Happy

If any Rolling Stones song is Keith’s official anthem, this one’s it. It’s got his attitude and no coincidence, it’s his best performance as frontman. Now compare the decades-apart life performances. In 1972, the sound is dirty, hard and fast, almost chaotic. In 2006 the same song sounds clean and streamlined, the playing impeccably professional, the venue a new world record in itself. Look at those arthritic old monkeys, hopping about on a stage the size of football field. Conventional wisdom says the old performance has to be superior. Yes, things have changed, but was it for better or worse? Because, for one thing, in 1972 Keith Richards was simply in no condition. It’s supposed to be Keith’s big number, but the focus is steadfastly on the irresistible spectacle of Mick Jagger’s arse. Mick’s not hogging the spotlight, he’s just taking up the slack – Keith, eyes rolled back and teeth missing, can barely cough out the chorus. By 2006, though, he’s earned his full three minutes of solo spotlight. In his book, he noted with pride his ongoing improvement as a singer, and you have to notice it – the old devil’s gotten way better in front of the microphone. Say what you will about aging rock stars with more money than God commanding two-million-member audiences, but this time around Keith’s actually conscious for his big number, and relishing it.

 

Life

Keith Richards’ autobiography has rocketed to the top of my favorite Stones books list, with good reason. It’s not like other celebrity memoirs, not written to make a buck, grind an axe, or make the author look good. It doesn’t have the anonymous bland tone that signals the hand of the ghostwriter. It takes off in a chatty conversational voice that is unmistakably Keith, and it shows, over 550 pages, what it’s like to be Keith. That’s an epic achievement in itself. Keith Richards has always cut a mysterious and slightly terrifying figure. Always on the run from the law, knife in boot, weaseling out of one scrape after another while all around him his associates drop like flies. Did he sell his soul to the devil? Ineffably cool, but not exactly likable. Well, now he’s managed to make himself very likable indeed, by making no apologies about his badness.

Life is no tour guide to rock star depravity. It’s a love story – between Keith and his music. It runs throughout the book, an undimmed, unabashed, joyful enthusiasm for all things musical. Keith Richards really fucking digs his job, and he’s never stopped being amazed at his success. Not his popularity or ability to fill stadiums, but just the ability to play and write songs and make great music and earn the respect of other musicians. There are constant long asides about the technicalities of guitar heroism, stuff about tuning and strings and dropped chords. As a non-musician, I’ve never understood the significance of those things, and this is the closest I’ve ever come to grasping it. It’s the best window on how those famous sounds came to be. That alone makes the old devil immensely sympathetic. Also, his disinterest in repeating the sordid old anecdotes. There’s some juicy bits there, all right, but they’re not the point. The notorious pissing on the wall incident doesn’t even merit a mention. Richards isn’t interested in what’s been talked to death already, he wants to tell the stories he thinks are important. Like a daring rainbound cat rescue, a childhood accident with a rock, or how he met his wife’s family for the first time. The death of Brian Jones is dealt with in a few lines – he’d been written off as a goner long before he took that fateful midnight swim – while the deaths of Ian Stewart, Gram Parsons, and Keith’s mother are given full requiem.

Besides music, the other long running love story is the one with Mick Jagger, of course. The notorious Glimmer Twins who used to be thick as thieves are now barely cordial, to Keith’s eternal chagrin. Mick Jagger has changed, not for the better, thinks Keith, while Keith has stayed steadfastly the same. It was Marianne Faithfull, in her own memoir, who called it out that those two were really the loves of each others lives. What I think we have here is the kind of passionate romantic friendship that used to flourish among the Victorians, a Platonic union stronger and more important than any marriage or sexual relationship. Each party complains bitterly about the other’s shortcomings, accusations of betrayal fly, sometimes blows are exchanged, but they always come back to each other. Keith repeatedly complains that Mick is jealous and hostile, actively trying to block potential ‘rivals’, but he seems unaware that his own criticism of Mick, Mick’s personality and Mick’s solo work comes off more like the bitterness of a neglected spouse than any valid point being made. The shocking and much publicized denigration of Jagger’s manhood does occur, but the context is more interesting than the slur itself. In the same paragraph Keith claims not to care about Mick’s affair with Anita Pallenberg on the set of Performance, brags about nailing Marianne and suggests that Donald Cammell’s suicide was good riddance. Reading between the lines, it’s clear the betrayal stung and stings still. The low blow is just a jab of payback. It’s a tragedy, according Keith Richards, that Mick Jagger had to grow up and become the monstrous ego demon “Mick Jagger.” After all those years and ups and downs, he’s still missing the kid on the train with the blues records.

