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The Rolling Stones in the press: “Stones Find Moss Retardent Elixir” (by Richard Riegel)
Don’t come sniffing up the leg of this review, you necrophiliac kids, this is no obituary; the Rolling Stones are still alive and on target. Not that Some Girls is as morally incisive as Let It Bleed, or even so permanent a Statement as Exile On Main Street. But it’s undoubtedly the best studio album the Stones have made since Exile. The tedious pseudo-reggae of Black And Blue has given way to refreshingly kinetic rock ’n’ roll, played almost entirely by your five basic Stones.
So punk’s earned its keep, all right, if for no other reason than making these (relative) geezers get off their clouds and bust their asses for rock ’n’ roll one more time. Some Girls handles the New Wave competition less by head-on confrontation (which would be suicidal) than by the Stones’ tried & true gambit of running out their own impelling visions, while the lumpen-rock masses thrash away at “trends” across the tracks. The Stones seemed a lot more threatened by the competition from David Bowie in ’73 (when they responded with the dreadfully inbred “Angie”), than they have by the contemporary punkers (who swiped most of their bête noir readymades out of the Stones’ stylebook, anyhow).
Some Girls features a die-cut cover (a la Zep’s Physical Graffiti) which enables the casual listener to slip the liner-borne visages of the Stones and other jetset celebs in and out of an essence-of-sleaze wig display ad direct from the back pages of Ebony. jacket lists the song titles, and all the inspiring technical data, floating among the bustout merchandise of an equally-gamy bra ad. So just whose fetish is being gored, huh, Stones? Yours, or ours?
Packaging aside, Some Girls is less a concept album than a collection of disparate songs, just like those fabled LPs of our youth. The Stones have already begun to have a double-sided radio hit with the single “Miss You” / “Far Away Eyes,” and those tunes lead off the respective sides of Some Girls. “Miss You” almost pogos back to the lazily-syncopated yearning of Black And Blue, but pulls out a touch of class with a sardonic talking break (…some Puerto Rican girls just “dyin’ to meet you”) by the irresistible Mick.
Yet “Far Away Eyes” is such a cheap, dopey shot that it could become the biggest lowest-common-denominator hit since “Short People.” Check it out: Limey-eyed Mick is ostensibly passing through Bakersfield, CA, and manages to patronize some stoopid C&W shitkicker he catches on his car radio, and at the same time he caters down to the ersatz-cuntree tastes of the Pacifica Culture (thanks for that term, Gov. Jerry) with all this romantic “far away eyes” blather.
But after all, Mick is less of an American than you or me (never thought of that, did you?), so how could he possibly understand the whys and wherefores of our indigenous folkways? He and his blood-brother Stones fare better by working out on the N.Y.C. scene, as in “When The Whip Comes Down,” an obscure allegory about a gay garbage collector (?) learning all the ropes (so to speak) of the Big Bad Apple. All the S&M is in the staccato beat itself, but that’s plenty enough. “Shattered” kids Lou Reed in the way he should have been kidded all along, re his family’s probable Judeo-Capitalist ethic (“Don’t you know the prime rate’s goin’ up-up-up!”).
Okay, moving on down through these cuts—“Some Girls” may be the best groupie-celebratory alma mater yet, Mick doesn’t mess with cheap sentiment, just totes up all the ladies of the universe he’s had (“Some girls give me children… etc.). There, but for the grace of niggeerlips, go… (sigh). “Lies” and “Respectable” are yer basic Chuck Berry riffs this time around, with the latter as much of a comment on Margaret Trudeau as we’re likely to get from Mr. Jagger at this late date.
“(Just My) Imagination” is the Motown remake, more carefully soulful than 1974’s “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” and “Before They Make Me Run” is Keith’s say, a not-so-oblique reference to his impending legal troubles (vocal cocky and skeered all at once). “Beast Of Burden” (knew the Stones were going to write a song around that title sooner or later) is the old “Under My Thumb” domination come down to at least a draw in the don/sub exchange, in the spirit of modern liberation.
So it’s only rock ’n’ roll, but I never stopped loving that. And yeah, the Stones’ll always be smarter than the vast majority of their competitors. Always.
Oh, almost forgot. Ron Wood’s guitar is meshing into the ensemble sound more and more aggressively, but the reason he wears that non-Stone Grin in the group photos is that 1) he still can’t believe he’s really a Rollin’ fuckin’ STONE; and 2) Keith is goosing him off-camera.
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