THE ROLLING STONES: BETWEEN THE BUTTONS (1967)
1) Let's Spend The Night
Together; 2) Yesterday's Papers; 3) Ruby Tuesday; 4) Connection; 5) She Smiled
Sweetly; 6) Cool, Calm & Collected; 7) All Sold Out; 8) My Obsession; 9)
Who's Been Sleeping; 10) Complicated; 11) Miss Amanda Jones; 12) Something
Happened To Me Yesterday.
The Rolling Stones' follow-up to their first
fully autonomous album was recorded at around the same time as the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper and the Kinks' Something Else — and, unsurprisingly
for the times but curiously from a retrospective point of view, sort of sounds
like an uneasy, but fascinating cross between the two. Neither Mick nor Keith
had a lot of kind words to say about it afterwards: Mick, in particular,
complained about the production, dismissing it as overwrought, eccentric, and too
much corrupted by the psychedelic atmosphere of the times (a complaint that
would be thrice as relevant for their next album). Not counting the hit single
that was plopped onto the American release of the album, they almost never
performed any of these songs live after their touring schedule was cut short
because of the 1967 busts — even in later years, when the Stones actively
resuscitated a huge part of their old legacy, I think that ʽConnectionʼ (a
vocal showcase for Keith) was the only number from B&B that they agreed to bring out on stage. And, naturally,
this also agrees with the «conventional» critical view that the Golden Age of
the Stones does not properly begin until they purged their respiratory system
clean of Brian Jones and completely settled into the image of «midnight
ramblers with sympathy for the devil».
Despite all this, ever since «art pop» became
one of the key preferences of serious music fans around the world (about twenty
years ago or so), Between The Buttons
has managed to surreptitiously strengthen its positions — and today it has
pretty much become the banner around
which are gathered all those who say «The Rolling Stones are — or, at least, were — really so much more than generic,
ballsy blues-rock!» In fact, quite a few of these people seem ready to rate the
band's pop phase around this time as completely equal to The Beatles and The
Kinks, albeit, of course, strongly infected with the Stones' usual nastiness
and sneeriness, which gives it a hooliganish charm all its own. Who knows,
perhaps one day Mr. Jagger will cave in to the admiring reactions of these
people — somehow it seems to me that his bad associations have more to do with
the overall tense atmosphere of that transitional period, when the
deteriorating mental condition of Brian Jones, the erratic behavior of Andrew
Oldham, and the upcoming drug busts would turn the «Summer of Love» into,
arguably, the most miserable period in the personal and public lives of The
Rolling Stones.
It can hardly be denied, of course, that Between The Buttons feels somewhat specialized. Jagger's lyrics here teem
with bits and pieces of contemporary British reality, also both public and
personal (at least two, if not more, of the songs seem to have been written directly
about Marianne Faithfull), and the band's musical influences include music
hall and vaudeville — later on, they may have regretted becoming so hypnotized
with the UK pop fashions of 1966, but the thing is, they were a bunch of British kids, and they had what it takes, in their
blood, to subvert these influences and use them correctly. (In fact, it makes
far less sense to deride the Stones for going all «dandy» on our asses than to
criticize them for the faux-country flavor of something like ʽDead Flowersʼ —
not that I have anything against the latter, because the Stones were using the
country idiom for their Stonesy purposes, rather than trying to become «legit»
speakers of the country idiom; but then again, they did precisely the same with
the Brit-pop idiom).
Before proceeding on to the songs, the usual UK/US
debacle has to be taken care of: the US edition, as previously mentioned, took
two songs off the record (ʽPlease Go Homeʼ and ʽBackstreet Girlʼ, perhaps
picked out for their particularly vicious brand of «misogyny») and replaced
them with the contemporary hit single ʽLet's Spend The Night Together / Ruby
Tuesdayʼ. Unlike the changes on Aftermath,
which caused the US edition to lose some of its British flavor, this particular
decision does not affect the results too seriously: the baroque melancholy of
ʽRuby Tuesdayʼ is an acceptable substitute for the softly mean serenading of
ʽBackstreet Girlʼ, and ʽLet's Spend The Night Togetherʼ is clearly superior to
ʽPlease Go Homeʼ, although its braggardly, entertainment-oriented facade does
seem to be somewhat out of context here. At the very least, they could have
preserved ʽYesterday's Papersʼ as the original opener — its spirit is much
closer to the overall spirit of the album.
