Soundtrack Saturday

Performance came out in 1970, the year of my birth, a druggy, graphic, psyched out crime thriller. I'm not suggesting my birth and the film are related in any way, merely coincidental. Nic Roeg signed Mick Jagger up for the role of Turner (also my surname), Mick playing the part of a reclusive late 60s rock star (largely playing himself except for the reclusive part) holed up in his West London home (Powis Square, Notting Hill) suddenly brought into contact with the violent criminal underworld when Edward Fox (Chas) gatecrashes his home. Turner is in a three way relationship which involves Anita Pallenberg (playing Pherber). Inevitably drugs are taken and Chas is given mushrooms. Chas and Turner begin to become each other, a drug fuelled identity crisis that ends in violence. 

Part of the drama and mystique of Performance is the real world that intersected it. In the opening scenes Jagger and Pallenberg have sex. The rumours were that the sex and drug trips were real and not acted. At the time Pallenberg was Keith Richards' girlfriend (having abandoned Brian Jones the same year on the ill fated trip to Morocco Jones, Pallenberg and Richards undertook). Keith became suspicious his songwriting partner and friend was going beyond the acceptable boundaries- although in Rolling Stones world, what are acceptable boundaries and where do they lie? He spent days during the filming parked outside the house in Powis Square in his Rolls Royce waiting to pick Anita up after filming, silently seething that Mick might be inside being filmed having sex with Anita. 

The soundtrack, also released in 1970, is  a proper soundtrack, the score written by Stones associate and producer Jack Nietsche, with Ry Cooder contributing some filthy slide guitar. Merry Clayton sings on two songs- she famously provided the vocal on The Stones Gimme Shelter (from 1969), an epic piece of singing that completely defines the song. The title track is a short two minute ambient piece, whooshing noises and a hum (recorded by Bernie Krause), unsettling and intense. Merry's voice comes in after a minute, instantly recognisable and equally instantly evoking Gimme Shelter. 

Performance

There are songs by Randy Newman, Buffy Sainte- Marie and The Last Poets and several more Nietsche pieces including this one, Ry Cooder's guitar the soundtrack to Turner's nocturnal, shadow existence in the house in Notting Hill...

Powis Square

The Stones were originally lined up to do the soundtrack.They were in the middle of their hot streak, that run of four albums from 1968 to 1973 where they released Let It Bleed, Beggar's Banquet, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street, the albums where they live up to the legend. Needless to say Jagger and Richards personal relationship was not at its best during the filming of Performance and the soundtrack ended up coming together via Nietsche, Crawford, Cooder et al. Except for one song, Memo From Turner, a Jagger- Richards co- write. And what a song it is...

Memo From Turner

Raw '68/ 69 Stones, Ry Cooder's slide guitar, groove and swagger, instant late 60s cool glamour/ dirt, Jagger drawling like he's come in from Louisiana, singing lines about Spanish speaking gentlemen, leather boys, Coke conventions and soft machines. There are three versions, the one above that appeared in the film and on the soundtrack and as a Jagger solo single, and two earlier ones- one played by Traffic and a second with Al Kooper and Richards. In the film, when the song plays Jagger/ Turner lip syncs to it, breaking the fourth wall and inventing a whole sub- genre of indie/ rock videos. Fans of Happy Mondays and Bummed will spot the 'we've been courteous' sample. Fans of Big Audio Dynamite will know that e=mc2 is written about Nic Roeg's films, verse two about Performance and spot the 'you'll look funny when you're fifty' sample.

This Is A Story...

Out in east Manchester the city turns into a series of small towns nestled into the Pennines. In one of those towns, Ashton- under- Lyne, there is an industrial museum at Portland Basin, the meeting point of two canals and some restored industrial buildings. In part of the museum there is a section on local bands and venues, all long gone, and this poster advertising a Rolling Stones gig from 1963. Oddly, the venue, Baths Hall in Urmston is miles away at the western edge of Manchester, a couple of miles from where I live. Baths Hall is also long gone, demolished in the 1970s. The Stones have outlived it by decades. The poster was saved by a member of the support act, The Meteors, who were from Hyde, an east Manchester town not far from Portland Basin (and not the '80s psychobilly band of the same name) and is part of a display about The Meteors.  

The Rolling Stones played all over the country in 1963/ 4. I've written before about them playing in Leek, Staffordshire, a post that linked Joe Strummer's song At The Border, Guy (which has Joe calling out, 'at Leek town hall, Leek town hall tonight') and Half Man Half Biscuit's magnum opus The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train). The song has lines about several Pennine and Staffordshire towns- New Mills, Matlock, Eyam, and Leek. I know Leek because it was where my Dad was born and grew up and we spent many Saturdays in the 1970s going over there to see my grandmother. Any musical references to it are therefore of interest. The last time we were in Leek, last year, we had a sandwich at The Foxlowe Arts Centre, which I noted was putting gigs on and I see that Leek will shortly host a gig by Jah Wobble so things are definitely happening in small town Staffordshire. At my original Leek post someone left a comment saying The Rolling Stones played Leek in 1963, and added 'I know this because I bought the pies'. 

