THE ROLLING STONES: AFTERMATH (1966)
1) Paint
It, Black; 2) Stupid Girl; 3) Lady Jane; 4) Under My Thumb;
5) Doncha Bother Me; 6) Think; 7) Flight 505; 8)
High And Dry; 9) It's Not Easy; 10) I Am Waiting; 11) Going Home.
Looking back at the era where most bands began
as cover acts, and then slowly progressed towards establishing their own
styles, images, and writing signatures, this sort of makes me happier than
looking forward at the situation where, even if you are a completely immature
and insecure struggling 18-year old artist, you are still expected to enter that studio, trembling hands and all, and
come out with your own set of writer credits. Imagine an entire album of Jimmy
Reed remakes and clones of ʽThe Singer Not The Songʼ — I am much happier
hearing the Stones reinterpret Chuck Berry and, for that matter, cover Jimmy
Reed directly rather than trying to «write» something in his name. But those
first two years helped them work out a solid base, and by the time it became
clear that major artist, want it or not, would have to write their own stuff (not to mention all the financial
benefits), Jagger and Richards, having finally cut their teeth on the
occasional A-grade riff-rocker and the occasional Brit-pop ballad, were ready
to play «the Beatles game» for all its worth.
Recorded at the RCA Studios in Hollywood in
late 1965 and early 1966, Aftermath
features nothing but Jagger/Richards originals and firmly plants the pair in
the top rank of contemporary British songwriters. Their artistic ambitions stay
true to their inner spirits — they are not even trying to out-Beatle the
Beatles by writing painful-soulful confessions like ʽHelp!ʼ or dabbling in
early cosmic-psychedelic territory like ʽNowhere Manʼ. Instead, they take their
cues from the sneery attitude of Dylan and the psychological surgery of Ray
Davies — Aftermath is a penetrating,
sarcastic, and, judging by modern standards, delightfully offensive portrayal
of a bored young man's life in contemporary England, as the boys set their
mastery of the American blues form firmly in the service of painting the
reality of British existence. This means that Aftermath will, almost by definition, have a somewhat lesser appeal
than Rubber Soul or Revolver, but it does not mean that Aftermath does not possess certain intricate
qualities and strong points of attraction that you will never find on any
Beatles album — or any Beach Boys one, for that matter.
The continuing discrepancies between UK and US
releases began to hurt at this point: Aftermath
was the Stones' first intentional stab at a certain conceptuality, and the
decision of the American people to take out ʽMother's Little Helperʼ and
replace it with the contemporary successful single ʽPaint It Blackʼ, while
understandable from a purely financial perspective, would look akin to a
classical label's decision to throw out a slow, boring andante movement out of
the middle of a Mozart concerto and replace it with Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. They also thought that the running length
of 50 minutes was way too revolutionary for the local people (only crazy people
like Bob Dylan could get away with something like that), and tossed out ʽTake
It Or Leave Itʼ, ʽWhat To Doʼ, and — in a particularly criminal turn of action
— ʽOut Of Timeʼ, an essentially Aftermath-like
type of song; the fact that two of them later ended up on the US-only Flowers (with ʽOut Of Timeʼ cruelly cut
up by about a minute and a half) does not properly excuse the butchers.
Still, once the pattern has been set, it would
only make things messier to deviate from it, and so we will be talking
primarily about the way Aftermath
was served to the American people, beginning with a universalist anthem of
bleakness and darkness rather than a bitter sociological observation on the
depressed life of British housewives. ʽPaint It Blackʼ does not yet give us the
Stones at the ʽGimme Shelterʼ height of their apocalyptic powers — it is much
lighter than that, and it is hard to take Jagger's lyrics and vocal delivery
too seriously. What really makes the song (or saves the song, if you prefer) is the anger, the sturm-und-drang mode
that begins with Charlie's «alarm! alarm!» percussion pattern and culminates in
the key change in the middle of the verse: as Jagger turns from the mope of
"I see a red door and I want it painted black..." to the bark of
"I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes...", it is
clear that this is sure as hell not
going to be another unsatisfactory fakery à la ʽBlue Turns To Greyʼ — this is
more about anger, of the headbanging type, than about drowning in one's own
tears. And from that point of view, Brian's introduction of the sitar here is,
in a sense, even more revolutionary than George Harrison's introduction of it
on ʽNorwegian Woodʼ — here, for the first time, the sitar is actually used as a
rock instrument, playing a rhythmic,
rocking drone that kicks ass rather than mystifies in some pseudo-Hinduist
manner. Throw in those thick bass zoop-zoop-zoops from Wyman, particularly in
the coda, sliding his fingers down the strings as if he were figuratively splashing
fat blots of black paint at Jagger's red door, and the aggressive
interpretation of the song is complete: you can trash the concert hall to the martial
sounds of ʽPaint It Blackʼ just as effectively as you could do it to ʽThe Last
Timeʼ or ʽSatisfactionʼ.
