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.

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.