The Rolling Stones, Some Girls – Deluxe Edition
Featured Album
Reaffirming that in 1978, the Stones had something to prove
Some Girls, considered by some the last great Rolling Stones album, is now the last two great Stones albums. The 12 previously unreleased tracks on a second disc reaffirm that in 1978, the Stones had something to prove. Outflanked by punk, disco, shifting tastes (the mega-selling melodic rock of the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Boston), and “cock-rock” upstarts like Aerosmith, the Stones were starting to sound irrelevant. “We were more focused and had to work,” Keith Richards wrote in his 2010 autobiography. It was partly out of professional pride, and partly desperation: Richards, bottoming out in his heroin addiction, was also facing the possibility of a long stretch in a Canadian jail. “Before They Make Me Run,” in this context, was Richards’s bold statement of defiance and hope.
The Chuck Berry-meets-rockabilly track “Claudine” leads the pack of outstanding outtakes finally seeing official release. It’s about the controversial actress/socialite Claudine Longet, who served 30 days in an Aspen jail for shooting and killing her ski star boyfriend. “So Young” is Mick Jagger’s jocular jailbait song, performed with a bit of Leiber-Stoller sass. “When You’re Gone” is a Chicago blues harkening to “12 X 5,” though Jagger’s exaggerated enunciation sounds like a drag queen who adores Moms Mabley rather than an Englishman who wants to be Muddy Waters. “I Love You Too Much” could be vintage “Beggar’s Banquet,” with Jagger’s declaration of romantic obsession sounding as menacing as it is lovesick. “No Spare Parts,” a country song in a commercial Nashville vein, has its moments, though it’s understandable that the group went with the superior, deftly crafted “Faraway Eyes,” a comic parody of country radio homilies, that appears on the original “Some Girls.” The newly-issued batch of covers also include Hank Williams’s “You Win Again” and country standard “We Had It All,” which Richards’s imbues with regret. The topper is a hotwired version of Freddy Cannon’s “Tallahassie Lassie” that evokes the disciplined recklessness of vintage Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.
The main disc opens with the disco riff which, filtered through the Stones’ special mojo, morphed into the brilliant barrier breaking “Miss You.” The full integration of Ronnie Wood into the band and the attention to craft make tracks such as “Beast of Burden” and “When the Whip Comes Down” lasting contributions to the best of the Stones repertory. Both “Shattered” and “Lies” answered the punks, blitzkrieg boppers with chops. As Richards wrote, “We’ve got to outpunk the punks, because they can’t play, and we can.” The title song startled and offended some 33 years ago, with its racial and sexual provocations, but it’s still mystifying why anyone was shocked. This, ladies and gentlemen, was the Rolling Stones.
