The Rolling Stones in the Sixties

 THE ROLLING STONES IN THE SIXTIES

 

The Rolling Stones came from London and were bluesmen compared to the Beatles Liverpool beat group origins and were hyped as the hairier, more offensive competitors to the clean cut Beatles who became the public’s darlings where the Stones became the bane of the public, ostensibly anyway. If one listens to the records, the Stones were as much interested in commercial pop success as the Beatles and if Jagger / Richard started off in the shadow of Lennon / McCartney as a songwriter partnership,  they soon came up to speed and, arguably, soon wrote songs that were as good as any from the Beatles’ stable ad, in my view, in many cases, better.

 

At the start of his career, Mick Jagger had difficulty comprehending that he, or the other guys, could still be in the pop music industry after turning thirty and yet, almost 50 years later, the Stones, dropping a few members along the way, are still regarded as the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

 

The records I discuss here are only the UK releases.

 

THE ROLLING STONES (1964)

 

The young, fresh, wide eyed Rolling Stones performing a mix of blues, current R & B hits and three original compositions, two of them credited to the group and one, the quite awesome “Tell Me,” to Jagger  / Richards. One imagines that this studio set is also pretty much the live set of the time and on this evidence the Stones weren’t that different in approach and repertoire to their peers. The album followed some singles, not collected on the record, and was a chart topper but it hardly  gives us any clue that the band would become as massive as they did, even if one can point to the presence of Jagger and Richards. Brian Jones is fully integrated into the sound, as befits the erstwhile leader of the band, and Charlies Watts drums magisterially and Bill Wyman holds down his end with authority, yet the set list and thin sound aren’t particularly impressive.  

 

It’s an enjoyable album with spirited performances but one can’t say much more about it than that.

 

I’d bet that the singles (the best ones were “Come On,” I Wanna Be Your Man,” Not Fade Away,” “It’s All Over Now,” “Time Is On My Side,” “Little Red Rooster” and “Heart of Stone”), aimed at commercial success are the true reflection of the power of the Stones even this early in their career.

 

 

The formula is the same as with the debut album, with three Jagger / Richards compositions in a lightweight pop vein.  The productions values are higher, which means that the tunes sound less tinny than on the debut album but there’s still a sense that the covers are merely earnest interpretations of the music the band loved, despite the vigour of the performances.  For example, the musical performance of “I Can’t be Satisfied” is stellar but Jagger sounds awfully young and  British.  The band’s own songs are far better.

 

Once again the singles tell the story much better than the album tracks do. “The Last Time,” “Play with Fire,“ “Time Is On My Side,”  “ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Get Off of My Cloud,” amongst the others, are viscerally exciting, energetic and full of the creative ingenuity that pushed the Stones to the head of their peer group class. “Satisfaction” was the monster international hit that propelled them to success and huge status in the USA, after which they never looked back.

 

 

OUT OF OUR HEADS (1965)

 

Surprisingly, still more of the same, with three Jager / Richards  songs and one group composition.  If it wasn’t necessarily true for the debut album, by the time of The Rolling Stones No 2, it seems that the covers are little more than filler because of the then practice of not including singles on albums. If the Stones could have included their strongest material, the singles, on their albums, these would have been far stronger and more cohesive.

 

This is probably where the strategy of different track listings for the UK and US albums works in favour of the latter because these records could happily discard the covers in favour of UK singles. It’s surprising how much the Stones relied on cover versions to  populate their albums. I suppose, not only was the advice to save the Jagger / Richards compositions for singles but that the pressure to release albums (in those days usually at least two a year) was so intense that the songwriting partnership just couldn’t keep up.

 

The production on this record is excellent and quite bottom heave, for the first time giving the Stones the literal weight to their sound that their music needed to make impact. Closing track, “I’m Free,” sounds like a defiant proto hippy anthem.

 

 

AFTERMATH (1966)

 

The tracks were recorded in the US and all songs were written by  Jagger / Richards.  At 11 minutes plus, “Going Home” is the longest track the Stones have released, and about only Bob Dylan had done something like that before. The Beatles were still dong three minute pop songs. Not that “Going Home” is a great song, being just a long, jamming groove with Jagger improvising vocals for most of the duration.

 

With “Stupid Girl,” “Under my Thumb”  and “Out of Time,”  another long song, the songwriters’  misogyny, which became a trademark during the following period, became openly apparent. 

 

Richards and Jones discover how powerful acoustic guitars can be if amplified correctly, and Jones spreads his instrumental horizons with sitar, marimba and dulcimer, though Richards played all of the standard guitar parts.

 

Though the best tracks on the album have become classic Stones songs, not all of the tracks are great, but at least this time around even the filler was composed by Jagger / Richards.

