"I thought of being a journalist once" - Mick Jagger
Ah, The Rolling Stones. Where do I start? I
guess I was first made aware of them as a seven or eight year-old in
the 1966-67-68 period when they started to appeal to my heightening
sense that the all-conquering Beatles were goody-goodies and The Stones
were proper bad boys. My developing tastes found this to be an admirable
thing. Even at that age, there was a nascent feeling that if the older
generation - parents, teachers and the like, even the judiciary -
despised them, they must have something about them. Ironically, though,
my Mother loved The Stones.
Then, of course, there was the music - loud, punchy, riffy, buzzy and singalong, but not in a "she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.." way, but in a "he can't be a man because he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me" style. The Stones always had a healthy cynicism and a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour that appealed to me no end.
Not
only that, there was the look - the cockiness, the laddish (but pretty
harmless) sexism, the sneers, the long hair. A general wilful grubbiness
that appealed to many young boys such as myself. I let my hair grow
Stones-ish. No mop-top for me, thank you very much.
When
The Stones really started to resonate with me was in 1968 when Jumpin'
Jack Flash hit the number one spot. Wow! What a devilish brew of a song.
What an accompanying video they showed on Top Of The Pops - the group looking positively Mephistophelean. I was ten by then and I loved it. The huge, dirty riff, the menacing lyrics - "I was bawwwn in a crossfire hurricaaaaane...." - and Mick Jagger's drawled, affected but immensely captivating singing. I'll take half a pound of those please...
The
next song to do the business for me came as life went in to colour in
the seventies and Brown Sugar came out. Jagger strutting around on Top Of The Pops in
a pink shiny suit and looking just so supremely decadent. The King of
Knaves. They just looked the absolute business. That was that sealed for
me. The Stones were here to stay. They have been here ever since. They
always will. Say what you like about them going through the motions for
over thirty, forty, fifty years. So what? Just listen to any Keith
Richards intro. They can go through as many motions as they fucking well
like, man.
Anyway - here we go then. The Rolling Stones....
This is a hugely significant album. It is the debut album from The Rolling Stones. Before this there was no Rolling Stones. Just imagine that.Granted, it is almost all blues-r 'n' b cover versions, save the two Jagger and Richards in disguise "Nanker-Phelge" compositions, Now I've Got A Witness and Little By Little and the first properly accredited Mick Jagger and Keith Richards composition, Tell Me (You're Coming Back), but it is played with a huge effervescence and energy that made people really sit up and take notice. Many albums from British r'n'b groups at the time (and US Motown ones for that matter) were loaded with covers. There was such a wealth of songs out there that these acts had only just discovered. Anyway, a lot of those albums have not aged as well as this one - The Stones apply a veritable bucketload of youthful energy and more than a little skill to the songs.
The UK version of the album included Mona (I Need You Baby) instead of the hit single Not Fade Away and was simply titled The Rolling Stones, as opposed to England's Newest Hitmakers, as it was for the US version. This has led to a lot of confusion regarding these early Stones albums. The album was recorded in mono and, for me, by far the sonically-best version to listen to is that taken from The Rolling Stones In Mono box set. It is the UK version of the album on this set, and it quite simply will blow you away with its pure monoaural power.
The afore-mentioned sound comes blasting right from the centre of my speakers with a huge big, bassy thump right from the frantic opener, Chuck Berry's Route 66. The throbbing bass is a thing of aural beauty. As I said, just check out that delicious, deep bass on this energetic cover. As an introduction from The Rolling Stones to the world, it wasn't a bad first step. The Stones were here.
I Just Want To Make Love To You - Mick Jagger's first use of innuendo features in his drawly vocal delivery on this Willie Dixon Chess Records blues classic. Brian Jones contributes harmonica here, not Jagger, something unusual in these very early days. On Honest I Do Jagger does full justice to a song he owned on an imported EP by Jimmy Reed. For many, including myself, it was The Stones' versions of these songs that they heard before they experienced originals.
