Worse, the punks weren't exactly wrong. The Rolling Stones had become complacent and decadent in the ugliest sense of the word. Largely because Keith Richards' increasing heroin addiction and the fact that the band now lived in different countries, the spent the period from 1972 to '78 coasting on their reputations.
It didn't help that their live shows kept adding musicians like Billy Preston, Ollie Brown and progressively larger horn sections. The Stones brought the Vegas "revue" pheonmoenon to rock that finally collapsed under its own weight on Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion tour, which seemed to have horns, keyboards, chick singers, a massuse, three dwarves and a charterd accountant on stage with Axl, Slash and Duff. And that nearly bankrupted GN'R, which is why that fucking tour seemed to go on forever, and ultimately destroyed the band.
Then there was Keef's misunderstand with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over the 22 grams of heroin that they found on his person in Toronto's Habour Castle Hilton in March of 1977, which threatened the very existence of the Rolling Stones.
22 grams is a lot of smack to have on you at any given time, especially if you're only supposed to be in town for less than a week. The Mounties developed an interesting theory around this; that zillonaire rock star Keith Richards made music as a hobby, but his real passion was selling junk. They charged him with possession with intent to distribute, which carries a sentence of seven years to life in Canada.
In doing so, they overlooked the fact that even the dumbest junkie musicians aren't that dumb. Even though they need to get high, they obviously can't afford to be caught with smack at a border crossing. So they get other people to do it for them. Because the potential for one source getting nabbed was so great, folks like Keef would have multiple supplies coming to him in a city. However, sometimes none of the sources would get nabbed, which is what basically happened at the Harbour Castle.
If the Rolling Stones were broken up by Canuck justice, they were threatened with irrelevence by groups like the Sex Pistols and the Clash. It was under these clouds that the Stones decamped for Paris to record what would become their "New York" album, Some Girls.
With the exception of the incomparable Sugar Blue on harmonica, "guest musicians" were almost completely absent from the Some Girls sessions. It was the five Stones, along with regular keyboardists Ian Stewart and ex-Faces Ian McLagan, and that was pretty much it. Having said that, Sugar Blue is impossibly good, and should've joined the Stones full time. The harmonica he plays, especially on "Miss You" sounds almost nothing like a harmonica, which is a pretty rudimentary instrument. Sugar's parts are played live with a saxophone to this day.
The Stones always had a weird dynamic with guest musicians. Instead of the guests complimenting the band, the band tended to support the guests. If you listen to Black and Blue - with standout exceptions like "Hand of Fate" - it sounded more like a Billy Preston album of the era than a proper Stones album. And that's not necessarily bad. Billy Preston was fucking dynamite in the 70's. But it wasn't really the Rolling Stones. That's also true of "It's Only Rock n' Roll" with is structurally David Bowie meets the Faces, which makes sense since Bowie and Ron Wood wrote it with Mick Jagger. Keith Richards doesn't even play on the recorded version of the song.
Some Girls was destined to be the last great album of great "new" Rolling Stones songs (1981's Tattoo You was almost as good, but it was mostly a hodgpodge of outtakes from Goats Head Soup through 1980's Emotional Rescue sessions. Jagger finished and cleaned up Tattoo You pretty much on his own in the studio.) Unlike every subsequent record of new songs, there isn't a bad fucking tune on Some Girls. Sure, some of them are better than others, but none of them actually suck. The Stones hadn't done that since Exile on Main St., and they'd never do it again.
Last week, the Stones decided to cash in on Some Girls yet again. To understand this, you need to understand the peculiar business position the Rolling Stones are in. In 1971, they started their own record company, which would license their albums to a major distributor, but the Stones own the masters. That means if you sign the Rolling Stones, you don't just get the next three records that no one but me will buy. You get everything from Sticky Fingers onward, and the Stones catalogue still sells a fuck-ton of units in an era where no one is dumb enough to actually pay for music.That's why there have been at least three "remastered" editions of those records in the last 25 years.
Maybe later in the week I'll write about the reissue, which is way better than last years reissue of Exile. The hidden treasure this week is the brand-spanking-fucking new Some Girls Live in Texas '78 BluRay and DVD. Unlike last year's home video release of the 1974 movie of the '72 Exile tour, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones - which is well worth picking up - Some Girls Live in Texas has never before been seen by the public.
And Live in Texas, 78 is rocks the gawdamn casbah, teenagers. From 1989's Steel Wheels tours - which comprises most of the band's live concert home video releases (there have been five, six if you include Martin Scorcesse's feature film, Shine a Light) onward, there were almost as many people on stage as there were in the audience. Of them all, the only one that comes close is the Paris theatre show on the Four Flicks box set, and that's because so many rare and cool songs and covers were on it) comes close. Because Jagger was so concerned with recreating the records on stage from '89 forward, he ressurected the "Stones Revue" idea of the '75 tour, but more bloated and without anyone as fucking hip as Billy Preston with them. Live in Texas '78 is just the five Stones, with Stewart and McLagan on keys.
More importantly, the Some Girls tour was the last time the Rolling Stones exclusively played arenas and theatres. Forever afterward, they played your local enormodome. While the Stones are better at it than almost anyone else, pretty much all rock music sucks in a sports stadium, especially outdoor stadiums. And domes are even worse. When a band plays outside, the music goes everywhere but your ears. And when there's there's a steel dome involved, it bounces all over the fucking place.
Worse still, when you play in a place for 30,000 to 120,000 assholes, you had goddamned well better play the 22 songs that everybody hears on the radio 13 times a day. And God help you if you play too many songs from your new record.
Some Girls Live in Texas, '78 doesn't do that. This show had seven (then) new songs - ('When The Whip Comes Down', 'Beast Of Burden', 'Miss You', 'Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)', 'Shattered' ,'Respectable' and 'Far Away Eyes') in a row. The only band I know of that's done that lately with a new record was the Foo Fighters, and they only did it in clubs before Wasting Light was released. I'll grant you that the Stones haven't made an album with that many great new songs to play in a row subsequent to Some Girls - after all, no one's chanting for, say, a suite from Dirty Work or Undercover - but it's a ballsy move, nonetheless.
What stands out on Live in Texas is the paucity of the "Greatest Hits." Yes, "Honky Tonk Woman", "Tumbling Dice", "Happy", "Brown Sugar" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" are all here, and "Miss You" and "Beast of Burden" eould later become part of "The Big 22", but there's no "(I Can't No) Satisfaction", "Sympathy for the Devil" or "Street Fighting Man" to be found here. In fact only two orignial songs pre-date Exile on Main St., which would be unthinkable for the Stones to do now.
Instead you get two Chuck Berry covers - and you just can't go wrong with a Chuck Berry song - the brilliant "Star Star" from Goats Head Soup and the classic Robert Johnson blues "Love in Vain."
If you want a giant "hits" set, Some Girls Live in Texas, 78 likely isn't for you. Nor are you going to get all of the fucking fireworks, fire and confetti that the Stones have employed since '89. There isn't even a giant video screen behind the band. But if makes you feel better, Mick does spend a good deal of the show in a douchey red leather disco cap, a punk t-shirt with an obscured swaatika, and really odd pants and shoes. That's about all the spectacle you're going to get.
But if you want to see a fantastic band fighting for their fucking lives, then you have to buy Some Girls Live in Texas, 78.
Editor's note: The audio on the actual Live in Texas Bluray/DVD/BitTorrent is much, much louder than it is on the YouTube clip above.
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