When the POLL Comes Down: The Stones' "Some Girls"

Tough!

It's between Beast of Burden, Far Away Eyes and Miss You for me

ToughToughToughToughToughToughToughToughToughToughToughTough

They've been trying to remake for thirty years, but they lost the knack for balancing effortless mean-spirtedness and tenderness.

voted just my imagination just barely over when the whip comes DOWWN. on some days am crazy about everything on it except the title track (ok i'm probably never crazy about 'before they make me run'). always annoyed when someone slags this album off in order to praise emotional rescue (which don't ge me wrong is pretty great also).

Listening to "When The Whip Comes Down" inspired this thread; it's ferocious. At one point when Charlie's coming down like an avalanche, Mick sings "CHAKADACHAKADACHAKADA" and you know he could be singing "I couldn't hit it...sideWAAAAAAAAYYYS..."

"before they make me run" is maybe the most likeable self-mythologizing move ever, which is kind of keith's speciality even now - but this might be the absolute bullseye

I mean "wasn't looking too good but I was feeling real well"- the line, the delivery, everything so on point

"Shattered" because it scared the shit out of me when I was a kid & the chorus effect on the guitar is delicious & Charlie just murders it.

There was some controversy surrounded the lyrics to the title song, an extended musing on women of various nationalities and races. The line "Black girls just wanna get fucked all night" drew strong protests from various groups, including Jesse Jackson's PUSH. Jagger famously replied, "I've always said, you can't take a joke, it's too fucking bad," although he was reportedly more conciliatory to Jackson in private, as he claimed the song was intended as a parody of racist attitudes. Saturday Night Live cast member Garrett Morris would have the final say on the controversy with a mock-editorial on the show's Weekend Update segment: After giving the impression that he was going to openly criticize the Stones, he quoted a sanitized version of the "Black girls just..." line, then stated "I have one thing to say to you, Mr. Mick Jagger... where are these women?!?"

has anyone here seen 'shine a light' cuz apparently they play 'some girls' in it - WTF

"Shattered" is in the "Sway" and "Gimme Shelter" category of Stones songs that sound inexplicably frightening despite being silly; I can't think of another band that created anything like this.

this has been a perennial top ten fave of mine since i first bought it 15 years ago. and i think every one of these songs has been my favorite at one point or another (except "far away eyes" - which is still awesome in its own right). i may have to abstain from voting.

xposts

yeah - the guitar sounds & charlie in general are so great on this record

i'm searching for a better word, because it feels cheap and lazy but... the most fun stones record? to be honest I don't hear the inexplicably frightening much, but they're definitely getting silly left & right

Interviewer: "Why did you call it Some Girls?"
Keith: "We couldn't remember all their fucking names."

They were at their most gleefully piggish here.

Shidoobee

Rob Sheffield's recent post about this album as the first in the Stones' Mall Rat Trilogy is terrific.

Some Girls doesn't sound all that much like any of their other albums, dominated musically by Mick Jagger, who plays more guitar (and cracks more jokes) than ever before or since. After their big mid-Seventies productions, the sound of Some Girls was remarkably spare, as all five Stones holed up in a Paris studio to bash it out with engineer Chris Kimsey. They didn't call up big-name guests or L.A. session guys to butt in; even longtime chums like Nicky Hopkins, Bobby Keys and Ian Stewart were noticeably absent. It's still shocking how confident Some Girls sounds rhythmically — while all the other big-name rock vets (Dylan, Who, Zeppelin, Kinks, Floyd, Steely Dan or Genesis or Yes or whoever) were getting lost in texture and finesse and overdubs, the Stones stripped down to focus on their killer rhythm section. They made everything else on rock radio sound embarrassingly slow and overbaked.

I am assuming it's old hat and undisputed that punk had something to do with the strength of this one? (although I love Black and Blue all over) What other 70s (or 60s-70s) acts got a boost from punk and showed it in their 78(7?)-79 releases...(besides Roxy, Soto!)

WENNER:
You came back, though, with “Some Girls.” Did that have to do, perhaps, with being in New York City?
JAGGER:
Yes, you are absolutely right! Well done! I’d moved to New York at that point. The inspiration for the record was really based in New York and the ways of the town. I think that gave it an extra spur and hardness. And then, of course, there was the punk thing that had started in 1976. Punk and disco were going on at the same time, so it was quite an interesting period. New York and London, too. Paris – there was punk there. Lots of dance music. Paris and New York had all this Latin dance music, which was really quite wonderful. Much more interesting than the stuff that came afterward.
WENNER:
“Miss You” is one of the all-time greatest Rolling Stones grooves.
JAGGER:
Yeah. I got that together with Billy Preston, actually.
WENNER:
You and he came up with that?
JAGGER:
Yeah, Billy had shown me the four-on-the-floor bass-drum part, and I would just play the guitar. I remember playing that in the El Mocambo club when Keith was on trial in Toronto for whatever he was doing. We were supposed to be there making this live record.
WENNER:
That was the first performance of it?
JAGGER:
Yeah. I was still writing it, actually. We were just in rehearsal.
WENNER:
But that’s a wholly Mick Jagger song?
JAGGER:
Yeah.

LOL at "Yes you are absolutely right! Well done!" like Wenner had somehow deciphered the secret clues to pick up on the NYC connection

Since there's no 'all of the above' option, going with Miss You

yeah what's ppl's take for the breath of fresh air here - 1) keith's clean 2) new guitarist 3) mick's single/got a new gf (may be off on my timing here though i know bianca thought 'miss you' was about her but actually it was about jerry hall) 4) 'punk' 5) they were due

xpost 6) new york

7) disco

but yeah, mick is def in good spirits, cracking wise like a motherfucker

Best batch of lyrics he ever wrote. And I love how they almost brought it off again on the next album.