Bo Diddley's Mona (I Need You) is a particularly infectious, shuffling and rhythmic number - check out that cheese-grater percussion rhythm. The quality of the album is continued with a full-on attack that is pretty much irresistible. I have been listening to stuff from The Yardbirds, The Animals and Them (all bluesy contemporaries of The Stones) a lot recently, and, in doing so, I have sort of neglected The Stones' recordings that kicked the whole thing off. Listening to this now, I realise just why it spawned so many similar groups hammering out the same stuff. It is wonderful, youthfully vibrant fare but with a real respect to music from what was, until then an almost-forgotten bygone genre.
Now I've Got A Witness is a wonderful, monaural 12-bar blues instrumental jewel. The sound on it is simply superb. It was the first Jagger/Richards composition attributed to their bizarre and vaguely naughty (for the time) Nanker/Phelge pseudonyms. All schoolboys immediately realised the "wanker" soundalike, of course!
A comparatively chugging Nanker number, Little By Little still ain't bad though, such is the quality present. Phil Spector was involved in the creation of this, a sort of re-hash of Jimmy Reed's Shame Shame Shame. Vague plagiarism was de rigeur in the British blues explosion, wasn't it? Nobody seemed to mind.
A great bluesy start to the album's second side, I'm A King Bee has Mick Jagger adopting that affected supposedly-American accent most obviously for the first time. Once again, the sound on this just takes your breath away with its clarity.
The precocious Keith Richards nails the riff on a second Chuck Berry song, Carol, which is another copper-bottomed corker. Never mind the old bluesmen, it was Berry first and foremost for Keith, certainly in terms of rock and rollers. The bluesers were Brian and Mick's territory, initially at least. The song was memorably performed live on 1969's Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out album.
Tell Me You're Coming Back is, as mentioned earlier, Jagger and Richards' first song and you can tell. It has that typical mid-sixties Stones sound that the other songs don't have. That mid-paced, electric and acoustic guitar backed sound. It has an excellent guitar solo near the end too. It is a bit of an underrated early Stones number.
Obviously this album's wide-reaching effect was far greater than the sum of its parts, but it is still a most uplifting, invigorating listen, all these years later. This was fully exemplified by the group's cover of Marvin Gaye's upbeat Motown, but very r'n'b classic, Can I Get A Witness, which is given a reasonable makeover by an enthusiastic Stones. It suited the group down to the ground at this point. Their enthusiasm oozes from every note.
You Can Make It If You Try - on this Gene Allison blues cover, Jagger's vocal is actually pretty mature for one so young, despite yelping a little in the middle, he still doesn't do a bad job at all. Once more, the picking of the song to cover showed just how deep into r'n'b and blues this group of young men had delved, searching out piles of seemingly obscure 45s. This one had arrived in the UK in the late fifties, to be picked up by a blues-hungry Jagger a few years later. He was already a connoisseur. Finally, Rufus Thomas's much covered soul groover Walking The Dog is enthusiastically done too. It was another song that would seem to have been tailor-made for Jagger.
Overall, this was a fine debut offering from a group who would, of course, become legendary. Little did they know it. "A couple of years", thought Jagger at the time.
Something notable about The Rolling Stones' output throughout the sixties was the absolute wealth of non-album tracks. Those from this period of their career were the first single, Chuck Berry's Come On, the follow up, Muddy Waters' I Want To Be Loved, Lennon & McCartney's I Wanna Be Your Man (the only song recorded by both The Beatles and The Stones) and the bluesy virtually instrumental groove of Stoned. They all date from 1963.
As I said in the introduction, the US version of the album was titled England's Newest Hitmakers, and included Not Fade Away.
Buddy Holly's fast-paced romp would seem to have been tailor-made for The Stones. Once more, they put their own unique stamp on it, from Jones's harmonica to Richard's guitar to Jagger's effortlessly drawly vocal. It is 1:48 of early Stones perfection. It is best heard via The Rolling Stones In Mono box set.
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