The Stones and Me

This Saturday my wife Leslie and I will see the Rolling Stones in Austin, on the next-to-last date of possibly their last tour. I’ve been an off-and-on fan of the World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band for most of my life and, at their peak in the late 60s and early 70s, they indeed were the best. I haven’t paid much attention to the band in the last few decades so, to get ready for the show, I’ve been listening to all their music chronologically. These are my recollections as I’ve gone through the records.

I discovered girls and rock ‘n’ roll at about the same time, when I was 10 or 11 in 1965, when I heard Keith’s guitar riff on Satisfaction. You know the one I’m talking about. I guess it’s kind of funny that I could relate to “I can’t get no girl reaction” when I was just starting out! [Okay, here’s the first Google-derived surprise: I always heard that line as “girly action”!]

Satisfaction was actually on the Stones fourth American album, Out of Our Heads, when they were really just beginning to write their own stuff. My grade school buddy Rob Connor had all the early ones. I used to borrow his until I finally went out and bought them all.  (Spotify has both US and UK versions of many of the Stones albums, as well as “Deluxe” re-releases but for the most part I stuck with the versions I grew up with in my journey through the past.)

The first one, England’s Newest Hitmakers, released in the US in May of 1964, was a trip through American R&B music, including songs by Willie Dixon (I Just Want to Make Love to You), Jimmy Reed (Honest I Do), Chuck Berry (Carol) and Rufus Thomas (Walking the Dog). The album includes the first Jagger/Richards song, Tell Me, as well as two bluesy songs credited to “Nanker Phelge”, the pseudonym for the whole band. So for me the early Stones were also a primer of American soul music.

One interesting thing is that, for the US version, they added Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away, perhaps after noting how the Beatles had exploded earlier in the year with their heavily Buddy Holly-influenced sound. 

The second American album, 1964’s 12x5, continued the Stones love affair with soul music, including another Chuck Berry (Around and Around), Bobby Womack’s It’s All Over Now, Under the Boardwalk Susie Q, as well as three Jagger/Richards songs and two more group compositions including 2120 South Michigan Avenue, the address of Chess Records in Chicago, where the track was recorded. I worked in Chicago for a few weeks in 2014. One night my college friend Jeff Korman was driving me back to my hotel from dinner, along S. Michigan Avenue. The Stones song flashed into my mind from 50 years earlier and there it was, Chess Studios (now a museum)!

The version of Time is on My Side on the album starts with a lame organ intro but was re-recorded for the single with a nasty guitar intro!

In 1965 came their third album, The Rolling Stones Now, with their first Otis Redding song, Pain in My Heart (written by Allen Toussaint). The Stones led me to Otis; he’s still my favorite singer.

Satisfaction was released in June of 1965, when I was 10, and became the Stones’ first #1 hit in the US. The music and guitar riff are all Keith, a harbinger of what was to come, the words classic Mick. It came out on Out of Our Heads in July, along with another Stones classic, The Last Time. R&B covers included Sam Cooke’s Good Times, Marvin Gaye’s Hitch Hike, and another Otis song, That’s How Strong My Love Is.

December’s Children (And Everybody’s), a collection of singles and UK-only songs, was released in late December 1965. Get Off My Cloud, such a badass song, was the big song, but the album includes two other Jagger/Richards compositions, I’m Free and As Tears Go By. It also includes the Stones’ first country cover, Hank Snow’s I’m Moving On.

I’m Free has always been an anthem for me, but just picture an 11-year old proclaiming

I'm free to choose whom I please any old time
I'm free to please whom I choose any old time
So hold me, love me
Love me, hold me
But I'm free any old time to get what I want
Yes, I am

As Tears Go By was probably the first song I slow danced to, at summer camp in 1966, so probably also the first time I touched a girl!

Aftermath came out in July 1966 and was the first album consisting entirely of Jagger/Richards songs. To me this was a very English album, with Lady Jane, Stupid Girl (“like a lady in waiting to a virgin Queen”), I Am Waiting (which Jagger pronounces “Whiting”). Paint It Black was the big song from the album. This album probably represents the peak of Brian Jones’ influence on the band, bringing in new instruments including the sitar, dulcimer and marimbas. That is, when he showed up and wasn’t too drugged out.

Between the Buttons came out in early 1967, as the psychedelic period in music and culture was gearing up. Two of my favorite Stones song are the first and third cuts on the album and they couldn’t be more different. Let’s Spend the Night Together is a classic bad-boy rocker (Ed Sullivan made them sing it “Let’s spend some time together” although Jagger mumbled the line so you can’t really tell what he is saying - see the video), which you know exactly what it’s about while Ruby Tuesday is in the Stones’ soft, poetic, orchestral genre. I still don’t know whether Jagger’s saying “cash”, “cache” or “catch” your dreams before they slip away. (Google says “catch”). The album concludes with a vaudeville-sounding track about LSD (?), Something Happened to Me Yesterday, which includes the first Keith lead vocal.

