andrews27 wrote on Apr 20
th, 2015 at 7:12pm:
Mel Belli wrote on Apr 20
th, 2015 at 10:39am:
With the open-ended, experimental arrangements of songs like Thru and Thru and How Can I Stop, plus all the likeminded stuff with the Winos, it's no wonder Keith and Mick found it difficult to collaborate over the last 20 years. Imagine coming to the studio with HCIS, and Mick is doing Might as Well Get Juiced.
Two different planets.
Well - Imagine Keith a dozen or so years before coming to the studio with the superior songs on Dirty Work, plus the great Keith songs that didn't make the album but are on the Dirty Work studio boots, and Mick shows up with Winning Ugly and Back to Zero. If they'd forgotten about convention and made it a half-Mick/half-Keith record (also putting on the better Mick songs relegated to the bootlegs), Dirty Work could have been a groundbreaking record. Instead....
Yup, every album since Tattoo You has been a missed opportunity of one sort or another. The one time they were able to "look down the same telescope," as Keith put it, was for the Voodoo Lounge sessions. That's probably the most coherent and collaborative record of the modern era.
Not being on the inside, we can't know if Keith dried up as a songwriter by the time of A Bigger Bang; or, alternatively, the stuff he writes now is totally incompatible with the Stones brand, which Mick keeps alive with "imitation riffs" (Keith's description) and lyrics about cock, tits, and booty.