This course will survey the music of the Rolling Stones, beginning with the roots and first formation of the band in the early 1960s, and following the group through the release of It's Only Rock 'n' Roll in late 1974.
SCU: “Have You Seen Your Mother”, “Baby”, “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, “Ruby Tuesday”, “Cool, Calm, Collected”
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Del curso dictado por University of Rochester
The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962-1974
108 calificaciones
De la lección
The Music Matures
1966, singles, compilations, and the live experience.
Conoce a los instructores
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Let's zero in on some songs from the end of 1966 into 1967 to get a kind of closer
look at some of the things that I've been talking about when surveying these two big
albums aftermath and between the buttons from 66 and early 67.
The first song, I want to start out with this Have You Seen Your Mother,
Baby, Standing in the Shadow?
This one the B-side to it.
In the U.S and the UK is a song called, Who's Driving Your Plane?
And you know, we didn't,
we've only been talking about these covers on these two albums.
From 66 into 67.
We haven't said a lot about blues.
There has been some blues there by considering where the Stones came from,
for Pete's sake, they came out of that British Blues revival movement.
There hasn't been a lot, an overwhelming amount of blues but
this track Who's Driving Your Plane, this B side.
There's another really good example of the rolling stones going back to
their roots in blues music writing their own blues and and, and performing it.
So the, and another, another kind of overlooked track.
But worthy cert, certainly worthy of your listening and your attention.
So Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?
Recorded in August of '66 at RCA.
And then finished up in September at IBC in London, where Glyn Johns was working.
This one is interesting because it's got horns on it and
the horns are are, arranged by Mike Leander, and you m, maybe remember
the name Mike Leander as being the guy who arranged the strings on As Tears Go By.
And of course went onto about the same time arranged the strings for
The Beatles She's Leaving Home, which was recorded in the first half of 1967 for
the Sergeant Pepper record.
And this is because Mike Leander was a bigger ranger, film music, TV music,
kind of guy, around London, so he was he was available.
Anyway, those are his horns that we're hearing in Have You Seen Your Mother Baby,
his arraignment.
The form of this track is what I call a modified AABA.
Modified because you get the AABA form and
then the only thing that comes back at the end is one more verse, one more A section.
So it kind of goes intro.
Which has the wahwah, fuzz, and feedback thing.
Aw, everybody, a lot,
a lot of people are really proud of the introduction of this tune, because it,
it has this sort of wahwah, feedback, fuzz kind of sound before it gets rolling.
And, than that, of course, that comes back at the very end,
just the distorted guitar sort of bathed in a rich sea of reverb.
But all that kind of,
you know, sort of loud distorto-kind of sign, you would say aha.
They must have been influenced by Hendricks here, right,
because he was the guy for feedback and those kinds of sounds.
Well, it turns out that Hendricks didn't actually play his
first live gig in London, and, you know, Hendricks broke in London before he.
Broke in the United States.
He played around the country United States, that's for sure, but
when Chas Chandler brought him back,
the first gig his band played was after the song had been recorded.
So, if they got all that feedback and stuff from somebody,
they may have gotten it from The Who, you know, Pete Townsend and
Keith Moon kind of liked to destroy the auto destruct [LAUGH] thing.
They stopped doing, because it was too expensive or
they'd bring cheap guitars out, but there was an awful lot of noise that was made.
When they did that,
of course, there's feedback at the beginning of the Beatles' I Feel Fine.
But I think it's a fairly innovative introduction to this tune.
So I want to give the Stones credit for not following what somebody else has done,
but innovating here in their own, in their own way.
Well, that's just the introduction tune.
It's snappy, we get a verse that has a refrain that, that,
that begins each verse.
So you get the refrain at the beginning of each verse and
then different lyrics to follow it each time.
So you get a verse.
A verse, each of those acting as A sections.
Then you get a bridge, which is the B section.
It gets very quiet for contrast and then builds.
That's a technic they're going to use a couple more times,
that is come to the contrasting B section and
bring it way down and then build it back up again, and that's what happens here.
It builds to a return of the verse.
And then as I say after you get the intro, the A, A, B, A.
You get another, another verse, and
then a Coda with that distorted guitar that comes back at the end.
Now, the lyrics refer to a sh,
a, a, shadowy life and shadowy love relationships.