The early Rolling Stones were very much the band of Brian Jones. In the summer I found these photographs from the last photo session of the band with Brian as a Stone, nattily turned out in velvet suit and snakeskin boots, taken in May 1969. 

Brian was a mess by this point and had been for some time- drink, drugs, paranoia, estrangement within the band. The third of the three photos is telling- they seem to be waving goodbye to Brian, Mick especially. The writing was on the wall when Andrew Loog Oldham put Jagger and Richards in a room five years earlier and told them they couldn't come out until they'd written a song. Brian was a blues obsessive whose guitar is all over their early songs and he could play any instrument he picked up. The mid- 60s Stones are drenched in Brian's playing- harmonica, piano, organ, harpsichord, mellotron, sitar- and his white teardrop Vox guitar. Tensions between Brian on the one side and Mick and Keith on the other led to his sacking from the band he started, in June 1969, replaced by Mick Taylor. Loog Oldham contributed to the wedge that was driven between them, as did Brian's own behaviour. Footage from the sessions that became Sympathy For The Devil show him in a poor light, only dimly aware of what's going on around him, nodding off while strumming. 

Many people who knew him said he could be two different people, one sweet, intelligent, shy but friendly, the other cruel, preening, difficult and insecure. In 1969 Brian took a trip to Morocco in his Rolls Royce with his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and Keith along for the ride. This became another straw added onto the camel's back that became Brian's sacking. He became violent towards Anita and Keith stepped in. Keith and Anita came home as a couple, and Keith portrayed himself as Anita's saviour ever after. Brian's declining abilities to turn up to sessions, play guitar when he was there and his various legal difficulties (drug busts, visa issues planned tours of the USA) made Mick and Keith's decision easier. Keith and Mick took control of The Rolling Stones musically, managerially and commercially in the mid/ late 60s and removed Brian when he was no longer any use to them- or the brand. 

In an interview around the time of the publication of his autobiography Life, Keith was asked which of the people from the '60s who died young he'd bring back if he could, Keith gave a response- I can't remember who, maybe John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix. The interviewer then asked him, 'what about Brian Jones?'. 'Nah', Keef chuckled, 'he was a cunt, leave him dead'. Mick and Keith have controlled the narrative ever since Brian's ejection from the band. Brian's use of drink and drugs undoubtedly made his problems worse. Charlie Watts said Brian did everything to excess and that he wasn't strong enough to take it. In July 1969 Brian was found dead in his swimming pool aged twenty seven. The Stones paid tribute to him at their free gig at Hyde Park, Jagger dramatically reading a Shelley poem and then they released hundreds of white butterflies (most of which died within minutes). In the weeks before his death Alexis Korner had visited Brian at his cottage and they talked about putting a band together. Brian is said to have spoken to others about this including John Lennon, Alan Price, Mitch Mitchell and Jimmy Miller. He demoed some songs apparently. 

It's fairly easy to imagine a different life for Brian, if he'd been pulled out of the pool in time to save his life. A blues band with Mitch Mitchell and Alexis Korner releasing an album in 1970. Some time getting himself sorted out, making a clean break from the Stones. Maybe an album in the mid- 70s with Steve Marriott and/ or Ronnie Lane. He could easily have added some '60s flash to T- Rex although Brian and Marc would surely have been combustible and bad for each other. Maybe as the '70s ticked over into the '80s Brian would have flounced into Billy's in Soho and been adopted by the New Romantics, a single with Steve Strange, a bit part in a Bowie video, a top ten synth- pop single. Maybe by the mid 80s Brian Jones could have made a single with Psychic TV, rather than being the subject of one.

Godstar

From Psychic TV it's a short step to Shoom, Brian lost on the dancefloor at Southwark fitness centre, then making a 12" anonymously with Richard Norris maybe or a one off single like this one by ex- Frankie Goes To Hollywood man Paul Rutherford... 

Get Real

As Stones tours became bigger and louder it's easy to imagine Brian being brought on from the wings at some stadium somewhere and barrelling his way through Let's Spend The Night Together or taking the lead on Paint It Black. Then, in the 90s an elder statesman, acoustic album with Rick Rubin. 

Let's Spend The Night Together

He was a troubled soul and a flawed human being. He probably needed some help that people weren't set up to give him at the time. He pops up now and again in popular culture- this year on their album Glasgow Kisses, The Jesus And Mary Chain paid tribute, 'I've been rolling with The Stones/ Mick and Keith and Brian Jones...'

The Eagles And The Beatles

That last photo session also gave up these shots which became the sleeve art for the second Rolling Stones compilation, Through The Past Darkly, released in September 1969 two months after Brian's death with the gatefold containing an epitaph to Brian- 'When you see this, remember me and bear me in your mind. Let all the world say what they may, speak of me as you find'. 

Fifty Four

I am 54 today- and all of a sudden the mid- fifties have arrived. I have tried to put together a number 54 based Sunday mix. It turns out 54 isn't a particularly popular musical number. As so often happens Mr Weatherall came to my rescue along with The Clash and a very famous and debauched New York nightclub and a blinding reggae song. This mix is as a result somewhat varied stylistically and gets even more random towards the end- maybe that's a metaphor for one's 50s.