Yeah, this might be in the top three of Significant Comebacks

why the scare quotes around 'punk', balls? just curious....i like the list, very thorough

no real reason, just it seems like some corny rockcrit narrative (though jagger's comments from that pretty great circa stripped interview maybe belie my skepticism)(though knowing jagger it could be he's also totally playing into rockcrit narrative for his own reasons), i always picture some 'it's yr cousin marvin...marvin JAGGER - yknow that new sound you're looking for? well listen to THIS' scene at the pistols free trade hall show or something. knowing jagger it could've been a canny business move as much as anything else, a precursor to biz markie on bridges to babylon (not as canny). i had always heard somewhere that he was annoyed he never heard any stones at studio 54 ergo 'miss you'.

yeah the "it's punk stones" thing is maybe a bit overcooked - I hear it a bit more in the lyrics than music, there's a nice thread of dee dee ramone-style observation of funny/grotesque street scenes like "people dressed in plastic bags/directing traffic!" and jokey shit like "talkin heroin with the president/that's just a problem, sir, that you can't prevent" etc.

or "I was gay in New York and a fag in L.A."

man I voted Shattered but I sure do love the hell out of Respectable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPKbCRkMlUM

voting in this poll = nothing but regret for your other nine favourites

i thought everyone hated faraway eyes

Beast

omigod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVEdYYMlOJ4

So. deeply. disturbing. The cutaways to Charlie Watts-as-outpatient only heighten the phantasmagoria of the Dreyer-like closeups of Jagger and his hideous "you know yer a redneck" sprechtstimme...

and where exactly are they performing, the studios of Manhattan's Channel D public access channel?

As for the Stones' reaction to punk thing: Nothing has made me happier in my record-buying life than when as a 16-year-old I went to the punk-centric Wax Trax Records in 1978 Denver (back then buying every Clash, Talking Heads, and Vibrators single, etc, I could find) and finding the clerk-written plug above the Some Girls display: "Old Farts Fight Back!".

I thought, "Yes! My boys still got it." Later only John Elway evoked such little jewels of fandom pleasure.

(I'm voting Shattered or Miss You.)

I like the idea of this album more than the real thing. 'miss you' and 'beast' are the only songs I have any love for.

yikes! serenity now!!!
"imagination" is one of the greatest RS covers, but...., "lies", "respectable" or "whip"....impossible to go wrong

Before You Make Me Run

Sounds like every entry here's getting a vote. So does anyone have a least favorite song? For a while mine was "Just My Imagination," but now I love how swaps the original's ethereality for smut.

"Miss You" over "Shattered" though "Respectable" needs loving too. But "Miss You" has such a hard groove & is a blast to sing along with; not surprised to hear it's a Jagger song since for me the performance comes down to his scats/coos/dyintameetcha.

I don't like "Far Away Eyes" very much; it's another cornball Jagger country vocal & I just don't relate.

Voted "Shattered". The Stones' 'SNL' appearance from this time period rocked my 11-year-old world.

this is a great album, second all the positivity here - listening to it I'm usually struck by how simple everything is. most of the songs are just a disco beat and two chords then a lot of vamping and silly lyrics, it's a great marriage of punk, disco, and classic rock dickishness

a lot of these songs run together for me though, have no idea what I would pick as a standout

"Shattered" is some kind of Platonic ideal of whatever that is.

Voted "Shattered". The Stones' 'SNL' appearance from this time period rocked my 11-year-old world.

i'd never seen this respectable & shattered on snl (with Ian Stewart(?) on the piano): http://www.livevideo.com/video/KeithRichards1972/91D7FF56577B47C09D8D7A6709DE2C19/the-rolling-stones-shattered.aspx

oh and beast of burden is there, too.

i'm prolley a bad person for it, but i kind of hate "Beast of Burden"...

The one Stones ballad I never, ever get tired of hearing.

Ben Williams once posted on ILM that "Shattered" was an overlooked punk-funk classic, and he's right. That's what I voted for.

(Speaking of punk, and New York, I once read Jagger attributing the groove of "Stray Cat Blues" off Beggars Banquet to the Stones trying to sound like the Velvet Underground!)

yeah, i read that interview recently, too. what's weird is he said they were trying to get the sound of "heroin" which doesn't seem right at all! maybe he meant waiting for the man?

that sounds like some serious retconning to me

The quote was in a book published sometime in the the '80s, I think.

The quote was from a Crawadaddy! or Creem interview, maybe? Something along those lines.

Shattered. It gets in that groove & wears it down about 15 feet.

It's not that collection of interviews by Bill Flanagan, is it?

It's not. It was from some 8 x 10 paperback with a red cover of quotes from the Stones about all their songs. (That Flanagan book is fantastic, one of the best music books I've ever read.)

It sure is, and Jagger is unusually forthright in it.

I've always found Jagger's interviews fascinating. He has a reputation for being cagey but a lot of the ones I've read he's been pretty straightforward: his comments in Rolling Stone about John Lennon's death, for example.

Did you ever read Mikal Gilmore's Night Beat? Excellent summer of '87 interview with Jagger (some of the best longform interviews with Joe Strummer, Dylan, Sinead, etc I've ever read).

I got it out of the library a long time ago but didn't pay it that much attention. I should go back. Gilmore is probably the best stylist of all the obvious-RS-canon guys, something I appreciate more as the years go by.

(Just to be clear: "obvious-RS-canon guys" meaning writers who articulate the mag's core musical values rather than the likes of e.g. Hunter S. Thompson.)

I'd like to read more of Gilmore's music writing - have only read Shot Through The Heart, which is just incredible.

'When I die I'll go to heaven, cause I've spent my time in hell' is cribbed from a Korean war vet motto, isn't it?