 

“!9^th Nervous Breakdown” and “Paint It, Black” were the contemporaneous singles. 

GOT LIVE IF YOU WANT IT!  (1966)

 

This album was originally released only in the US as a cash in on the popularity of the Stones. When I first listened to it, I was unimpressed by the performances and the sound.

 

The tracks is the expected mixture of hit singles and filler, representing the Stones live sets of the period.  Not very interesting to say the least except as some sort of concert memorabilia. Both the on-stage sound and repertoire would be infinitely better 10 years later with technological advances and with the core songs we have become over familiar with. 

 

 

BETWEEN THE BUTTONS (1967)

 

Surprisingly light, proto-psychedelic, Swinging London pop that seems an atypical release from the grungy rhythm and blues musicians the Stones were at the start of their career only a few years before, but Jagger and Richards were always as much pop song tunesmiths as they were blues fanciers and on Between the Buttons they show off their ability to write as good frothy confections as anybody else.

 

“Yesterday’s Papers” and “Back Street Girl” continue the misogyny.

 

The US version of the album contains the singles “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday”  in place of “Back Street Girl” and “Please Go Home.”  The singles add some heft to the album and perhaps losing the sneering misogyny of “Back Street Girl” is not a bad thing but the Diddley-esque romp (the Stones’ take on the Northwest Pacific punk rock scene which was influenced by the Stones in the first place) of “Please Go Home” is rather fun if utterly lightweight.  

 

The best I can say about this records is that the breadth and pop ambition of Jagger / Richards songwriting is quite intriguing and the album is enjoyable but is so bereft of gravitas that I see it mostly as an experimental curiosity and not one of the top Stones albums of all time.

THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST (1967)

 

Apparently, this was the Stones answer to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and maybe the Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile, in that this was their stab at high psychedelia.

 

It wasn’t very well received at the time of release and was seen as a poor imitation of the Beatles’ “masterpiece” but, when I listened to it for the first time, possibly 40 years after its release, I didn’t understand why contemporary  rock critics took such a dim view of it. I already knew some of the tracks from various Stones compilation albums, such as “2000 Light Years from Home,” “Citadel” and “She’s a Rainbow.” The latter could’ve fitted on Between the Buttons, “Citadel” has an excellent, post-Cream heavy riff and “2000 Light Years from Home” is deliriously, beautifully, gloomily psychedelic.

 

“In Another Land” is Bill Wyman’s debut composition on a Stones album and he sings it, a departure from the norm where Jagger sings most of the songs and Richards has one or perhaps two vocals per album and was never repeated. The song itself seems influenced by “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Wyman’s flat vocals let down what otherwise would have been a lovely little pop tune.

 

Jagger / Richard tries to imagine how middle aged people would see the new generations in “2000 man,” only 33 years away (I wonder how they felt about this song in the year 2000) and in this they seem to take a cue from the skewed views of Ray Davies of The Kinks.

 

“Sing This All Together (See What Happens)” seems to be a studio jam, perhaps cobbled together from various takes, and the methodology and a throwaway riff halfway through sounds very much an adumbration of Miles Davis’ On the Corner. Put it down to LSD inspired  experimentalism.

 

The best one can say for “The Lantern” and “Gomper” is that they’re different, off-kilter folky and psychedelic with respectively electronics and Indian instrumentation to tart up slight whisps of songs.

 

This album has only three good tracks, the ones that turn up on so many compilations and though none of the rest are bad, they’re just not very engaging. The Stones attempted to stretch the envelope, and perhaps they did, but to no great appeal or success. There’s so little visceral excitement here.

 

I would say that Their Satanic Majesties Request marks the end of the progression of Stones Mk I from grungy R& B band to Swinging Sixties psychedelic pop.  And although Brian Jones was still technically a member of the band for the making of Beggars Banquet, that album marks the genesis of Stones Mk II.   

 

 

BEGGARS BANQUET (1968)

 

The last Stones album recorded and released during the lifetime of founding member Brian Jones, though he was no longer much of a force in the band and contributed nothing to the recording. 

 

“Jumping Jack Flash,”  the non-album single, introduced the “new” Rolling Stones, on the cusp of becoming eh greatest rock and roll band in the world, with the innovation of acoustic guitars played through a cheap cassette tape recorder that distorted the sound to a degree that it became more powerful than roaring electric guitars.  On close listening it seems as if almost every track has a bedrock of acoustic guitars with electric guitar overlays and fills.  Regardless, it’s still a quite tough record and even the slighter songs benefit from this treatment.

 

Part of the sessions for the album, specifically the recording of “Sympathy for the Devil” was filmed by Jean Luc Godard for inclusion of one of his movies.