Forty Five Minutes Of Fifty Four

• Grace Jones: Nightclubbing
• Tom Tom Club: Genius Of Love
• The Clash: Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Shack 54 (Joe Mckechnie Remix)
• Patrick Cowley and Sylvester: Menergy (Rich Lane 'Too Hard' Cotton Dub)
• Big Audio Dynamite II: The Globe (Studio 54 Remix)
• The Velvet Underground: I Can't Stand It (2014 version)
• The Rolling Stones: All Down The Line
• Toots And The Maytals: 54- 46 That's My Number

Studio 54 was a New York nightclub located at 254 West 54th Street, midtown Manhattan. It was converted from a theatre to a club in 1977 and for a while was the world's premier disco nightclub, a place with a famously loose approach to sex, drugs and extravagance. It had apparently the world's most difficult entry policy but once in 'the dancefloor was a democracy'. A list of Studio 54's celebrity clientele includes Grace Jones, Woody Allen, Bianca Jagger, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Bowie, Cher, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Lou Reed, John Travolta, Margaret Trudeau, Divine, Farrah Fawcett, Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicolson, Liza Minelli, Rick James and many more. Some of those people were thusly shoehorned into my mix above. Chic famously were turned away at the door and went home and wrote Freak Out, a disco track which started with the phrase 'Fuck You!' chanted as the chorus instead of the eventual title. 

Grace Jones, a Studio 54 devotee, released her album Nightclubbing in 1981, an early 80sunk/ reggae/ post- punk/ new wave/ disco masterpiece, recorded at Compass Point in the Bahamas. The title track is a cover of Iggy Pop's 1977 song, an ode to numbed out nighttime adventures on the floor. It's Grace's birthday today as well- happy 76th birthday Grace.

Tom Tom Club's Genius Of Love is also from 1981, a brilliant slice of New York post- disco/ synth- pop/ art rap that nods its head to a cast of black musicians- James Brown, Sly and Robbie, Hamilton Bohannon, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Bob Marley- and was a big tune at Studio 54. Its creators, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz only went a couple of times, they claim, preferring the Mudd Club or Danceteria. 

The Clash went to Studio 54 once and Joe Strummer said they were observed by the Warhol crowd like animals in a cage. Joe wrote The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too about the experience. Ivan Meets G.I. Joe is from Sandinista!, and includes the line 'so you're on the floor at 54', imagining the Cold War as a competition on the nightclub's dancefloor, a Soviet- America disco face off, sung by Topper Headon. It's not my favourite Clash song but it fits this mix. 

Shack 54 was on Two Lone Swordsmen's Wrong Meeting Part 2, a 2007 album with Weatherall and Tenniswood by this pint deep into live rock 'n' roll/ garage rockabilly territory. It was great fun, Andrew once again turning on a sixpence and wrong footing people who expected him to keep doing the same thing. This remix of Shack 54 by Joe Mckechnie is I think unreleased. 

Patrick Cowley and Sylvester were both Studio 54 attendees. For his Cotton Dub edit Rich Lane ramps up the campness and Hi NRG to the max on a song that wasn't exactly lacking in either. 

Big Audio Dynamite II's The Globe was the best single the second incarnation of the band released, a  1991 single that samples Mick's most well known Clash riff. It was a Mick Jones and Gary Stonnage co- write and produced by Mick and Andre Shapps (making both of them related to current Tory Minister Grant Shapps, a man I sincerely hope loses his seat and his deposit come election day).  The Studio 54 remix adds some disco strings and keys and has never been officially released but is on the bootleg series The B.A.D. Files. 

The Velvet Underground have Studio 54 connections via Lou Reed and Andy Warhol but there's a big disconnect between the sound of the Velvets and Studio 54 so really this was just an excuse to shoehorn in this 2014 version of a Lou reed song that should be played daily by everyone, Lou and Sterling taking the Bo Diddey beat and rhythm guitar to its logical limit. The part where Lou counts down from 8 is among my favourite moments on any song. 

Bianca Jagger once rode into Studio 54 on the back of a white horse, an eye- opening way to celebrate one's birthday (a party for Bianca thrown by fashion designer Halston). Bianca later said she didn't ride the horse to or in the club, she just sat on its back once it was already inside. I was going to say, with a knowing smirk, hey, we've all been there- but then I remembered that at the Golden Lion last November at the end of a night David Holmes played at the pub there was a horse at the bar having a pint with its owner, so actually, maybe we have all been there. Bianca was married to Mick from 1970 to 1978, a period The Stones made their final absolute classic album, 1973's Exile On Main Street from which All Down The Line is one of four superb songs that make up the album's fourth side. 

Toots And The Maytals released reggae classic 54- 46 Was My Number in 1968. 54- 46 was Toots' prison number when he was jailed for possession of marijuana and for the next 365 day trip around the sun, 54 is my number. 

Forty Minutes of World Of Twist

World Of Twist have come up in my internet world a couple of times recently and it seemed too good an opportunity to resist to sling some of their best moments together into a single forty minute mix, one side of a C90 tape in old money. The group's back catalogue is fairly slim- a 1991 album, Quality Street, a handful of singles and remixes and a pair of BBC radio sessions, one for John Peel and one for Mark Goodier. My first encounter with them was on a Manchester compilation album, the swirling song The Storm already getting mentions in the music press. After that I bought everything they released, seeing them live twice, once in Liverpool and once in Manchester. 