"Shattered," I guess. Hard choice.

I know this isn't the place to register your antipathy towards this album, but I will anyway. I was finishing up high school when it came out, and also, I'm pretty sure, just discovering Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet (I'd known the hits, of course, but not "You Got the Silver" and "Prodigal Son" and all the other amazing album tracks). So beyond a half-hearted "Oh, that's pretty good," Some Girls didn't mean anything to me--not then, not now. It's like the difference between Gosford Park and Nashville. Gosford Park is very well made, and you can tell it's Altman, but it's just not Nashville--it's not really even close. It also makes me think of that Joy Division line: "I've got the spirit, but lose the feeling." Some Girls is good music well played. The moment has passed. For me, anyway. Clearly a lot of people love this album.

That's exactly how I feel about Tattoo You.

One's reaction depends on how much of the band's mythos you're ready to accept. I knew the Stones first as snarling craftsmen (c/o the Steel Wheels period).

I think it's a timeline thing. For you, Tatoo You = Some Girls. For me, Some Girls = snarling craftsmen. I wouldn't mind losing about 15 years, though, even if it means Some Girls becomes my favorite Rolling Stones album. Want to trade timelines?

Some Girls came out just before I entered high school. I had discovered Beggars Banquet and Let it Bleed a year of two before that. I thought Some Girls measured up to those classics at the time a lot better than Goats Head Soup and It's Only Rock 'n' Roll did.

this is up there with rumors for my favorite coke-rock record. voted "shattered" because it seems most emblematic of the record as a whole, but "miss you" is a close second.

Ben Williams once posted on ILM that "Shattered" was an overlooked punk-funk classic, and he's right. That's what I voted for.

i'd buy this except for the overlooked part. contrarily, "shattered" is the only punk-funk classic i can think of that was in regular rock radio rotation when i was in high school. (granted it's not like the djs were saying, "and here's a punk-funk classic from mick and the boys!")

In my 4th grade class we had a copy of this on cassette for some reason & I used to play Shattered over and over again. I was very literal about songs back then, and probably liked it because it sounded like it was about breaking things.

Some Girls was definitely a re-entry point into the Stones for me. I loved them as a kid because my brother owned a few of their classic albums (though the one I gravitated to was the stop sign hits collection, Through the Past Darkly -- the album that "formed me" as much as any single album could be said do have done so). I guess you could say I kept tabs on them throughout the seventies -- I was familiar with all of the albums -- but they ceased being a primary obsession as I got lost in the haze of glitter, prog, punk, etc. (though they were definitely always there). For reasons others have already suggested (punk, mostly, at least in connection with my life) Some Girls just seemed to perfectly fit that moment in what I still cherish as one of the most amazing years I've ever lived through for discovering music (new and old). The Stones mattered to me, in a renewed way, all over again with that record. All that being said, it's not a record I find myself listening to often, though I love the best stuff from it whenever it comes on (I could seriously do without ever hearing "Miss You" and maybe even "Beast of Burden" again, though; the former, for sure, is as played-out for me as "Satisfaction" and "Start Me Up" and half a dozen other Stones classics).

I think I might vote "Respectable."

It has to be up there with Exile on Main as one of the most richly detailed album covers.

Fantastic album . Too many options, but have to go with "Miss You" for myriad reasons.

i'd buy this except for the overlooked part. contrarily, "shattered" is the only punk-funk classic i can think of that was in regular rock radio rotation when i was in high school. (granted it's not like the djs were saying, "and here's a punk-funk classic from mick and the boys!")

He wasn't talking about the radio, he was talking about all the punk-funk comps that were coming out at the time of his comment.

the Stones' 'SNL' appearance from this time period rocked my 11-year-old world.
Yup. Watching Mick lick Ron Woods' lips during "Shattered" was one of the more disturbing things I had seen on TV at that time.
"Respectable" for me.

Or rather, about the punk-funk revivalism happening at the time. (No way would the Stones license anything to Strut!) xpost

Or maybe the lip-licking was on "Respectable?"

I know everyone's tired of the "punk" influence on Some Girls, but that SNL performance of Shattered (which I'd never seen) is about "punkiest" I've ever seen them...I wonder if the ripped shirt routine isn't just the "tatters" but an R. Hell ripoff?

The one Stones ballad I never, ever get tired of hearing

This, Alfred, is madness! The Stones excel at ballads, in my view. Just off the top of my head I can think of a bunch: "Back Street Girl," "Ruby Tuesday," "Waiting on a Friend," "Let it Loose," "Wild Horses," "No Expectations," "She Smiled Sweetly," "Angie," "If You Need Me," "Time is On My Side," the list goes on...

What other 70s (or 60s-70s) acts got a boost from punk and showed it in their 78(7?)-79 releases...

Well, Neil Young, obviously. And ZZ Top, on Deguello (listen to "Manic Mechanic," for instance.) And I think in Christgau's 1978 Pazz & Jop essay he mentioned the Who (and Warren Zevon, who was covering the Sex Pistols live apparently), though I'm not sure I've ever understood the claim in reference to Who Are You (maybe because I've never listened to it much.) (And then there's Queen, who were clearly punking out when they did "Sheer Heart Attack," in 1977.)

"shattered" is the only punk-funk classic i can think of that was in regular rock radio rotation when i was in high school

Well, I'm not sure when you were in high school, but there's also "Another One Bites The Dust," "Whip It," Flying Lizards' "Money" (assuming that got much AOR play -- definitely got some in Detroit), Herman Brood's "Saturday Night," and uh, "Emotional Rescue," for starters (though those were all a year or two later -- and since I graduated high school in 1978, all of out my own window, actually.)

