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Shane’s Rock Challenge: THE ROLLING STONES – 1978 – Some Girls

| 15 August 2014 | Reply

Shane’s Rock Challenge: THE ROLLING STONES – 1978 – Some Girls
By Shane Pinnegar
9/10

The Rolling Stones - Some Girls cover

If memory serves me correctly, Keef Richards quipped of this album title that they called it Some Girls, “because we couldn’t remember all their fucking names.” It certainly captures The Stones at the end of a decade of hard living and establishment baiting, the sleaze and decay starting to show on their once-fresh faces.

Richards may have been the soul of the band, but as the decade wound on he sunk deeper into a heroin fog (and stressed about his Toronto bust for the drug and the very real possibility of doing time), with Mick Jagger taking the reins and guiding the band with a firm business-minded hand. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but they always sounded better when they worked together, sparks a-flying.

Jagger wasn’t about to ignore the fact that disco and punk were the big chart toppers of the time, not to mention his pride being wounded as the punks labelled The Stones ‘dinosaurs.’ The essence of both is distilled into The Stones primal soup to great effect on Miss You (the former) and Respectable and Shattered (the latter).

Elsewhere Far Away Eyes is a tongue-in-cheek country twang ridiculing the Southern Baptists in the USA, the title track mocks female stereotypes (and got feminists up in arms when they missed the joke), When The Whip Comes Down and Beast Of Burden are The Stones at their best, while Before They Make Me Run is Keef’s own response to that Toronto bust.

Hailed as their best album since 1972’s Exile On Main Street, it’s definitely bolstered by the first full-time appearance of guitarist Ron Wood – a partner-in-crime for Richards in more ways than one, and had sold over 6 million copies by 2000. Some Girls remains an excellent record to this day, with a louche, wastrel charm and a sneer, and many of its tracks have featured in The Stones live shows over the ensuing decades.

Category: Shane's Rock Challenge

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