Charlie did the back-cover artwork for Between the Buttons. The best image of it I can find is here.

Flowers (Summer 1967) was a collection of singles and other non-previously released on album songs. Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow features Keith’s fuzz guitar like on Satisfaction. Two of my favorite lesser-known Stones songs are on Flowers: Back Street Girl (an illicit romance with a girl from the other side of the tracks, a theme Jagger would return to frequently) and Sittin’ On A Fence:

All of my friends at school grew up and settled down

And they mortgaged up their lives

One thing’s not said too much, but I think it's true

They just get married 'cause there's nothing else to do, so

I'm just sittin’ on a fence

You can say I got no sense

Trying to make up my mind

Really is too horrifying

So I'm sittin’ on a fence

Their Satanic Majesties Request came out at the end of 1967, full blown psychedelic music. There’s a lot of weird shit in here – Bill Wyman’s only (?) vocal ever, the heavily reverbed In Another Land. A vaudeville-type song, On With the Show, about a strip club. But there are several songs that rock, most notably She’s A Rainbow. For those who want to compare it to the Beatle’s, Sgt. Peppers, from earlier in the year, I would only ask, is there anything on Sgt. Peppers you can dance to?

So now it’s 1968, a very hard year. The escalation of the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin and Bobby, police violence against protesters in Chicago and Paris, the election of Richard Nixon. I’m 14 and awakening politically, only to see my heroes killed and a stupid war continuing.

Musically the pyschedelic craze is passing and rock ‘n’ roll is returning to its roots and the Stones put out one of their best albums, Beggars Banquet, and kicked off what many including myself consider their classic period. They could have stopped the album after the first song, Sympathy For The Devil, and I would still say the same thing. Where to start? The insistent groove, Keith’s sizzling guitar breaks, the ominous feeling that the violence will never end. (The recording was done between June 4 and 10, 1968. The line was changed from “Who killed Kennedy” to “Who killed the Kennedys” as Bobby of course was killed on June 6.) Maybe Mick’s best vocal ever. The repeated “What’s my name” always reminded me of Muhammed Ali pounding Ernie Terrell, who insisted on calling him Cassius Clay, and taunting him with “what’s my name?” However, I can’t find any comments from Jagger that support that.

No Expectations, a simple Robert Johnson-like delta blues, highlighted the band’s return to its roots. The slide guitar is Brian Jones’ last major contribution to the band’s songs.

Street Fighting Man, another Stones classic starts side 2 on the album. So many mixed feelings about this song! Musically, Mick’s strident vocals ringing out over maybe the most forceful acoustic guitar track ever, with Charlie’s drums driving the whole thing. Lyrically, he’s ambivalent about the place of violence or even violent overthrow, to oppose the war and racism, as I was. The first two lines totally grab you but, is Mick advocating fighting in the streets despite being told there’s no place for it or is he literally saying don’t do it?

Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy

'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy

But what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band

'Cause in sleepy London town

There's just no place for a street fighting man, no

As much as I love Stray Cat Blues, with its screaming guitar, I probably knew even at 14 that sex with 15-year old runaways wasn’t right. It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last time where I would have to dissociate myself from the message while digging the song. My rationale was something like, “oh that’s just the Stones being bad!”

I can see that you're fifteen years old

No I don't want your I.D.

And I can see that you're so far from home

But it's no hanging matter

It's no capital crime

Oh yeah, you're a strange stray cat

Oh yeah, don'tcha scratch like that

Oh yeah, you're a strange stray cat

I bet, bet your mama don't know you scream like that

I bet your mother don't know you can spit like that.

By the way, while the Stones were doing all of the above the Beatles were singing about Rocky Racoon and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.

This is a good time to mention a technology that had a huge influence on popular music, namely the growth of FM radio and the corresponding emergence of album-oriented rock. Sympathy was never released as a single for AM and Street Fighting Man never made the Top 40 (it was banned by several stations, including those in Chicago where it was feared to incite violence at the Democratic convention). Instead you would hear them on FM radio and Beggars Banquet was a top-selling album even without a hit single. Meanwhile, Jumping Jack Flash, recorded during the Beggars Banquet sessions, was released as a single only in June of 1968, and Honky Tonk Women would be released the next year.