And this is maybe a celebration of lifestyles traditional
society sees as decadent, maybe?
Maybe it's a kind of an embrace, a celebration of, you know.
You know, square, straight people would think that these kinds of s, lifestyles
are decadent but we know there's an attraction and a, and an excitement there.
And so well, you might think that, but
you might say, well that's a little bit fanciful.
There is a, there is a little bit of,
a little bit more evidence that that's kind of where the song is going and that.
Have you seen your mother mother baby standing in the shadows?
The idea of standing in the shadows
indicating kind of a shadowy forbidden kind of lifestyle is,
is kind of born out by the promo picture that was done for this single.
The promo photo, there's a video that was done for it as well,
that incorporates these images.
Features The Rolling Stones in drag.
So all five of the Rolling Stones all dressed up like women.
There's a little sort of tasteless mangling of the legs of one of them and
a, and a wheelchair, which is probably,
they would have done it differently if had they done it today.
But there they are, all of them dressed up like women.
And you wonder whether the song is really.
suggesting, not just sexuality but transvestism, right?
As a kind of is that's what's in the shadows, is that's what's hidden but is,
has a sort of certain kind of excitement and kind of sexual attraction.
And, that's kind of what this is all about.
So, I would ask you to read back through the lyrics again,
listen to the song again, wondering whether or not.
What they're really doing is in a, not even so
secret way, saying that there are all kinds of different kind of love and
sexual relationships, some that are forbidden and some that are not.
And sometimes the forbidden ones are the best ones.
I'm wondering if that's what they're saying.
Again, whether they believe it or not, who knows, but
there is this idea of trying to say things that will shock people.
Having seen the great effect that that I Can't Get No Satisfaction
was able to have.
And of course the dissatisfaction of Hey You, Get Off Of My Cloud.
So it's not, sort of outside of their wheelhouse to do that kind of a thing.
Well, let's move onto Let's Spend the Night Together.
Well, I was just talking about a song that could, that could be somewhat provocative.
Let's Spend The Night Together, as we talked about already,
a song that because of it's lyrics seemed to be courting scandal.
And of course, scandal would soon arrive, as we talked about,
by by virtue of the drug bust that occurred in February of 62.
Let's Spend the Night Together,
I'll remind you, has got lyrics that are provocative.
Pleading with a girl for sex.
Making assurances and in so
doing, as I said before, I think courting scandal trying to be provocative.
Saying things that, that they know polite society is going to object to.
Of course, they think the polite society is hypocritical.
That all kinds of crazy things go on behind the scenes of, of polite society.
But nevertheless, this is, this is, this is the, this is the,
that's the eye that this song is the stick poking into.
anyway, the form of the song is something we call a Compound AABA.
It features an intro, and then a verse and a chorus.
Each verse-chorus pair constitute kind of the A Section, so
you get kind of a verse-chorus, that's the first A.
And another verse-chorus, that's the second A.
And then a bridge.
And then a return to the verse-chorus pair again, and then a coda.
So, you get a big overall AABA,
with a contrasting verse-chorus occurring inside of each A section.
As I said before, there's an intro and a coda.
What's interesting for
me is, is this bridge, again, gets very quiet and refers to classical music.
When they go into that, that bridge section it almost sounds,
again, like Beach Boys kind of vocals.
Think about Good Vibrations and that kind of thing, and then, of course, it builds
up, builds up, builds up not unlike Have You Seen Your Mother Baby before it does.
And employs the chorus at the very end before it breaks back in to the return of
the verse and the chorus.
This track recorded at Olympic Studios, both this one and Ruby Tuesday,
which we'll talk about next, are both recorded.
In in the winter of 1966 at Olympic Studios with piano by Jack Nitzsche.
So again Jack Nitzsche's the guy playing that piano intro
on Let's Spend the Night Together.
All right.
So with that, so far with that two songs that are, that are fairly provocative or
that I've argued are maybe attempting to, to provoke.
Let's move on to the B side from Let's Spend the Night Together.
It comes out of the same sessions that, that got us the A section, the, I mean,
the A side and the, the B side I want to talk about is Ruby Tuesday.
Now, this song has got a form that is a contrasting verse chorus.
We've certainly seen those before.
The first section, is very classical sounding.
