Rolling Stones Raw and Rocking on Voodoo Lounge Uncut

Not for the first time in their fabled history, the Rolling Stones faced a dire moment of truth. Such was first the case in 1969 when, on the eve of an anticipated U.S. tour, the band effectively fired its drug-addled founding member, Brian Jones—he was soon found dead in his swimming pool—in favor of lead guitarist Mick Taylor, arguably the most proficient guitarist the Stones had ever held in their ranks. Six years later, Taylor quit, leaving the door open for the Faces’ amiable Ronnie Wood to pick up the slack. Finally, after the Stones finished their round-the-world tour in support of their 1989 LP Steel Wheels, original bassist Bill Wyman retired, leaving an unenviable space to fill. A lesser band would have called it quits.

Rather than packing it in, however, the Stones still continued to roll, recruiting bassist Darryl Jones—the formidable musician’s credentials included live and session work with the likes of Miles Davis, Eric Clapton, Sting, and Madonna—to round out the lineup (though, unfortunately, not as an official member). With Jones in tow, the Stones suitably stepped up their game on their subsequent album, 1994’s Voodoo Lounge, arguably their strongest since 1978’s Some Girls. Perhaps the acquisition of Jones inspired this improvement, or maybe the band’s thirtieth anniversary compelled the remaining members to harken back to former glories; regardless, Voodoo Lounge represented a solid step up for the “world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.” 

Road tested on the concert stage is where such efforts live or die, though, and with a massive tour in support of Voodoo Lounge, the Stones—including their latest recruit in Jones—laid it on the line. 

On a late-November night at Miami’s Joe Robbie Stadium, the band more than demonstrated its mettle, the chemistry between the old guard and the new blood coming across with fearsome, raw power. Voodoo Lounge songs like the seething sleaze of “Sparks Will Fly,” the punk-like punch of “You Got Me. Rocking,” and the achingly forlorn Keith Richards ballad “The Worst” are indeed redeemed here, summoning both potency and edge. Mick Jagger flits, slithers, and struts across the end-zone-wide stage, proving why he is rock’s most charismatic frontman. Other highlights include both rarities (“Rocks Off” “Monkey Man”) and ballads (“Beast of Burden,” “Angie”), not to mention the usual warhorses (“Sympathy for the Devil,” “Miss You,” “Brown Sugar,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” etc.), making for an ecstatically fantastic performance and an overall searing document of a stellar Rolling Stones tour.

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The Deep End of Pete Townshend's Genius

Pete Townshend was always too ambitious for rock ‘n’ roll. 

Not so much with the early hits he wrote for The Who, songs like “Can’t Explain” and “Substitute,” which were in essence point-and-click snapshots of the lives Townshend observed around him—songs that in turn gave the band’s youthful audience a collective voice and culture of its own. More so, rather, with the emergence of Tommy in 1969, when Townshend broadened his creative sweep into the realm of a rock opera, crafting songs with narrative themes and psychologically complex characters that when presented together achieved even more prescient significance. 

Evolving from a singles-oriented band to one which makes long-form albums was not a particularly innovative shift in and of itself, of course. By the same year as Tommy’s soundtrack release, the Rolling Stones had likewise moved on from casting such succinct aspersions of British society as “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Get Off My Cloud” to pursue grander (and darker) subject matter on such LPs as Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. 

What Townshend as the prime songwriting conduit in The Who was doing by this point, however, signified more than a mere intention to broaden a musical idea or even to render an album as some sort of cohesive piece of work. Townshend composed character sketches and thematic motifs, implemented plot devices and narrative constructions like a novelist or playwright, his lyrics laying the foundation that he and his bandmates—bassist John Entwistle, drummer Keith Moon, and vocalist Roger Daltrey—would then galvanize into song. 

Townshend could be obsessive about his art, but who could blame him? The expectations he unwittingly created—the benchmarks he and the band set in the studio, the mythologized behemoth The Who became on the concert stage—became a lot to live up to, with Townshend’s reputation as a songwriter dictating ever more genius with each new piece of music.  

In the throes of composing his most aspirational project yet, Lifehouse, Townshend grew increasingly overwhelmed and disillusioned, his intended magnum opus crumbling under his own madcap perfectionism. Scrapping all but the script, so to speak, the band’s producer Glyn Johns salvaged what he deemed the project’s strongest songs, culminating with the 1971 LP Who’s Next. An unmitigated classic, the album—which included a veritable haul of ageless warhorses like “Baba O’Riley,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”—offered perhaps the most ironic affirmation of Townshend’s artistic prowess. 

Only two years later Townshend redeemed himself with Quadrophenia, yet the specter of the Lifehouse debacle loomed over his head for decades to come. In fact, he didn’t put Lifehouse to bed for good until 1999 with the sprawling, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink box set, Lifehouse Chronicles—which, conspicuously, was credited not to The Who but to Pete Townshend.

And therein lies the crux of Townshend’s songcraft. For all the democratization that often makes a band better than the sum of its individual parts, Townshend’s best ideas came out of working alone. Sure, his initial ideas were then retooled and rearranged and implemented by one of the most ferocious rock bands on the planet. But the most crucial atoms of those classic Who anthems originated out of Townshend’s imagination.

Without the concerted collaboration of his band to shape his musical ideas, Townshend’s solo work (which he experimented with in the ‘70s before taking far more seriously in the ‘80s with albums like 1980’s Empty Glass and 1982’s All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes) seemed to be an endeavor wholly distinct from The Who.

Which is why, when on January 29, 1986, Townshend and a big-band ensemble dubbed the Deep End rolled into Cannes for a performance for the popular German television series Rockpalast in support of his solo album from the year before, White City: A Novel, the overriding impression—as witnessed on the Blu-ray and CD  Pete Townshend’s Deep End: Face The Face—is one of liberation. 