 

“Jigsaw Puzzle,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Factory Girl” and “Salt of the Earth”  are the social commentary songs, “Stray Cat Blues”  is the misogyny song and “Prodigal Song” is the acoustic traditional blues, adumbrating “You Gotta Move” from Sticky Fingers.

 

The conceptual change here, seems to me to be that for the first time the Stones overtly embraced Americana, blues and country, in an amalgam that served them extremely well over the next five years and resulted in their best music, their most original music, the music that truly did make them that great rock band.

 

 

LET IT BLEED (1969)

 

Mick Taylor joins the Stones and the music changes subtly with less of the dual guitar interplay that characterised the Brian Jones period, with Keith Richard sticking more to rhythm and Taylor playing lead guitar. Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet are the first two instalments in a 4 album purple patch (Sticky Fingersand Exile on Main Street are the others) that straddle the end of the Sixties and the start of the Seventies, and arguably represent the Stones at their creative peak. 

 

The album opener, “Gimme Shelter,” is up there with “Sympathy for the Devil” as a kick off for arguably the most complete Stones album to date with possibly the highest ratio of classic Stones songs, that include “Midnight Rambler,” “Love in Vain,” “Live With Me” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

 

“Honky Tonk Women” was the monster single of the time, mirrored by “Country Honk,” a country tune played earnestly and not for laughs, as the band was wont to do in later.

 

Let It Bleed ended of the Sixties for the Stones, as much as the notorious Altamont concert in December 1969, meant to conclude the first Stones tour of the US in many years, ended the peace and love vibes of the late Sixties and proved, for all the rebellious stance, that the Rolling Stones were only people, powerless as individuals or band to influence badness around them even if they were building towards the satanic majesties peak of the early Seventies. Rock and roll is built on myth and the myth of the infallible superstar rocker is possibly the biggest.

 

What is also true, though, is that as band and as songwriters the Rolling Stones changed, mutated and improved radically between 1962 and 1969, from a rinky-dink English R & B group to a powerful, internationally famous and influential rock band. 

The Rolling Stones between 1990 and 2020

 

 

1990 is just off the halfway point in the life of the Rolling Stones and it seems safe to say that the music made in the 30 years between 1990 and 2020 is not the music most fans will cherish and treasure. The Stones remained a commercially viable brand, especially with their mega tours, and possibly became a “national treasure,” despite their rebellious roots and Keith Richards continued semi-outlaw stance.  No Stones album released in this 30 year period is of huge value and worth and, at best, one might make a half decent playlist of the best tracks, but it won’t be the mandatory Stones playlist that the public will listen to, not like the classic tracks from roughly the first 20 years.  The two Hot Rocks compilations or the Rolled Gold double album, though each stops  short of the best stuff from the late Seventies, are probably just about the only Rolling Stones albums you ever need own. Even the early studio records had their fair share of filler and also rans. The point is, when people think of the top Rolling Stones songs, and pick their favourites, it’s not likely to be anything released after 1980 (except maybe for “Start Me Up.”)

 

 

FLASHPOINT (1991)

 

These tracks were recorded on the Steel Wheels / Urban Jungle tour, the first Stones tour since the outing in support of Tattoo You in the early Eighties. It’s the final tour featuring bassist Bill Wyman who left the band afterwards.

 

The opening track is “Start Me Up,” which seems to have become the standard show opener for the Stones, and the rest are a mixture of some tracks from Steel Wheels (presumably deemed to be the most worthwhile performing live), some hoary old classics, “Miss You” from Some Girls and two brand new tracks, a clever, popular marketing ploy in the Nineties to persuade fans to buy live albums and greatest hits sets.

 

The first impression is of crystal-clear sound and lively, energetic playing, giving life to well-known studio tracks, which must’ve made this tour a pleasure to attend. On some later live recordings the Stones, especially Jagger, sound as if they’re playing to the gallery and going through the perfunctory stadium motions with crowd pleasing tunes and antics, but here the band seems fresh, eager and sharp, as if to exorcise the demons of the animosity between Jagger and Richards in  the late Eighties and of not touring for such a long time.

 

The only disappointment is the over blown, almost showbiz blues version of “Little Red Rooster,” originally a stark, angular, spooky take on the Howlin’ Wolf classic, but with guest star Eric Clapton, I guess they felt it needed that additional bluster.

 

I’d never heard this album until I wrote this and I must confess that I have a slight regret that I didn’t buy it at the time of release, but, having said that, and taking into account that this is a great live set, I don’t know whether I’ll ever want to listen to it again. There’s a lot of Stones live material out there and I prefer the looser, starker, more gnarly Seventies shows than the perfectly recorded, stadium version from the Nineties onward, when the band became less of a gritty, working rock and roll band, to my mind, and more just a smoothly operating, mega touring, nostalgia stage show.

