band attempting them was a mistake, rather that they’ve tried them and they didn’t work out, so they move on to something else. A negative result is still a result, and neither come close to doing any damage to the album (indeed, “Let It Loose” is actually a pretty great song, for all that it sounds derivative). While you’d be hard pressed to call Exile “experimental” in any way, you could, perhaps, call it “developmental” at the very least. And if not every development works out, well that’s fine – there's plenty more genres and styles to try out.

One of the big differences between this and Sticky Fingers is how well Mick Taylor fits into the band. At last. The last album really struggled to integrate what he did into the ongoing sound of the Rolling Stones, turning in competent work that nevertheless never quite felt like it fitted. Here the reverse is true – he vanishes completely into the band, becoming another element to be drawn on as and when required. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way – Taylor simply feels like he fits now, after an album of working out how best to use him. The wobbly, all-over-the-place production actually does him a favour in this regard – rather than having a big brash guitar solo that sits atop and apart from everything else everything is mixed more or less at the same level, allowing his playing to become part of the process. Though, saying that, the mixing itself deserves some mention, because it’s near-universally horrible. This might be the best worst-produced album in history. The few songs that gets the production right (“Shine A Light”, “I Just Want To See His Face”) only shows up how badly off the mixing is everywhere else. Sometimes that can lead to a compelling effect – the vocals on “Rocks Off” fade in and out, come and go, with different singers, and the effect is a sort of audio Cut-Up Technique, eventually becoming almost mesmerising, and it’s curiously effective – certainly it doesn’t seem like a song that would benefit from being any cleaner. Elsewhere though it often serves to squash Jagger’s performances (“Torn And Frayed”, “Tumbling Dice”) and to little purpose – the fact that the material still manages to soar despite this is a testament to how good what we have here is. Even the crappy production can’t ruin it!

So there’s not really going to be an original conclusion here. Exile is great, it’s a thoroughly enjoyably album and it feels like an invigorating restatement of what the Stones are capable of delivering on after the mumbling self-indulgence of Sticky Fingers. The genre experiments feel fresh and invested, Jagger is on fine voice, and everyone contrives something worthwhile. The songwriting is strong and the sheer confidence and swagger deployed here feels like something almost no other band in the world could deliver – the sheer chutzpah on display feels uniquely of this time and of this band. Even a song with a title as stupid as “Turd On The Run” turns out to be unexpectedly great (and it really is a fantastic song). So yes – like I said, no hint of an original conclusion. Exile is fantastic, and I’m thoroughly glad to have finally listened to it.


How Much Of This Album Can Be Cut?
Exactly two song, “I Just Want To See His Face” and “Torn And Frayed”. It’s always the way with a double-album – there's always something that just doesn’t quite live up to the rest, and this time it’s these two (I’m giving “Let It Loose” a pass here, though it’s number three on the chop list). Like most double albums, Exile’s whole is greater than the sum of its parts and in truth neither of them derail the album, but taken purely as individual tracks they’re clearly the weakest of what we have here and need to go. Thus this time out we can be precise – 11%.

2019 Cringe Factor 2019 Observations:
I don’t quite know what to write here this time out. “Sweet Black Angel” obviously deserves a mention, since it’s a rare (and successful) foray into politics for Jagger, but beyond that there’s not a whole lot to get worked up about, either from the point of view of Cringe or Observations. “Turd On The Run” is, as mentioned, a stupid title masking a great song, though I don’t personally think much of “I Just Want To See His Face” it’s not an embarrassment – well, no more than white guys trying to sing gospel would normally imply – and the faux-country exaggerations (“geee-tar”) of “Torn And Frayed” are absurd, though mostly because there’s little sense that Jagger is in on the absurdity this time out (unlike, say, “Dead Flowrs”). So to be honest I’m just gonna leave it this time out.

What Else Happened Musically In 1972?
Well, David Bowie released The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, one of the finest pieces of music humanity has ever created. So there’s that. Paul McCartney debuts Wings for the first time, while around the same time what’s left of The Velvet Underground (not much) call it a day. Aretha Franklyn releases Young, Gifted And Black and, in rather less excellent news, Don McLean releases Don McLean, meaning we’re stuck with “American Pie” from now until the heat death of the universe. And fucking “Vincent”. ELO have their first concert, so brace for a lot of people telling you they aren’t just Jeff Lynne desperately trying to recreate Magical Mystery Tour, actually, while Diana Ross gets an Oscar nomination for Lady Sings The Blues. Ready for some hardcore flute action? Jethro Tull are on hand with Thick As A Brick and *shudder* Genesis are there with Foxtrot. Sorry about that.

Best Track: “Ventilator Blues”

Worst Track: “Torn And Frayed”

Number Of Songs Added To My Rolling Stones Playlist: 3 “Sweet Virginia”, “Ventilator Blues”, “Turd On The Run”

Album Rankings:

1. Let It Bleed
2. Exile On Main St
3. Sticky Fingers

"Torn and Frayed" is the best country song any British band has ever managed, you're barking

Right, in the interest of the non-existent objectivity which I do not possess, I've got back and listened to it a couple more times.  I... don't get it.  Not sure what I'm missing and doing a bit of reading it seems to be an exceedingly popular song but...eh.  Or maybe "the best country song any British band has ever managed" is such a low threshold that this is all it takes to clear it? I'm glad you and Dellarigg like it, but I just don't get it. It's staying in my Worst Song, though feel free to nominate your alternatives for that slot.