I also didn't really start seriously keeping tabs on music until early 1979, so I had no preconceptions about the Stones when I first heard Some Girls. I think it's one of their best albums -- at least on a level with Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet, maybe better.

(Guess I'm also assuming all of those titles count as "punk funk," and as "classics," obviously. I suppose somebody could make the case, say, that "Another One Bites The Dust" and "Emotional Rescue" aren't punk enough, or "Saturday Night" isn't classic enough, or whatever.)

Also think you could easily make the case that punk/new wave helped revitalize Ian Hunter, on 1979's You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic, too (though Mott were kind of punk to begin with.)

What might make the Stones unique is how they were clearly revitalized by both punk and disco (and yeah, they'd shown some disco influence before, but not as blatantly as "Miss You," I don't think.)

Also, fwiw, I've always connected "Emotional Rescue" with punk/new wave in my head because, the first time I heard it on an AOR station in Detroit, the DJ actually said it sounded like the Flying Lizards to him!

And oh, there's also Peter Gabriel -- "D.I.Y." was on his second album, in 1978. (And he may have been listening to disco as well, but I'm not sure that manifested itself until later.) And Robert Wyatt from Soft Machine was on Rough Trade by 1980 (and covering Chic, duh), and then there's Hawkwind and Be Bop Deluxe guys (in Hawklords and Red Noise), but by now were talking real cult acts (at least in the States), so maybe they shouldn't count. And Ronstadt and Billy Joel were making new wave moves by '80, etc. etc. (Pretty sure we did a whole long thread on this once, but it was keyed more to a couple years later.)

I'm not sure I've ever understood the claim in reference to Who Are You (maybe because I've never listened to it much.)

Three reasons I can think of:

1) title track is apparently about Townshend's encounter with some punks in Soho;
2) The Who themselves -- esp. "My Generation" -- were obviously a key punk influence, so part of it was just good timing; virtually anything they released at that time (save an entire album filled with ballads, maybe) would've carried such an expectation;
3) further to #2... a certain amount of the "revitalized by punk" claims were, I'd argue, simply by default. Almost any of the '60s/'70s hard rock icons who appeared to have weathered the storm might've been awarded the tag (save, I suppose, Dylan who was busy being saved or something).

Actually, speaking of key punk influences, the Kinks circa Low Budget would be another old band who seem to have been inspired by both disco ("Superman") and punk ("Attitude," maybe other tracks) in 1979.

"punk"

This, Alfred, is madness! The Stones excel at ballads, in my view.

No, you're right, but something about the loping, ever so slightly lazy cadence of "Beast of Burden" lends itself to replaying (and I HATE "Angie").

can't listen to "Wild Horses" either

you better use scare quotes around " 'punk' " around here, pardner!

is "angie" the most 70s am gold the stones got? i'm always amazed that the old rock ppl who think some girls is when the stones started to suck (or really black and blue, but definitely when they 'went disco') aren't ott outraged by "angie" - it could be gilbert o'sullivan or terry jacks or harry chapin or something, makes james taylor sound like james osterberg. i love it for it's soppiness and get a bigger thrill from hearing it on oldies radio than i do from hearing "beast of burden" but thank god it's not played anywhere near as much as "wild horses".

wild horses is perhaps the most interminably excruciatingly boring song they ever did...or just overplayed?

I dunno why Bowie got flak for being an 'affected' singer when Jagger's singing on "Angie" is ludicrous. I don't mind Jagger at all on "Dead Flowers" or "Lady Jane" but the ironies are pinned down on those numbers.

i kinda like "angie" -- especially for jagger's hilarious pronunciations ... "annnnjuh!"

o it's the whispers that makes it for me

(Guess I'm also assuming all of those titles count as "punk funk," and as "classics," obviously. I suppose somebody could make the case, say, that "Another One Bites The Dust" and "Emotional Rescue" aren't punk enough, or "Saturday Night" isn't classic enough, or whatever.)

well, yeah. maybe i mean "shattered" was the most punk-funk song that was in the classic-rock canon by the mid-80s. anyway. i get matos' point, that it was left out of the revivalist reference points. maybe because it's so familiar it's easy to forget.

i <3 u guys! picked the title track cause of mine ever so fond summer of '79 then 14-year-old's memories of strolling up and down the beach and checkin' out the babes as it blasted out ye olde tape recorder (also for featuring a most BADASS harmonica performance!!!).

In response to something upthread: the established artists who were most affected by punk were, not surprisingly, the ones who felt (correctly or not) they'd had a hand in inventing some aspect of it. I posted a poll on this very thing last year. Reed, Thunders, Johansen, and Iggy were the four most obvious examples, but I think more or less the same dynamic was at work with Some Girls and the late-'70s work of Neil Young, David Bowie, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, and probably a few others. Seals & Crofts, on the other hand, seemed largely unaffected by punk.

"shattered" is awesome. "go ahead, bite the big apple, don't mind the maggots, uh huh." somehow it's more sinister to me than "sympathy"

"shattered" was the most punk-funk song that was in the classic-rock canon by the mid-80s

Not gonna argue with this (whether any of the songs I named before count as competition or not), but I will say that, in the 32 years since it came out, yesterday is the first time I ever saw somebody refer to "Shattered" as "punk-funk". I remember people noting a possible punk influence back when it was new, but they seemed to leave out the other half. (Or maybe they didn't, and I just never noticed.) (Actually, I could argue that there were classic-rock-canon songs that sounded more punk and funk but that preceded punk -- by, say, Hendrix, Aerosmith, Zep, whoever -- but I assume those don't count.)

