Townswoman Citizen Mom, inspired by the taunting of Rock Town Hall’s anti-Ron Wood stance, decided to defend the band’s Tattoo You album. For fear of being excomunicated from the Halls of Rock, Citizen Mom originally published this piece in econoculture.com. After reassurances that any stance is worth taking on Rock Town Hall, she decided to come forward and share her views with us. For this, we thank you!
Journey with me, if you will, back to a time not so long ago – a time when The Rolling Stones were still a viable rock band, before they just started sending the fossilized remains out on tour every few years. Before Keith Richards had shit growing out of his hair, before Jerry Hall finally threw Mick out for good, before they had daughters tall and gorgeous enough to be the kind of women their fathers would date.
During that dusky time, between when the sun set on disco and rose on “Thriller” and hair metal, even a bunch of castoff tracks from previous Stones albums, slapped together with a few new numbers so the band could have something to promote on an upcoming world tour, could kick ass.
That time, my friends, was 1981, and the album was Tattoo You, also known as the Last Great Rolling Stones Record and the band’s last full-length release to hit #1 on the American charts. It’s pretty well buried under the mountain of undeserved rockist scorn, but there are some damn fine songs lurking between “Start Me Up” and “Waiting On a Friend,” the two wildly successful singles that bookend the album.
Still, the snitch keep snitchin’ and the bitches keep bitchin’, and when I pitched this piece to Econo, the response I got back from my editor went like this: “I dare you to defend that crap album. ‘Waiting on a Friend’ is great. But the rest — ugh. Do we really need to hear ‘Start Me Up’ ever again?”
Yeah, we’ve all heard “Start Me Up” a million times, but should its Awesome ’80s ubiquity doom the entire album? I blame this on that friggin’ bodysuit — you know what I’m talking about:
Most of the songs were written and originally recorded for the sessions that became Goat’s Head Soup, Black and Blue, and Emotional Rescue, so all you who revile Tattoo You for being an “’80s album” are way off. In fact, the album is more a time capsule of the ‘70s: “Waiting on a Friend”, for example, was recorded to be part of Goat’s Head Soup, and features guitar work by Mick Taylor – so you Ron Wood haters can just settle down.
[Note to Viacom: This is what you get for attempting to remove the Stones’ video for the one song on this album that even those too-cool-for-school regarding this album will agree is great.]
Let’s be honest: This is probably the last time Mick could pull off Rock God With Smokin’Bod, white sweatpants notwithstanding. Remember also that the Tattoo You Tour – and the football pants/knee pads combo Mick rocked onstage – went down in history as some of the biggest concerts of that decade.
The slow-boiler “Slave”, far and away the best song here, had been recorded in 1975, during the sessions for Black and Blue, and probably would have improved that album greatly had it been included. Long and limber, it is very much a song of that time, with Billy Preston playing organ, Sonny Rollins doing an explosive sax solo and Pete Townshend lending some backing vocals. There isn’t much in the way of lyrics, but Jagger’s howling refrain of “Don’t wanna be your slave” pretty much says it all. All of that, atop one of those low, growling guitar lines that instantly says Keith Richards, and it makes for fierce, sweaty, and emotional stuff.
This being a Stones album, many of the songs are about women; the travails of life with a Rock Wife are very much on our boys’ minds — even the album art speaks to this, with its illustration of a devil’s cloven hoof clad in a stiletto heel. The women on Tattoo You are greedy, concerned with status and clutching at success. “Tops,” originally written and recorded in 1972, can’t be about anyone but Bianca, who became the first future ex-Mrs. Mick Jagger in May 1971: “I’ll be your partner/Show you the steps/With me behind you tasting/of the sweet wine of success/Cause I’ll take you to the top, baby.”
And on “Neighbors,” one of the two songs written specifically for Tattoo You, we find the Glimmer Twins dealing with the strains of marriage and fatherhood: “Ladies, have I got crazies/Screaming young babies/No peace and no quiet/I got TVs, saxophone playing/Groaning and straining/With the trouble and strife.”
Sad for him, I know, but surely the million the Stones grossed on that tour helped ease the burden a bit. Unfortunately, this was also about the time that Rolling Stones concerts morphed irrevocably from rock concerts to stadium events, with all the cascading balloons and waving lighters that entails.