World Of Twist formed in Sheffield in 1985, disintegrated, and then reformed in Manchester in 1989, many of the members living in the Withington/ Didsbury area where I grew up. The line up of singer Tony Ogden, guitarist Gordon King, Andrew Hobson on synths, Alan Frost (FX, visuals, synths), MC Shells aka Julia on 'swirls and sea noises', Angela Reilly (visuals) and drummer Nick Sanderson found press and a record contract quickly, caught up in the feeding frenzy of late 80s Manchester. They took the driving rhythms of northern soul, 80s indie rock and late 60s psychedelia, the end of the pier, faded glamour of seaside towns like Blackpool and fused it all together. Their live shows had slide shows and projections, trippy effects, glitter curtains and rotating signs with the words Rock And Roll on them. Tony Ogden, floppy hair centre parted and black leather jacket, had a stage stance that was like a young Elvis (if Elvis had been from Stockport rather than Tupelo). They finished their live gigs with a cover of The MC5's Kick Out The Jams. If Pulp (who travelled a similar road to much greater success) had covered Kick Out The Jams it would have been draped in knowing irony, Jarvis giving it high leg kicks and an arched eyebrow. World Of Twist, after an ascending Blackpool Ballroom organ intro, attack Kick Out The Jams in deadly seriousness. I really liked them. 

There was a feeling that Quality Street missed the boat. By 1991 the Manchester tide was going out and the album, largely produced by Richard Norris and Dave Ball of The Grid with Martin Moscrop of A Certain Ratio and Cliff Brigden also at the desk, never seemed to be loud enough, no matter how much you turned your volume knob. The press went from full blooded praise to very lukewarm in months.  They called it a day in 1992 when, having begun work on a second album, Tony decided he didn't want to sing any more. Gordon King and Nick Sanderson went on to Earl Brutus. Sadly two members are no longer with us- Tony Ogden died in 2006 and Nick Sanderson in 2008. 

Forty Minutes Of World Of Twist

• The Storm
• Lose My Way
• Blackpool Tower (John Peel Session 1991)
• She's A Rainbow (12" Version)
• This Too Shall Pass Away (Chat)
• Sweets (Barratt 200 Mix)
• I'm A Teardrop
• Sons Of The Stage (12" Version)
• On The Scene
• Kick Out The Jams (Live at St. Andrew's University 1991)

The Storm was on the demo tape that got them a deal. It came out several times as a single with their cover of She's A Rainbow on the B-side, variously with Martin Hannett and/ or The Grid on production duties and Hugo Nicolson and Spencer Birtwistle from Intastella engineering. It starts with thunder and sound effects, then the swirly organ and rapid fire drums kick in. Indie night floor filler. 

Lose My Way opened Quality Street, a strong start to the album with its trumpet part, hammering four four drums and Tony's full throttle vocal and lyrics about love and lust. On The Scene is from the album too, an album track that is the closest they came to the Manchester sound, swirly indie- dance from 1991. 

Blackpool Tower is from a John Peel session, 25th June 1991 along with versions of Lose My Way, St Bruno (otherwise unreleased) and Kick Out The Jams. Blackpool Tower became part of a ten minute song called Blackpool Tower Suite, released on 12" in late 1990 with The Storm and She's Rainbow.

She's A Rainbow was one of their signature tunes and the record company threw it out multiple times looking for a hit. It's a cover of a 1967 Rolling Stones song, one of highlights of the Their Satanic Majesty's Request album, and one of Martin Hannett's last production jobs. The 12" version opens with some lovely, gnarly distorted guitar before the famous piano line comes in. 

This Too Shall Pass Away was the B-side to the single Sweets (and in its 'proper' form appears on Quality Street). The song is a cover of a 1964 Honeycombs single. On the Chat version Tony's vocals have been replaced by samples of people talking about Norman Wisdom, gardening, artichokes and potatoes and other everyday matters. 

Sweets was a sugary pop song, lovely stuff. The Barratt 200 Mix  came out on the 12" and CD single.

I'm A Teardrop is a great little song, recorded for a Mark Goodier session in September 1990, two and a half minutes of indie- guitar pop. 

Sons Of The Stage was on the album and a single and if it was all they had ever released, it would be more than enough. Like Hawkwind streamlined and rebooted for the early 90s, the song is a rush of indie dance, northern soul and early 70s sci fi psychedelia. It's a magnificent achievement. Tony's lyrics describe the sensation of being the singer on stage, with the band powering away around him and the crowd a seething mass in front of him. 'The beat breaks down so we pick it up/ The floor shakes down but it's not enough/ The beam is up and kids are high/ I see them move and it blows my mind/ The floor's an ocean and this wave is breaking/ The head is gone and your body's shaking/ There's nothing you can do 'cos there is no solution/ You gotta get down to the noise and confusion...Out of our minds on the stage...'

Kick Out The Jams is a cover of The MC5's famous high octane 1969 song. This recording is live, from a gig at St. Andrew's University in 1991, World Of Twist marrying their devotion to music with the rundown pleasures of British seaside resorts, utter conviction. Kick 'em out. 