Anyway, since the same two songs would later be
reproduced once again on Flowers,
we'll talk about them later — here, let's try to concentrate exclusively on
what makes Between The Buttons so,
well, exclusive. ʽYesterday's Papersʼ
does set the tone, combining brutality (in the guise of Keith's distorted
guitar and Bill's heavy bass line) with gentleness (represented by Brian's
vibraphone and Jack Nitzsche's harpsichord), but what really makes the song
special is Jagger's vocal delivery. The song is usually supposed to be about
his breakup with Chrissie Shrimpton, the recent heroine of ʽStupid Girlʼ and
ʽUnder My Thumbʼ — but if on those two songs the singer intentionally sounded
as mean and obnoxious as possible, ʽYesterday's Papersʼ sounds sad in comparison: despite the usual
nasty words ("who wants yesterday's papers, who wants yesterday's
girl?"), there's clearly a lot of pain in the singer's voice, and it's
almost as if he is trying to coax himself into believing these words. It's
ironic, isn't it? On one hand, we do
know that "Seems very hard to have just one girl / When there's a million
in the world" is pretty much the definitive slogan of Jagger's entire
life, yet, on the other hand, these lines here are delivered without even the
tiniest smudgeon of lasciviousness — on the contrary, there's an echo of
desperation, amplified by the «alarmed» falsetto backing vocals. Somehow,
insecurity and even fear have entered the picture — a stark contrast with the
cocky, self-assured spirit of Aftermath.
What this means is one more step down the
ladder of psychological depth, and indeed, the multiple pictures of women that
the band paints on this LP, both musically and lyrically, represent genuine
artistic progress compared to the somewhat flatter imagery of Aftermath. Not surprisingly, though —
if Aftermath was Jagger's Chrissie
Shrimpton album, then Between The
Buttons is his Marianne Faithfull album, and Marianne, in his own words, is
"very complicated", because even if it is true that "she knows
just how to please her man, softer than a baby lamb", she's also quite
"educated, doesn't give a damn", and, for the first time ever, the
hero is even ready to admit his own inferiority: "she's sophisticated, my
head's fit to bust". ʽComplicatedʼ is one of the many underrated gems on
this record — combining a ʽSusie-Qʼ-style jungle beat with music-hall poppy sentimentality, it totally
succeeds in presenting its protagonist as deeply confused, a scratch-your-head-in-bewilderment
portrait of a relatively simple guy who is not quite sure of what to do with
this unexpectedly over-intellectualized piece of ass that fell into his hands straight
out of the sky. It's neither a loving serenade, nor a misogynistic
condemnation, but a song of genuine bewilderment (and, perhaps, one of Mick's
most honest ever songs about women).
Elsewhere, there is at least one loving serenade — ʽShe Smiled Sweetlyʼ is the
band's most beautiful and original love confession up to that point. A song
where the chief driving instrument is the Hammond organ (again, played by Jack
Nitzsche, I guess), giving it a bit of a solemn church feel, and the chief
secondary instrument is Charlie's drumset (he is pretty much dueting here with
Jagger, setting up the stage for every important vocal move of his), and the
heroine is addressed as the only person who can soothe and calm down those
insecurities and fears that keep haunting the male hero. It is the Rolling
Stones' equivalent — in their own way, of course — of ʽHere, There And Everywhereʼ,
only in reverse: where McCartney projects his own sweetness, like an enveloping
cloud, onto his imaginary lover friend, Jagger feeds on the sweetness of the imaginary lover friend to save him
from his bad dreams. Which either makes McCartney a self-sacrificing brave
knight and Jagger an egotistical bastard — or makes McCartney a narcissistic,
condescending fop and Jagger an honest-to-God, grateful lover. You decide.
Of course, a Brit-pop era gallery of female
portraits as painted by the Rolling Stones cannot be completed without a couple
caricatures — ʽCool, Calm & Collectedʼ begins the job on the album's first
side, and ʽMiss Amanda Jonesʼ completes it on the second one. The former is the
Stones at their most music-hall-ish ever, clearly competing with Ray Davies in
his ʽDedicated Follower Of Fashionʼ and ʽDandyʼ mode, except they prefer to
sing about ladies rather than gentlemen, and they like to set those good old
values on their head, taking the genre to absurd heights by frantically speeding
up the tempo towards the end until everything collapses in a decidedly un-cool, calm, and collected manner. There's
a symbolic dimension to it, too — the song can be interpreted as representing the
mad socialite whirlwind in which the heroine is trapped, whirling ever faster
and faster until... well, you know. But what sort of symbolism would be attached
to the bizarre chords that Brian plays on that dulcimer, introducing each new verse
with a few bars of some drunken, off-the-wall neo-Celtic dance pattern? I have
absolutely no idea, but it's so totally cool that it's there anyway. There's
elements of whirlwinding on ʽMiss Amanda Jonesʼ, too — I love how the guitars
catch on to Jagger's "down and down she goes", "on and on she
goes", "up and up she goes", and how the song, in its brief
three minutes, becomes even more of a fussy madhouse than ʽCool, Calm &
Collectedʼ.
