THE ROLLING STONES: METAMORPHOSIS (1975)
1) Out Of Time; 2) Don't Lie
To Me; 3) Some Things Just Stick In Your Head; 4) Each And Every Day Of The
Year; 5) Heart Of Stone; 6) I'd Much Rather Be With The Boys; 7) (Walkin' Thru
The) Sleepy City; 8) We're Wastin' Time; 9) Try A Little Harder; 10) I Don't
Know Why; 11) If You Let Me; 12) Jiving Sister Fanny; 13) Downtown Suzie; 14)
Family; 15) Memo From Turner; 16) I'm Going Down.
Although this was technically a compilation
rather than a regular album, and although it was, indeed, quite «out of time»
by the standards and fashions of 1975, and although the actual Rolling Stones
had very little to do with its release (it was more of an Allen Klein / Andrew
Loog Oldham project), Metamorphosis
still deserves more than just a passing mention. To date, it remains the only
officially released (though not officially endorsed by Mick and Keith)
collection of early Stones outtakes — and even if it was, first and foremost, a
money-grabbin' cash-in, its appearance on the market precisely at the time when
the Stones had just landed their first serious artistic crisis was quite a
miraculous coincidence.
Indeed, even if there is relatively little
greatness to be found among this bunch of demos and outtakes (on many of which
the Stones do not even play their instruments — there are several demos here
that were written by Mick and Keith for other artists and played by session
musicians), many of them compare quite favorably to the state of mind the
Glimmer Twins were in when they were producing It's Only Rock'n'Roll. There, in 1974, you had your wasted rock
stars, defeated and humiliated by their own excesses; and here, in 1975, you
get a glimpse at the same artists before
they were rock stars — seriously fresh, a little naïve, and still willing to
experiment with all sorts of songwriting styles before comfortably settling in
the Rock paradigm. So what's better — a new album from seasoned, but wasted
pros, or a bunch of questionable-quality outtakes from young aspiring disciples
of the craft?..
Actually, I'm not sure, but at least it is
definitely more curious to take a
look at this «alternate career retrospective» than it is to see how safely
predictable the band eventually became. And curious — to review not only the
paths that they had reliably trodden, but also those paths that they ultimately
rejected. ʽSome Things Just Stick In Your Mindʼ, one of their earliest compositions
that was recorded during the sessions for the first album, for instance, sounds
like a country-western reinvention of ʽBlowin' In The Windʼ — which was enough
to peddle it to the American duo Dick And Dee Dee (and later get it covered by
Vashti Bunyan), but not enough to dare come out with their own version. ʽEach
And Every Day Of The Yearʼ, given to another little-known American artist,
Bobby Jameson, is a strange ballad with a distinctly Spanish twang — bolero
rhythms, matador horns, ecstatic strings — the likes of which you will never
encounter in the Stones' catalog proper. ʽ(Walkin' Thru The) Sleepy Cityʼ,
released by the even more obscure British band The Mighty Avengers, is an
embryonic example of upbeat Kinksy Brit-pop from a time when the Kinks hadn't
even invented Brit-pop yet — and we're still only talking about 1964, mind you,
when the Stones themselves were mostly covering Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed.
Now I'm not saying any of these tunes were
masterpieces, but one thing they do show is that the pop song explosion of the
Stones in 1966 did not happen overnight: apparently, they spent quite a bit of
time training and honing their skills. In addition, there are some less
surprising cuts from those early years, as they also tried their luck at
mind-numbingly repetitive R&B (ʽTry A Little Harderʼ) and romantic
country-western (ʽWe're Wastin' Timeʼ); the most predictable of these
selections is a nasty-cool cover of Chuck Berry's ʽDon't Lie To Meʼ (probably
shelved because the melodically similar ʽRoute '66ʼ turned out to be far
superior), and the most historically treasurable one is a version of ʽHeart Of
Stoneʼ with Jimmy Page on lead guitar (not surprisingly, I far prefer Keith's
final solo on the original release — Jimmy was not quite able to latch on to
the required vibe here, pulling the song in a different direction).
After a chronological break, the second half of
the record is largely given over to outtakes from 1968-69, mostly around the Let It Bleed era — in theory, this
could be a blessing, but in practice, they are mostly jamming pieces on which
Richards and Taylor were getting used to each other, so stuff like ʽJiving
Sister Fannyʼ and ʽI'm Going Downʼ is required listening only for big fans of
the Stones sound in general. More interesting is ʽDowntown Suzieʼ, a sloppy
piece of acoustic barroom rock with Ry Cooder on slide guitar — I'm fairly
sure some people would have easily welcomed it in the place of ʽCountry Honkʼ,
but with those ridiculously low, Zappa-like "yeah, yeah, yeah"'s and
all, it's a bit too novelty-like. (I'm also pretty sure that this tune later
got reworked into ʽCasino Boogieʼ on Exile,
so they salvaged at least the main bulk of the melody). Even more interesting
is a cover of Stevie Wonder's ʽI Don't Know Whyʼ, also recorded during the Let It Bleed sessions but stylistically
predating the «lazy sinner gospel» style on Exile — and with a great Mick Taylor slide solo to boot;
unfortunately, they aborted the process midway through, so the song cheats on
you, repeating its last minute twice.
The most interesting tune on the second part,
however, is ʽFamilyʼ, an acoustic outtake from Beggars' Banquet with some melodic and atmospheric similarity to
ʽSister Morphineʼ — and a set of lyrics that contains more direct stern social
critique than the entirety of the album. I think they pulled the plug on that
one because they thought it was too Dylanesque — but on the other hand, that
did not prevent them from releasing ʽJig-Saw Puzzleʼ that was even more
Dylanesque lyrically, and these here lyrics are damn sharper: "What
exactly's gonna happen / When he's finally realized / That he can't play his
guitar like E. G. Jim (sic! no idea who
they mean — G.S.) / Or write St. Augustine if he tried". Of course,
ʽSister Morphineʼ ended up creepier, but this is Mick at his best as a lyricist
— and, for my money, the line about the father finding out that "his
virgin daughter has bordello dreams" actually goes way beyond "I can
see that you're fifteen years old" in terms of dark disturbance.
Throw in an early demo for Mick's solo piece of
verbal offense, ʽMemo From Turnerʼ (from Performance,
a movie whose relevance largely ended with the cessation of demand for Anita
Pallenberg's tits — these days, it looks like a rather clumsy and boringly
artificial amplification of Jagger's «Satanic» myth), and the collection takes
on a decidedly two-faced look: first, the Rolling Stones as innocent providers
of pop fodder for pop fodder artists — next, the Rolling Stones as the «Bad Boys
Extraordinaire» in the twilight of the Sixties. Which kinda sorta explains the Metamorphosis title, if not the silly
sleeve art with its gratuitous Kafka-esque allusions. Regardless, this is essentially
a hackjob, rather than a thoughtfully assembled collection of undeservedly
forgotten minor treasures — yet still perfectly listenable, because even at
their worst the Stones could still have decent songwriting ideas and/or a juicy
rock'n'roll sand; and certainly well worth knowing for both seasoned Stones
fans and those who are in need of
learning more about the breadth and scope of their artistic reach, so as not to
peg them away as the "it's only rock'n'roll, but I like it" kind of band.
Jiving Sister Fanny is absolutely great. It should have made it into "let it bleed" final cut .
ReplyDeleteHmm... strange thing about "Some Things..." on Wikipedia, it does indeed say that it was recorded in February 1964, implying the same sessions that produced their debut. On the other hand, this website (http://www.rokkets.com/ayukawawards/Stones/chrono63-67.txt) claims it was recorded in July that year, in the same sessions that produced the alternate "Heart of Stone". Other online recording sessions lists seem to confirm a later recording date. Now unless it goes by last recording for a particular tune (i.e. overdubs), then perhaps that would explain it, especially since "Try a Little Harder", also listed as a Feb '64 recording, is listed at the tail end of 1965 here. Then again, the "overdubs" assumption could be wrong too, since the post-1967 page from that website (http://www.rokkets.com/ayukawawards/Stones/chrono68-75.txt) has "You Got the Silver", "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Sister Morphine" grouped with the Beggars' Banquet sessions, and I'm pretty sure those must have had some kind of overdubbing.
ReplyDelete