Boasting a five-piece brass cotillion and five backing vocalists, along with The Who’s stalwart keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour on lead guitar, the fast-paced set is chock full of raw R&B energy, yielding solo highlights like “Slit Skirts” and “Second Hand Love” alongside a few Who favorites (“Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Behind Blue Eyes”) for good measure. Oddly, Gilmour assumes more challenging and audience-thrilling passages on the axe than does Townshend, who seems to revel more in his role as entertainer—some rather awkward dance steps prove that point to a fault—than as a guitar god.

But perhaps that was the fundamental object of the exercise. Townshend had already, even by this point 31 years ago, composed one of the most enduring and imposing catalogs in all of rock history—he would return to The Who in periods of both ambivalence and urgency in the three decades to come—and he knew full well that the benchmark he helped set could never be eclipsed, much less by his own effort.

Townshend would never make a solo album without it garnering comparison to his most definitive work with The Who—take 1993’s Psychoderelict, for instance—but as a solo artist he has carved out a space wherein his genius can thrive with abandon. 

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The Temperance Movement: Ain't No Telling How Far They'll Go

The Temperance Movement had already opened for the Rolling Stones on a handful of dates last year, but when the nascent British-based band got the nod to do it again this past June at Orlando’s Citrus Bowl, age-old anxieties emerged. Of the sold-out audience, for starters, Australian-born drummer Damon Wilson recently told Write on Music on the phone from his UK residence, recalling his speculations, “What kind of mood are they in? Are they sitting down? Are they drunk? Are they sober? Is it daytime? Is it nighttime? What’s going on out there? What’s the feeling? What [was] the main act’s soundcheck [like]? What are they gonna do? You’ve got to factor in quite a lot of things.”

As showtime loomed, however, Wilson was at least sure of one thing:

Nobody was coming to see his band.

“When you go to a Stones gig it’s all about the Stones,” he said, “probably more than any other band. They’re actually a bit of a challenge to open for because they don’t need any warming up. People are there and they’re ready to go.”

Since forming in 2011, the Temperance Movement (whose self-titled debut LP was originally issued on indie label Earache Records in 2013 and was re-released this past February on Fantasy/Concord Records) have built a burgeoning fan base all their own. Messengers of chiseled, rhythm-and-blues-soaked rock ‘n’ roll in the vein of The Faces and Humble Pie, they deliver rambunctious album standouts like “Midnight Black” and “Ain’t No Telling” with a swagger that comes from having hit the proverbial jackpot. For the band’s five members — besides Wilson the lineup includes frontman Phil Campbell, guitarists Luke Potashnick and Paul Sayer, and bassist Nick Fyffe — that’s not too far from the truth.

In fact, as Wilson recalled, the band’s earliest rehearsals not only proved to be worthwhile for everyone involved but enlightening and inspiring as well.

“The sound came instantly,” he said, “so it was very clear that we weren’t a pop group. It was also clear we weren’t a death-metal band.

“If I was to make it really simplistic,” he continued, “I think we kind of jokingly said, ‘Let’s be the next Black Crowes.’ I guess. That’s kind of the dream for any musician, to be in a band that people respect the musicians and the music [of] but you also get played on the radio and you get to travel the world. I think that’s what most musicians want.”

That’s not to say there haven’t been any tentative moments in the band’s evolution thus far.

“For the first probably six months, I remember,” said Wilson, “when we did bits of recording, a handful of gigs, it was very part-time. But even as that was going, I knew what we were doing was brilliant. I just didn’t think that anyone else would think it’s brilliant.

“It’s not that we didn’t have any confidence,” he continued. “We had loads of confidence. I’d never really taken a band from nothing to as far as we’ve gone before.”

Greater success seems all but certain to follow. Performing their music to audiences at every opportunity, the Temperance Movement are currently touring across the United States and Canada — the band’s latest single, “Take It Back,” currently tops the Canadian Active Rock chart — and no doubt earning new fans each step of the way.

“It’s not necessarily how good the musicians are, because there are plenty of better musicians than us,” said Wilson. “It’s just that it works. That’s a really nice thing about music — that’s why people never get sick of new bands — because there’s something special that goes on that you can’t put your finger on, that at least one unique combination of people works.”

For more information, please visit the Temperance Movement online.

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Album Review: Bill Wyman - Back to Basics

Although he officially retired from the Rolling Stones in 1993, founding bassist Bill Wyman hasn’t exactly led a quiet life of leisure in the meantime, having curated various pursuits in photography and prose while also leading a revolving cast of fellow trad-jazz and blues enthusiasts called the Rhythm Kings.

Apart from all that activity, however, Wyman’s solo efforts (beginning with 1974’s Monkey Grip) have been few and far between. Indeed his latest, Back to Basics, is his first in 33 years.

The album finds the 78-year-old rock legend embracing a stately, intimate mood throughout as if engaged in a confidential conversation or, in other moments, solitary reflection. Wyman’s singing voice, with its whispery resonance (which with age now sounds like a cross between Robbie Robertson and latter-day Nick Lowe), suits its twelve songs like a well-worn winter coat.

In light of Wyman’s primary instrument and in contrast to the strident pulses he once meted out on Stones classics like “Under My Thumb” and “Miss You,” it’s worth noting that the grooves he generates in the most rhythmic moments here are, while less-pronounced — such is the subtle thrust of “She’s Wonderful” and, especially, “Stuff (Can’t Get Enough)” — no less present. Overall, though, the emphasis is more on the stories these songs tell rather than on any particular displays of technical prowess or pageantry within them.  

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An Interview with Rickie Lee Jones

In interviewing Rickie Lee Jones about her music, come up with a question that piques her interest and you’ll likely end up fielding a few comparable inquiries of your own in return.

That Jones should welcome or even seek out such insights from those who admittedly appreciate her music isn’t all that surprising, however. Indeed, with such expository songs as “Chuck E.’s In Love,” “Stewart’s Coat,” and “We Belong Together,” the two-time GRAMMY® winner has not only distinguished herself as one of the most gifted and versatile singer/songwriters of the past 40 years but among the most sentient as well.