Pat Fish

Pat Fish, the singer/ songwriter/ musician/ gentleman died suddenly this week aged sixty- four. He was best known as The Jazz Butcher and in the eighties and early nineties recorded seven albums for Creation records, which is where I first heard him. I think my first Jazz Butcher song might have been Lot 49 which was included on the legendary budget Creation compilation Doing It For The Kids. Lot 49 is breakneck, literate indie pop, guitars played at amphetamine pace, with the only pause coming for the line 'you make me want to carry on'.

Lot 49

One of the many gems in his back catalogue is this, Southern Mark Smith, from his 1984 album A Scandal In Bohemia (a few years before he moved to Creation), a perfect slice of mid- 80s indie- pop.

Southern Mark Smith

In 1990, fired up by the times and the technology and recording as J.B.C. Pat recorded an acid house cover version of The Rolling Stones '67 single We Love You. It's one of my favourite singles of that time, a huge sounding record with crunchy drums, acid squiggles firing on all cylinders, synths and samplers and a vocal line pinched from a Tears For Fears song that skewers the period instantly- 'DJs the man you love most'.

 We Love You (The Great Awakening)

There were many tributes to Pat in certain corners of the internet yesterday. He comes across as one of life's good guys, a genuine person, good friend to many and loved by those who knew him as well as a fine writer and musician. 

RIP Pat Fish. 

Charlie Watts

On Tuesday night someone on Twitter said they'd always thought The Rolling Stones were immortal but the death of Charlie Watts aged 80 puts paid any notions of that. Charlie was the engine room, the provider of the backbeat, a cool and collected presence with a minimal, four piece drumkit who always seemed to treat being the drummer in The Rolling Stones as a job- a healthy attitude in that particular group maybe. Turn up, do your bit, go home. Simon Price commented, also on Twitter, that 'he had the jazz chops but he always kept it unfussy, just holding things down. And I always appreciated his quietly tolerant expression of ''These idiots...' '', which nails Charlie's onstage facial expression perfectly, sitting at the back keeping time while the others did the showing off at the front. Either that he was mentally making a list of what he needed to buy from the 24 hour garage on the way home...

This interview with Charlie backstage somewhere on the road in the USA during their 25th anniversary tour is priceless, Charlie deflecting any rock 'n' roll cliches with a remark about the reality of being in the band- 'work five years and twenty years hanging around...'

Back in 1989/ 1990 The Rolling Stones were both everywhere and dinosaurs. Sympathy For The Devil was heard all over the place, the congas and the rhythms part of the sound of the times, the woo- woo backing vocals slipping into indie- dance and acid house, the danger and glamour of the song seeping in alongside house music, De La Soul, Happy Mondays, 808 State, Soul II Soul and all the rest. On the other hand, they were old men (or seemed to be to us aged twenty), millionaire rock stars with no idea of what was really happening. When they announced the Steel Wheels/ Urban Jungle tour I remember debating with a friend about whether we should go. They had dates at Maine Road in July 1990 (it being Maine Road could have been a factor against it). We decided not to go, possibly fired up on the spirit and cheek of Ian Brown's comment- when asked whether his band would support The Stones he replied, 'The Rolling Who? They should be supporting us'. I recall thinking that paying over £20 to watch some old men play their hits in a football ground was ideologically unsound, especially with so many other younger bands to see and clubs to go to. There's a lot to unpack there in retrospect, not least the fact that in 1990 Mick, Keith and Charlie were in their mid- to- late 40s i.e. a little younger than I am now. 

A month ago The 1968 Rolling Stones Rock 'n' Roll Circus was on TV. I switched over as it started and there it was. It was famously unreleased when it was recorded, Mick unhappy with the Stones performance. A few decades later, when watched again, they weren't as bad as he thought at the time and the CD and DVD box sets kept the cash registers ringing. The Stones went on in the early hours of the morning, playing in a big top after Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull, a paint stripping performance by The Who and some gritty, dirty blues from an all star band put together by John Lennon, but there's nothing poor, tired or under par about this and while the camera is all about Mick, it's Charlie locked in with Keef who are doing the work and dredging up the voodoo (and playing through a PA smaller and less powerful than most modern pub tribute bands use).

The Stones with Charlie on drums made some superb mid- 60s pop singles, brittle, bright, amphetamine songs like 19th Nervous Breakdown and Get Off My Cloud and some wonderful trippy but spiky psychedelia (Citadel, She's A Rainbow, 2000 Light Years From Home). Citadel sounds like an 80s garage band, flanged guitar, feedback, three chord riffs and Charlie's drums, slightly behind where you think they should be- dislocating psychedelic rock. 

Citadel

Then there are the four albums the made between '68 and '72, are the stuff of legend- Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street, albums dripping with sticky, grungy, murky, sweaty, arrogant but ultimately life affirming rock 'n' roll, with some huge dollops of country and blues and pop stirred in. Street Fighting Man. No Expectations. Let It Bleed. Gimme Shelter. Live With Me. Monkey Man. You Can't Always Get What You Want. Wild Horses. Moonlight Mile. Dead Flowers. Rocks Off. Torn And Frayed. Happy. All Down The Line. Shine A Light. Charlie Watts was never just the drummer. He was the backbone and the backbeat. This song was an outtake from the Sticky Fingers sessions, unreleased until Allen Klein put it out a cheap cash in compilation several years later.