It is this unusual combination of predictable
and unpredictable instruments, familiar forms and unfamiliar substantiations of
them, that makes Aftermath still
sound so fresh and unique after all these years — provided you give it a
serious and fair chance. I mean, when you really sit down and take a close look
at the lyrics to ʽLady Janeʼ, it turns out that the general message is not that
far removed from ʽYesterday's Papersʼ' "seems very hard to have just one
girl / when there's a million in the world" — this is not so much a
chivalrous love serenade as it is about dumping one love in favor of another,
the whole thing being permeated with thick Jagger irony, both in the words and the
faux-Chaucerian accent that delivers them. This contrasts starkly with the most
seriously-minded person in the band — Brian Jones, playing the hell out of that
Appalachian dulcimer, yet even Brian got caught in the irony when he talked in
an interview about the dulcimer being an old English instrument (probably
confusing it with the hammered dulcimer). Of course, texture-wise, the song
does have an Elizabethan feel to it (though you'd probably be hard pressed to
find anything from Elizabethan times that would sound even remotely close), but
it only works because it mixes «gallantry» with «mockery» — otherwise, you'd
have the Stones as predecessors of Amazing Blondel, and that would probably be
a real disaster.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of Aftermath, and the one reason why the
album will never find as much acceptance in the circles of «pop aestheticists»,
is that, unlike the Beatles or Brian Wilson (or Hendrix, for that matter), the
Stones do not show as much interest in exploring the technical sonic
possibilities of the studio. The songs sound relatively sparse, with few
overdubs except for all of those Brian's exotic instruments; experiments with
tape, special effects, etc., are kept at an absolute minimum; and all the songs
are strictly guitar-based, with Brian's dulcimers, sitars, and marimbas
fulfilling the cherry-on-top role. On the other hand, give Keith Richards his
due, too: he is perfectly willing, where necessary, to work in the background
and just provide the dough for Brian's toppings — Aftermath is not a very riff-heavy album (even on a song like
ʽUnder My Thumbʼ, you really get to have a much stronger feeling for its riff
only in a live setting; in the studio, you hum along to the marimbas), and it
rather gets by on the strength of vocal hooks and exotic instrumentation,
justifiedly opening the so-called two-year «pop period» for the Stones.
Time and radio play singled out ʽPaint It
Blackʼ and ʽUnder My Thumbʼ as the highlights (and maybe throw in ʽLady Janeʼ,
which was also released as a single), but in reality, the album is quite
consistent, and contains a good deal of «sleeper classics» that the Stones
themselves would subsequently — undeservedly — shun in concert, mainly because
those songs did not so well agree with their «roots rock» image. (Or,
sometimes, maybe not, because how more «roots» can you get than with the genius-amateur
country of ʽHigh And Dryʼ?) Almost everything is catchy one way or another,
though sometimes too repetitive — ʽFlight 505ʼ, for instance, sets an excellent
mid-tempo groove going, but once it has been established, very little happens
with the song over its three long verses and one unremarkable instrumental
break, and you begin wondering if the music here wasn't organized around Jagger's gruesome story of an
airplane crash rather than the other way around. (Of course, you don't have to
think that the song is literally
about an airplane crash — it is about having to pay dearly for one's reckless
decisions, the kind of which a highly disciplined and precautious English
gentleman like Mr. Jagger would never take on his own). More importantly,
almost everything tells a story, whether it be the female character assassination
of ʽStupid Girlʼ or ʽUnder My Thumbʼ (Jagger's «misogyny», for which he'd be roasted
alive in the PC age, even if stupid girls — and cruel boys — are as much a
reality in 2016 as they were in 1966), contemplation of one's own loneliness
and stupidity in ʽIt's Not Easyʼ, the odd airplane allegory of ʽFlight 505ʼ,
or... well, I am, of course, not going to insist that the Stones were as
accomplished in the art of British storytelling as the Kinks on Face To Face or Somethin' Else, since too many of these songs are centered around
the protagonist's relationships with his numerous Lady Janes and Lady Anns and
Sweet Maries, but even as it is, the scope of Jagger's feelings is
head-spinning: on Side B alone, he has enough time to (a) blame his woman for
dumping him because "she found out it was money I was after", (b)
blame himself for being left without a woman (ʽIt's Not Easyʼ), (c) express an
abstract hope that it'll all work out in the end (ʽI Am Waitingʼ), (d) revel heartily
over the perspective of going home to see his baby as if nothing happened in
the first place and he were just some nonchalant Sonny Boy Williamson on his
way back from a hard day's work at the factory.