Since then, the Stones have become the (somewhat) living embodiment of what happened when the ‘60s rock got old. The Jagger-Richards union hit its infamous mid-life crisis in the ‘80s, after Tattoo You, beginning an artistically fallow period from which the Rolling Stones have never really recovered. The song “Black Limousine” – a patchwork quilt of a blues number recorded over various sessions between 1973 and 1981 – seems to speak to that a bit:
“We used to shine, shine, shine, shine
Say what a pair, say what a team
We used to ride, ride, ride, ride
In a long black limousine
Those dreams are gone baby
Locked away and never seen
Well now look at your face now baby
Look at you and look at me”
Listening to Tattoo You now is a bit like breaking out a family album, one that showed the last happy times before the dysfunction took hold. In some ways, the entire album is a symptom of that approaching dark period – barely original, leaning on the past, trying to find a safe way into the future, but resembling the good times enough that you don’t mind taking a long look back.
Good work, Citizen Mom. Don’t let the fuddy-duddy purists get you down! This era of Ron Wood-period Stones has its place. Hell, I’d rather listen to Some Girls than Aftermath. Damn straight!
I’ve always thought that there’s plenty to like about this LP. I was 16 when this album came out and at that time it seemed that the Stones were still relevant and everyone I knew was psyched that they were going to tour (and kicking it off in Philly no less, we all felt somewhat privileged). I still play this album once in a while, and I still love the groove in “Slave”.
This was a really fun read Citizen Mom, thanks for posting! Great writing!
Great piece, Citizen Mom, although I’m not sure I’m ready to let down my “too-cool-for-school” pose, which may have kicked in precisely with the opening chords to “Start Me Up”. I haven’t quite shaken it yet.
I bypassed a chance to see this tour in both Philly and Chicago. I could have had 2nd-row seats in Chicago, if memory serves, with more, let’s say, accoutrements than my 18-year-old self had any right to enjoy. To this day I still don’t regret missing that Chicago show, although I know it would have been an easy feather in my cap, as much as any post-1975 Stones tour would matter among rock nerds.
In retrospect, I can’t help but love “Waiting on a Friend”, and I know there’s really not much wrong with “Start Me Up” that losing the memory of thousands of cheesy yuppie people from my youth digging the song and losing the memory of dozens of uses in yuppie commercials wouldn’t cure. And, yes, that bodysuit sucked!
Thanks again for sharing this piece with us, and thanks to the folks at Econoculture.com. I think you’re going to make a lot of folks around here just a little more comfortable with their heretofore suppressed views on this album.
Let me be the first to open a can of whup-ass on this lame album. As with many el-pees fro that era, I suspect there’s a lot of RTH geez-tro-specting going on here. Well, I for one didn’t hear “Tattoo You” until I was 39 (I was in Africa when it came out), and — though I bought it on the basis of its “last great Stones album” rep — I was really let down.
Yeah, there are three or four choice cuts on the record — maybe five or six all told that are worth listening to — that don’t make a “great” album! For my money, it’s the last *decent* Stones album. And that’s saying a lot these days.
For the record, I just consulted my iPod to see which tunes I thought were keeping:
Start Me Up
Hang Fire
Little T&A
Tops
Heaven
Waiting On a Friend
And for the record, I ain’t no Ron Wood hata! In fact, I think Mr. Mod should drop the RTH sub-head from this site, as I think there’s a critical mass of us Woodites out here.
Let’s get something straight, Townsman Hrrundivbakshi: I – and, by association, RTH as a watchdog organization – am no hater of Ron Wood. Read the subhead. Read it! It is a cut on Ron Wood-era Stones in terms of the essential Stones discussion point. As if you, of all people need some context, in one of the greatest debates that frames our activities and mission at Rock Town Hall, the essential Brian Jones-era vs Mick Taylor-era Stones debate does not allow room for Ron Wood-era Stones. That’s all that the subhead is saying. Deal with it.
Please note that my use of boldfaced commands is done with love.
Oh, and furthermore, I think Ron Wood was strong to fantastic in a number of settings before joining the Stones. His membership in the Stones, however, must be one of rock’s ultimate deals with the devil. The man traded in all his gifts for a free ride. Too bad The New Barbarians crashed and burned before Wood could have gotten a little back for his sacrifices.