And yeah, Bowie was obviously another '70s guy who was seemingly taking lessons from both punk and disco by decade's end, duh - arguably even more than the Stones, come to think of it. And Johansen had a disco track or two on '79's In Style. And Queen swung both ways by The Game in '80. So the Stones weren't unique after all. (Also don't get at all why somebody would put punk in quote marks in these cases. Just because all these bands were trying to do what they thought punk had done doesn't mean they wound up sounding like the Sex Pistols. Being inspired by something isn't the same as being something.)

"punk" cuz this whole narrative is boring and done and it's sad that like half a century after the fact rock critics still can't talk about rock without sticking closely to the script. laziness + wasted opportunities = one hack profession no one can be too sad to see die.

As somebody who has spent a good quarter century "sticking closely to the script," I, for one, appreciate your incisive comments, "balls". (Fwiw, I haven't much thought in terms of "punk" for forever. But that doesn't mean I'll pretend it never happened, if somebody brings it up.)

someone bringing up corny rock crits lazily parading out the same old boring lines isn't actually a cue for some corny rock crit to lazily parade out the same old boring line.

unless you're lenny and squiggy (or maybe you're chiming in about lenny and the squigtones punk move).

Gotcha -- Unlike people whining about rock critics, which isn't corny or lazy at all. (In fact, it's never been done before, iirc.)

you've been doing that for a living for 25 years also right?

Nope, I just stick to the script.

ppl gotta eat

butthurt is so embarrassing

ppl gotta eat

― balls, Sunday, June 27, 2010

so chew on a dick.

people, people! brothers and sisters! everybody be cool! who's fighting and what for? (Mick Jagger, Altamont)

Queen? Hmmm...not so sure about that one. I don't know their music beyond the radio hits I flee from--I owned Night at the Opera in high school; "You're My Best Friend" still sounds good--so while there may indeed be a song or two on The Game that sounds vaguely punk, I'd be surprised if Freddie Mercury ever saw himself as a punk antecedent (which, for me, would have to be true to throw him in with Iggy and the rest--not even necessarily that he was a punk antecedent, just that he viewed himself that way). I can definitely see where Queen would belong to the whole old-folks-doing-new-wave moment that came along in '80 (Glass Houses, Mad Love), which I see as a connected but separate thing. (Should I be using quotation marks to keep Mr. Balls happy?)

i don't think anyone's arguing that queen were punk antecedents?

i mean there was mention of sheer heart attack in 77 but that was clearly on the bandwagon stuff

I'd be surprised if Freddie Mercury ever saw himself as a punk antecedent

well, does it matter? What matters is if we do.

But it does matter. Lou Reed, Johnny Thunders, the Rolling Stones, etc. all clearly believed they'd been doing punk long before the fact (and for someone like Ray Davies, I think he would have believed he helped shape the sound of punk). So they made music that was a response to their probably conflicted feelings over the Sex Pistols and the rest. If it's someone who doesn't have those conflicted feelings--someone like Freddie Mercury--then you're ascribing a response to him that doesn't exist. (I say this as someone who almost always argues on the side of it's not what the artist intended that matters, it's what I hear. But in this specific case, I think intent matters.)

Totally don't get Clemenza's logic here. The idea that performers who most considered themselves punk antecedents were most likely to be inspired by punk is his theory, not anybody else's here. And why you'd have to consider yourself a punk antecedent to have conflicted feelings about punk in the late '70s is beyond me; maybe you just thought "hey, this is a pretty good idea, to sound like that." (I'm also not sure how, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'd know who considered themselves punk antecedents, but I doubt that's even relevant here.) In the case of Queen, it's hard for me to listen to "Sheer Heart Attack" (from '77) and think they weren't being inspired by punk somehow -- maybe they just thought "we can do that crap better than those idiots." Which, again, would not require them to think that they, in turn, had inspired said idiots (or non-idiots, whatever) to begin with.

I was specifically referring to your contention that The Game took lessons from punk; you've rather deftly switched over to "Sheer Heart Attack." If you want to connect that to punk, well, sure--I probably wouldn't, but go ahead. But, to reiterate, Street Hassle, So Alone, The Idiot, and David Johansen were all very specific reactions to punk by four people who I'm quite confident believed they invented punk; Some Girls and "Who Are You" were more oblique, but I'm equally confident that their creators felt both liberated and threatened by punk in roughly equal measure, and that punk was very much on their minds when those records were made. Neil Young's always off on his own plane a little bit, but Rust Never Sleeps very much fits in too, and (your idea initially, I believe) I can even see a case for Ray Davies. Do you really want to add Queen's The Game to that list? Freddy Mercury was show business and glamour and Cabaret, and I think your formulation above, that he probably had a kind of contempt for punk--which, whether you love it or hate it, was most definitely not those things--is quite likely the case. Which is fine, but is qualitatively different than what I hear in all those other records.

I hope I'm not being reductive in arguing for the results. If Some Girls, Squeezing Out Sparks, Who Are You, The Game sound punk or are punk-influenced, that's enough. I don't ever trust an artist's intentions.

A long back-and-forth is no way to spend a Sunday evening, so let me put it another way before I go back to my movie. Lou Reed sees the Sex Pistols, is very affected by what he sees (more than he might even be willing to concede), and goes off and writes Street Hassle. That makes sense to me. Freddie Mercury sees the Sex Pistols, is very affected by what he sees, and, after a couple of years of mulling things over, he goes off and writes..."Crazy Little Thing Called Love"? If you two guys sincerely believe that, then, well, we just disagree.

But would you say, "Paul McCartney sees the Sex Pistols, is very affected by what he sees (more than he might even be willing to concede), and goes off and writes `Getting Closer.' That makes sense to me"?

I'm not being glib. "Getting Closer" to my ears is as hard as "Junior's Farm" or "Girls Schoo" -- which is to say, not particularly punk or punk-influenced, but part of Wings' tuffer catalogue.