On her first new work of original material in more than a decade, The Other Side of Desire, Jones marries influences (from jazz to blues to Cajun to rockabilly to pop) that are often indigenous to New Orleans, where since leaving her Los Angeles stomping grounds last year she has lived and written songs with renewed passion and purpose. “I’ve got nothing to prove,” said Jones, 60, recently from her Big Easy abode. “I feel and want to spread a little joy, so that’s what I’m doing.”

And that’s what she’s done with the songs that make up The Other Side of Desire, culminating in one of her most intimately personal and poignant albums to date.

“One of the things I wanted to do was to write things that I could sing for the rest of my career and not have to do only old songs,” she explained, “things that would be fun and that the audience would want to hear as much as their sentiment with the old songs.

“I’m pretty sure that anything I write is relatable to anything else,” she added, “and there wouldn’t be that much of a difference because they’re all coming from my own personal color palette.”

Are you a songwriter whose songs naturally reflect your environment? Or, in the case of this latest album, did you deliberately intend for it to reflect musical influences of New Orleans?

Well, the first thing was to build a new life, and I also wanted to write a new record; and those things happened simultaneously. I think that’s why the environment is woven into the work, because they were one in the same. Then I thought, Why not? I’ve always shied away from that stuff because there’s something contrived about it, even if you make good work … because it always has an “I’m playing you” kind of thing about it. It’s not fair, really, to anybody, because so many people do that. They take an idea and they squash it to death, so that somebody who might sincerely feel that way, it’s harder to convince. At least now I don’t feel that way so much, because I think the sincerity of your heart is what people hear. But it’s harder to be heard, right? If you’re the twenty-seventh person making a record of Nelson Riddle stuff, even though the twenty six before you had never done jazz in their life… Anyway, all those reasons had made me shy away from thematic things, but this time I knew I didn’t want to do anything in L.A. and that act in itself is gonna make it reflect what I’m hearing around me and so in a roundabout way I did make the choice to reflect this music.

It seems to me that if you use any sort of filter into which you invest your heart and soul, your heart and soul would still reflect through the filter.

Most definitely. I think that there’s no getting around my personality and in this case they’re really simpatico, these kinds of music and how I feel and what I want to say.

One song from the album that struck me straightaway is “Infinity,” and for a couple reasons: its sense of transience; the way the lyrics are sung almost in a murmur, like water rippling off a rock; how the snare shots seem to punctuate each moment as if delivering each one to history. It’s a striking piece of music.

That song, in particular, that was a dream. I woke up and wrote it down exactly as it was and went into the studio the next day. It was a Sunday. Somebody had to come in [to produce it]. I heard it all whole. … Then I just sang it. It just came out like that. “This is where we’ve always been and it will always come again,” was so exciting to sing. It was very exciting. … I had a picture of what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to articulate it. I said to the producer, “I’m trying to evoke these sounds and feelings from the ‘80s or things that were more dance or ambient kinds of tracks.” I didn’t really know any names or things to use, but that was as close as I could come to tell him what I was trying to do.

On another song on the album, “Christmas in New Orleans,” you wrote a lyric, “And I still can’t recognize the sound my scars make when I sing,” that hit me especially hard.

Finally! I thought that was one of my better lines, and you’re the first person to mention it. Thank you.

It’s such a powerful reminder of how deep you cut in your music. You’re one of the few musicians I’ve seen in concert who doesn’t shy away from vulnerability. I’ve seen you cry on the stage, just overcome by a song in the moment. It must take a lot of guts to be that honest. Is that something you consciously strive for?

You’d have to be really courageous to do it [by design]. I think it’s just the way I am. It’d be hard to make a choice to be vulnerable. I can’t imagine any other way to sing a song but the way I sing it, because that’s the joy of singing it, is that I feel all of it every time I sing it. It’s like stepping into a movie instead of watching it, and I can be anybody I want to be in the course [of it]. I’m also the narrator, so it’s very wonderful and complex. Sometimes in acting or feeling one of the parts, when I pull back to be the narrator I get choked up sometimes and I do cry. I don’t mind that, but my dad said to me, “You must not cry. You have to pull back so they can cry, because if you cry they can’t.” It was really wise. As much as I enjoy feeling all that, as a performance it doesn’t really… I’m not ashamed of crying, but it’s not my favorite thing to do. But I allow it now. I don’t chastise myself for it. I just try not to go that deep.

Are there emotions or certain experiences that are too profound or painful to share in a song?

Yeah, I would say that’s true. I’m not sure if I would use the word “emotions,” but there are subjects that are still sore or active or haven’t been resolved and so to sing them is really to just bring them up on the table — and it’s not good. So, when that happens I just avoid those songs until I can sing them. You know, like, puppy dogs make you cry. Singing about my child is always emotional. Singing about anybody in my family, as a matter of fact, is emotional. And on stage, everything’s turned up louder. So, if I was sitting in a café with you and said something about my dad I might feel a tear, but I could breathe and hold it back and finish talking. But on the stage where things are turned up loud, it’s a much harder thing to do. So, I try to just avoid things that… You know, I don’t know if that’s true if I try to avoid them. I wish I would try to avoid them. [Laughs] But shows are really instinctual. I go here, I go there, and I always feel like I’m going in these directions because of the collective consciousness that’s directing me. That’s the audience and what I’m feeling from them, the way that their laughter, the way that their sighs tell me what direction to go in.

That’s in a live setting, but are there subjects you would avoid to even write about if you hadn’t processed them earlier?

No, no. Anything that wants to be said gets to be said whether or not it… I’d probably write some violent songs and listen to that expression and see if it finds its way to something else whether it’s a line or some part of a cynicism or whatever. When I’m writing everything gets to come out.

Some songwriters I’ve spoken to have conceded that they’re sometimes reluctant to reveal too much of themselves in what they write, but that’s clearly not how you approach it.

