Tag: brian jones

The Rolling Stones’ “Aftermath”

Cover of Rolling Stone's Album "After-Math"

I’ve been listening to The Rolling Stones’ album “After-Math” from 1966 this week. This was their fourth album in the UK, but their sixth released in the States. Quite impressive, either way considering their first album had only come out in 1964. The UK and USA releases had different cover art and different track listing. The UK release instead starts with “Mother’s Little Helper,” one of my favorite Stones songs. That and three other tracks are missing from the American version that I listened to. In their place, it opens with “Paint It Black.” A song that I also love, only not as much as “Mother’s Little Helper.” This album was excellent from start to finish, either version.

“Aftermath” represents a significant point in the band’s evolution. Previous albums consisted mostly, if not entirely, of cover songs originally performed by blues and soul. This album shows the band venturing further beyond their initial blues inspiration into more other territory. Guitarist Keith Richards and vocalist Mick Jagger wrote all of the songs, according to printed credits. Brian Jones most definitely contributed to the songwriting, especially on “Paint It Black.” Also, “Aftermath” presents a set of songs written together, as opposed to a collection of individual songs.

I Am Waiting

On the second side of both the UK and US release, “I Am Waiting” provides a gentle folk-inspired rock ballad after the more rocking “It’s Not Easy.” The intro and verse feature instruments played gently, resulting in their identifying characteristics becoming hidden. There’s a harpsichord, dulcimer, and acoustic guitar weaving together a tapestry of chords textured by arpeggios. A haunting bassline quietly emphasizes the chord progression, while encouraging the cautious suspense of a hide-and-seek game. Restrained drums beat pull the song from one bar into the next, without emphasizing the beat. Jaggers sings the verses gently, with even softer backing vocals singing in unison on key phrases.

The band play the choruses much different from verses. Dulcimer and guitars join in a jangly strumming rhythm. The drums approach a rock beat, with the hats giving a jazz dance over the beat, the kick drum emphasizing the first beat and the snare providing hops across the remaining three beats. The bass guitar gets played more strong. The vocals are sung more strongly.

The lyrics consist of verses, choruses, and a refrain. Normally in songs, every chorus has the same lyrics, giving the listener a hook to return to. Here, a separate refrain provides that function, with “Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere.” The chorus each consist of four lines, the second and fourth being some variation of “You will find out.” Each of the first and third contain an internal rhyme, dividing the line into two parts.

Stand up coming years and escalation fears
Oh yes we will find out
Well like a withered stone, fears will pierce your bones
You’ll find out

Think

The Rolling Stones close out the first side of the US release with “Think.” Jagger and Richards wrote “Think,” but the song already received release as a single by Chris Farlowe. The more filled out soul-rock Chris Farlowe version is fair enough, but I definitely prefer the more raw rock sound of the Rolling Stones track. It opens with a blues acoustic guitar intro riff, joined then by a second acoustic guitar strumming chords, drums, bass guitar, clean electric guitar, and a fuzz electric guitar. The fuzz guitar mostly plays extended notes, letting them fade out. Richards originally meant the fuzz guitar in “Satisfaction” to be played by horns; the fuzz guitar here performs a similar function. A significantly clean electric guitar plays a solo, backed by that fuzz padding the background.

The song has two different types of verses, with one feeling like a bridge. The overall song structure, with the two verse types labelled as VerseA and VerseB is: Intro-VerseA-Refrain-Chorus-VerseB-Refrain-Chorus-VerseB-Refrain-Bridge-VerseA-Refrain-Chorus-Outro. The first and last verse follow a chord progression of IV-V7-IV-V7, which is a progression leading the listener to a cadence, providing a floating sort of suspense. The refrain gives that cadence, by staying on the tonic chord. Now we have resolution, but extending it gives desire for movement. The chorus rises up to IV, holding that chord, and then closing with a I-VII♭– IV. The flattened major seventh is a particularly blues-rock borrowed-chord. The other verses start with this borrowed chord, following a series of descending chords: VII♭-V7-IV-II7. The use of sevenths on each second chord pulls the listener towards the next bar by creating a mild-dissonance asking for resolution.

Doncha Bother Me

Perhaps the song that most got stuck in my head is the stomping blues track “Doncha Bother Me.” Brian Jones provides essential electric slide guitar between each sung line. His slide guitar drew me into the song, and the vocal hook of “Doncha bother me no more” increased the catchiness. Piano, acoustic guitar, and drums provide rhythm, panned hard left. The electric guitar is panned hard right. Vocals and bass sit right in the middle. Cross-talk between mics (and perhaps on the tape machine) pulls this hard-panning together putting the listener in the room. I’ve seen some documentary footage of the Stones doing overdubs on songs, and they would sometimes just have the previously recorded tracks playing through a speaker in the studio rather then into headphones. While this robs the engineer of the separation of tracks (a preferences especially in the 90s), it increases the live-sound of the room. It’s more pleasing and gives the recording a more warm human feel.

The choruses use a blues-inspired chord progression of I-IV-I-IV-I-V7-IV-I. And the verses go into a more energetic rock feel with V7-V7-IV-I. The piano drives along with a boogie-woogie rhythm throughout, drumming up in intensity during the verses. The drums move between stick and snare sounds. The vocals deliver a line, then the slide guitar rises up in response.