It's up to the critic to make the case. Rod Stewart's "Young Turks" totally sounds like he's attempting New Wave, but I'm willing to read someone else cite, I dunno, "Ain't Love a Bitch" or "Passion."

I don't think I know that song...so I'm not even sure what you mean! Generally speaking, I think the ex-Beatles were unusually immune to most everything that happened after their break-up, sometimes to their credit, sometimes to their detriment. (And not always--I can hear glam in some of their '72-'74 stuff.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G59EpuqmHs

Thanks. Pretty good song, though I much prefer "Junior's Farm," probably my favourite Wings single. Do I think "Getting Closer" has anything to do with punk? No--it's just Paul being Paul! Which is kind of my argument; if someone tried to sell me on the idea of "Getting Closer" as a response to punk, that just wouldn't make sense to me.

And let me add (every time I want out, they pull me back in) I totally agree that it's up to the critic to make the case. But making the case is more than just asserting something to be true. If you or Chuck can make a convincing case that The Game is a response to punk, I'm willing to listen. It'll have to be a very good case. So far I haven't heard it.

Only Geir Hongro can resolve this very complicated issue.

Thanks. Pretty good song, though I much prefer "Junior's Farm," probably my favourite Wings single. Do I think "Getting Closer" has anything to do with punk? No--it's just Paul being Paul!

oh yeah I totally agree. But watching that video (skinny ties! shorter hair!) and listening to the song (clipped rhythms!) you would be forgiven for thinking, "Hey, it's 1979, and Paul is obviously influenced by punk." Like I said above, it doesn't sound much different from what he'd tried for years (and he was always a super-sponge: do you think "Goodnight Tonight" sounds like any disco you and I know?).

you've rather deftly switched over to "Sheer Heart Attack."

No, actually (as somebody else pointed out a few posts up) I mentioned that song here on this thread long before I mentioned the The Game (and you also mentioned Night At The Opera in the post in which you more or less shrugged the band off, so I didn't realize '70s Queen's apparently punk influences were suddenly off limits.) As for The Game, as I said before, there do seem to be new wave influences there (and sure, doing a rockabilly song in 1980 might well be one part of it.) Though I think I've lost track by now of why exactly that matters. (I could also argue that Mercury could well have thought the nihilism of "nothing really matters to me" in "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1975 was somehow an emotional antecedent to "no future for you" or whatever -- in fact, I may have made that connection in a book once. Or maybe he didn't. But again, whether he did is kind of immaterial.)

By the way, I'm not sure I understand how, e.g., Street Hassle (which I admittedly haven't heard in a long time) or David Johansen (which, if anything, has basically struck me as a less ferocious version of what he'd early done with the Dolls) are "specific reactions to punk." But I'll take your word, if they sound like that to you.

I missed it earlier, but rockabilly formed a crucial part of the punk/New Wave ethos. "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" doesn't sound any crazier than Elvis C and the Clash's experiments, not to mention the Polecats and Stray Cats a few years later.

I still think you're making my case for me. You're saying that "Getting Closer" has some of the superficial signs of having been punk-influenced--something I'll readily concede with regards to The Game, and probably a ton of other stuff from that time--but really isn't punk-influenced at all, it's just Paul doing what he'd always been doing. Yes. Whereas with Street Hassle and the rest, I believe the connection to punk goes much deeper than the superficial.

(Fwiw, I'd say I hear more Cars or even, uh, Flying Lizards -- again, see "Another Ones Bites The Dust", which is a weird, spare dance-oriented rock track, unlike anything Queen had done before -- on The Game than the Pistols or Ramones. But inasmuch as the Cars and Flying Lizards would probably have been unthinkable for lots of people without punk happening, I don't think that evolutionary line doesn't matter. Should also mention, what the hell, that I haven't played The Game in a while, and could be totally wrong. I'm not even saying it's an especially good record or anything. But as with lots of proggy bands tightening up in the early '80s, I always detected a new wave influence there; didn't even think that was controversial. Favorite song, "Dragon Attack," is probably more funk-metal actually.)

The new-wave angle, absolutely. I conceded that upthread. So maybe we're really into one of those pointless is-it-punk-or-is-it-new-wave? arguments here, which I've often made fun of in the past, even though sometimes I think it's a meaningful distinction, like right here.

x(And I mean, obviously "Another One Bites The Dust" is a mainly a Chic ripoff. But it doesn't especially sound like Chic, as a whole, or even like '70s Queen ripping off Chic. It sounds like something totally new.)

Does it? From the unfunky bass to the shouted gibberish it reminds me of mid-period Roxy Music (not necessarily an insult, mind you).

Anyway, you've both convinced me. I was surprised last year when my "I Invented This Stuff" poll didn't generate more than the dozen or so votes that it did, but I realize now that my own shortsightedness was the problem. I'm going to repost tomorrow, and you can vote for either Lou Reed's Street Hassle, Iggy Pop's The Idiot, Johnny Thunders' So Alone, David Johansen, or Queen's The Game. I'm out of here!

Some of you guys hate romance, I'm sad for you

You can't make shit like this up

"Queen and The Sex Pistols were recording albums in London's West End when Sid Vicious wandered into the wrong studio to find Mercury alone at the piano. 'Ah, Freddie Mercury, still bringing ballet to the massses are you?' hissed Vicious. 'Oh yes, Mr Ferocious, dear,' Mercury bit back. 'We are doing our best.'"

welcome back!

I'll just add that were I ever to compile a CDR of "punk songs which predate punk," this would be in there, for sure (though I might want to fade it before the proggy bit).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUKi3_QntE

[BTW, that's from 1974]

Also, Queen did their "God Save The Queen" more than a year before the Pistols one, right?

Sounds familiar, but I'm hazy on that.