Speaking of (d), the one and only thing that
the American release of Aftermath
got absolutely right was sticking the 11-minute jam ʽGoin' Homeʼ to the end of
the record. Not only is it easier that way to simply turn off the record 11
minutes too early if you hate its meandering, but it also forms a much more
natural (and somewhat eerie and foreboding) end to the LP than the somewhat
subpar series of filler tunes (ʽThinkʼ, ʽWhat To Doʼ) that capped off the UK
version. And I, for one, have always been fascinated by ʽGoin' Homeʼ. What that
track does is take a dusty old blues cliché ("goin' home to see my
baby", usually delivered in an optimistic key by the bluesman whose only
joy in life is his baby) and, as soon as the jam part starts, turn it on its
head — the music quickly takes on a dangerous air, with alarming, suspenseful harmonicas
and guitars all over the place, and Jagger's improvised ad-libbing is the exact
opposite of a love-crazed R&B-er like, say, Otis Redding, burning it on
stage: he is 100% in his "midnight rambler" image here, throwing off
endless "I'm goin' home"'s and "I'm gettin' out"s and
"early in the morning"s and "in the middle of the night"s
with the alarming glee of a psychopath rather than a sweet man in love. The
only thing missing here is an accompanying video: I can easily picture a
setting in some creepy part of nighttime London, with Mick gliding and
wriggling his way across the pavement while Richards with his guitar and Brian
with his harmonica occasionally show up from behind the hedges, evil grins on
their faces and all. Could be creepier than ʽToo Much Bloodʼ, with a little
effort invested. Especially that ending — "touch me one more time... come
on little girl... you may look sweet... but I know you ain't... I know you
ain't...". That's Mick the Ripper, right? You bet your ass that as the
night goes by and the first rays of the rising sun put an end to the song, what
we're left with is not so pretty a picture.
Of course, that's just one charming way of
interpreting things, but if I do not acknowledge this, there's no way I can
explain the strange magic of Aftermath
that has kept me in its grip for so many years. Yes, it is the album that
initiates a relatively «sweet» period for the Stones, one that would be
officially discarded only with the advent of ʽJumpin' Jack Flashʼ two years
later, but even that sweetness was always mixed with darkness and provocation. Aftermath knows how to switch from
tenderness to cruelty, from sincerity to irony, from light optimism to dark
suspense without suspending belief in either of these — thanks, first and
foremost, to the burgeoning talents of a skilled melodist (Richards), an
inspired arranger (Jones), and an unparalleled showman at the peak of their
powers. Perhaps, song-by-song, it is not the most consistent set of tunes they
had ever produced (I would never include ʽDoncha Bother Meʼ or ʽWhat To Doʼ in
my Top 100 Stones songs, I guess), but in terms of highlights, conceptual
unity, and innovative breakthroughs (the 11-minute length of ʽGoin' Homeʼ
alone is worth something!), Aftermath
is as good a Rolling Stones album as can be found. It does not ask you to turn
off your mind, relax and float downstream (because that's one sure way to get
whupped by the midnight rambler), and it does not pretend that they just
weren't born for these times (because they so very much have), but it does tell you, in no uncertain terms, how it feels to
be like a rolling stone — so let's just leave it here with a dylanesque thumbs up.
