Rolling Stones dress up 'Some Girls' for reissue
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAYUpdated 10h 56m ago
When the Rolling Stones began jamming at a Paris rehearsal hall in October 1977, disco and punk were wrestling for cultural dominance and threatening to annihilate rock's mainstream giants.
Like every trend before and since, neither intimidated nor impeded the Stones, who surfaced in 1978 with chart-topper Some Girls, a sharp, diverse batch of rock, R&B, dance and country that won over a new generation and remains the band's best-selling album (6 million-plus).
It returns Monday as a remastered, expanded reissue in deluxe, super-deluxe and digital editions. (Some Girls Live in Texas '78, on DVD and Blu-ray, is also out Monday.) Along with classics Miss You, Shattered, Beast of Burden and Respectable, the set offers 12 previously unreleased tracks that were unearthed this year.
"Some have been out in bootleg form," says Mick Jagger, 68, who searched the vaults with producer Don Was. "There were a few surprises. Some songs were more finished and just had to be mixed. And some didn't have any lyrics or were very fragmentary. Some were too demo-sounding, and I just threw them out."
The songs that were 'left over'
In fleshing out the tunes, "we kept everything in context," says Keith Richards, 67. "You don't want to fool around too much and pretty them up with digital extras. Leave it in its own time
The Girls reissue, which follows last year's celebrated repackaging of 1972's Exile on Main Street, introduces rocker I Love You Too Much, a cover of Hank Williams' You Win Again, obscure B-side So Young, twangy No Spare Parts, harmonica-laced Keep Up Blues, Tallahassee Lassie (featuring John Fogerty) and Claudine, inspired by French chanteuse Claudine Longet, who was accused of killing her ski-champ boyfriend, Spider Sabich.
"Unlike Exile, there was a lot more left over," Richards says. "Claudine should have been on the first one, but we had deadlines."
Timing isn't the only reason songs didn't make the cut.
"In the case of the countryish ones, if you'd put them all out on Some Girls, it would have been a country album," Jagger says. "So we picked our best one, and also the one that was finished. You should finish them all, but that's not what happens. You concentrate on the 10 or 11 you've got, and the others fall by the wayside."
Miss You, a nod to the disco era, sprang from Jagger's love of dance music and the New York club scene. Richards didn't object.
"Disco is just another funk beat," he says. "None of us dreamt of making a disco album, but if you can come up with a primo disco track, that would be our input. And Miss You made it."
Not pumped about punk
As for ascendant punk rockers, who both jeered and imitated the Stones, "all they could do was be a bad copy of me," Richards says with a gruff laugh. "I loved the energy. They were coming on as strong as we did 10 years earlier. But my problem with punk, man, is they can't play. All they got is attitude and nothing else."
Jagger is similarly dismissive.
"Punk was such a short-lived phenomenon," he says. "Record labels were trying to hop on it, (but) it wasn't a big commercial success. You're hard put to name more than two American punk bands."
Girls stirred controversy for salacious lyrics and a cover that depicted the Stones in drag alongside pictures of famous women.
"Some girls weren't so happy," Richards says, referring to Lucille Ball, Raquel Welch and others whose likenesses hadn't been legally cleared, requiring a recall and redo. "We didn't ask them. We should have been more gentlemanly."
He and Jagger are game for more reissues, within reason.
"We had this idea that we'd reinvigorate certain albums by finding other songs recorded in that time that would hold up," Jagger says. "That sounded like a better idea than doing mindless compilations."
Richards adds: "If there's something interesting that helps to understand the album, let's do it. Otherwise, I'm not one to rehash stuff. We do have so much in the can. We've been around a while, you know?"
Band has 'no golden plan'
The Rolling Stones will hit their golden anniversary next year, fueling expectations for a tour. No plans for a 50th blowout have been revealed, though rumors flared when Keith Richards announced that he, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood intended to convene soon to jam.
"It all sounds great, and I'm sure we're going to do lots and lots of wonderful things," says Mick Jagger, who isn't participating in those sessions. "What the future may hold is known only to God and myself. I'll talk after we've done it rather than before."
Richards hopes for a 2012 return but says he and his bandmates are simply "getting our chops back together. We haven't played together for four years or so. We all happen to be in England in December. I don't want to blow it up into anything. There’s no golden plan."
Not officially, anyway.
“Nothing is supposed to be clear,” Richards allows. “It’s intended to be murky so you don’t know what the hell’s going on until we let you know.”
Pages: 
Some Girls Deluxe - Coming November 21st! (Read 66,657 times)
