Rolling Stones Interview: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards Talk Some Girls ReissuePosted In: VEVO. Posted By: Jim on 11.24.2011
“Don’t you know the crime rate’s going up, up, up, UP!” yelps Mick Jagger on “Shattered.” The tough little ditty closed out Some Girls, the crackling 1978 opus that told doubtful listeners the Rolling Stones still had an enviable amount of snarl in them. Jagger was singing about the New York of the mid-70s, his personal stomping ground at that point, and “Shattered” was a portrait of the decay he bumped into every day. “Rats on the West Side, bed bugs uptown, this town’s in tatters. Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don’t mind the maggots.”
Artistically nudged by the established punk rock and burgeoning hip-hop movements of the time, the Stones came up with one of the top five records of their career. From the disco allusions of “Miss You” to the slow-moving soul of “Beast of Burdon” to the tongue-in-cheek twang of “Faraway Eyes,” there was no filler on board – just 10 songs that punched you in the gut and kept moving. Now it’s been re-released, along with an additional disc of tracks that were being worked on during the original recording sessions. A few of these extra cuts have been tweaked for release with new vocals or instruments added. Several of them boast a spunk similar to their forebears.
VEVO recently spoke with Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards about the impact of Some Girls. Both were in great moods, laughing easily (Jagger in particular chuckling over the current crop of GOP presidential candidates), and citing it as one of the band’s strongest discs. The interviews were done in two separate phone calls, but because their answers paralleled each other, we’ve blended the chats into one conversation. At some points it felt like the two old friends were sitting shoulder to shoulder. VEVO: You made Some Girls in France. But it’s always seemed to be a New York album.
Keith Richards: We recorded it in Paris, yeah, but it was mostly written in New York. Mick was living there and so was I. So there was a New York vibe behind it, absolutely, we just had to transfer it to Paris for whatever reason.
VEVO: Describe what the city was like in ’78.
Mick Jagger: Broke. Broke and dirty…but full of life and artistic endeavors.
VEVO: It was a cultural hotbed at that point too, right?
Mick Jagger: Yeah, exactly. A lot of interesting music and art made it through the squalor. There was a big art scene then, as partly described in “Do You Think I Really Care?” (an extra track from the Some Girls reissue), a country song about New York. Yeah, it was a vibrant art scene, lots of comings and goings, new things, new people. And great music scene, too, with dancing, clubs – you know, a mix-up, a mash-up of everything.
VEVO: You’re one of the people that could feel comfortable in both a disco scene, a rock scene, and a visual art scene.
MJ: I saw this documentary a year or two ago, and it reminded me of that time. You had Sugarhill Gang and Blondie playing on the same bill. It was before the time when people were afraid of mixing up genres. It was so new, no one knew what genre they were in, really. And New York being geographically small, it was quite easy to get around, so there was lots of people connecting. The Clash did great dance remixes, you know? And they were played on that radio station Frankie Crocker used to DJ on (WBLS), and it was kind of exciting on that level, because that was new, that was different. In a lot of ways, Some Girls reflects those comings and goings.
VEVO: You’ve previously mentioned that the arrival of punk brought out some of the album’s tough personality.
KR: Yeah. The punk influence was really coming in strong. It had a great energy and attitude. It moved our ass, boy. See, the thing I loved about those times was the attitude and a new generation coming up.Unfortunately, only a very few [bands]could actually play, you know, music.
MJ: Well punk heyday was sort of ’76 and ’77, really. So this was kind of the end of it, if you want. Nobody knew it was going to be quite so short-lived perhaps, or morph into sort of something else. And also, punk meant something a bit different in New York than it did in London. The sort of punk scene in New York, you know, you had The Ramones and you had the New York Dolls, but they didn’t really play that kind of music, you know what I mean? And it was a very different – it was more of a glam look. New York was sort of different than what the Sex Pistols were putting out. I mean, my favorite band of that period, was The Clash, definitely. They definitely had a dance sensibility, as well as a rock sensibility.
KR: It sort of spread like wildfire. It was another generation, you know, and a lot of energy going on. And that, I was very much in favor of.
VEVO: Did you stick your head into CBGB or other clubs like that?