No. I’m just exploring all… There are so many ways to tell a story. I tend to naturally like to tell a story rather than tell a feeling, but in the course of telling the story can build feelings. But it’s not so much, “I feel like this,” and, “You did that.” In the past it hasn’t been the best way I’ve told a story. This record is kind of different. I think there’s a lot of “I”: “How can I tell you how I feel?” [“Valz de Mon Pere (Lover’s Oath)”]; “O Cheri, come and take a ride with me” [“Jimmy Choos”]. I mean, as I’m talking now, [I realize] I figure heavily into this record. I didn’t really think of that before. That’s kind of good. It’s healthy.

One reason I believe people are so affected by your music is the honesty in your voice, and of course that element resonates even when you’re interpreting works by other songwriters. When you take on someone else’s song, what do you generally latch onto first? Is it a lyric or narrative? Is it the melody?

I think it’s usually both. There are only a few songs in my career — I’m thinking of “My One and Only Love” [on 1991’s Pop Pop] — where I was attracted to a melody, but didn’t relate so much to a lyric. Like, “Sympathy for the Devil,” I did [on 2012’s The Devil You Know] because I did this Rolling Stones tribute so I had to pick a song and I picked that song because it relies so much on the band and so much on the “woo-woo” [witches chorus]. I thought, This is a powerful and frightening story, and I don’t know if anybody ever hears it because they’re busy dancing around.

If you break it down and tell it like you would tell it if you were just making up a song with a guitar, “Allow me to introduce myself, I am the scariest motherfucker that you’ve ever met. I’ve killed people for 2,000 years, and by the way I have my eye on you as well.” In the course of doing it — because, you know, it’s how I am — I tend to become the demon. It’s fun, but it’s scary.

I like playing it live because I like the series of things the audience goes through. They laugh at first, nervous laughter. Then it’s the laughter of recognition — and I don’t try to hurt them with it; I don’t go too far — but then either they keep giggling and looking away or they slowly listen to the text of the song. By the last verse, they’ve converted now. They did it. I really love that because it’s like I showed them the song instead of the Rolling Stones performance.

If I can do that with somebody else’s song — if I can show them the song again — I feel like that’s a worthwhile goal, because usually I don’t have a goal. I just want to sing a song because of the way it makes me feel, but some of these songs are used up and it’s kind of exciting to me if I can sprinkle something new about them.

In a far different lyrical context, of course, but that’s also what you achieved so convincingly with your rendition of The Beatles’ “For No One” [on 2000’s It’s Like This], which is, for me, one of your all-time greatest performances. 

“For No One” I heard when I was little, 11 or 12. I liked the story, but what is the word for it? “There’ll be times when all the things she said will fill your head. You won’t forget her.” Even at 11 or 12, I knew how that felt, that melancholy of loss, that all your life you would have this little scratch inside and you would always have to live with that sorrow. That’s the part that attracts me about that song, in particular.

Going back to something you said earlier, that you have nothing to prove now… What, then, drives you to still be creative? Considering that this is the first album you’ve written for since The Evening of My Best Day [in 2003], what made you want to return to writing?

Without something to prove is what makes me able to take the lid off and play music again, because no matter what I did there was always … this sense of loss that permeated everything I did. I’m not sure how — it feels a little miraculous — but it was probably just having to work so hard so long, but I was able to go, “There’s no relationship to the past. I am making a record here in this year right now and I have a name so I have an audience out there, but for the most part people under 30 don’t know who I am. This is a strange blessing because I can speak to them for the first time, but I have no hope or expectation of a resurrection or anything. All I can do is do the best work I can and hope that it does something good for somebody somewhere.”

Finally, you learn whether people notice you or not — I don’t know why — you still have to go up on the stage and play the song. … It was a relinquishing of my own thing: Am I ever gonna get my crown back? Finally it was, No, you aren’t. And I [thought], Thank God.

I’m just a musician. I’m just a singer. I got a band. I’m playing in your local town. I know what I’m worth. The things you said to me are so wonderful to hear because they’re how I see myself, that what I’ve contributed is a kind of an emotional honesty that hopefully rings through. But in the end when you die, you die. Sometimes it seems like we feel like if we’re really famous and if we’re really successful, we won’t really die. It seems like we’re running real fast so we won’t die. So, that’s been the expectation of hope that has permeated this work, a hope of a joyful time. That’s really all I wanted was to have some fun, and I feel like that’s kind of happening. It’s pretty cool.

For more information, please visit Rickie Lee Jones online.

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DVD/2CD Review: The Rolling Stones - From The Vault: L.A. Forum (Live in 1975)

As recording artists the Rolling Stones by 1975 were, depending on your perspective, either trudging through a provisional rut or growing accustomed to the status of a legacy act. Their magnum opus, Exile on Main Street, was ensconced three years in the past; their brazen resurgence (or anomalous triumph), Some Girls, lay three years ahead; and their weakest effort in the interim, It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, was what they’d ostensibly mounted their much-hyped Tour of the Americas to promote.

Of course by this point the Stones didn’t need to release a spectacular album to sell concert tickets. Not only was their reputation as live performers arguably unsurpassed in this era but, as evidenced on L.A. Forum (Live in 1975) — recorded during a five-night stand at the Forum, bootlegged for years thereafter, refurbished and most recently released as a DVD/2CD set by Eagle Rock — utterly justified.  


With the ever gregarious lead guitarist Ronnie Wood now in tow after having replaced the often taciturn Mick Taylor, the band is especially rambunctious during the 24-song set, even by Stones standards — not unlike Wood’s old mates, The Faces, veritable connoisseurs of errant behavior both on and off the stage. Auxiliary musicians (including percussionist Ollie E. Brown, saxophonist Trevor Lawrence, and keyboardist Billy Preston) no doubt enrich the sound and each man has his moments, but ultimately it’s the Stones stalwarts (Ian Stewart, Bobby Keys) that prove indispensable.


Flamboyant to a fault, Mick Jagger unleashes a primal, savage growl throughout that gives even the ballsiest songs (“Rip This Joint,” “Star Star,” “Brown Sugar”) an added guttural thrust. On the rare ballad (most notably “Angie”) he summons a soul man’s urgent ache, his gruff vocal suggesting Otis Redding’s raw, Southern-bred inspiration. Yet it’s on a torrid, sixteen-minute romp through “Midnight Rambler” that Jagger is at his most intoxicating, at turns humping and writhing atop the stage floor, brandishing his glittered belt like a whip as if in a masochistic fit. It’s a steal-the-show moment in any other band’s show. But this is the Rolling Stones in their prime as live performers, and L.A. Forum (Live in 1975) thrills from start to finish. 