Would you guys not agree (excuse me if this point has already been raised) that virtually all mid-70s glitter rockers can claim at least SOME credit for how punk ended up sounding? Queen seemed to flit back and forth between glitter and prog, and they undoubtedly landed much more frequently in the latter camp than in the former, but, as maybe "Brighton Rock" attests, at least, they weren't immune to a certain strain of musical chaos.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Queen and The Sex Pistols were recording albums in London's West End when Sid Vicious wandered into the wrong studio to find Mercury alone at the piano. 'Ah, Freddie Mercury, still bringing ballet to the massses are you?' hissed Vicious. 'Oh yes, Mr Ferocious, dear,' Mercury bit back. 'We are doing our best.'

this is totally made up

Sid's dead, Freddie's dead, and they were alone together - who's doing the quoting?

Or maybe there wasn't anyone sitting at the piano with him.

after careful deliberation - listened to the album over the weekend - voting "when the whip comes down." but the whole holds up while being SO of its time w/o sounding dated. (every college party I attended in 1978 featured this LP & talking heads "buildings & food" and DEVO!) guitar sound is crisp & funky: arguably the last all-out stones classic.

'When I die I'll go to heaven, cause I've spent my time in hell' is cribbed from a Korean war vet motto, isn't it?
― calstars, Friday, June 25, 2010 8:04 PM

It may well be an Army thing from way back, but it was definitely used by guys in Vietnam - I distinctly remember the slogan being referenced in Michael Herr's "Dispatches" which came out in '77.

http://www.vspa.com/images-zippo/zippo-bt-levinson-2-1969-1970.jpg

http://www.camosurplus.com/images/tour_jackets/vietnam_qui_nhon.jpg

Some Girls and "Who Are You" were more oblique, but I'm equally confident that their creators felt both liberated and threatened by punk in roughly equal measure, and that punk was very much on their minds when those records were made

Indeed. Townshend in 1977: "I'm sure I invented it, and yet it's left me behind. ... I prayed for it, and yet it's too late for me to truly participate. I feel like an engineer. Just let me...watch."

Also, "Who Are You" was written the morning after (and about) a drunken encounter with Paul Cook and Steve Jones in a pub.

Thank you, Tarfumes. As with anyone who takes my side when I'm politely disagreeing with xhuxk, you've just won yourself a brand-new set of steak knives. (For you, sw00ds, nothing!)

You're welcome. The thing is, Townshend was willing to engage punk in a way none of his peers were. Not just because they were scared of/felt threatened by it (not all were), but because none of them had the kind of artist-performer relationship that the Who had. Townshend (and, to a far lesser but still significant degree, Daltrey) constantly pored over all possible meanings and implications of any given shift in scenery because of how the Who's engagement with their audiences had been formed in their early days.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Daaaamn.

shocked that BoB beat Miss You...these polls are wacky!

fuck i forgot to vote. i'd have liked to seen a lot more votes for respectable, but tbh i often start on side 2 so i don't blow my wad on miss you, so my vote woulda gone to that.

ok who voted for far away eyes

I like those results, actually. "Beast of Burden" was my runner-up.

i was unable to decide between "miss you", "lies", and "shattered". depends on my mood, i guess.

Expanded Reissues of Some Girls due in November

I like these results. I don't get why there's a couple of posts upthread saying Shattered sounds frightening. It sounds like Jagger's doing a funky rant against NYC and none of the notes played are particulary dismal. Then again, I can't think of any Rolling Stones song that I'd qualify as scary.

The album cover for this release tho, is definitely scary.

I was frightened at the time.

btw I forgot about the xhuxk-clemenza-Soto panel.

I was in my early 20s when I first heard this album... I wasn't around at the time of the release and I didn't get to hear it when I was younger. Is there any particular reason you found it scary Soto? Or is it just Jagger's persona which scared you off?

My first interaction with the Stones music was the bridges of babylon album I was about 11 or 12 I think... and although there wasn't anything particulary scary about that record I did find Mick Jagger's voice oddly disturbing. I'd say his over-sexed persona sometimes borders on rapist and when you're young and new to the whole sex thing listening to him is a bit too much. You just want to to take it slowly and he's giving you the whole thing without any foreplay.

mick's unbelievable mugging in that faraway eyes clip posted above is kinda scary tbh

sometimes I marvel that anyone ever took Mick Jagger seriously. more often than not I find his antics positively clownish/silly

cf. Mick Jagger doing the funky chicken, or the "naughty schoolteacher", or the "watch me attempt to imitate James Brown"

"Gimme Shelter" and "Sway" are the only times he ever sounds demonic.

would add memo from turner + some live versions of midnight rambler to that list.

sympathy for the devil too

sway he sounds half asleep, not demonic

scary=anything off dirty work

There's a live CD/DVD from the 1978 tour coming out this fall, too.

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sometimes I marvel that anyone ever took Mick Jagger seriously. more often than not I find his antics positively clownish/silly

― you will always be wrong (Shakey Mo Collier), miércoles 14 de septiembre de 2011 07:53 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cf. Mick Jagger doing the funky chicken, or the "naughty schoolteacher", or the "watch me attempt to imitate James Brown"

― you will always be wrong (Shakey Mo Collier)

Yeah I get he's being silly, but when you're young and non-british you can't tell the difference and you think he's actually serious so it's borderline creepy. Nowadays I get the humour and I love it.

I do love it sometimes, others I find it distracting. oddly the most genuinely affecting Stones moment for me is "Dead Flowers", a song Jagger reportedly could not/did not take seriously at all.

Track Listing for Reissue

Damn! The three-guitar lineup at its purest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=oBlLbNVBKCc

"Do You Think I Really Care" and "Claudine" = classic

The Some Girls bonus disc is the best Stones album since...Some Girls?