 

The new studio tracks, “Highwire” and “Sex Drive,” are muscular grooves, the one in gleaming, power rock vein, the other  in Stones funk style familiar from the mid-Seventies onward, but neither are essential listening. 

 

VOODOO LOUNGE (1994)

 

There was a 5 year gap between Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge.

 

I bought the album because I was a member of a CD club at the time and it was one of the monthly hot picks they sent you by default, but I guess I wouldn’t otherwise have owned it.  By 1994 it was far less vital than ever before to buy any new Rolling Stones studio album. 

 

At 62 minutes it’s effectively a  double album LP-wise and though I thought it was an okay record it did drag towards the end, being just too long when the songs are much of a muchness, technically well produced and played yet without significant spark.

 

The rockers pound hard, the slow songs meander along smoothly, and they groove, but that’s about all you can say  for the album. It’s not bad but it’s not great either. 

 

It’s a pro job produced by pros. Proper visceral excitement is completely absent.

 

 

STRIPPED (1995)

 

This conceptually stripped-to-the-bone version of the Stones, with “Like a Rolling Stone,”  “Street Fighting Man,”  mostly songs from the Sixties and some from the early Seventies, plus a blues to end off, is my favourite Stones album of the Nineties and, with Voodoo Lounge, one of the only two albums from this decade that I was willing to pay good money for at the time of release.

 

Most of the tracks seemed to be acoustic based and/or are played with what sounds like minimal amplification and effects, as if the band were playing in their lounge, almost like rehearsals, and it’s some of the most unaffected vocals by Mick Jagger one could hope to hear.

 

The songs show that the Stones do not have to rely on bluster and bombast and that the songs can stand the low key, acoustic treatment and still shine.

 

For my money, this is not only the best and most entertaining Stones’ live album since Love You Live, but just a damn fine record.

 

 

BRIDGES TO BABYLON (1997)

 

Never bought this record and never listened to it until I wrote this.

 

The first impression is that the production is quite excellent. The sound is beefy, sharp and clear and the music positively booms from the speakers.   Where the positive is that the album sound great, one is still left with the feeling that the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts and that the parts, though each may be individually worthy, don’t quite register in the mind as well as they could or should.  It’s the quintessential issue with Rolling Stones albums since the Eighties that they sound good, even exciting, when one listens but fade pretty quickly from one’s memory once the music stops.  They’re no longer truly “Stones records” in the way we came to know and love them but simply, and regrettably, generic rock albums.

 

 

NO SECURITY (1998) 

 

By now the Stones had firmly established the routine of record releases with each studio album followed by a tour and live album, and this set is taken from performances on the Bridges to Babylon tour.

 

The mix is a nice compromise between new music, lesser known songs, over familiar songs, one stone classic in “Gimme Shelter,” and the omission of “Start Me Up.”

 

 

LIVE LICKS (2004)

 

The tracks form this live set were recorded on the tour supporting the Forty Licks  compilation album and this album seems quite redundant seeing as it’s just another live set of songs we know well, though, I suppose, the avid fan can point to the inclusion of  tracks like “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” “Rock Me, Baby” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” that do deviate from the norm. Otherwise, though, one might as well just stick with Forty Licks, or any of the other good compilations of the best of the Stones.

 

The band plays well, the sound is good, and the material is generally exemplary. By this time, though, nobody went to a Stones concert for any reason other than just the event. The music is not transcendent or even viscerally exciting, or only so because of the huge sound the sound guys achieve.

 

 

 

A BIGGER BANG (2005)

 

This is the first Stones studio album I bought since Voodoo  Lounge, because the reviews were so highly positive.

 

This album clocks in at 64 minutes and is also a tad overlong. Having said that, the guitars are rougher and tougher, almost fiercely ragged, than they’ve been in a while and the drum and bass grooves are feet tappingly energised. The problem always is, though, as proficient as the musicians are, are as excellent as the production is and as well-crafted as the songs may be, there’s little here to retain in the memory as classic Stones stuff.

 

A straight blues like “Back of My Hand”  is by far the hardest hitting track on the album mostly because it does seem less tooled and geared than the rest.

 

A Bigger Bang is an admirable project and enjoyable to listen to, much like Voodoo Lounge or Bridges to Babylon, and as quicky and easily forgettable as those albums too.  Instead of putting a lengthy album every five or six (or more) years, the Stones would perhaps have better off releasing short albums more frequently. 

 

 

SHINE A LIGHT (2008)

 

Taken from performances at a charity concert for Bill Clinton and also preserved for posterity by a Martin Scorsese concert movie. There are umpteen official DVDs of various Stones tours from 1978 onward and it therefore seems as if most of our visual record of the band reflects the old guys, preponderantly more so than the far younger Stones of the Sixties or Seventies, but perhaps that’s just my perception but the period between 1969 (Altamont) and the mid-Seventies seems to be covered by only Gimme Shelter and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones, the 30 years between 1990 and 2020 is oversupplied with concert videos.