And if you wonder what that low sound is,
it sounds like it could be some kind of sitar, it's a little bit buzzy.
That's, that's Bill Wyman playing stand-up bass using a bow.
Right? And so there's a,
a certainly in addition to the kind of classical structure of the chord, and
the melody, and all that kind of thing, there's also idea of the bowed bass and
Brian Jones over there on the recorder.
So the song, really is, like, almost a kind of you know?
A, a real sort of proto-psychedelic tune, in terms of the way it puts
a lot of these different kinds of sort of psychedelic stylistic traits together.
Different, you know, use of different instruments, importing classical music.
That kind of thing.
So the contrasting versus-chorus.
The form here gives us a verse, a chorus, a verse,
a chorus, a verse, a chorus, and then a repeated chorus, and then a coda.
And listen to that coda.
Boy, if there was ever a Rolling Stones with a strong classical reference it's
the way this song, Ruby Tuesday.
And so it's very very traditional in that way.
The lyrics describe a free spirited women who cannot be tied down and
is dedicated to following her dreams.
There couldn't be more contrast between the women,
the women that's being described here in Ruby Tuesday and some of the others
that we talked about in the last song close to women with regard to the, the.
Perhaps misogynistic, or
leaning toward at least very critical of women kinds of lyrics 19.
Nervous Breakdown Mother's Little Helper.
and, and those tunes.
So these ones describe a free spirited woman who cannot be tied down, and
is dedicated to following her dreams, no matter what straight culture.
No matter what the square culture believes,
she's going to go where she's going to go, she's a free spirit.
It makes me wonder if this is a song about Marianne Faithfull.
because just at about this time.
She was, well, of course, they'd known her for some years, or
some time, anyway, because she'd done As Tears Go By.
And she was also being managed by Andrew Lou Goldham, so
they were part of the same circle of, of friends and acquaintances.
But, it very much describes somebody who reminds you quite a bit of
Marianne Faithfull, and you wonder whether the classical references also
support that being that As Tears Go By was
really their first song to use those kinds of classical references.
So, I don't know if, if, if that's really the case here.
But whatever or whoever it's about or if it's about nobody in particular but
a particular personality type, it's definitely much more complimentary and
endorsing of, of, of a women or a type of women than some of the other stuff.
So it's only fair to point out both sides of this this debate about the kinds of
things that the Stones.
Are capable of in their music.
Well, we finally turn now to the song Cool, Calm, Collected.
Which I sort of push a little bit forward for everybody to consider.
Because I think it's got some, some great stuff for us to dig into here.
It was released on Between the Buttons, as we've mentioned.
Produced by Andrew Oldham and recorded at RCA and then at Olympic.
We've gone through all the recording stuff for the album Between the Buttons.
The form itself is a contrasting verse-chorus, but
here's what's interesting about the verse-chorus here.
It's a contrasting verse-chorus in after the intro, which is in a kind of,
you know, music hall kind of style, I imagine, you know,
sort of British seaside entertainment.
Right?
And the verse, each verse is in the kind of musical style with the kind of,
you know sort of loud buoyant piano in the background.
You know, honkey-tonkey kind of piano.
Bu then when they get the chorus it's like they go into an entirely different style.
The chorus is in this kind of pseudo-indian style.
They don't use the Sitar but
they play electric 12 string guitar as if it were a kind of a sitar.
And then, the melody seems to, to, to veer away from a kind of an Indian kind of
thing into something that sounds like a kind of American hoedown or something.
[LAUGH] I'm not, not really quite sure where they're going with that.
But there's such a fantastic contrast between the music hall style and
the almost Indian meditative kind of style.
And it happens when the lyrics talk about how the woman in
being described who is cool, calm and collected.
So.
Which seems like, when all this stuff is happening around her, and
we'll talk about the lyrics in just a minute.
All the kind of hustle bustle of the real world, it's this music call kind of thing.
But, then when we get to her inner space, it's this kind of meditative kind of
thing, that George Harrison would have been proud to have written.
And the song goes on like that.
Off turning, rowdy verses with these meditative choruses.
And, in fact, expanding the choruses to create some more, sort of,
instrumental kind of.
Sort of quasi virtuoso kind of sitar-ish, 12 string, electric 12 string playing.