KR: Occasionally, yeah. As much as possible, really. You know, in and out, have a quick one. And usually get rushed out before anything [too crazy happened]. A quick drop-in.
MJ: I wasn’t habitual in CBGB, but I definitely went there. That was one of the known places, but there were plenty of spots that were kind of unknown, like a very interesting, nameless dance loft you would go to during a weekend round. Weekends were the time to trying and discover new places and new sounds. But they were playing a really good mixture, too, you know? It wouldn’t just be one kind of music. It was an interesting melting pot of music that came out of that time, and I think the Some Girls album reflects that.
VEVO: Do you remember where you were writing “Miss You”?
MJ: Yeah, it was a riff and I wrote it in a rehearsal room in Toronto. Keith was in jail, and we were rehearsing to do this show at this club, and Billy Preston and I were playing one afternoon, and Billy was on the drums and I was just playing the guitar riff. The rest of the band eventually picked up on it, but that’s how it started.
VEVO: Rhythm has always been the bedrock for you guys. Tell me about Charlie Watts’ skills on something like “Miss You.”
MJ: He’d been listening to a lot of this club music, as well. We would buy all these records and listen to them. So he was very aware of all these different grooves that were behind a lot of these dance tunes. And also, that was the heyday of dance music played with a live drummer. Charlie was very interested in it. He was totally aware of all the subtleties, so he would try now to play dance music all the time. He took to it very easily.
VEVO: Charlie makes songs like “Beast of Burden” and “Miss You” sound simple, but they’ve got very intricate vibe.
KR: That’s one of the reasons he’s Charlie Watts. He’s got that deep groove. And if I can find the right tempo and the right riff for him, you know, it’s all smiles. He just has a beautiful feel for reading songs. He kind of knows what you’re going to do before you do it. I’ve never played with a better cat, man.
VEVO: Mick, the other thing that helps shape that track is the harp.
MJ: Yeah. And that’s not me playing the harp for once. It’s like the only time I haven’t played it. It’s this guy Sugar Blue from Detroit, who played in the subway in Paris. He added that part, which I thought was really beautifully played. He plays on a couple of the bonus tracks, too. I think it’s weird because there’s the rest of this modern groove, or modern for the time, but you’ve got this kind of ’50’s harp on top of it, which is kind of weird, but it all hanged together.
VEVO: Do you remember when you first started trying out the harp as a kid?
MJ: Yeah, I do. It’s a pretty easy instrument to pick up, to be honest. I mean, it’s small and most of ’em only got ten holes. But it’s quite hard to teach people how to play; you just have to learn it. I still play it, I like to play it. It’s good fun. I added some harp to a couple of the blues tracks that are on the extras disc.
VEVO: Keith, tell me about “Before They Make Me Run.” That was your main vocal track on the disc. Where did it come from?
KR: Well, you never know where songs come from. I probably only realized it much later, but obviously I was under several indictments at the time, and the impetus came from there. I was living all over the place at the time, man. I was moving from space to space. I was sort of on the run. That was the whole thing. But when I was writing it, I was just writing another song. You know, it’s a got a good feel, it’s got a good title. It was only later on I realized I was actually writing about myself. That happens quite often. Writing a song is a weird thing, because really you’re writing a story, something where you have to go from A to Z in three or four minutes. Other songs sort of take over, and decide what they’re going to do by themselves, and you just hang onto their tail. Like “Beast of Burden,” I had no idea how that was going to turn out. To me, it was just a soul song that came out – a part of my heritage. There’s a little bit of blues in there. All I did was throw out the phrase “beast of burden” to Mick, and I played him the music, and then he took it off by himself and did a beautiful job on it.
VEVO: When I told a friend I was going to chat with you, she said, “Tell him I’d take the whole album of tracks like “Far Away Eyes.”
