B returned home today armed with duty free Hendricks gin so tonight's martinis were particularly sensational. And wouldn't Keith Richards be happy with us. Again we break our rules, pulling out albums from the basket until we find one that suits our mood. Let It Bleed, the Stones' eighth album from 1969, is perfect.
The liner notes state in capitals, "THIS RECORD SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD". Roger that.
It's worth thinking about the time this album was released. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated the year before; Nixon had just become POTUS; Woodstock was held; there were massive protests about the Vietnam War, gay rights and Soviet aggression. Apparently Delia Smith was an unknown food writer when she contributed the cake to this album cover. The Rolling Stone magazine review at the time marked this album as the end of the sixties. "Gimmie Shelter is a song about fear; it probably serves better than anything written this year as a passageway straight into the next few years."
The party was well and truly over. Although it was only just beginning for Keith, who "drifted into heroin" around this time. The British Government had a program where you could register with National Health "as a being a herion addict and then you got pure little heroin pills, with a little phial of distilled water to shoot it up with". His autobiography is one of the best books of the decade - bursting with the most ridiculous stories. And because he only took "pure, pure, pure" stuff, he remembers it all.
Honky Tonk Women. According to Keith "it's one of those tracks you knew was a number one hit before you finished the motherfucker". The well-known version was released a single, but it's the country version that appears on the album - Country Honk. Jackson instead of Memphis. Let It Bleed was the Stones at their whisky-soaked blues best. They were pulling in the the opposite direction of the self-involved and contrived prog rock of some of their counterparts - stripping back their rhythm and blues till it was raw.
The title track, Let It Bleed is sexy, dirty blues. We understand that the Stones were rock'n'roll sex fiends, but did Mick have to drawl "you can cream on me"? On You Got the Silver Keith takes the vocals (to share the workload, he explains in his book). It's an earnest 12-bar blues number, demonstrating that Keith is the equal of any bluesman of the century.
B grew up listening to his dad playing the Stones: when we were kids, my sister, brother and I loved You Can't Always Get What You Want. It was a common request on road trips with us forming a choir for the opening. I loved this song when I was eight. I love it now I'm thirty. I will love it when I'm sixty. What begins as plaintive wail of resignation turns into a fatalistic celebration. It's joyous recognition that in spite of the shortcomings and limitations of life, what we have can not only be enough, it can be everything we need.
How many bands peak eight albums into their career? Ok, the early albums were mainly covers, but we can't think of a modern band that has even released eight albums. This is the second album in the four album run that is considered the Stones' finest period. The three others, Beggar's Banquet; Sticky Fingers; and Exile on Mainstreet are all in the basket so don't worry, there is plenty more Stones hyperbole and Keith quotes to come.
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