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Rolling Stones Bring the Whip Down on 'Some Girls - Live In Texas '78'

The Rolling Stones were losing their edge. By the late ‘70s, amid the throes of punk's rebellious angst and disco's ribald decadence, the Stones—who had long personified both such distinctions—seemed atypically tame.

It had been a long six years since the band’s last really big deal, Exile on Main Street, and even that wasn’t considered the classic then that it generally is today. Critics had begun to dismiss the Stones as obsolete, a relic of a bygone age. If they failed to harness their collective talent, stave off their detractors, and deliver the goods with their next album, the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band stood to get knocked off its proverbial cloud.

Some Girls, released in June 1978, heralded the Stones’ brazen return to form and, moreover, to artistic relevance. Simmering with loose groove and swagger the album seethed with all the spunk and splendor of New York’s urban jungle.

By the time the Stones rolled into the Lone Star State the following month on a tour stop in Fort Worth, Some Girls was the number-one album in America. Their performance at the Will Rogers Memorial Centre, captured in the concert film, Some Girls - Live in Texas '78, reveals just how hard they were pushing to stay on top.

Watching them here, not so much playing as but working—the band performs seven of the new album’s ten tracks in one block, book-ended by a smattering of older hits and favorites—is riveting.

Mick Jagger prowls the stage with a feral, no-bounds libido—during “Tumbling Dice” he cops a feel of guitarist Ronnie Wood’s crotch—and striking, in-the-moment conviction. Fronting the band with impassioned, soulful urgency one moment (“Beast of Burden”) and savage ferocity the next (“Shattered,” “When The Whip Comes Down”), he rules the roost throughout this stunning performance

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An Interview with George Thorogood

George Thorogood pays tribute to the seminal music of Chess Records on his latest LP, 2120 South Michigan Ave., its title boasting the Chicago-based label’s mailing address from which as a teenager he’d receive catalogs listing available releases. Produced by Tom Hambridge and featuring cameos by Buddy Guy and Charlie Musselwhite, the album finds Thorogood and his rock-steady band, The Destroyers, barnstorming through tracks by such legends as Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, and Bo Diddley. In other words, it sounds just like the blues-spiked rock you'd expect from George Thorogood and The Destroyers—and that ain’t bad.

Do you ever get intimidated taking on a song by Chuck Berry or Muddy Waters, just because of their stature?

No. If you’re going to be intimidated in this business you shouldn’t be in this business. Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters—it’s almost like actors who don’t know anything about Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams—[they’re] almost like a standard part of your education. So it’s not something to be intimidated by; it’s something to be educated by.

Were any of the songs on this latest record foreign in that you had to learn how to play them?

Some of them, yeah, some of them were. I hadn’t realized that “High-Heeled Sneakers” was already in the Chess catalog; it was pretty much a rock ‘n’ roll standard. And J.B. Lenoir I didn’t know had been with Chess, and the song—I was familiar with it, though I never played it—“Mama, Talk to Your Daughter,” was a Chess recording. The other ones are obvious—Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Muddy Waters—but we needed more than that. Some of it was foreign. Some of it was stuff we’d done a lot, and some we were very aware of. We were kind of all over the place with this record.

You learned about Chess Records originally through the Rolling Stones.

Well, so did everybody, pretty much, in my generation. Most of us were just listening to Top 40 radio, and the Rolling Stones were able to crack that Top 40 radio thing with a Howlin’ Wolf song written by Willie Dixon called “Little Red Rooster.” And they had other songs—“I Just Want to Make Love to You” and they did Bo Diddley covers—and they brought that consciousness into the teenagers of my generation.

On the television show Shindig! they brought Howlin’ Wolf and that got the ball rolling with me. I started getting interested in these people, where the Stones got their sound from. The Beatles had listened to just about everybody—Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and the Everly Brothers—[but] their roots were closer to straight-ahead American rock ‘n’ roll whereas the Stones were down deep into the heavy Chicago blues and the Mississippi Delta blues as well.

Do you still get a buzz from playing live?

More than ever. It’s a lot better now because we have radio support. We’ve had classic rock radio behind us for almost 20 years now. And we have a strong catalog, better amplifiers, better rooms. We have buses to drive us around. It wasn’t like that for us 20, 30 years ago. Now it’s work, but back then it was hard work. And I got into this business not to get into work.

Is that support continuing? With satellite radio and so many other options available now, is FM radio still a vital medium for you to get your music heard?

We seem to be on the radio somewhere, sometime, all the time… People in radio stations, they make their money off advertising. And the reason they put their money in it is because they want their product on radio. They invest in stations that people listen to the most. And the stations people listen to the most are the ones that play rock music. Rock is what rules. I didn’t invent this. I didn’t set this system up. That’s just where it’s at. Turn on the radio right now and you’ll hear a song by Led Zeppelin that was recorded 40 years ago, because the advertising people know that’s what people listen to.

When did you and your band’s music transition from being played on Top 40 radio to classic rock radio?

When “Bad to the Bone” came out in 1982 it was not that big of a hit. We played it and people kind of liked it, but it didn’t stand out. Then when classic rock radio started in the ‘90s I was told that “Bad to the Bone,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Rock’n Me Baby” by Steve Miller, and a couple others were the staples that they used to start classic rock radio in several mainstream areas. That’s when “Bad to the Bone” took off. Then all of a sudden we went from a blues-boogie band to a rock band.

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Album Review: Ronnie Wood - I Feel Like Playing

When you’re already a member of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most legendary, successful bands, odds are you don’t get the urge to make a solo album unless you have something to say.

