Lyrics Uncovered: The Rolling Stones’ ‘Some Girls’ Album
'Miss You'
When the Stones released 'Some Girls'
in 1978, it was a pretty contentious time in rock history. Disco was
storming the charts, and punk (and, slowly but surely, hip-hop) was
spilling over from the big cities. Rock fans were so riled by this point
that they began staging anti-disco crusades around the country. So
imagine their surprise when the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band
opened their new album with 'Miss You,' a disco-blues hybrid conceived
during a jam session between Mick Jagger
and keyboardist Billy Preston. They were rehearsing for a gig when they
came up with the song's skeleton. Lyrically, 'Miss You' is a pretty
simple lament of lost love from the perspective of a playboy. Jagger
said the song's memorable middle section -- about "Puerto Rican girls just dying to meet you"
-- was made up to reflect the character's steady parade of women coming
in and out of his life. After the album's release, Jagger said that the
band didn't set out to make a disco record. But it's hard to overlook
the influence of late-'70s N.Y.C. club music. 'Miss You' turned out to
be a huge hit in those clubs, as well as on the pop chart, where it
reached No. 1.
When the Whip Comes Down'
For a band known for its
extracurricular activities, it's little surprise that 'Some
Girls' features some pretty provocative material. 'When the Whip Comes
Down' is the album's boldest cut, "a straight gay song," according to
Mick Jagger in a 1978 interview with Rolling Stone. "But I have no idea
why I wrote it. Maybe I came out of the closet." The song is about a gay
man who moves from Los Angeles to New York to become a garbage
collector. But the implication here is that his real job is as a
prostitute: "I'm learning the ropes, yeah, I'm learning a trade / I got so much money, but I spend it so fast." The song's thick guitar comes from a triple attack: Jagger played along with Keith Richards and Ron Wood. It
all gives 'Whip' plenty of downtown attitude, most likely inspired by
Jagger's experiences living in the Big Apple at the time.
'Just My Imagination
The Stones have never been shy about
their influences, filling many of their early albums with faithful
covers of old blues and R&B songs. By 1978, the band still touched
on the past, but with a modern-day spin. Their version of the
Temptations' 'Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)' bristles with
the same gritty energy found on the rest of the album, with a
particularly feisty power play between guitarists Keith Richards and Ron
Wood. Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1978 that the song was a
continuation of their 1974 cover of the Temptations' 'Ain't Too Proud to
Beg.' "I've always wanted to do that song, originally as a duet with Linda Ronstadt, believe it or not," he said. "But instead, we just did our version of it, like an English rock 'n' roll band tuning up."
'Some Girls'
By the time the Stones went into the
studio in 1977 to record 'Some Girls,' the band's two major creative
forces were dealing separately with legal issues outside of the band.
Keith Richards was arrested in Toronto for heroin possession, while Mick
Jagger was on his way to divorce court with first wife Bianca. That
tension surged throughout the album, especially in the sloppy blues of
the title track, in which Jagger rolls off a list of the evils women do.
And it's not a very flattering portrait. In his 1978 interview with
Rolling Stone, Jagger said there was even more: "I had another version
of the song, but when it came to the take, I sang a completely different
version -- it was 11 minutes long -- and then edited it down."
'Lies'
The punchy, three-chord blast of
'Lies' complements 'Some Girls'' title track. After slamming pretty much
every race of women in the world, Jagger gets somewhat specific here,
sending a pointed message to a "dirty Jezebel" who had fire on her
"wicked tongue." In Cyrus R.K. Patell's book about 'Some Girls' for the
33 1/3 series, Ron Wood says, "Those punk songs were our message to
those boys"; likewise, Keith Richards states in his autobiography that
the band was attempting to "out-punk the punks." Jagger, Wood and
Richards cut through the song with slashing, dive-bombing guitar lines
that buzz through the three-minute song without pause.
Far Away Eyes'
Side two of 'Some Girls' starts in a
strange place with the woozy, country-fried 'Far Away Eyes,' which
features Mick Jagger imitating a Southern drawl. It's all played as a
3/4 waltz with Ron Wood on pedal-steel guitar. In the end, it comes off a
bit comical and a throwaway. (No surprise that Jagger admitted in a
1995 interview, "I love country music, but I find it hard to take
seriously.") Not everyone in the band was on board with Jagger's
performance. A year after the album was released, Keith Richards said
that "Mick feels the need to get into these caricatures. He's slightly
vaudeville in his approach. You expect Mick to walk out in his cowboy
duds on an 18-wheeler set."
Respectable'
According to the liner notes Mick
Jagger wrote for the Stones' 1993 best-of compilation 'Jump Back,'
'Respectable' started life as a slower song. But then it just got louder
and faster. "I was banging out three chords incredibly loud on the
electric guitar," he recalled. "This is a punk-meets-Chuck-Berry
number." The song's lyrics are some of the most playful on the whole
album, taking aim at the punks who were brushing away bands like the
Stones -- as well as at Jagger's ex, Bianca. "You're a rag-trade girl, you're the queen of porn," he sings. "You're the easiest lay on the White House lawn."
(That last line was an apparent reference to Bianca's encounter with
President Gerald Ford's son.) Plus, there was also a nod to Keith
Richards' drug-related arrest in Toronto, which could have led to some
lengthy jail time for the guitarist: "We're talking heroin with the president / Well, it's a problem, sir, but it can't be bent."
Before They Make Me Run'
Like Mick Jagger, who spent a great
deal of time on 'Some Girls' discussing his marital troubles, Keith
Richards got personal in the one song on which he took lead vocals.
Before they entered the studio to record the album, the band was in
Toronto, where Richards was arrested for heroin possession. To help
stave off the possibility of imprisonment, the guitarist entered a
voluntary treatment program. 'Before They Make Me Run' is his reaction.
Richards looks back on the highs ("I wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well")
and lows (the title refers to his attempt to find a place to call home
after he had burned so many legal bridges in so many different
countries). Looking back on the song in his autobiography 'Life,'
Richards calls the song "a cry from the heart."
Beast of Burden'
On 'Beast of Burden,' one of the
album's most popular cuts and a hit single, Keith Richards and Ron Wood
trade a slinky mix of lead and rhythm parts that never seems to resolve,
leaving drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman
to hold things steady. Richards wrote most of the music and lyrics,
thinking of the weight he was putting on his bandmates, especially Mick
Jagger, with his ongoing drug and legal struggles. As he put it in his
autobiography, 'Life': "I came back to the studio with Mick ... to say,
'Thanks, man, for shouldering the burden.' That's why I wrote 'Beast of
Burden' for him."
'Shattered'
If the rest of 'Some Girls' was the
Stones trying to make sense of the punk movement blowing up around them,
'Shattered,' the album's closing track, was the band embracing it. It
doubles as Mick Jagger's blast at his adopted home of New York City: "You got rats on the West Side, bed bugs uptown / What a mess, this town's in tatters," he sings. "Go ahead, bite the Big Apple / Don't mind the maggots." And apparently he wrote the lyrics in the back of a cab. How's that for inspiration?