I said, Oh no, don’t you follow me no more
I said, Oh no, don’t you follow me no more
Well, pick your own mind and don’t you touch mine no more

The Rolling Stones’ “Beggars Banquet”

Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet album cover

This week, I’ve been listening to The Rolling Stones album “Beggars Banquet” from 1968. This is the third of their albums I’ve had for my weekly albums. “Exile on Main Street” and “Let It Bleed” each had their turn earlier this year. As I mentioned before, I chose the Beatles over the Stones when I was young. However, I feel for “Exile on Main Street” pretty hard when I was about 30 years old. There’s some tremendous cuts on “Beggars Banquet” as well. I’ve heard several of them over the  years, especially “Sympathy for the Devil.” But now some of the whole album has grown on me and some of these songs are now great favorites.

The famously controversial cover image of a bathroom wall, includes some graffiti that says, among other things “Bob Dylans Dream” with an arrow pointing to the toilet handle. I wonder if this is a joke on Dylan’s line “the pump don’t work, because the vandals took the handle” that closes his song “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Either way, the mention of Dylan is importantly telling; These Rolling Stones songs frequently offer snapshots of contemporary society and culture in a rather Dylan way. Also, musically the way they strum the acoustic guitar in some of these songs shows that they’ve been listening to some of this recordings.

“Jigsaw Puzzle” provides a more obvious example of Dylan’s influence on the Stones. Acoustic guitar strums repeats a V-IV-II-I chord progression four times for the verse, and then plays I-II-IV-V-V-IV-IV-V for each chorus. A bright slide-guitar manically slides up the neck mimicking the slide guitar in Dylan’s song “Highway 61 Revisited.”

I enjoy how they play these verses. All instruments except drums and bass rest during the first line, and then each guitar comes back in as the verse progresses to the chorus. This gives the feeling of rising intensity. In this way, also, they treat the chorus more as a refrain in the balladry tradition than as a rock n roll chorus. Though the lines incorporate some rhyme, they don’t follow a strict rhyme scheme as Dylan would; They frequently abandon rhyme altogether.

The lyrics paint short vignettes of characters walking about in the world of the song, as often seen in Dylan songs, especially “Desolation Row.”  There’s the story of so many things going on in the world: issues, conflicts, corruptions, etc.  These are vague passing references to the sociopolitical climate, like skimming newspaper headlines when you just want to read the comics. The speaker is cut-off from these other characters and their interactions with each other. He’s just “trying to do [his] jigsaw puzzle.” However, though they incorporate some rhyme, 

There’s a tramp sitting on my doorstep
Trying to waste his time
With his methylated sandwich
He’s a walking clothesline
And here comes the bishop’s daughter
On the other side
She looks a trifle jealous
She’s been an outcast all her life
Me, I’m waiting so patiently
Lying on the floor
I’m just trying to do my jigsaw puzzle
Before it rains anymore

The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” remains one of the most undeniable recordings of the 1960s. In addition to the amazing music and performance, the song features great lyrics about the evil running through history and culture. This week, I also watch the not-so-good documentary by Godard, “Sympathy for the Devil” which follows the band through the development of the song. I can’t recommend the movie, but it was neat to see them recording early versions of the song before they knew how they were going to play it.

The verses follow I-II-IV-I chord progression. The choruses rises up to V-I-V-I.  For the first verse, the piano plays chords on the first beat of each measure, along with the bass playing the root note. With the second verse, the bass picks up more of a driving shuffling rhythm, still mostly on the root note of each chord. With each verse, the piano gets more active with great rhythm-and-blues rhythms. This is all accompanied by layers of Latin rhythms played with a variety of hand percussion. 

After the second chorus, vocals repeating a “hoo-hoo” chant continue through the rest of the song. These backing vocals sing the tonic chord I throughout the verses. They change only for the chorus, rising up to the V chord along with the rest of the accompaniment. I’m not really sure why, but this chant contributes to the driving feel of the song.

A menacingly sharp electric guitar solo plays during after the third chorus. This overdubbed guitar sits right in front, fuzzed and bright. While it’s definitely a blues-inspired solo, it mixes held notes with staccato stops. With the lack of reverb or delay, the rests are hard and just as cutting as when the guitar plays notes. 

“Street Fighting Man” may be the song I played the most this week. It makes uses of the typical three rock chords, though the order is sort of flipped for the verses. Normally we’d see a I-IV progression, but instead these verses have IV-IV-IV-I, even though the intro gives us I-IV. The chorus changes key to the V of the original key for a I-I-I-V chord progression in the new key. These leads to a post-chorus that rather-floats on the II chord (V of the new key) of the original key to drop back to the original key.

The song opens with Keith banging out the chords on an acoustic guitar in one channel. He famously acquired the sound by recording the guitar on a portable tape cassette recorder.  The guitar was too loud for the little machine, overloading the mic input, the tape, or probably both. This serendipitously created a warmly distorted acoustic guitar. This is joined by a more cleanly recorded acoustic guitar in the left channel. There’s later some great subtle play back and forth between these two guitars.

The drums play a strong simple beat, emphasizing the 2nd and 4th beat like a march to accompany lines like the opening “Everywhere I hear the sound of marching charging feet, boy.” The verse and choruses are rocking, hard, and driving. They create this force with double-tracked acoustic guitars, hard-driving drums, rolling piano, and a simple-yet-effective bass guitar line. The post-chorus adds contrast with sitar and syncopated melodic piano creating a floating feeling, as the song finds its way back to the tonic.

Well now, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock n’ roll band?
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man, no.

EDIT: Updated the embedded videos, as ABKCO records just posted some great lyric videos on youtube.