The past few years have been rather bumpy ones for Ronnie Wood, who hit some turbulence in his personal life only to see it parodied by the tabloid press. It wouldn’t be all that far-fetched, then, to think he may want to get some things off his chest through his music. Not that the Rolling Stones guitarist should need a reason to record a solo album; his seventh and latest such release, I Feel Like Playing (Eagle Records), is fantastic.

A venerable slate of guest and backing musicians make appearances throughout, including Slash, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, and Bobby Womack. Also on hand are vocalist Bernard Fowler and bassist Darryl Jones—both men stalwarts of the Stones touring entourage—giving Wood some of the comforts of home even while he’s out on his own. 

For his part Wood sounds invigorated, with his raspy, Dylanesque singing on rambunctious cuts like “Thing About You” and “I Don't Think So” betraying a kind of precocious, little-boy-inside-a-man enthusiasm. Things get even funkier on “Fancy Pants,” a modish ode to British men’s sartorial excess set to a raunchy, thick-riffed groove.

It’s not all roguish mischief and bravado, however, as “I Gotta See” features Wood and Fowler engaging in a soulful, near call-and-response duet that gives the song a gospel resonance. Wood turns strikingly tender and compelling, though, on “Why You Wanna Go and Do A Thing Like That For,” his grim vocal betraying the fragility of a heartbroken man.

In the end, though, whether or not I Feel Like Playing is Ronnie Wood's way of working through some things doesn't matter as much as how good of an album he has made.

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Rolling Stones Revisit Days of Exile in New Documentary

To coincide with the recent reissue of the Rolling Stones’ seminal work, Exile On Main Street, filmmaker Stephen Kijak collected a considerable amount of archival footage to present Stones In Exile, which summarizes the making of the album, its reception by critics and fans upon release in 1972, and its enduring legacy today.
 
Through cinematography that often blends still photography from the time and present-day, voice-over narration by the band and other principal figures, the film uniquely invites viewers back to Keith Richards’ 19th century mansion, Villa Nellcôte, where much of the album was conceived.
 
It was also where much decadence and depravity ensued and, over time, overwhelmed just about everyone involved. This is an authorized film, though—Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts serve as executive producers—so while some salacious behavior is acknowledged (drug use, mainly), details of the more incriminating, hedonistic kind are selectively overlooked. Nevertheless, the film does well in rendering an impressionistic portrait of the circumstances and chaos that saw the Stones at their most turbulent and, arguably, their most artistically profound.
 
Of the supplementary material that accompanies the main feature, the best is “Extended Interviews,” in which select band members (Richards especially, but also former Stones guitarist Mick Taylor and retired bassist Bill Wyman) offer up recollections that either didn't make it into the film proper or were cut short. Also, the “Exile Fans” segment injects a bit of welcome perspective and context—the most insightful coming from director Martin Scorsese and record producer Don Was—from outside the immediate Stones circle.
 
All together, while the film is more entertaining than revelatory, one does come away from it wondering (if you didn't already) how the band managed to make any music at all, especially under such trying circumstances, never mind the caliber of which graces Exile On Main Street.

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Interview: Greil Marcus Discusses New Book on Van Morrison

Last year when Van Morrison revisited his classic album, Astral Weeks, in select performances across the country, he called to mind one of the most compelling instances in his canon in which the music was borne out of a conviction that even the most unintended note or inflection could yield altogether new inspiration.

In his new book, When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening To Van Morrison, music critic and historian Greil Marcus examines this philosophy as it has manifested throughout the artist's career.

“It is at the heart of Morrison’s presence as a singer," Marcus asserts, "that when he lights on certain sounds, certain small moments inside a song…can then suggest whole territories, completed stories, indistinct ceremonies, far outside anything that can be literally traced in the compositions that carry them.” Marcus encapsulates that vocal capacity in a word—adopted from another Irish singer, the late tenor John McCormack, who intended it as a distinguishing vocal trait—which, in turn, informs his assessment.

There's a term you reference in the book, the “yarragh,” which seems to be an unreachable, intangible essence.

It’s definitely intangible; it’s not unreachable. Because if the book is about anything, it’s about those moments when he does reach that, and some times when he falls short that you can kind of see what he’s aiming at. I’m taking it to mean any moment in a piece of music where the performer breaks through the boundaries of ordinary communication. And you just said something about essence, and that’s really it. You reach a point where you are getting across emotional depth and intensity and completeness that in many cases goes beyond words, any ordinary words, but goes beyond vocal sounds too.

You write that Morrison is on a quest, one that’s “about a deepening of a style, the continuing task of constructing musical situations in which his voice can rise to its own form.” That leaves the audience—whether one listening to an album or live in concert—out of the equation, doesn’t it? If he’s just up against himself…

Well, in that sentence, sure. Except if it’s about communication, if it’s about breaking the boundaries of communication, you have to have someone to communicate to. And that’s not yourself.

In the context of his live performances, you touch on how Morrison can be diffident and aloof with his audiences, yet resonate so profoundly with them.

I think it really is about sound, the kind of sounds that he can, or on a given night, can’t, generate. And so often that’s a matter of momentum, musical momentum, rhythmic momentum, and emotional momentum. I think I have a line in the book where…I’m thinking through him, as if he were saying, “Just because I have these songs I want to perform doesn’t mean there has to be people here to listen to them.” I’ve done one reading for this book and I learned a lot from the audience that night. One person talked about a night he had gone to see Van Morrison, and after the show he went to a bar and there were a lot of people at the bar who had been to the show. And after a certain point Van Morrison came in and people stood up and they cheered. He sort of didn’t really acknowledge that. And the guy who was telling the story said that he finally worked up his nerve and he went over to Van Morrison to try and tell him how much his music meant to him and how glad he was that he’d been able to be at the show that night. Morrison turned to him and said, “Why is it that people feel the need to tell me these things?” Why does the audience have to exist at all? [Laughs]

There’s a documentary, From A Whisper To A Scream, about the history of Irish music in which Van Morrison is interviewed on Astral Weeks. While other subjects in the film praise it, Morrison acts like it was just another album: He went to work, made a record, and moved on to something else.