Also,hrrundivbakshi, on an album with 11 tracks, you deem 6 worthy. How is that whuppin’ ass? Feel the love, my friend.
Good point, Citizen Mom. That ain’t no can of whupp-ass; that’s a slap on the wrist!
Hmmm. 6 good cuts on this one? No way. Side 2 is utter crap except for “Waiting On A Friend”, thanks primarily to Mick’s lame-ass Barry Gibb imitation.
“Black Limousine”? At best, it’s a J. Geils album cut. And why did a three-chord blues song take 8 years to record?
OK, I like “Hang Fire” and “Slave”, and even “Start Me Up” before it got overly drilled into my skull. So that leaves 4 good songs, which is about standard for every post-Exile Stones LP. So, nope, not a great album.
When I converted the albums from this pre-Dirty Work period to CDRs, I was surprised how much I liked them. Great? No, but definitely good. It would never have occurred to me to defend them based on the lyrics and subject matter of the songs.
LITTLE T&A
that’s like the third quintessential Keef cut, behind Happy and Before They Make Me Run.
Mr. Mod —
You said:
Read the subhead. Read it! It is a cut on Ron Wood-era Stones in terms of the essential Stones discussion point. As if you, of all people need some context, in one of the greatest debates that frames our activities and mission at Rock Town Hall, the essential Brian Jones-era vs Mick Taylor-era Stones debate does not allow room for Ron Wood-era Stones. That’s all that the subhead is saying. Deal with it.
I say:
Huh? I swear I’m not being difficult here, but: I don’t understand what you’re saying.
The subhead says: fans of Ron Wood-era Stones need not apply. Does that mmean what it says? ‘Cause if it does, there’s a bunch of us that ought not to be here. Your most recent post suggests that when debating the merits of Mick taylor vs. Brian Jones, we shouldn’t bring up Ron Wood. I say to this: huh?, and why not?
Most of all, the subhead needs to go because it makes us sound like a bunch of geezers who only listen to music up to 1976 or something. Which is only true some of the time. You want to cast a wider net with RTH? Watch that mission statement, bro!
Worrying about the implications of the subhead is what makes you sound like a geezer. Don’t sweat it. The kids are alright.
“Fans of Ron Wood-era Stones” to me suggests folks that like that era over the others. It’s not a slight on Wood. It could easily be “Post 70s era Rolling Stones” but that’s just not as pithy.
Is there anyone here who really likes the Ron Wood-era more than the previous eras? It does seem like a litmus test of sorts. We could argue the merits of 80s-90s-00s Stones for sure but couldn’t we all agree that the 70s Stones and/or 60s Stones, on a whole, were superior?
Re: The subhead, I say leave it — it certainly got me writing. Just add the hyphen.
azq
I took Tatoo You to my friend Brubaker’s house because we were all gonna drink and watch the movie ‘Neighbors’ with Dan Akroyd and John Belushi. They both came out about the same time and I associate them Tatoo You IS the last great Stones album as much as Neighbors is the last great(?) Akroyd/Belushi movie. My plan was to put the song ‘Neighbors”on as soon as credits rolled, however when I got up to get it, seems that Bru and another guy called Red Burns had put my LP in the oven and melted it into a shrinky dink. I was horrified and asked them why they would do such a thing. “Don’t you love the Stones?” I shreiked. Bru said “Yeah but not that disco bullshit”
It’s still my favorite Stones Album.
I was not a huge fan of Tatoo You at the time it came out, since it did indeed reek of an 80s fashion that was beginning to get me down even if I was a year or two too young to really know it. These days I find the album continues to please, and has grown on me significantly. In some ways “Start me Up” and “Hang Fire” are my least favorite cuts on the record. The Stones here are beginning to lose the ability to genuinely rock out, and the slower, more textured later numbers on the album work better for me. Mick, I think, sings really well on the album. Not a masterpiece, but a solid, playable record that along with the more uneven Goats Head Soup sit firmly in the not-their-best-but-still-strong-record grouping.
Funny, I too associate the song “Neighbors” with the movie. I liked that movie when it came out and the few other times I’ve seen it. Hadn’t thought of it in years. Great story, Townsman.