I'm Going Down

It sounds like Keith on guitar, sounds like him all day long, but the internet says it's Mick Taylor (who also wrote it and wasn't credited) and Stephen Stills. Charlie's gear changes at forty five seconds and one minute forty two drive the song and the band on, Bobby Keys' sax squawking away on top. And you think, 'this was one they decided to leave off the album...' 

This one too, a Stevie Wonder cover also from 1969 and apparently recorded the night news came through that Brian Jones had died. 

I Don't Know Why

I could go on but I think that's enough. Charlie Watts, gentleman, snappy dresser, drummer, Rolling Stone. RIP. 

Colours In The Air

While looking for something else I found a CD I'd forgotten I owned- Zero: A Martin Hannett Story 1977- 1991. It's a compilation of songs recorded and produced by Hannett, from Boredom by Buzzcocks onward. Zero is a really good compilation, even with U2's presence, showing the range and depth of Hannett's talents and the importance of the man to the sound of some key bands. The final song on the CD is World Of Twist's 1991 cover of She's A Rainbow and it struck me that this week's posts were developing a cover versions theme and that I should go with the flow.

World Of Twist are much missed in some corners not least round here- they got pulled along in the early 90s Manchester slipstream but didn't really fit in with the sound or the look. Their cover of She's A Rainbow was originally a B-side to their debut single The Storm and then re-appeared in 1992 in various guises and with remixes as the record label attempted to get a hit and some sales. The version here was one of the last songs Hannett worked on before his death in April 1991 aged just 41. In a way She's A Rainbow was one of World Of Twist's less interesting songs, a pretty straight cover version and it doesn't really show Hannett's peculiar production genius especially either. But it's fun and fits in with the group's aesthetic.

She's A Rainbow

Hannett lost five years in the 80s to heroin addiction and the groundbreaking productions he did in the late 70s and early 80s especially with the Factory bands- Joy Division, New Order, Durutti Column, Section 25, ACR- were well behind him and unlikely to be equalled (although he really pulled it out of the bag with Bummed).

The original of She's A Rainbow was on The Rolling Stones 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, a lightweight, pretty tune, sing-song psychedelia with la la la backing vocals, Nicky Hopkins on piano and some Brian Jones Mellotron. A most un-Stonesy single and song, coming at a mid-point between Paint It Black and Jumping Jack Flash.

She's A Rainbow

It's A Gas

I was watching a programme about India recently and this song, Ananda Shankar's sitar version of Jumpin' Jack Flash was playing in the background. My first reaction was 'all those thousands of songs played by Indian musicians and they have to choose a Stones cover, bah humbug, grumble grumble etc'. But then I checked myself and thought 'well, Ananda Shankar was a Bengali musician so there is that' and 'the song is a magnificent blast so stop being stupid'. I think I first became aware of it thanks to David Holmes' Essential Selection where it fitted in perfectly with that mid 90s pick 'n' mix aesthetic, rock and roll and funk and soul and everything else too.

Jumpin' Jack Flash

I Got Nasty Habits

Later on on Friday evening I flicked through the channels and chanced upon the final forty minutes of Shine A Light, Martin Scorsese's recent Rolling Stones film. I say recent, I've just checked and it came out in 2008. Is that recent? It was grimly compelling. Most of the film is a live performance in a smallish New York theatre. Keith has that pirate thing going on, still stick thin, eyeliner and bangles and by the looks/sound of it, his guitar playing is still a good thing- raucous and raw. Ronnie Wood is Ronnie Wood, take him or leave him. There are three backing singers who do quite a lot of the work. What to make of Mick Jagger? Energetic, yes. He performs like the CEO of a multi-national company- which is what he is. They played/massacred Live With Me, originally from 1969's Let It Bleed, arguably their best, most dangerous album. Christine Aguilera turned up for an ill-advised duet.

On the record Live With Me blasts into life with a ferocious bassline, played by Keith (which explains it) and slashing guitar chords. It is Mick Taylor's first recorded appearance with the band- maybe he was showing them exactly what he could do. Bobby Keys contributes a sax solo, a sax solo I can actually live with, and then there's Mick's libidinous lyrics. The legend of the wild, libertine, English Stones is all over these lyrics. 'I got nasty habits' Mick opens with, 'I take tea at three'. His best friend shoots water rats and feeds them to his geese. In verse two Mick tells of his 'hairbrained children', with 'earphone heads and dirty necks, so Twentieth century'. These verses are all there to build up to his attempts in the chorus to woo someone, someone who has a place between Mick's sheets. The third verse goes into 18th century overdrive, with a butler, the French maid, a cook, chauffeur and some slap and tickle in a place behind the pantry door. Louche, lairy, Carry On but with hard drugs. The band are so hot the tape must have been overheating.

Happy Valentine's Day.