Jagger has become the “Jagger” we know and love. He grew out of his blues purism and his stance against the world, accepted his knighthood, let the flattery and flashbulbs go to his head, and runs The Rolling Stones like a well-oiled money making machine. Richards has stayed the same blues-obsessed outlaw who goes to sleep hugging his guitar. He’s the one who exults in the honor of being allowed to jam with the locals in Jamaica, or the honor of playing with obscure but brilliant sidemen who haven’t seen the spotlight since the fifties. Jagger is delighted to have Wyclef Jean as a collaborator. Richards thinks it’s an honor to write with Tom Waits. They used to be The Glimmer Twins, now two more opposite men cannot be found, but together they still manage to form one badass entity called The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger reveals bits of himself in his songs, but he will probably never open up and tell his side of the story. Thank God Keith Richards is open-hearted enough to share his life with us.

Had It With You

I love you, dirty fucker
sister and a brother
moaning in the moonlight
singing for your supper
‘cos i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it i had it i had it with you
You always seem to haunt me
always try to haunt me
serving out injuctions
shouting out instructions
but i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it i had it i had it with you
And i love you with a passion
in and out of fashion
always got behind you
when others tried to blind you
but i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it i had it i had it with you
It is such a sad thing
to watch a good love die
i’ve had it up to here babe
i’ve got to say goodbye
‘cos i had it i had it i had it with you
and i had it i had it i had it with you
Loved you in the lean years
loved you in the fat ones
you’re a mean mistreater
you’re a dirty dirty rat scum
i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it i had it i had it with you
i had it with you
i had it with you
i had it with you………

According to Keith: “That’s the kind of mood I was in. I wrote ‘Had It With You’ in Ronnie’s front room in Chiswick, right on the banks of the Thames. We were waiting to go back to Paris, but the weather was so dodgy that we were stranded until the Dover ferry started rolling again [...] There was no heating, and the only way to keep warm was to turn up the amps. I don’t think I’d ever written a song before, apart from maybe “All About You,” in which I realized I was actually singing about Mick.”

There you have Dirty Work, an album primarily interesting as a document of the torn and frayed partnership of the former Glimmer Twins. As I suspected, Keith’s book provides deep insight into how and why (Keith thinks) the Jagger/Richards team went inseparable to barely on speaking terms. It’s because Mick Jagger is so selfish and full of himself, evidently. What Mick’s side of the story is, we’ll probably never really know, but I imagine he would say something about what an incorrigible, unreliable, unprofessional, drunk-addicted wreck Keith spent most of his life being.  Then Keith would call Mick a vain, jet-setting, trend-hopping fashion victim. Then maybe there’d be a fistfight. It’s clear to see why they live on different continents now. Obviously, The Rolling Stones are an entity much greater than the sum of its parts. Alone, Mick is all like “let’s go to the biggest most expensive studio with all the most famous people!” and Keith is like “let’s just jam in my garage for a while and drink whiskey.” As their solo records attest, neither approach is all that good. But together, they can have that jamming-in-the-garage-with-whiskey vibe, and have the biggest and best studio, and bring in the most famous people or the best, most obscure people and be the best of both worlds.

Gunface

The Stones being hardcore and urban in their golden years. All part of their sporadic interest in criminality and violence. Even in 1997 the boys could still get hip. This is the closest to a hip-hop beat they’ve ever come to, and with their usual verve and aggression. Bridges To Babylon has some really bright moments. The whole thing does sag on the second half, due to an unwise sequencing of three very long and slow sad ballads all in a row at the end. There’s also some heartfelt and poetic lyrics, but not in this song. This is your typical moment of Mick Jagger imagining himself to be a violent criminal. (Keith Richards actually is a violent criminal, famously armed to the teeth, so no need for him to imagine anything.) Now generally, violent lyrics about teaching people (especially girls) a lesson are a disturbing turnoff, but such macho posturing from someone as effeminate and pampered as Jagger is kind of adorable. Jagger has gotten away with a lot of nasty lyrics about whipping slaves and slashing throats without coming off like an irredeemable asshole because it’s so clearly a campy fantasy and he’d never dream of knifing anyone, for fear of getting blood on his trousers. Richards is another story; he’d easily knife and shoot you, but only if provoked and he’s not the one prancing around singing about it.