Every other song on the album is good in its
own way — I'm not going to fawn over the individual merits of every single bar
of music here, but the vocal and instrumental hooks, the dense arrangements,
the mood shifts, the psychologism are a permanent fixture. By the time we get
around to the carnivalesque conclusion of ʽSomething Happened To Me Yesterdayʼ,
the song is fully prepared for at least two interpretations — literally, this
is the equivalent of the protagonist waking up after an acid trip, but
figuratively, it is also an awakening from the psychotic confusion of the rest
of the album — with its relatively sparse arrangement, enlivened by a loud, but
very «earthy» support from the brass section, it really feels like "what
the hell was that? Okay, time to pick
yourself up and go home"; and, by the way, it initiates a whole string of
similar dust-yourself-off finales for Stones' LPs where you could be shook up,
stressed out, rocked and rolled, wined and dined, kicked around and tossed
about all the way, but the last
number (ʽSalt Of The Earthʼ, ʽYou Can't Always Get What You Wantʼ, ʽMoonlight
Mileʼ, etc.) would always leave you off with, if not a glimpse of optimism, then
at least a drop of sanity. This is neither good nor bad, it's just a manner of
work for the Stones. Say what you will about the bad boys image — in reality,
ever since 1967, they have subconsciously regarded themselves as obligatory
guardians of your sanity, morality, and general well-being. I mean, I don't
know about yourself, but my own gut reaction to ʽSomething Happened...ʼ had
always been «Gee, these guys really know how to make themselves my friends»
before I actually took the time to study the lyrics and understand that they
were inciting me to drop acid. And it's not as if my English was particularly
bad or anything at the time. It was just a friendly gut reaction.
I'd be almost prepared to state that the album
is better than Aftermath (and I might have some objective backing here: at the
very least, the stylistic diversity and the musical complexity are at
unquestionably higher levels), but perhaps it is the invisible hand of Mick
Jagger that stops me at the last moment, indicating that, after all, Aftermath is a clearer and more genuine
representation of the band's state of mind at the moment. On the other hand,
this is essentially a futile point: both records are great in somewhat
different ways, and the only reason to incite such a dispute would be to
complete the restoration of Between The
Buttons to the position of a classic record in its own rights — let us,
once and for all, demolish the retrograde tradition that says «The Rolling
Stones weren't really too Rolling Stonesy in 1967, so those albums have their
moments, but leave Brit-pop to The Kinks, and psychedelia to The Beatles», and
let this not-so-complicated thumbs up rating be a small contribution to that.
To me, it's the best Rolling Stones album, no matter what Jagger thinks. Really shows that the guys could come up with excellent melodies and stop themselves after two or three minutes, instead of dragging the same tuneless corpse for five minutes, as they would soon start doing on "Let It Bleed". Yes, this one and the two or three around it are my favourites.
ReplyDeleteHey George, have you stopped shading the songs Red and Blue? Btw the Stones played She smiled sweetly in the Forty Licks tour.
ReplyDeleteIn recent years BtB has become a favorite of mine -- as hard as it can be to rank "Aftermath" through "Exiles", this would still land in the top half. Perhaps the most diverse record they've done, proving they were right behind The Beatles in drawing in "alien" styles and synthesizing them into the Stones paradigm. As a devotee to the UK releases, though (the only band where I follow the US releases instead are The Animals -- a benefit (or curse?) of coming to this music after it was easier to access in its original form), I find that it lacks a certain something with "Let's Spend" and "Ruby Tuesday" instead of "Back Street Girl" and "Please Go Home" -- not that the single wasn't stunning and wonderful in its own right.
ReplyDeleteBy strange occurrences, this is the first Stones album I owned and memorized. Here's my take:
ReplyDeletehttp://everybodysdummy.blogspot.com/2009/11/rolling-stones-9-between-buttons.html
Ditto just about everything in Pink?'s post. A few weeks ago, I started poking around every corner of the Rolling Stones heretofore unexplored or ignored (I'll probably pop in for a comment on those reviews, too, if only in half-hearted defense of "Suck on the Jugular")...lo and behold, Between the Buttons is their pre-Golden Age masterpiece. The poppers, rockers, and weirdos all gel perfectly under the Stones umbrella and with perfect flow. "All Sold Out" is a simple, gritty Who-ish stomper (some groups would use this as an opportunity to "tee off;" the Stones nearly fade the song out TOO early). "Who's Been Sleeping Here?" is such a Dylanish parody of Dylan himself, I'm sure old Bobby got a chuckle or two. Finally, "Miss Amanda Jones" gives us the prototype "generic Stones rocker" of which we'd be getting at least one per album very soon ("Dance Little Sister," anyone?). But hold it! What's with that fantastic Beatles-y bridge? And that guitar tone is just gooey as hell.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'd put it up there with Exile and Sticky. Top-shelf melodies, arrangements, and vocals, and just oozing with humor and self-irony. The Stones never made and then immediately dismissed a better record.
Oh, no George! Why did you stop shading the great songs red and the bad songs blue? Please dont leave that out of your next Rolling Stones reviews! It gives your reviews a greater insight into what you truly feel about an album! Well, at least that's what I think! Please go back to that!
ReplyDelete