Jumping Jack Flash was and remains one of the Stones signature songs, almost always included in their concerts. It is the Stones definitive statement of, forget that acid stuff, we are going back to rock ‘n’ roll (and taking it to the next level)!

I’m Jumping Jack Flash it’s a gas, gas, gas

Honky Tonk Women is definitely a Keith song, with Keith supplying the music and chorus (“It's the honky tonk women, Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues”) and Mick filling in the verses. Today I’m reading that the version on Let It Bleed, “Country Honk” was the original version (recorded earlier in 1969), and then Keith turned it into the rocker released as a single, but the single dominated the radio in the summer and fall and the album didn’t come out until December, so I always felt it was the other way around.

Let It Bleed remains my favorite Stones album and its opening track, Gimme Shelter, my favorite song of all time. The song starts with Keith’s multilayered guitars, and builds with Nicky Hopkins’s piano and the producer, Jimmy Miller, on guiro, the Latin American percussion instrument which gives the opening its scratching sound. The guitars build and build. Keith’s bended note right before Mick’s vocal starts may be my favorite note in all of music!

Mick takes the first verse by himself,

Ooh, a storm is threatening

My very life today

If I don't get some shelter

Ooh yeah I'm gonna fade away

Then is joined by Merry Clayton (famously aroused from bed at midnight, pregnant, and rushed to the recording session) for 

War, children

It's just a shot away

Mick then takes the next verse, and both do the War children chorus again. Then another instrumental break and then, Merry Clayton’s scary, apocalyptic, awe-inspiring

Rape, murder, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away

Finally, when the listener is totally drained the tone of the song changes to 

I tell you love, sister

It's just a kiss away

The album then immediately goes into the acoustic Robert Johnson blues number, Love In Vain, featuring Keith’s beautiful slide and lead guitar (Mick Taylor joined the band toward the end of the recording sessions, replacing Brian Jones, but made minimal contributions so almost all of the guitars on the album are Keith).

Country Honk features the fiddling of Byron Berline, one of the best fiddlers of all time. Berline was recommended to the Stones by Keith’s buddy, country rock pioneer Gram Parsons. More on him later.

Live With Me, one of the Stones’ funniest songs, in which they make fun of their own bad boy image, just rocks! The saxophone solo in the middle is the first time we heard legendary Texan Bobby Keys, who also backed up Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Delaney and Bonnie, Joe Cocker and many others, and toured with the Stones right up until his death in 2014.

There are several other great songs on the album, notably Midnight Rambler, which became one of their best live numbers, and You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Some said the latter song represented the end of the 60s. I don’t know about that but the intro by the London Bach Choir was awesome!

On the Friday after Thanksgiving 1969 I saw the Stones at Madison Square Garden in New York. It was awesome! This was an extra early show added after the other shows that week sold out quickly. In the tour documentary, Gimme Shelter, you can see Mick saying, “Welcome to the Breakfast Show!” B.B. King and Ike and Tina Turner opened. The Stones did all their hits, with a dramatic rendition of Midnight Rambler, a song we hadn’t heard (Let It Bleed came out the following week).  I took Shauna Kloomok, a girl from my high school class. This may have been my first real date! One other cool thing happened: we ran into Marie Ertelli, who had been my English teacher in 9th grade and who I had a major crush on. She wasn’t dressed like she dressed at school. It was eye-opening to see her, not as my teacher, but as a mid-20s young woman out for a good time at a Stones concert!

That turned out to be a busy week for the Stones. After leaving New York they played two shows in Boston and then headed down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to start recording Sticky Fingers at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, home of the famous Swampers. In Gimme Shelter you can see them working on Brown Sugar and Wild Horses. From there they flew to California for the infamous free concert at the Altamont Speedway on December 6, where the Hells Angels were hired for $500 worth of beer to guard the stage. The Angels were involved with numerous fights, some involving musicians, and the scene in front of the stage was chaotic. While the Stones played Under My Thumb, a man, high on meth, who had been pushed around by the Angels, rushed the stage with a gun and was brought down and stabbed to death by the Angels.

Sticky Fingers came out in April 1971 and continued the streak of classic, guitar and horn-driven Rolling Stone records. Ignoring the words, Brown Sugar is one of the best rockers ever. But what was it about? Slavers raping their enslaved women as a literal reading of the lyrics would suggest? Heroin (which “brown sugar” is a nickname for)? Mick Jagger’s relationships (two different Black women have claimed to be the inspiration)? Reading Mick’s comments years later I’m not sure that he knows. It wouldn’t be the last time the Stones were accused of racism. Anyway, the Stones have dropped it from the current tour setlist, and probably that’s a good thing.