No performer, or no person who does creative work whether it’s a novelist or a singer or film director, actor, wants to be the prisoner of his or her past work. Otherwise you can’t go to anything new with a sense that is new, that you’re going to do something you haven’t done before, [that] you’re going to break through into an area you’ve never been able to reach before. I would think that would be both incredibly tiresome for Van Morrison to always have people tell him, “I love Astral Weeks so much,” or whatever it might be. And then he might say or he might imagine, “Well, did you hear The Healing Game or did you listen to Keep It Simple?” “Oh no, man, I stopped buying records back in 1981.” That’s awful.

But music occupies a certain nostalgic position in people’s lives. If you hear a Beatles song or a Rolling Stones song from the ‘60s, that triggers a memory in your mind.

Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure it really works that way. God, no one is more nostalgic than Van Morrison. No one takes nostalgia for childhood, for being a teenager or being the kind of teenager maybe he never really was, but would’ve liked to imagine he could have been— 

You think he looks back like that?

He very explicitly looks back. Over the last twenty, twenty-five years in song after song after song [he’s made] nostalgia really the centerpiece in terms both of melodies and rhythm and words of his music. And yet, I think it’s always to get somewhere, to get to the childhood [you] didn’t live; to see the things you didn’t see then; to do the things you didn’t get to do then that you only wished you could. I mean, when you listen to “Behind The Ritual,” which is on his last album of new songs [Keep It Simple], it starts out as simple and kind of puerile nostalgia and it becomes something so much richer.

When I hear something that's really powered by its own engine [and not] by whatever associations I might bring to it—say, "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones, which I hear on the radio every few days and I feel like I have heard it on the radio every few days since it came out—it's like I'm hearing it for the first time. And I'm noticing things I never noticed or some aspect of the song seems primary where before it seemed just like decoration. I don't think it has anything to do with nostalgia. I think it's about somebody responding to something and becoming more of a person because of that experience. When one's reaction is nostalgic or if it triggers a memory or some past association, that reduces whatever it is you're responding to to something like looking in a scrapbook or your old high school yearbook.

Like associating a song with your first car.

Yeah, whereas we're talking about art. We're talking about the way art moves people and upsets people, makes them feel fulfilled and glad to be alive or whatever it might do. Which means that it can never really be controlled. It can never really be fixed. And I think Van Morrison has made so much unstable music that that kind of thing can happen in so many different places in any stage of his career.

Having attended Morrison’s Astral Weeks concert in Berkley, were you compelled to measure the performance to the album? Or did you just take it for a concert?

No, what I wanted was for the songs to come alive in a way that they didn't on the album, [to] take a different shape. In other words, to play these songs as opposed to playing the album. And they played the album. So it was a replication, really, or as close as they could come. There weren't any moments of surprise or spontaneity. And in that sense it was really disappointing… I saw him in early '69 in San Francisco at the Avalon Ballroom. He was playing with just two other musicians, a bass player and a flute and saxophone player. He did all of Astral Weeks that night, not the order of the songs they appeared in, which he didn't do last year either. And there wasn't any question that he was still lost in that music. It was not a closed book to him at all. I remember that in some ways more vividly than the show just last year.

Given how you describe Morrison in the book, do you see any comparable artist? The one that comes to mind is Neil Young.

Neil Young is probably the best analogy. I think that's really on the mark. Not that they're identical or maybe even that similar, but... There's a moment on "Over and Over" on Ragged Glory where something absolutely extraordinary happens in the middle of the instrumental break. The only way I've ever been able to describe it to myself is that the song turns over. I've only heard that one other time, in one other piece of music. So I don't think it's something anybody can aim for or really replicate. And if you listen to the Dead Man soundtrack that Neil Young did, which is just him playing guitar, I think you can hear that same sense of trust in the music or in your own ability to find it, but also the willingness to just go out there, poking around in the bushes for days if that's what it takes to find what you're looking for. I love something Neil Young said in the '90s, and he was being interviewed on the radio about grunge. And he said something like, "Ya know, all those old guys who play guitar, they don't know what grunge is." And I'm thinking, All those old guys? [Laughs]

Like Eddie Vedder?

I don't know what he meant—Neil Young at that time was one of the old guys—but he was saying, "All these old guys, they don't know what this is. They don't understand it. When you play that kind of music, there's no feeling like it anywhere." And he's saying, "I play this music in order to feel myself emotionally respond to the sounds that I'm creating. I'm my own listener." What a wonderful thing. Now whether Van Morrison is his own listener in the same way, probably not. But they're both people who can be enormously frustrating in terms of making tiresome music, making albums that you never want to listen all the way through let alone ever play again, but that you can't ever write off. You have no idea what they're going to come up with.

Of the general observation you make in the book, that there are elements at work in Morrison’s music that aren't necessarily charted note for note—that some things just happen—do you think he perceives what he does as having that much to do with chance? Because he's extremely talented.

I can't speak for him. I did find something he said in an interview very revelatory where he said something like, "The only time I'm really concentrating on the words is when I am writing them. But after that, when it comes time to sing the song, I release the words. And the words go out and they do what they want. Sometimes it's me chasing them or it's not up to me how they are going to arrange themselves." So if it's not exactly chance—and God knows there are enough horn arrangements in his music. There are arrangements. There are charts. They've been structured. They've been given to the musicians—then it is an openness to surprise, to spontaneity, to letting a piece of music go somewhere that you didn't intend. I've always been interested in music as event, as the record is something that actually happened as opposed to something that you really could do seventeen takes on and most people wouldn't notice the difference between them but the musicians can tell when one's a little better than the other.