Live With Me

Spiked

Twenty five years ago today I was one of thirty thousand people standing on an island in the river Mersey near Widnes, just next to a chemical plant. The idea a year or two previously that a British indie guitar band could draw that many people to watch them was absurd and that was one of the things The Stone Roses brought to the late 80s, the thinking big and being ambitious. The day itself involved a lot of sitting around, a few support acts that didn't really connect at all and huge queues for the beer tents. This wasn't really a beery crowd though, unlike Heaton Park in 2012 which was collectively about as drunk as it could be. The band came on at nine and played well, clearly partly blown away by the event and the crowd's enthusiasm. The sound quality has been debated ever since, the wind whipping it about the island. Where we were, it sounded good. The final three songs were illuminated by the lights bouncing off the huge mirrorballs suspended above the stage just as it had gone dark- Made Of Stone, Elizabeth My Dear and I Am The Resurrection. We were driven there in Al's Grandad's chocolate brown Austin Allegro. I distinctly remember the compilation tape we played on the way. Killer by rave hero Adamski (and Seal)...

808 State's Pacific, which was everywhere that summer (and the one before)...

And this, Sympathy For the Devil. Woo woo.

Double Mick

I was listening to that BBC 6 Radio Clash show yesterday and one of Mick Jones' choices was Citadel by The Rolling Stones. Citadel is off the 1967 psychedelic disaster Their Satanic Majesties Request, an album with two, maybe three, good songs. I'd forgotten all about Citadel until Jonesey played it and it floored me, to the extent that I went to the vinyl collection, dug out Satanic Majesties (which probably hasn't been out of it's sleeve since the late 80s) and put Citadel straight on. Sneering, psychedelic garage rock. It's got a superb nasty, psych guitar riff from Keef and Mick doing what sounds like a slowed down proto- Jumping Jack Flash vocal. Add in some noise that The Velvet Underground wouldn't have turned down and you have what may well be the most under-rated song in The Stones whole back catalogue (which means all the records up to Exile On Main Street really doesn't it?).



Citadel

And for the last day of 2013 here's Bagging Area favourites Big Audio Dynamite with a lovely slice of late 80s house influenced positivity, Contact.

But what on earth was Mick doing with his hair?



Contact (Club Mix)

Saturday Mash Up

Mark Vidler, in his Go Home Productions guise, proves that a mash up of Shannon's peerless Let The Music Play and The Stones' equally peerless Gimme Shelter go together as well as bacon and eggs on a Saturday morning. Jim Morrison turns up at the start to provide the fried tomato (liked by some, loathed by others). Stoned. Immaculate. Fried mushrooms.

Shannon Stone

At Leek Town Hall Tonight

A while back I wrote a post about a Half Man Half Biscuit song which referenced the Staffordshire town of Leek. I said Leek was well known to me as the birthplace of my Dad but that other than the HMHB tune the only other time it had popped up in song was in Joe Strummer's wonderful reggae tinged At The Border, Guy. Recently a reader Sam Sherratt has left a couple of comments on the post adding further detail and deepening Leek's rock 'n' roll connections. This was too important to be left dwindling as comments below a post and I feel deserved a posting in their own right. Sam wrote...

Can help with the Leek reference in the Strummer song. Joe’s pre-Clash band the 101ers had a couple of members originally from Leek (incidentally Joe at the time was known as Woody). This included drummer Richard Dudanski (aka Nother), who later went on to drum with PiL. The 101ers played in Leek at a club called Samantha’s (not Leek Town Hall) and on another occasion came to a party. I was in touch with Richard a few years’ back and he said he asked Joe about this reference and said that he must have been confused.

Nice to tidy up a little corner of rock trivia!

and added afterwards...

Leek was also responsible for poisoning the Rolling Stones on Christmas Eve 1963, which is mentioned in Bill Wyman’s diaries – I know the man who bought the pies!

At The Border, Guy

Rolling On

I've been trying to ignore the recent Rolling Stones celebrations. They haven't been any use as a recording band since about 1973. The documentary Crossfire Hurricane showed the band admit that themselves- two hours about the 60s, half an hour in the south of France, five minutes of Miss You and Ronnie Wood, the end. The press for the gigs at the O2 has been largely positive and I suppose if you were there (tickets starting at £95 and going up to around a grand, for all you Street Fighting Men and Ladies out there) it could have been pretty good, if you like arena gigs. Charlie keeps the beat going and Keef pulls out all the riffs and Bill and Mick Taylor turn up (but on the other hand so does Eric Clapton, and on one night Florence Welch sang on Gimme Shelter- gimme shelter indeed), but on this brief clip at The Guardian they sound a bit ropey to these ears and the problem is Mick. He looks absurd- I know he's 69 but that hat is awful and the jacket worse. Looks like he got them in the sale in Top Man. Worse still his vocals sound terrible. Someone said he sounds 'strident'. Depends on your definition of strident I suppose.

Keeping a band going for fifty years is an achievement- hats off for that. Their early records marrying delta blues with Deptford are great, their run of 7" singles from 1964-68 is superb and there are four albums in the 1969-1972 span that are crackers. Hats off again. They can't keep going forever can they- ten years, maybe less, and they'll be gone and we'll probably miss them. But we'll be missing what they were really, not what they are (unless you went to the O2 gigs, in which case you'll say they were brilliant. And maybe they were).