MJ: (laughs) Okay, so she wants a whole country album, basically. There’s two country songs on the extras, there’s one called “No Spare Parts” and there’s a Hank Williams cover, so she’s got a couple more to hear, anyway. I was a fan of country music when I was 11 or 12, and I always liked the famous country artists. Johnny Cash was big back then, and he had songs like “Big River” and “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.” Then I got into other artists, like George Jones, that were quite popular in England. Ferlin Husky, and Hank Snow doing “I’m Moving On” – those kind of things. So I listened to all of those artists when I was a teenager. It’s always been with me. It was a big crossover music as well. People talk about Ray Charles doing Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On” before he did all those other country songs. Though it’s obviously changed some, you can still find some rockabilly ideas in today’s country, you know? Brad Paisley and stuff like that, is still very historical. He is particularly historical-minded, I think.
VEVO: “Far Away Eyes” also lets you get your yen for theatrics out, too, right?
MJ: Yeah, well you know, it’s a part. That particular song’s a parody, though “You Win Again” on the extras disc that is just pretty straight country. I redid the vocals of that in September because the vocal on it were only half done, and I managed to do a country song without it being a parody. (Laughs)
VEVO: Keith, the ballad “Don’t Be a Stranger” on the extras disc is gorgeous. You’ve always had a yen for country-soul and R&B. Your voice sounds sweet.
KR: You mean “We Had It All”? It’s a Dobie Gray song that we’ve always loved, and I actually had forgotten we had recorded it. I had also forgotten how good it was and how much I like it.
VEVO: Is it something that you sometimes still play on the piano when you sit down?
KR: Yeah, man. Oh yeah, it’s a perennial, you know what I mean? One of those songs you sort of warm up in the loins with, you know?
VEVO: Your voice sounds so supple on that.
KR: Blondie Chaplin taught me to warm up. If you want to get your voice in shape, you should start by humming as low as you can get, you know, because it’s like a ladder. Then you can go up, and find the high notes. If you start by just trying to get high notes, all you’ll do is strain yourself. So that’s my process for it. But hey, I’m only a part-time singer, you know.
VEVO: In the horse race to make it on the album in ’78, which one of the extra tracks was closest?
MJ: Ooh, that’s a good question. I’m not sure if any of them were really that close, because none of them were really finished. The one that was closest was probably “Claudine.”
KR: Yeah, absolutely, it would’ve been “Claudine.” It got hung up in legal things; that’s the reason it was off. “Claudine” would’ve been a number one track probably, you know?
VEVO: I was going to say “So Young.”
MJ: I think that that one was close, too. I think that a couple of them were recorded the year we did the tour, which was actually after the record was out. We didn’t want to do any more country songs, because we probably thought one was enough. The one we had on there was the best one, and we knew just one country song was enough. If you have three, it becomes a country album. At least that’s what they’d say. They were just put to one side and then said “Oh, that’s really great”, thinking you were going to finish it next year, but you did it thirty years later or forty years later. (Laughs) So you know, but I think it stands up, I must say it’s pretty good.
VEVO: You’re having a party. Exile On Main Street or Some Girls: Which album do you put on?
MJ: Um, well, both really. I think you just keep the whole thing going with both albums. The thing about Some Girls is it’s really short and straight and to the point. Exile’s completely the opposite. It’s sort of rambling and takes in everything, and has lots of different sounds on it.
KR: When I really think about Some Girls, I recall that we were just having a lot of fun, you know? It was Ronnie’s [guitarist Ronnie Wood] first complete record with us, and he and I were figuring each other out and stuff. Very electric, very exciting. So for me, it was a interesting record to make.
VEVO: Alright, I know you have to do another phone call after this, right?
KR: Um, no. But I do have a wife to feed. (laughs)
VEVO: One last question: “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5…
KR: Oh yeah, that hit number one or something, right?
VEVO: Right. In the video, singer in the band tries to do a bit of Mick’s dancing – all the stereotypical Jagger stuff. If someone had to do an imitation of Mick on stage, what would be the most important body part? The head, the neck or the crotch?
KR: That’s a good question. You know, that’s beyond me honestly, Jim. I can’t go there. (laughs) I mean, I just think it’s sort of ironic that the number one hit is “Moves Like Jagger.” I have to say, I only know the title, I haven’t heard it, I haven’t seen it. But I mean, it just shows you how long we’ve been around, yeah? Mick and I had a laugh about it. I said, “You’re number one on the charts again, pal.”
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