Sway is the first song to predominantly feature Mick Taylor on guitar. Also, Mick Jagger plays some rhythm electric guitar, his first recorded guitar work. Keith just sang backup on the track!

Wild Horses was inspired by Keith’s friendship with Gram Parsons, founder of the Flying Burrito Brothers. As with many songs from this period, Keith came up with the riff and chorus line (“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away”) and Mick filled in the verses. The song was recorded in Muscle Shoals and, soon thereafter, Keith gave Gram a demo version. Gram then rushed to put it out on the second FBB album, Burrito Deluxe, which beat the Stones version by a year.

Bitch is more raucous rock ‘n’ roll, featuring a great sax break by Bobby Keys. He played the Continental Club here in Austin once, backed up by some of the top local musicians. I was 10 feet away from his golden saxophone as he played Bitch, Brown Sugar and numerous other songs he’s been featured on!

For I Got The Blues the Stones added Keys’ trumpet partner Jim Price and Billy Preston on organ to do a Stax-style slow ballad with horn charts totally inspired by the Otis Redding songbook.

Exile On Main Street, which came out in May 1972, represents to me the end of the Stones’ classic period. Although many critics consider this album, the first Stones’ studio double album, a masterpiece, I think there’s enough good stuff on it for just a single LP. Tumbling Dice is the big song here for me. The opening guitar riff flows right into the vocal

Mmm yeah! (Woo, woo)

Women think I'm tasty, but they're always tryin' to waste me

Make me burn the candle right down

But, baby, baby, don't need no jewels in my crown

'Cause all you women is low down gamblers

Cheatin' like I don't know how

Baby, got no flavor, fever in the funk house now

This low down bitchin' got my poor feet a itchin'

Don't you know you know the deuce is still wild

The song builds and builds and then fades out as the chorus, including Vanetta Fields and Clydie King, sings, “Got to roll me”.

Torn and Frayed, with Al Perkins on pedal steel, is sweet:

And his coat is torn and frayed

It's seen much better days

Just as long as the guitar plays

Let it steal your heart away

Happy is Keith’s signature song:

Well I never kept a dollar past sunset

It always burned a hole in my pants

Never made a school mama happy

Never blew a second chance, oh no

I need a love to keep me happy

I need a love to keep me happy

Baby, baby keep me happy

Baby, baby keep me happy

When Keith sings it sounds like such an effort (and looks that way in concert too!)

Just Want to See His Face (“You don’t want to walk or talk about Jesus, you just want to see his face”) is a loose gospel jam that I always saw as an “answer song” to Delaney & Bonnie and Friend’s Talkin’ about Jesus, from Motel Shot, which came out the year before. Now I’m reading that Friend (and Domino) Bobby Whitlock, who sang on the D&B song, claims he played Jagger basically the complete Just Want to See His Face but was not credited. 

The culmination of my love affair with the Stones came in July of that year when Jim Sande and I saw them at the Garden. Tickets were extremely hard to get so we went down there without tickets and $100 in our pockets between us. We really didn’t want to spend it all but we found a girl who would sell us two (not very good) tickets for $50 each and we grabbed them (that’s like $230 per ticket today). Stevie Wonder opened, at the peak of his career, around the time he released Superstition and the album Talking Book. The Stones played all their best songs, including most of the songs I’ve highlighted here, and brought Stevie Wonder out for the encore to do a medley of his Uptight (with Keys and Price doing the horn break) and Satisfaction. In the video you can see Jagger leading Wonder from his piano to the microphone at the front of the stage for Satisfaction and then the two of them dancing together.

After that summer I went off to college, got heavily into country and reggae, and my passion for the band waned. I found their albums spotty. So I will just cherry pick some of my favorite songs after that (and yes, I will wrap this thing up soon!)

One of Jagger’s most passionate vocals is Heartbreaker, from Goats Head Soup (1973): 

The police in New York City

They chased a boy right through the park

In a case of mistaken identity

The put a bullet through his heart

Heart breakers with your forty four

I want to tear your world apart

You heart breaker with your forty four

I want to tear your world a part

A ten year old girl on a street corner

Sticking needles in her arm

She died in the dirt of an alleyway

Her mother said she had no chance, no chance!

Heart breaker, heart breaker

She stuck the pins right in her heart

Heart breaker, pain maker

Stole the love right out of you heart

Beast of Burden from Some Girls (1978), driven by Charlie’s drumming, is Jagger again at the top of his form:

Am I hard enough?

Am I rough enough?

Am I rich enough?