Sheer Heart Attack constantly referred to in this thread as being from 1977. It came out in 74. Kind of makes the discussion of it being influenced by punk irrelevant,as if the whole punk conversation on this thread wasn't irrelevant enough.

I wouldn't want to reopen the specifics of what we were going on about three years ago, but surely punk is very relevant to a Rolling Stones album in 1978. I looked up the Jagger Rolling Stone interview from that year, and there's this:

RS: Yet during that time you also wrote "Time Waits for No One," which really is a powerful, ominous, vatic song that no one commented on that much — as if it were a Seventies throwaway.

MJ: I liked it a lot. But I don't see things in terms of years — the Sixties, the Seventies — it's just a journalistic convention.

Punk rock, too. I don't want to get into the accusations that the Rolling Stones gave in or up or whatever. It's sort of vaguely true, but it's not really true. To me, rock & roll just goes back to the basic things. It doesn't exist because other people don't come across, it exists because kids want to get up and play very simple. The punk-rock movement said things to get a lot of copy. It's just an excuse to say that Rod Stewart lives in Hollywood and spends millions of dollars. It was just a good line. It wasn't the real reason punk rock existed.

I looked up the interview because I was pretty sure that the topic of punk would come up somewhere. But I expected it to come from the interviewer, not Jagger. I don't have any doubt that it was a subject very much on his mind at the time. This too:

http://www.iorr.org/talk/read.php?1,1560468,1560905

and there's Jann Wenner's 1995 interview:

WENNER:
You came back, though, with “Some Girls.” Did that have to do, perhaps, with being in New York City?
JAGGER:
Yes, you are absolutely right! Well done! I’d moved to New York at that point. The inspiration for the record was really based in New York and the ways of the town. I think that gave it an extra spur and hardness. And then, of course, there was the punk thing that had started in 1976. Punk and disco were going on at the same time, so it was quite an interesting period. New York and London, too. Paris – there was punk there. Lots of dance music. Paris and New York had all this Latin dance music, which was really quite wonderful. Much more interesting than the stuff that came afterward.

Don't these opening lines specifically address/make fun of their situation with regards to punk?

Well now we’re respected in society
We don’t worry about the things that we used to be
We’re talking heroin with the president
Well it’s a problem, sir, but it can’t be bent

("But it can't be bent"? Cut-and-paste from some lyrics site...)

That's the way I hear it. And I have no idea how those lyrics relate to punk. Just cuz some girls came out in '78 and had some fast songs doesn't mean it's a "punk" record. The whole "punk" narrative, an example of which is contained in this thread, is so goddam overblown

Overblown, maybe, but not irrelevant. It seems so obvious. Besides the quote from Jagger above, here's Richards two years ago:

"Without a doubt, the punks certainly made us sort of look around and say, 'Oh my God, we've been around for 10 years already!' The energy of the punk thing affected Some Girls in many ways."

The Rolling Stones didn't make music in a vacuum. They seemed acutely aware of what was going on around them at every stage of their career--Brill Building pop, psychedelia, glam, reggae, disco, whatever. As far as "Respectable" goes, they seem to be either making fun of the punk view of them at the time, or reveling in it--you're right, we hang out at Studio 54 with Truman Capote and Andy Warhol now, take drugs with Margaret Trudeau, don't you wish you were us?

Or both.

dig this

But I don't see things in terms of years — the Sixties, the Seventies — it's just a journalistic convention.

the basic things

this record still siren calls all my most kneejerk cheeseball wastrel instincts

like to lay around all afternoon and eat cheeseballs you mean

that is not a terrible way to spend an afternoon

any daypart basically

been thinking about the songwriting of the earlier 70s albums lately, esp. 'sticky fingers', and i was struck by how many of their songs seemed to start over every 2 bars or so, probably due to being written around riffs, but to hide that fact through a lot of very musical interplay from the band, with people always playing around the main block determined by that riff rather than right in it, so that the songs always just seem very restive. nothing with the very stodgy architectonic feel of ~~~songwriting~~~ you can get from 70s rock. or more conventional pop songwriting's blocked-out feel. when they switch to definite 4-bar forms or something else, it becomes obvious that they do it not just because of the prosody in the lyrics, but because they opt for harmonic structures that make for more conventional rises and falls to mark out the bars.

which is maybe one of the many thrilling things about 'miss you', the basic cell is 4 bars and it's got this incredible boiling billowing motion to it because of the harmonic structure and because of the disco bass arpeggiating all over the place, but it's still being used the way they tended to use their 2-bar cells in an earlier period, with the guitars especially using the space created by the empty fourth bar after the 3-bar riff to make the song like a five minute rubato that still has that charlie watts motor underneath

One of the discoveries of the last twenty years is how many of the riff rockers were actually written by Mick.

Co-DJ'd a fan afterparty for this weekend's Stones concert. One of the turntable needles was acting up, skipping/skating/sticking on perfectly fine records and such, and of course one of the places it got stuck was on that line during "Some Girls".

woke turntable

^^I still laugh about that. It was a Kanye sample waiting to happen.

Reviving because I was today years old when I learned about the CBS version of the album cover from the '80s.

https://images.recordsale.de/600/600/therollingstones-somegirls(41).jpg

Ah:

A third version of the album cover with the hand-drawn faces from the original Valmore ad was used on the 1986 CD reissue.

Re-upping the reference to the videos from their live in texas '78 show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYvy3kBYN4Q

sexandsexandsexandsexandsex

shmatteshmatteshmatte

...some kind of fashion

Jumpin' Jack Flash on that Texas show is really hot.

I actually have this show on Blu-Ray, and the picture quality is stunning. (It was shot on film and they still had the camera neg well-preserved.) Worth owning, especially since I usually see used copies for less then $10.