 

This one is almost as much a Martin Scorsese event as it is a Stones show. The stage is perfectly lit, and the sound is awesome, both far easier to accomplish in a theatre rather than a stadium, and the band plays tough, loud and with apparent enthusiasm. The Stones on stage is clearly the proverbial well-oiled machine. 

 

Only three of the songs were released after 1980 and the rest are the usual, over familiar crowd pleasers. Buddy Guy is the guest artist on “Champagne & Reefer” and Christina Aguilera sings along on “Live With Me.”

 

Going to the theatre to experience the movie is like being at the show and it’s good fun, but no more.

 

 

BLUE & LONESOME (2016)

 

The Stones started out as bluesmen wannabes, with Jagger declining to be in the pop music lark after the age of 30, then reconsidering when he did turn 30 and realised that the bluesmen the Stones had been emulating were still forces to be reckoned with well into middle age and after.  Here, when the core band members are in their Seventies, they give us a set of, presumably, favourite blues numbers, and do quite well at it.

 

I wonder why it took them so long to release a pure blues set, given that their music, especially up to Exile on Main Street, was so heavily informed by blues and they often threw in a nice little blues number to nestle brightly amongst the rock tracks of their various albums.  Whatever the reason,  whether as a stopgap because they didn’t have original material and needed to issue a studio album or simply wanted to show off their blues chops while they still could, it’s a very enjoyable set and the band sounds like they’re having unadulterated, unpressurised fun.

 

From the get-go, apart from perhaps “Little Red Rooster,” the Stones weren’t a purist blues band, fusing too many different genres into their musical stew but their R & B roots were always on show in their rock ‘n roll, and they rocked the R & B with brio and swagger. Here, they sound like a dynamite club band, good for accompanying drinking and dancing in a smoky room. 

 

I reckon only Stripped and this album need be in any record collection to represent the Rolling Stones in the 30 year period from 1990 to 2020.

  

The Ruling Stones in the Eighties

One can’t say that the Stones “lost the plot” in this decade, despite the well documented, less than amicable, estrangement between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, because the band still  rolled on inexorably like the commercial juggernaut it had become, released studio albums and, eventually, returned to touring. For me the first two and final studio albums of the decade represent the best work the Stones did but even so, the main impression is that neither Jagger or Richards wrote inspirational songs anymore and had become professional song craftsmen, with nothing much to say but a contractual burden to write and record new material.  Arrangements and production values seem to drive the records, all of which sound good, but none of these records are classics and hardly any songs are memorable anymore.

 

Despite the young Jagger’s misgivings, the Stones had lasted well beyond his 30^th birthday, had  become a brand and an enormously successful commercial venture, mostly from touring, and the records seem ancillary, merely necessary evils.

 

EMOTIONAL RESCUE (1980)

 

The Stones ended the Seventies on a high with Some Girls, a  roaring response to punk and New Wave, and then lost the plot some with this album of sprightly, supremely light weight rock, and the throwaway funky opener “Dance Pt 1” that could be an outtake from Black and Blue.  The production is bright and shiny yet can’t completely redeem the vapid tunes that may have been better served if performed by a skinny  tied power pop band.

 

Some Girls showcased a rejuvenated band with what seemed new purpose to stake a claim as greatest rock and roll band in the world, and then they almost regressed and produced songs, regardless of how well played they are, that just sound silly.

 

“Down in the Hole,” an ominous blues, is the closest this record comes to vintage Stones swagger and the title track is arguably the highlight of the set.  It’s not a good sign when only two tracks out of 10 on an album are worth putting in a Stones playlist.

 

 

TATTOO YOU (1981)

 

“Start Me Up” was the greatest hit from this album and about the only Stones classic of the Eighties, bearing in mind that it was originally conceived in the Seventies, and became entrenched as a show opener over the next 30 years. “Waiting on a Friend” is the other best-known track. “Black Limousine” is another highlight.

 

The album is divided into a fast and a slow side and the fast tracks rock hard enough, but the slower songs tend to drag and can’t sustain interest for more than a  minute at a time.  In the same way the rockers tend to become insubstantial from Emotional Rescue onwards, Jagger-Richards may continue to  write technically well-crafted slow songs, but they just seem crafted songs, written by professional song writers, rather than heartfelt or with sincere emotions. The songs are carried by their arrangements and the proficiency of the musicians and not by intrinsic value.

 

The best one can say for Tattoo You is that it has at least one side of listenable material  but “Start Me Up” is understandably the only truly standout track on the record.