A lot of adjectives, I know.
but, still, it's a,
it's a, it's a really interesting one for the way the contrast works.
And then, when they get to the end of the song,
the coda, which is based on the music of the verse.
Continues with the musical, the musical chorus and the verse together.
It's starts to, you get this manic increase in tempo.
And it's like, you know, if you've ever seen those kinds of dances that
the music just gets faster and faster and faster and faster.
And then, finally, it ends with this big kind of spacey ending.
So what does all that mean?
Well, the lyrics seem to deal with a wealthy American woman.
A public figure who is very skillful in public.
She knows what to say to everybody.
She's unflappable.
Nobody can ever throw her off game.
But she's a bit wilder behind the scenes.
She seems like everything right and
everything, you know, all American on the, on the surface.
But get behind the scenes and things get a little bit different.
Maybe having more to do with, Have You Seen Your Baby Standing in The Shadow?
Have you seen your mother baby standing in the shadow?
Than than, than, than the image that she puts forth.
And even, the lyrics would say, even maybe a little bit deadly.
She shows her teeth.
So this is a, very interesting kind of portrait of a,
of a, maybe a powerful and influential woman who, behind the scenes
is a very different kind of person and maybe a little bit more of a party animal.
Than her public image let's out.
And, that's what I think the strong musical contrasts are driven by.
Another when the strong musical contrasts are there to
show the strong contrast between the external persona of this person, and
the internal sort of headspace of, of what's happening with this person.
And, this idea of letting the music make these kinds of
statements about these contrasting lyrics.
I think as a pretty sophisticated way we call it text painting in classical music.
It's a very sophisticated way of sort of creating meaning in the music.
So that means that if, if I'm right about that, what does this kind of
speeding up at the end, this kind of manic acceleration of the music?
Maybe it's some kind of crazy Bacanal,
some kind of crazy orgy that happens after.
After whatever the public event is that has to happen.
Maybe that's what this is, is all about, is the, kind of, culminating point.
Who knows? But,
I would, I would ask you to listen to the, listen to the song again.
Listen to the lyric, lyrics, and
see what you think about the way in which these two sections go together.
And see what you think.
The ending then is supposed to be telling us, because there are no lyrics there, so
you've gotta guess from what the music and the lyrics have been telling you
what the ending tells you purely by musical means alone.
Again, that we can say this about rock musicians says that they're
doing something more than just put hits on AM radio.
There is a real kind of elevation of their game here.
Musical ambition.
Trying to things that are more like what classical composers and
what art music people do than like what typical building song writers would do.
So let's just review a little bit of what we've talked about this week.
1966 and early 1967 show the Stones
producing increasingly mature and ambitious music.
Dominated by Jagger and Richards originals.
Remember, the big way in this week was all of
a sudden these albums have got tons of original songs on it.
The covers are gone.
The arrangements become more experimental, and we've been talking a lot about that.
Working different kinds of instruments and
giving Brian Jones a lot of credit for being able to play all
those different instruments that make their way into these Rolling Stones tune.
And then finally, thinking about the cover versions from earlier albums and
how they might exert.
Influence on these originals that we've been talking about.
As well as some of the contemporary influences of people like Dylan and
the Beach Boys and the Beatles.
And the contemporary movement of artists away from
the craftsman model toward the artist model.
So when we blend all that together, I think we can see that 1960,
if 1965 was the year of satisfaction in terms of commercial success,
1966 becomes the first year where the Stones really established themselves
as kind of mature artists doing primarily their own music.
And I think that it's a real turning point for them.
Well, what we've got coming ahead next week, is a very,
I think a very interesting point in the group's history.
The first half of it.
The first, the rest of 1967 have them being involved in
Their Satanic Majesties Request.
An album that a lot of critics don't like at all, they think it's a real loser.
I will argue, on the other hand,
that I think it's a, in many ways a fantastic record.
But there's no doubt about it, 1967 is a pretty confusing year for the Stones as
they, as they try to struggle through the drug charges and the conviction,
the various kinds of things that go with that, and the publicity.
And then as we get into 1968.
The story is that the Stones' style changes and
turns back to something that rejects psychedelia.
But I'll argue that's not entirely true.
Anyway, I'll save those arguments for next week.
Psychedelia and beyond.
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