Gun

Get ready for another impassioned defense of Mick Jagger’s solo career. Seriously, some of it is really good, especially that last one. Who are you gonna believe, me or Keith Richards? I’m still angry with Keith for calling Goddess In The Doorway ‘dogshit’. Although I concede that it’s probable he was just joking. I’m in the middle of reading Keef’s fascinating memoir, and it’s shedding a lot of light on their songwriting dynamics. I suspect that by the end of it I may have to reconsider some of my assumptions about the whole relationship. Like why they continually fight like old spouses. (Because in a way, they are old spouses.) The theory stands now that the reason The Rolling Stones’ songwriting has (purportedly) declined in quality is because The Glimmer Twins don’t spend as much time occupying the same continent as they used to, losing that essential ongoing give-and-take of mutual inspiration. While at their zenith in the sixties, those two practically shared one brain, but over the years they drifted apart both geographically and in other ways. By the 80′s both were increasingly writing by themselves and delivering nearly finished songs to the studio. And since Jagger has been writing songs by himself and either recording them with the Stones or saving them for his solos, there really isn’t a significant difference in quality between Stones songs and solo songs – they all come from the same basket. Of course, not having that group dynamic does make a difference, as does choice of collaborators. I mean, Lenny Kravitz looks good in eyeliner and all, but musically he’s not fit to lick Keith’s dirty bootheels. Which might be why Keith chafes so that Lenny’s the one who gets to play on what’s actually some pretty funky songs that Mick wrote and hoarded all to himself. Sometimes I wish Mick and Keith would just go ahead and marry each other now that it’s legal.

Going Home

This is for one thing, one of my top played songs ever, according to software that tallies such things, and for sure my top played Rolling Stones song. You might not know this one if you’ve never listened to Aftermath all the way through. I never get tired of saying that sometimes the deep album tracks outshine the singles. It’s also the Stones’ longest song, at over ten minutes. But most of all, it’s their sexiest song and maybe the sexiest song ever period. The Rolling Stones, are of course, the world’s sexiest rock’n'roll band. I mean that in a couple different ways. In the looks department, obviously, Mick Jagger is among the sexiest human beings ever to strut the earth. They’re sexy in terms of glamour and lifestyle, because nothing is sexier than flirting with death and disaster. But those opinions of mine you’re not obligated to agree with. You have to agree, though, that The Stones’ music sexy. The way Keith Richards plays guitar, on top of Bill and Charlie’s rhythm section exactly mimics the throbbing of blood and the pounding of the heart. Their rhythm is just incredibly sexual. Add to that Mick Jagger’s voice, which swings from whip to caress in a single line, and you have the world’s best musical approximation of doing the wild and nasty. Listening to the Stones while in a seriously open minded chemical condition increases the effect. It’s actually rather a suitable substitute for sex, if you’re fucked up, horny and alone. This song especially, along with Midnight Rambler and Stray Cat Blues, mimics exactly the rhythm of a good fuck, driving inexorably to climax on as if on a heartbeat. Jagger’s vocal might actually be his most salacious, not to mention the lyrics, all about fantasizing about coming home to a girl who makes him ‘feel alright’. Listen to him sing his “shalalala sha la la la’s”  and it gets real slow and then he moans and chokes a little, then the handclaps come in, and then the speed picks up again harder than before, and he’s saying “come on, come on”… If you’re not mentally fucking Mick Jagger by the time it gallops to climax, you must be made of wood. Those are the dirtiest eleven minutes ever recorded.

Get Off of My Cloud

 ”I never dug it as a record. The chorus was a nice idea, but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in L.A. and it was time for another single. But how do you follow-up “Satisfaction”? Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew Loog Oldham’s worst productions.”

Sez Keef. Yeah. The Stones were probably England’s worst-produced hitmakers in 1966. Keith might have complained about making singles at great speed and under a lot of pressure, but it suited them just fine. When the punks spat at them for being relics a decade later, they sucked it up, took a deep breath and came back with Some Girls, one of their most classic LPs. The Stones weren’t going to let anyone show them up – they were the original punks. They were the ones who cared about the energy of their playing more than production values, cared more about expressing their youthful discontent more than being liked or looking pretty. Generations of three-guitar garage bands have looked up to Get Off My Cloud, with its horrible production and pissed-of spirit. Maybe the poor sound blurs the playing, but it’s the driving aggressiveness that matters. It’s a shame though, how the vocal mixed down into incomprehensibility, for as usual under the noise lie some clever lyrics. If this were coming from somebody who gets high regard for their wordsmithery, scholars would have lauded Jagger’s sharp use of quotation and dialogue to subtly subvert his own meaning.  The line “Just ’cause you feel so good, do you have to drive me out of my head?” which is one of the few comprehensively enunciated lines and thus the most famous, appears to be the singer’s complaint about the annoyances in his life, but is in fact spoken by a man on the telephone who calls to complain about all the noise. Thus the writer is aggravated by the intrusion into his privacy, yet also acknowledges his own capacity to intrude on others, giving the iconic line to a presumed adversary, and so taking the entire songs out of the realm of selfish angst into a more universal diatribe against the inevitable grinding headache that intrudes on everyone’s cloud. That’s what critics would say if Mick Jagger ever got a dime’s worth of credit for his writing abilities.