I'm not too blind to see

I'll never be your beast of burden

So let's go home and draw the curtains

Music on the radio

Come on baby make sweet love to me

Start Me Up from 1981’s Tattoo You, with the driving guitars and irresistible chorus (“You make a grown man cry … You make a dead man come”) was the best song of theirs I had heard in years so, after skipping the tours in 1975 and 1978, on a beautiful October day in 1981, I took a day off from grad school in San Diego and went down to Jack Murphy Stadium to catch the band, with J. Geils and George Thorogood & the Destroyers opening. The Stones played a blend of old and new songs. It was fun seeing them again!

After that I continued buying their CDs but, to be honest, I must not have played them much because, on going back through them over the past few weeks, I don’t remember most of the songs.

In November, 1989, I took Leslie to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas for the Steel Wheels tour. The Stones were fine but our overall experience was bad. This was the worst organized venue I’ve ever been to. It took us a full hour on the shuttle from the hotel to the Cotton Bowl entrance (a 15-minute drive), then over an hour to get to our seats. At one point we had to push through a crowd going both ways at the only point in the stadium apparently connecting the two halves. Leslie just grabbed onto my belt buckle and held on as I inched my way forward. We sat down just as the Stones were coming on. We missed all of Living Colour.

In November of 1994 we drove a bunch of friends down to San Antonio for the Voodoo Lounge Tour at the Alamodome with Bryan Adams opening. We put a big sign, “Voodoo Bound”, on Leslie’s mommy van and honked at similarly decorated vehicles.

In February of 1998 James Jordan and I were at a conference in Houston that ended on a Friday while the Stones were playing at the Summit (now the Toyota Center) on the Bridges to Babylon tour with Jonny Lang opening, so we went over and caught that show.

In November 2002 my college buddy John “Little Johnny” Koerber took me to see the Stones at the SBC Center (now AT&T) in San Antonio. Johnny got us 9th row seats, a little bit left of center, right between Keith and Ronnie, so I got to see up close the guitar interplay between the two. Johnny had seen them earlier in the tour so he knew when to move to a small stage in the middle of the audience where just the five main members played a more intimate set. This was maybe my favorite Stones concert!

The Stones played Austin before – at Zilker Park, where Austin City Limits Festival is held - in 2006. They sang Bob Wills Is Still The King (“It don’t matter who’s in Austin, Bob Wills is still the king”) for the crowd. I missed that show so I am really looking forward to seeing them here this weekend, to see if they have a special song for us!

It’s been a treat going back through all these old albums and tours the past few weeks. In perusing Wikipedia (which has entries for nearly every album, song, and tour referenced here) I’ve read a lot about women that caused tension in the band (Anita Pallenberg was with Brian, then Keith, and maybe Mick too), drug issues (Keith was heavily addicted to heroin during the Exile sessions, which made his participation erratic), management/business issues (how Allen Klein ripped them off). I was only vaguely aware of any of that at the time and it didn’t affect my appreciation of the band, which was always through the music, so I left that out in my writeup.

If you’ve read this all the way through, I owe you a drink of your choosing. Thank you for indulging me on this trip through the past!

I especially wish to thank Little Johnny, who’s been a Stones fan as long as I have, for great Stones discussions, information, artwork, and of course the San Antonio show.

Postscript - the show

The show was fine aside from the screwed up logistics getting into and out of the venue - the Circuit of the Americas track where the U.S. Grand Prix is held.

The Stones were in good form and Mick especially seemed nostalgic about doing the last big show on the tour. Several times he professed his love for “the ATX” but they didn’t do any special songs for us.

Keith was in good form and, as always, I found the guitar interplay between him and Ronnie fascinating. He chose to do Connection and You Got the Silver for his lead songs. I would have liked to hear Happy!

Sasha Allen is the new (?) backup female singer and she knocked Gimme Shelter out of the park! The other musicians were mainstays Darryl Jones (bass), Chuck Leavell (keyboards), Bernard Fowler (vocals). New to me were Matt Clifford (keyboards and French horn on You Can’t Always Get What You Want), Karl Denson (sax) and Tim Ries (sax and keyboards). And of course Steve Jordan on drums. Mick dedicated the show to Charlie.

Here’s the setlist. Aside from “Ghost Town” we could have seen this show in 1981!

Street Fighting Man

It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (but I Like It)
19th Nervous Breakdown
Tumbling Dice
Let It Bleed (chosen by the public)
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Living in a Ghost Town
Start Me Up
Honky Tonk Women
Connection (Keith lead)
You Got the Silver (Keith lead)
Miss You
Midnight Rambler
Paint It Black
Sympathy for the Devil
Jumpin' Jack Flash
Encore:
Gimme Shelter
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction