THE ROLLING STONES: OUT OF OUR HEADS (1965)
1) Mercy
Mercy; 2) Hitch Hike; 3) The Last Time;
4) That's How Strong My Love Is; 5) Good Times; 6) I'm All Right (live); 7) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction; 8) Cry To Me; 9) The
Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man; 10) Play With
Fire; 11) The Spider And The Fly; 12) One More Try.
Once again, we witness the strangely wise
strategy of the American market — by integrating the band's strongest singles
of 1965 into LP space, it made the American LP positively glowing next to its
British counterpart, which only came out a couple months later and looked quite
gray and disappointing in comparison, being more the equivalent of the equally
disappointing December's Children in
America (with which it would also share the front sleeve). On the other hand,
there is also no denying that the American Out
Of Our Heads seems uncomfortably bumpy in comparison — with A++ level
songs sharing the bus with such originals and covers as were, frankly speaking,
way behind the times by mid-1965.
So let us first look at the record as if the
three big songs (we all know which ones) weren't there at all. What remains,
then, is somewhat of a letdown after the near-perfect balance of blues, rock
and roll, and R&B that we'd just experienced with Now!. In particular, there is a very strong tilt towards R&B
here — Don Covay, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and Solomon Burke all get represented? Like, skinny white boy Mick
Jagger has to single-handedly take on all five
of them in half an hour's time? Sorry, not going to happen, even if he does
attempt to give it his best, and even if we remain thoroughly unprejudiced.
At least when he sees some strong support from
his buddies, things work out well. Thus, ʽMercy Mercyʼ is given an entirely
different face, with an aggressive fuzz riff from Keith that certainly presages
the ʽSatisfactionʼ riff in terms of sheer nastiness (ironically, the original
Don Covay version is generally assumed to have featured Hendrix himself on
guitar — but that was still in his younger days, when he already had the touch
but did not yet quite have the flash), and next to that riff, it is fun to see
Jagger try and combine pleading and
menace in one single delivery: his "I'm gonna make it to the nearest river
child and jump overboard and drown" is more of a blackmail message than a
broken-hearted plea. For ʽCry To Meʼ, Brian switches to rhythm guitar, and
Keith once again helps out with a lead part that is actually more soulful than
the vocal — best is saved for last, when the singer and the guitar player fight
each other over the coda with machine-gunned vocal barks and bluesy licks,
making the whole thing wilder and crazier than the original could ever hope to,
even if, left all on his own, Jagger could never hope to steal the show from
Mr. «Muhammad Ali of Soul».
But it is not always like that: on numbers such
as ʽHitch Hikeʼ, ʽThat's How Strong My Love Isʼ, and ʽGood Timesʼ the
instruments all take a back seat next to the vocalist, and there is little
other than tolerable competence to support these versions — Jagger's mimicking
of Redding's alternating "now I'm soft and tremble and weepy / now I'm
incensed and energized and screechy" is a bit ridiculous, and, likewise,
he is unable to find a meaningful alternative to Sam Cooke, while all that
Keith and Brian can do is just learn and reproduce the chords, so take that
"what's the point of listening to us doing ʽI'm A King Beeʼ when you can
hear Slim Harpo doing it?" quote and amend it to "what's the point of
listening to us doing ʽGood Timesʼ when you can hear Sam Cooke doing it?"
and you got it just about right.
Worst thing of all, this time around the
R&B covers are not balanced with
a decent batch of rock'n'roll ones — the closest they get is with a live
version of Bo Diddley's ritualistic vamp ʽI'm All Rightʼ (taken from the band's
first official live release, the brief EP Got
Live If You Want It!), but (a) it's live, so there are problems with
fidelity; (b) it ain't Chuck Berry, and if it ain't Chuck Berry, it ain't proper rock'n'roll with the Stones; (c)
there would be a sharper, better-sounding alternate version of this one anyway
on next year's live album, although, granted, Brian's «dive-bomb» guitar runs
are already as exciting here as they ever would be.
If we throw in a pair of frankly underwhelming
originals — the repetitive jam ʽUnder Assistant West Coast Promotion Manʼ,
whose only function was to vent some frustration at the alarmingly expanding
ego of Andrew Loog Oldham; or the annoyingly moralistic ʽOne More Tryʼ, whose
only redeeming feature is a smooth harmonica solo from Brian — it is not difficult
to understand how Out Of Our Heads seems
to be stalling, bogging the Stones down in covers that they have a harder time
appropriating than they used to. Perhaps it was just one of those brief periods
when they wanted to get away from the «it's only rock'n'roll» ideology, but they'd
already ended up stuck with evil grins on their faces, so excuse me for just
one moment if I am unable to find Mick Jagger singing "ain't felt this
good since I don't know when..." totally convincing.
But then there are the singles — ʽThe Last
Timeʼ with ʽPlay With Fireʼ as the B-side, and that other one, ʽKeith Richard's
Dream No. 9ʼ. How they can abide on the same album with ʽOne More Tryʼ on it is
a little beyond me, but that's what the word «transition» is there for; after
all, in 1965 the Stones, like most of their British pals, were still
substantially a «singles band». ʽThe Last Timeʼ is not a personal favorite of
mine, but remains a milestone, as it basically introduces Keith Richards The
Riffmeister — that simple, jumpy, unforgettable chord sequence, probably
developed by the man as he was riffing around the ʽEverybody Needs Somebody To
Loveʼ groove, broke open the doors and initiated one of the greatest
riff-writing sequences in the history of popular music. Other than that, the
song is also notable for its booming, echoey production (Phil Spector was on
board to lend an easily recognizable hand), but I would still define it as
transitional, too: Jagger's lyrics here still owe too much of a debt to his
R&B idols, the solo break is a bit underwhelming (as if neither Keith nor
Brian had any good ideas in store), and the pissed-off mood is fairly
straightforward. (In other words, I sometimes get bored with the song and get
the temptation to cut it off after the first verse/chorus).
A completely different kind of a breakthrough
comes with ʽPlay With Fireʼ — the song that announces an entirely new type of
Stones music, one that would reach its apogee in 1966-67 and then, more or
less, depart forever: the «Anglo-Stones», almost for the first time turning
their heads away from across the Atlantic and back to their native shores. A
dark acoustic ballad, colored further with Jack Nietzsche's «baroque» harpsichord
lines, and with lyrics that dare mention English realities, replacing the
barely known (and barely pronounceable) Winona, Kingman, Barstow, and San
Bernardino with the more familiar Saint John's Wood, Stepney, and Knightsbridge
and sounding like a barely veiled threat to the upper classes — and, above all,
recorded and released several months prior to ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ, with
which it shares at least the basic theme, if not the details. If Mick Jagger
sounded like a lascivious midnight rambler in 1964, then on ʽPlay With Fireʼ he
actually sounds like a real menace — and all he has to do is keep his voice
down to a stern, but calm, half-spoken tone: "Well you've got your
diamonds and you got your pretty clothes...", and the first line already
gives it away that this situation is probably not going to stay the same for
very long. So what do we have here? Simply the Stones' very first venture into
«(dark) baroque pop» and their very
first «socially conscious» song, ever; and a certain milestone not only in the
Stones' career, but in the history of British music as well.
On ʽSatisfactionʼ, I'd like to keep quiet,
because ʽSatisfactionʼ is ʽSatisfactionʼ, and no amount of critical /
analytical dissection of the song is going to make it any less fabulous than it
is. (My one moment of indecision regarding that song concerns the opening
vocals — I have never been able to decide if the original soft, breathy, oddly
seductive vocal tone suited the whole thing better than the sneery bark that we
usually witness on later live performances; I guess the sneery bark can be seen
as a more logical choice, given the presumed mental state of the protagonist,
but I still have a quasi-nostalgic soft spot for the original soft start, and
wouldn't at all mind if it returned to the stage one day — perhaps when Jagger
hits 90?). Instead, let me devote a few lines to the single's B-side, the much
overlooked ʽSpider And The Flyʼ, which is one of the most lyrically smart early
Stones songs ever — they admitted to borrowing the melody from Jimmy Reed, but
they made it more poppy, or, even, more Brit-poppy, and the cool, calm,
collected tempo, the self-assured, cocky, sly-grinning vocal delivery, the diabolical
intonation with which Jagger pronounces the greeting "Hi!", all of
this make it a direct predecessor of ʽSympathy For The Devilʼ: admittedly, on a
minor scale, but even Lucifer has to start somewhere. (Though if the lyrics are
to be interpreted correctly, this Lucifer just had his ass handed to him by a
30-year old machine operator — he still had to build up some experience).
None of the criticisms voiced above prevent the
record from getting a firm thumbs up — anything less for a record with
ʽSatisfactionʼ on it, even if everything else was a bunch of by-the-book
Frankie Avalon covers, would be an outrage. But I have always found it fun to
see how the development of one's own songwriting talents might go hand-in-hand
with the decrease of the ability to brilliantly interpret others' material — and
there's no better illustration of that than the second half of 1965 for the
Stones.
In The Netherlands Satisfaction is seen as the signature song of The Stones and I agree, but for different reasons. The song is good, but not fabulous. In the first place there already were better riffs: You really got me now and Don't let me be misunderstood. In the second place the song rocks and kicks ass, but not as much as the fans pretend. In the third place the melody is a bit bland. In the fourth place, even if only three and a half minutes, the song is repetitive, with that riff repeated over and over again and Jagger singing I can't get no a gazillion more times than necessary to transmit the message.
ReplyDeleteNow I think artists should be evaluated on their best output. We don't judge Mozart for his youth symphonies either. So with one notable exception from here on I will focus on their best output. I just don't think Satisfaction qualifies.
Minor nitpick: I don't know if the riff from "The Last Time" was written by Keith, but Brian is the one who plays it (you can check it at for example the video footage of the 1965 NME awards). Nowadays Ronnie plays it.
ReplyDeleteGood info Jaime it's always important to have Brian get his due.
DeleteGreat review as always, George. All I can add is that "That's How Strong My Love Is" has a vocal performance for the ages.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny to think about how thin the bench really is on "Out Of Our Heads," given the two famous hits and the three fan-beloved B-sides ("Under Asst" was "Satisfaction's" US B-side, while "Spider" did that duty in the UK). I like its thick, jangly vibe and Mick really hits his stride as sneering, amusing frontman. I like "Under Asst." more than you, but otherwise concur this is solid but not stupendous.
ReplyDelete