I always think of the Rolling Stones' "Going Home," which is on Aftermath. The story always was that they had this song called "Going Home" and the first two-and-a-half minutes or so are Mick Jagger singing about going home. It's actually kind of dull. Then at the point where the song would be faded out, somebody finds something interesting in the rhythm and keeps playing. And they start to fool around with the rhythm. And the story was Charlie Watts, knowing that the song was over, got up from behind his drum kit and started walking out of the studio while everybody else was still playing. And somebody yelled at him, "Get back there!" I don't know if that story's true or not, but I love the story. And of course they go on for another, what is it, nine minutes or something like that in one of the most extraordinary things they ever did, and something they never have been able to or maybe never even tried [again]. They didn’t record it again; they've never played it live. It was something that happened. It was when they discovered themselves as musicians. Now that kind of event for the Rolling Stones is very unusual. For Van Morrison, you hear that kind of event all through his music, over and over and over.

How much credence do you give to Morrison’s talent, though, as opposed to something magical that happens? There has to be a baseline of talent to even have the possibility for magic to happen.

Well, I think his talent, at its deepest, is for opening up a feel where magic can happen. That's his talent. People who don't have any special talent, who really do just go through the motions or who have developed a product that market-research surveys have shown people will buy over the long term—and a lot of bands and a lot of performers really do work that way—don't have that kind of talent. Most of us probably don't. But I think he does.


When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening To Van Morrison by Greil Marcus is published by Public Affairs™, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2010.


Greil Marcus photo credit: Thierry Arditti, Paris

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Album Review: Buddy Guy - Skin Deep

It’s a classic case of a teacher showing up his students. In Shine A Light, Mick Jagger invites Buddy Guy to “help us out” on the Muddy Waters cut, “Champagne And Reefer.” As he waits for his cue, Guy leers at the band with this mischievous grin—this knowing look—as if to say, ”Let me demonstrate how it’s done, boys” before he steps up and thoroughly schools the Rolling Stones with a master class of Chicago Blues.

Guy assumes a similarly fervent and commanding approach on Skin Deep, an album of twelve originals (seven of which he wrote or co-wrote) that holds up as well as anything this side of Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues. At 71, his brilliance as a guitarist remains undiminished as he elicits tones so ferocious they sound like he’s manhandling six industrial power lines rather than playing a portable instrument. 

And like he enlightened the Stones, he takes a few more students under his wing, giving them room to groove without forsaking his own domain. Robert Randolph lays down a dirty steel guitar on the swamp stomp, “Out In The Woods,” and pedal steel (as Guy levels some “nighttime funky love”) on “That’s My Home.” Eric Clapton joins in on “Every Time I Sing The Blues,” a smoldering brew that finds them trading verses and licks for nearly eight minutes.

Yet it’s Derek Trucks who proves most versatile as he deftly complements the title track, which forgoes raucousness and heavy riffs for a countrified gut-check story about tolerance and dignity. “Underneath, we’re all the same,” Guy sings with poignant insight. Trucks also lends a modest slide guitar to “Too Many Tears” while his wife, Susan Tedeschi, holds her own against Guy’s mighty voice in this you-did-me-wrong duet.

The best lessons come from leading by example, though, and that’s where Buddy Guy especially thrives. He goes roadhouse on “Show Me The Money” and “Best Damn Fool,” tearing into them with merciless, combustible fury. And sustaining the potency but not the barnstorming pace, he simmers though primal tracks like “Smell The Funk” and “Lyin’ Like A Dog.” It’s on these slow burners, in particular, that Buddy Guy digs deepest, stretches out, and summons his most searing, inspired performances. In other words, he’s just demonstrating how it’s done.

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Rolling Stones Rule The Killing Floor with Shine A Light Soundtrack

Scoff all you want about their elder status in a young band’s domain. The Rolling Stones still run the Rock & Roll table at will. Issued to coincide with the theatrical release of Martin Scorsese’s film by the same name, the soundtrack to Shine A Light is a brazen, balls-to-the-wall live album.

Recorded over two nights at New York City’s Beacon Theatre in late 2006, the two-disc set comprises twenty-two tracks, four of which are not included in the film. The Stones wisely stick with what works, the most recent track dating back twenty-five years.

Armed with one of popular music’s ultimate catalogs, the band draws out rarities and hits with deliberate intent, brandishing them like select weaponry. Tenacious rockers abound – like “All Down The Line,” “Start Me Up,” “Brown Sugar,” “Shattered,” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” – while Charlie Watts keeps time with unassuming command.

Mick Jagger delivers more than a few electrifying performances, seldom sounding complacent, always exuding his roguish charisma. He swaggers through “Some Girls” and “Tumbling Dice” in inimitable cocksure form. He imparts “As Tears Go By” and “Faraway Eyes” with marked sincerity and, in the case of the latter, with a suitable honky-tonk twang. And he metes out an acerbic rendition of “Sympathy For The Devil,” his embodiment of Lucifer not only seeming absolute, but also strikingly appropriate.

Keith Richards, of course, musters up his own highlights at the microphone, as when he digs into “You Got the Silver,” singing out his ancient soul and trading dirty licks with Ronnie Wood. As well, on “Connection,” he shovels through the propulsive obscurity with certifiable cool.

Invited or not, artists who tread onto the Stones’ stage face an inherent risk, namely that they wind up looking foolish while attempting to hold sway with their hosts. Either they play it too safe or they try too hard, both scenarios rendering the same fate. Jack White, for instance, joins in on “Loving Cup,” but what should have inspired an assault of solos and riffs instead dwindles down to what sounds like a wholesome vocal duet. Conversely, all Christina Aguilera has to do is sing “Live With Me” with Jagger, but she exaggerates her voice – which ascends from wailing to howling to squealing – and overwhelms the song.

Leave it to Buddy Guy to get it just right. On the Muddy Waters barnstormer, “Champagne & Reefer,” the bluesman makes his total presence known, his booming voice and crying guitar steamrolling through – if not over – the playing of his loyal protégés. Damn right he’s got the blues and, at least for the duration of this song, Buddy Guy owns the Stones’ stomping ground too.

In the end, though, the Rolling Stones stand alone, getting their rocks off unrivaled and free to do what they want any old time. They’ve long deemed the concert stage as a killing floor. As a live album, Shine A Light exhibits how their enduring dominance still decimates lesser bands to nothing more than charlatans in their shadow, victims in their wake.

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