Fingerprint File

Here is another obscure Rolling Stones album deep cut notable for being not your typical Rolling Stones. It’s been one of critics’ favorite laments that the Stones lean too heavily on the same formula, churning out an endless supply of generic ‘Stones rockers’ without branching out or experimenting. While it’s true that they do churn out the rockers (because they’re smart fellows and they know what sells) it’s also true that a listen to any of their album beyond the hit singles reveals a voracious appetite for branching. It’s the ongoing teeter-totter of Mick Jagger’s polyglot restlessness against Keith Richards’ traditionalism.

In the case of Fingerprint File, it’s one of their earlier forays into dance music, incorporating wah-wahs, phase effects and a slinky funk groove. For me, it’s always brought to mind Thriller-era Michael Jackson. It’s in the insistent groove with roots  on the disco floor and Motown, a combination that was Jackson’s calling card. Also, the they’re-out-to-get-me sense of paranoia is Jacksonesque – a boy who lived 44 of his fifty years with a microphone and/or camera shoved in his face can’t help but feel persecuted. But particularly the high pitched YOWs Jagger unleashes at the end sound just like Michael Jackson. Jackson, of course, was fourteen when It’s Only Rock’N'Roll came out and had not yet developed the sound he’d become known for later in life, so it’s a prescient coincidence. Listen to the studio recording to get the full effect. Jagger is in upper-register throughout, alternating yelpy with breathy in an eerily close approximation of what Michael Jackson’s vocal style would evolve into. The more subdued concert outing sticks closer to classic Stonesiness.

As far as the paraniod theme of the song, it’s not so outlandish. Today the famous and infamous can expect to be imprisoned in a glass bubble of constant scrutiny, but that’s not what Jagger is talking about here. He’s talking about government persecution and he’s not far off. At the height of their ‘bad boy’ notoriety in the sixties, The Rolling Stones (and other rock stars) were subject to surveillance and wiretapping by Scotland Yard, which in the end resulted in the famed Redlands bust. In that event it is believed the police had tapped Keith’s phone line and the phones of his friends. Clearly, illegal phone intrusion has a proud and storied history. (In that event also, the now scandalized and defunct News Of the World played a significant role.) It was partly to get away from that hostile environment that the Stones fled to France at the close of the sixties. In the seventies things weren’t much better for rock stars. It’s well known that the  FBI conducted a long-running investigation of John Lennon before finally granting him a greencard. Mick Jagger was absolutely right to feel edgy and paranoid – he was being monitored, followed and eavesdropped upon.

Factory Girl

More of Mick Jagger’s patented ersatz country, this time in the service of a character sketch, which I think he does not enough of. It’s impossible to tell whether it is about someone real or just a sketch or even if it’s honest or joking – Jagger is opaque that way. At first I thought he was mocking the poor schlubs who get their feet wet waiting for girls who are not international jet-setters to come out of work – Jagger can be mean that way. Then I thought, maybe he’s thinking back on his own days of waiting in the rain for girls who work and have stains on their dress. Looking at the conversation going on on YouTube I saw an entirely different view. Some people are hearing it as a tribute to a whole generation of ‘factory girls’ – the hardworking women who kept industry churning during the war years. Mick Jagger, born in 1943, must have known a lot of such women growing up, and no doubt remembers a few of them. He could have been thinking of people he knew as a child when he wrote this song. We can only speculate, but however you understand it, it’s one of Jagger’s best observational lyrics.

Musically, it’s an interesting beast too. Keith Richards called it “Something like ‘Molly Malone’, an Irish jig; one of those ancient Celtic things that emerge from time to time, or an Appalachian song.” Charlie Watts said “On ‘Factory Girl’, I was doing something you shouldn’t do, which is playing the tabla with sticks instead of trying to get that sound using your hand, which Indian tabla players do, though it’s an extremely difficult technique and painful if you’re not trained.” And Jagger said “The country songs, like ‘Factory Girl’ or ‘Dear Doctor’ on Beggars Banquet were really pastiche. There’s a sense of humour in country music anyway, a way of looking at life in a humorous kind of way – and I think we were just acknowledging that element of the music.” All interesting things to know. Of course there’s no reason why Jagger couldn’t have been thinking of an old girlfriend, and remembering factory workers in the forties, and at the same time been happily poking fun at Appalachian folk music.

Raise a glass to the good and the evil…

And the ongoing survival of this fellow.