LET THE AIRWAVES FLOW

My ten favorite Rolling Stones songs, in alphabetical order. (This week anyway) At any given moment they are given too much, and too little credit for their accomplishments. Say or think what you will, I just couldn’t imagine what my music collection would look like without their music. This is my desert island disc with a few bonus tracks.

Crazy Mama From their most underrated album (Black And Blue) comes this strolling rocker that soars in it’s few live renditions. It’s a throwback to another era for a band that was aging and surrounded by new groups who sought to take them down regardless of their stature. This rocker kept the newer acts at bay for a few more years.

Gimme Shelter If I had ranked these songs this one would be number one with a bullet the size of a mortar shell. This song deserves a book not a blog entry. It is so ominous that it has to fade in just to keep from paralyzing us before the vocals start. The apocalyptic lyrics are sung as though a match is being struck at the start of every line. By the time Merry Clayton appears to fulfill Jagger’s most perverse fantasies even he’s weakened by her power. In her vocal turn she wipes away nearly every female vocal of the sixties and reduces the future female vocalists of the seventies to consider a new career. The guitar riff carries with it the weight of every lick that Chuck Berry ever collected a royalty on and weathers a storm of feedback that still rages somewhere in the ether. Their first album of the decade opened with Buddy Holly’s riffing promise that their love would Not Fade Away. Their final album of the decade opened with them content to just stay dry.

I’m Free This one proved that when they wanted to just be one of the many “British Invasion” acts who could come up with catchy pop they were equal to the task. A song that could have only come out in 1965.

Play With Fire There was a time when they were too scruffy and unkempt to attract the kind of women that could elevate their status and position. Once they achieved that lofty stature they never forgot the sting of rejection and consigned themselves to a life of punishing those that now professed undying love.

Ruby Tuesday The Beatles had a way of taking a song like this and making it something ethereal and breezy. For the Stones that was never an option. They had cast their lot with those who lived a smaller more paranoiac existence. Even when they tried to be tender and get close to someone it came off sinister and with a hardly concealed motive. Closing the song with the line “still I’m gonna miss you” lets you know that they don’t clean up behind themselves very well.

Stray Cat Blues (Live) A nice slinky studio version surfaced on Beggars Banquet that unfolded as a cautionary tale for parents of young girls everywhere. However by the time it appeared on Get Yer Ya’s Ya’s Out it had been transformed into a strutting, salacious tale as told by the Midnight Rambler.

Sway Why rehearse when a first run through sounds like perfection? The first time I heard this I thought it was going to fall out my speakers. Probably their least self conscious track ever. Credit Mick Taylor and the session guys for getting them to go with the flow and just “let it loose.”

Time Waits For No One One of the few times that Jagger let his guard down and faced his own mortality. He was still young in mere mortal years, but aging rapidly as a relevant rocker trying to move his band from one decade to the next. He succeeded, but was showing the strains of being at the wheel for over ten years with a hundred more to go.

Torn And Frayed Ian Stewart’s piano drives this tale of another wasted soul who lost his way in the world of rock and roll. To this band though it’s just another loose end that they don’t have time to go back for. But it gave them a nice song by the time the ashes were spread.

You Can't Always Get What You Want Forget the orchestral intro from the album version and flip over your single of Honky Tonk Women for this version that starts with Al Kooper on the flugelhorn. His mournful notes slowly raise the curtain on yet another swirling, drug fueled, dirge of a daydream about trying to ignore the world around you while heading to the next score. A perfect way to let the sixties die its inevitable death while looking the other way.

BONUS TRACKS

Harlem Shuffle An odd choice for sure, but something about the way they approached this cover at this point in their career draws me in. They were at a crossroads and nearly adrift despite a fat new contract that left them no doubt satisfied, but seeing nothing but distant shores in a changing musical sea. This attempt to re-connect with a groove that had inspired them years before revealed that they could hear the whispers and knew that there was more on the line than their signatures.

Moonlight Mile What better way to close out Sticky Fingers than this song. On this track they acknowledge the fact that the decadence and drugs of the sixties were now a part of their lives. In some circles they would be forever defined by these vices. For the rest of us they would be judged by what they came out of the studio with, not what they took in with them.

Street Fighting Man In America we dance in the streets, in England they have to clear a path first before any dancing takes place. A snapshot of how the youth in another country view their dwindling options. Too acoustic to be hard rock, too hard driving to be acoustic. It meets us in the middle.