 

 

STILL LIFE (1982)

 

Culled from the Tattoo You tour, this is a very enjoyable, single album of highlights, one of which is anointment of “Start Me Up” as perennial set opener. This tour was probably the first proper stadium tour the Stones undertook in the USA and somehow they still sound human-sized, like the club band of the Seventies and without the bluster and bombast of the tours from Nineties and beyond when the Stones became much more of a Big Brand Band than they are here.

 

I think of it as a fun live set, not as deeply satisfying as its two predecessors from the Seventies but a good listening experience, nonetheless.

 

 

UNDERCOVER (1983)

 

The last album in a series of annual releases. From here on in the Stones released studio albums more infrequently (only two more studio efforts in the Eighties), tour less and release regular live album souvenirs of the tours.

 

The term “Stonesy swagger” characterises, for me, an insouciant, bravura style of blues-infused rock and typifies the best Stones songs until the Eighties, particularly over the period between Beggars Banquet (1968) and Exile on Main Street (1972) there are examples from the preceding and subsequent years, but from the start of the Eighties the band seemed to lose, or to forego, that loose yet tight swagger

 

The Stones became just another rock band, albeit with the recognisable voice of Mick Jagger up front and Keith Richards’ riffs and Charlie Watts’ drumming in the engine room. The problem is that the ineffable qualities that made great Stones songs are mostly absent from the mid-Seventies onward.  As an NME writer put it: the Stones were capable of writing some good songs and releasing half decent albums but were no longer capable of making great albums.

 

As is usual by now, the production values are high and the band sounds good but is where the typical big, overworked Eighties sound that overtakes the Stones characteristic rock ‘n roll swagger, kicks in and reduces the band to just another anodyne AOR rock act.

 

“Undercover of the Night” and “Too Much Blood” (both the Stones’ take on funk / dance) are the best known tunes, and “Wanna Hold You” (Keith’s vocal), “Pretty Beat Up,”  “Too Tough,”  “All the Way Down” and “It Must Be Hell” are the simpler, enjoyable, `Stonesy’ rockers that end off the record nicely. Even so, one still feels that these are just jumped up throwaways tarted up by production to make them feel more important.  The fact is that none of these songs, however ephemerally pleasurable,  are worthwhile compiling on a “best of” playlist.

 

 

 

DIRTY WORK (1986)

 

The album born in the period of strife and estrangement  between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and the vaunted struggle for control of the soul of the Stones, with Jagger choosing to follow a solo career, as did Richards in riposte, as Eighties pop-rock musician.

A cover of “Harlem Shuffle” was the underwhelming leadoff single from the album and “One Hit (to the Body)” also received airplay. The production values are high, and the album sounds great but once again it’s sound and fury signifying nothing.  Some will argue that it’s the worst Stones album ever but for me it’s not even a question of being bad, it’s just so non-essential and pointless. One can imagine that it was the result of contractual  obligations rather than creative need and that it was professionally written and put together by professionals who did a job of work and took no pleasure from it other than from the completion of the project.

 

“Too Rude” (Keith Richards’ vocal) is a Stones reggae and sounds least like the rest and is therefore intriguingly enjoyable. and the title track and “Had It With You” are the best rockers on the record. The latter sounds like an outtake from Exile on Main Street. And that’s a compliment. ‘Sleep Tonight” (another Richards vocal) is a good slow one.  

 

I suppose it’s no coincidence that Keith Richards contributes the best tunes on the record.

 

 

STEEL WHEELS (1989)

 

Bill Wyman’s last album as Rolling Stone.

 

I loved this album when I heard it for the first time, possibly because it just seemed so much more organic and, well, more “Stonesy”, than the previous two. “Sad, sad, sad” seemed almost old-school in its tough bluster and was the best album opener since “Start Me Up.”

 

Of course, the loose bluesiness of the best mid-Seventies material has been banished permanently and the mega hard rock sheen is firmly fixed in place but, for all that polish, there’s a limber toughness with solid riffs and some of Charlie Watts’ best playing, and, incredibly, the best songs the Stones have managed to pull off in a while, certainly since Some Girls. The rockers aren’t exactly classics, but they rock satisfactorily hard and there’s plenty of innovation of sound, groove and mood.

 

“Hearts for Sale,” the ‘experimental,’ virtually electronic,  “Continental Drift,” the twelve bar blues strut of  “Break the Spell” and “Slipping Away,” the Richards set closer, are particularly impressive.  

 

Steel Wheels was an apt way to close the Eighties for the Stones. They, like so many of their Sixties and Seventies contemporaries, seemed to lose their way, turning forty, finally beginning to slip out of the hip pinnacle and into mainstream adult oriented tock, and trying to remain relevant to the younger generation of rock fans by adopting all manner of contemporary, faddish production techniques and ways of expressing oneself. The Stones had become established professionals and journeymen; they were no longer dangerous and were no longer at the vanguard of rock. From here on, specifically, they ambled into the twilight of their career, with infrequent studio releases and mega tours, effectively as much of a “classic rock” act as their peers but with the unparalleled cachet of being ‘the Stones” drawing an audience that comes for the spectacle and the bucket list ticking attendance of a gig by one of the greatest of all rock bands, even as the musicians were as old as the parents or grand-parents of those cheering them on. 

 

The blues Power of Albert King

 

Albert King is my favourite of the three kings (Albert, B B and Freddie) partly because I heard him first and partly because I like his style of guitar playing best.

 

I bought Years Gone By (1968), with Albert in a conservative sports jacket against a psychedelic backdrop, in either 1977 or 1978 mostly, I must admit, because it was cheap, but I’d heard of him by then and the descriptions of his fierce playing style in the NME piqued my interest. Since I’ve duplicated the original vinyl LP on CD as well as digital download and as a vital example of a tough soul blues set on Stax Records in the mid-Sixties when Albert, like B B, had been “discovered” and adopted by the cool white kids, it’s still way up there. 

 

Around the same time as I bought Years Gone By I also acquired a collection of B B King  tracks from the Fifties, possibly recorded at the height of his “urban blues” period, backed by a big, horn driven  band. I didn’t like this B B King stuff at all. There was too much big band riffing and too little guitar for my liking and though it was a style I came to appreciate, if not exactly love, many years later, it’s relative lushness and smoothness was a stark and, to me, unfavourable contrast to the tough, small combo backing of the Albert King album.

 

it was a long while before I heard anything by Freddie King. I knew of him, knew that he wrote, or made famous, “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” a huge track for Eric Clapton and that he once played support on a tour for  Clapton who quite liked him.  King also wrote the, instrumentals “Stepping Out” or “Hideaway,” which I knew in  versions by Cream, and “San-Ho-Zay”  covered by many other guitarists. When I heard Freddie King play, and by this time  I’d come to love B B King’s work anyway, I realised that as good as he may have been, his energetic, busy, style of Texas blues guitar was not for me.

 

So, over the years I’ve acquired plenty different music by the other two Kings, from their Fifties stuff, when they were not too dissimilar, to the Seventies end Eighties, and in the case of  B B  also the Nineties and beyond.  Albert died too young.  In both cases their respective record companies did their best to update their blues stars’ sound to keep them appealing to contemporary audiences, who really only wanted to hear the old hits anyway.

 

In my view, B B King’s best tunes seem to be those big band jump blues he kept trotting out in live shows, along with :”The Thrill is Gone,” whereas Albert King’s best tunes are the mid- to late Sixties soul blues he’s best known for and that, like “Born Under a Bad Sign,” have been covered most by other bluesmen.  in each case it’s sad that these guys seem forced to repeat, ad infinitum, the same small number of songs but I suppose that’s true of most musicians. The audience always wants to hear the over familiar hits. Having said that, I think I’d rather listen to Albert King repeating his hits,  because I like them better than the B B style songs regardless of how good he is.

 

Years Gone By is not one of those albums that has hit after hit, with only “Wrapped Up In Love Again, “ “You Threw Your Love On Me Too Strong,”  “Killing Floor” and “The Sky is Crying” that could be live standards and the last two are not specifically identified with Albert in the first place, but as an example of what Albert King sounded like at the time and how blues was being recorded and probably aimed at the White audience that gave blues a new commercial lease of life, you can hardly go wrong.

 

King of the Blues Guitar is the best compilation of the tracks for which Albert is known  and Live Wire / Blues Power (1968)  is an excellent record of what his live sound and approach was in the Sixties. The Thursday / Wednesday Night in San Francisco live albums are also excellent examples of Albert King on stage and at the height of his powers.  These, and a compilation of Fifties tracks, when Albert and B B weren’t so far apart in their respective ways of playing the blues, represent my current Albert  King collection and I think that’s sufficient.

 

in the Seventies  Stax Records, and whoever else he recorded for, attempted to update the blues by recording King with funk musicians and smoothing out his rough edges and to my this was a mistake because, if the records aren’t altogether bad, they’re not gritty enough to be satisfying and most of them sound like Albert King going through the motions because of contractual obligations  and perhaps a misplaced compliance with the advice from his producers who tried to convince him that he’d sell more records that way. 

 

Obviously an artist can’t afford to be stuck in the same rut all their creative lives, although it’s true only for new record releases, as the set list for any live gig will always feature the usual suspects the audience come to hear. Unfortunately, updating an artist’s sound or approach to recording can often depend on the vision and opinion of a record producer, or a record company, and their idea of commerciality may not suit the artist or even be that successful with the public. Muddy Waters’ career was revived in the late Seventies with a new record company and Johnny Winter as a producer who went back to the roots with Muddy  and simply gave his Fifties sound a contemporary vintage slant production wise. John Lee Hooker’s career had a longer and arguably more successful renaissance when producer Roy Rogers not only updated the sound, brought in well-known guest artists but found a new way to rejuvenate old familiar songs that stuck to the template and yet shone new light. 

 

For me, that didn’t happen with Albert King’s studio output towards the end of his life. The smooth sheen of the production blunted his edge into non-existence and the producer(s) couldn’t find new tunes that could, or did, become classics in the King repertoire.  It’s not as if, for example, Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker made records with all new hits; they recycled tried and trusted material, but the production managed to revitalise them. Albert King’s new material had no vitality to start with.

 

The old bluesmen, from the earliest days to about the mid-Sixties, and excluding the odd “discoveries” like Leaf Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee who were adopted by a section of the White cultural elite in the USA, played to and for their own people, the Black audience, but from the mid-Fifties when R & B and then soul gained popularity and were seen as progressive and modern compared to the down home label of blues, this includes the urban blues of B B King, T Bone Walker and others, what one might call traditional blues lost ground and its audience slowly dissipated. Where once some blues was seen as a hip, sophisticated urban music (not the raw Delta style blues, then), it was replaced by a new type of  musical expression embraced by younger generations of urban blacks with little or no connection to the countryside and who wanted  a music that was not their parents’ music and exemplified a modern worldview.  For a while the bluesmen struggled and then fate intervened when there was an increasing large scale exposure to and adoption by young White listeners and audiences who then became the greatest supporters of blues outside of the deep country side where some musicians always managed to keep playing, even if it meant they had a day job to put food on the table, and the bluesmen were playing to larger audiences than before, made more money than before and were suddenly regarded and discussed as cultural phenomena  rather than as just the providers of good times in bars and juke joints. Where the original White, intellectual and musicological interest in blues had been focused mostly on the country bluesmen, almost all of blues was brought in to the ambit of these deep cultural roots and significance, as if these people were cultural mavens and ambassadors for their people rather than just musicians who chose this form of making a living as being far better and more lucrative than the menial jobs most Blacks seemed to be stuck with.

 

I’ve read many books on the history of blues and all of them have at least one chapter on the origins of the music and the meaning the blues has in the community as an expression of the mood and life experiences of the people as a whole. These learned discourses often make it sound as if a Delta blues musician intentionally made art as a cultural and political expression of conditions (poverty, racism and repression) amongst his people, and was therefore a folk heritage herald, so to speak, and not just someone who chose to make music because they were interested in it and it gave them some escape from  their daily grind or gave them an additional income or got the ladies interested.

 

For me, the blues may have originated as a cry in the wilderness, but at least from the start of the recording industry, it was as mush a commercial, show biz endeavour for the musicians as it was for the record industry. Once musicians learnt they could make money from records, the concept of blues being no more than an expression of a people’s soul blew out the window. The blues men were already for tips on the streets, and at house parties for some money, food and drink, and now  there was yet another revenue stream.

 

When Big Bill Broonzy or Sonny Boy Williamson I were recording for Bluebird Records,  or Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf were recording for Chess Records and John Lee Hooker was recording for whomever he could cut a side or two, just to name some well-known examples,  they were doing for strictly commercial reasons and when they were playing the bars and dives of Chicago and Detroit, they had the same motivation. It was a moneymaking gig, not a campaign of folk expression.   It was about paying the bills, raising a family and having some of the good things in life.

 

I suspect that most of what we now “know” about the origin, nature and cultural impact of  blues, comes from White intellectuals seeking to find deeper, hidden meaning in a very simple musical genre, because it couldn’t be just what it appears to be. Some of it may be true but eventually the blues tropes we  are  familiar with, seem to have been formulated by people who analysed the music and its background rather than by the people who made the music.

 

Albert King has a narrative in his tune “Blues Power” about what the blues supposedly is, and he gives some very banal examples, such as a crying baby, a disgruntled teenage girl or himself, who misses his main squeeze. These sound carefully constructed and sanitised to be relatable to a young White audience and do not refer to poverty, racism or repression; he does not pretend that his blues is rooted in and informed by the extremely negative experiences of his people. King is playing the gig to entertain his audience. Music is his career and blues is his chosen genre. I don’t for a moment believe that Albert King chose this particular career because he had a burning, material need to be a spokesman for his people and to expose the injustices of this world in general and the prejudice Black people in the USA suffer. His blues are braggadocio or cries of woe over a bad woman and perhaps one can see the latter as metaphors for how Black people are treated by White society but most of that seems farfetched to me. It’s professional entertainment, pure and simple.