Parachute Woman

Her Man's Been Gone For Nigh On A Year

In 1967 The Rolling Stones held their Rock 'n' Roll circus, a gig in a big top. Due to poor planning or Mick's ego or Keith's drugs they rather foolishly they went on last, in the early hours of the morning when band and audience were tired, and gave a somewhat below par performance. By that time they'd also been blown away by The Who, who stole the show with a performance of Pete Townshend's mini-opera (it's not really an opera, it just has different sections and tells a story. Maybe it is an opera then) A Quick One. It is one heck of a performance.



The version below was taped for the Beeb and first broadcast on Top Gear in 1967. Not that Top Gear.

A Quick One (While He's Away) (BBC Session)

It occurs to me I've got a Billy Childish and The Buff Medways cover of A Quick One. The Who need seven or eight minutes for it. Typically Billy gets through it around three. I'll try to find it for you if you like.

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Here's one for that curious cover versions compilation/playlist you've been meaning to make- Sandie Shaw doing Sympathy For The Devil in 1969. Crazed and frantic, it's a million miles from the Eurovision stuff of two years before and the Smiths collaboration of the mid 80s. The album, Reviewing The Situation, also has a fair stab at Led Zeppelin's Your Time Is Gonna Come and a Donovan cover but this is the WTF? moment, if you'll excuse the young persons slang.

Sympathy For The Devil

Keef

While on holiday I read Keith Richards' autobiography Life. I'd stayed away from it for ages- it seemed like such a middle aged, music Dad thing to read, but then saw it cheap and thought it might make a good holiday read. Which it did. The first three quarters are highly entertaining, despite Keith's sometimes questionable attitudes towards women, or at least his terminology. His recollections of Dartford in the fifties are almost proper social history and the story of the Stones through the sixties is gripping- their desire to be a genuine blues band and not a pop group, writing Satisfaction, touring, the Redlands drug bust, Altamont, Brian Jones, Anita Pallenberg, exile in France and beyond. His several pages explaining the five string open G tuning are brilliant. Really. It's funny how quickly the cream of the London sixties pop glitterati began mixing with the upper classes slumming it and the eurotrash (Prince so-and-so of such-a-place, Lord this-and-that). Some people barely feature- Bill Wyman for example hardly gets a mention, apart from when he joins, and that's only because he had an amplifier. His description of his heroin addiction through the seventies and repeated attempts to clean up seem honest. I don't know how much you can take at face value- he claims never to have thought about what to wear, which can't be true, seeing as there isn't a shabby picture of him before the mid-seventies (see above). There's a lot of brogaddacio, pirate/outlaw lifestyle justification, tales of rockstar hissy fits and minor acts of violence, and many pops at Mick Jagger, although he does give Mick his dues as well. The last quarter gets a bit tedious but all in all it's a good read, much better than it could've been. This is Monkey Man, a rocking, groovy,adrenaline fuelled, junkie rock song from 1969's Let It Bleed.

Monkey Man

You're Obsolete My Baby

'You're obsolete my baby' is a pretty cutting line. So is much of the rest of this Jagger-Richards written song, taken to number one in 1966 by the great voice of Chris Farlowe and some very cool strings. Mick Jagger's songs from the mid-60s often showed some fairly neanderthal attitudes (see also Under My Thumb amongst others) but if we can leave that to one side this is a cracker of a single, recorded for Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate label. Wiki adds the following line to his page- 'Outside his music career, Chris Farlowe collects war memorabilia.'

Out Of Time

The Rolling Stones 'Hitch Hike'

This 1965 Rolling Stones song, a cover of a Marvin Gaye hit from three years earlier, shows a couple of things. Firstly, that the Stones could be a decent little r'n'b/garage/covers band, and secondly that the opening riff has inspired some of our favourite indie guitar heroes, both at the time and later. The Velvet Underground used it to kick off There She Goes Again in 1967, and almost twenty years later Johnny Marr re-used it to open The Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

03 Hitch Hike.wma

The Rolling Stones 'Memo From Turner'

I thought I was done with The Rolling Stones. I listened to them loads years ago, mainly the 1968-1972 so-called 'classic' albums, amd have had times where I've loved the mid 60s stuff, but I got bored with them a long time ago. Besides, they havn't, as everyone knows, done anything of consequence for decades, and being a Stones fan seems a bit like being a fan of Coca Cola, or Microsoft, or Tesco- a global brand making money first, last and always.

However the recent re-release of Exile On Main Street woke the beast, and when I was in the supermarket last week I gave in and bought the cd. My double vinyl's pretty knackered anyway. I've played it all weekend, it's worked well with this heat we've been having, and it's so good- dirty, distorted, grungy, funky, bluesy, and all those things serious rock critics say about it.

This is Memo From Turner, from the film Performance. Credited to The Stones at the time, it's actually Jagger and Ry Cooder, Keef staying away allegedly due to Keef's then girlfriend Anita romping with Mick on the filmset. Top track this, all woozy slide guitar and Mick sneering about leather boys, Spanish speaking gentlemen called Kurt and daughter's who lick policemen's buttons clean.

memo-from-turner-1.mp3