News October 27, 2015

The Rolling Stones Australia 2014: six under-rated Stones classics

So, the Stones are coming to Australia next year, it would seem.

Instead of pulling out your old 45 of My Satisfaction in celebration, hooking up the record player, remembering the left speaker doesn’t work, then also remembering it’s one of their worst singles, why not give this a go? Michael Hartt digs through the back catalogue and pulls out six amazing Stones songs you may not be aware of.

In Another Land – 1967
The first single to be released from the band’s underrated Sgt Pepper homage, Their Satanic Majesties Request, is the only Stones track to ever feature a lead vocal by bassist Bill Wyman. In fact, it’s only one of three Wyman-penned tracks the band ever recorded. In keeping with the time it’s a pretty echo-heavy, harmony-heavy affair that owes a lot to the various layers of keys played by famed session man Nicky Hopkins. The chorus includes the unmistakable super lungs of Steve Marriott of the Small Faces. Jagger and Richards’ major contribution to it was the recording of Wyman snoring that ends the song.

Play With Fire – 1965
One of a number of tracks the Stones wrote in the mid-’60s that deal disparagingly with the upper echelon of British society, Play With Firewas put down by Jagger and Richards (with backing from Phil Spector and jack Nitzsche) the day before they headed to Australia for their first tour. The atmosphere of the recording is unlike much else in the band’s catalogue. Jagger’s cool delivery and clear annunciation makes it clear that the central character means what he says, in the most polite way but behind it all, there is menace. The song was used to great effect in Wes Anderson’s The Dajeeling Limited.

She’s So Cold – 1980
A fun little rocker from 1980s Emotional Rescue. It will forever live in the minds of many as the tune Homer Simpson learnt the Cocksure Strut to in the episode How I Spent My Strummer Vacation, in which Jagger and Richards guest starred.

Monkey Man – 1969

The penultimate song on Let It Bleed has one of the best grooves the Stones produced in this era; an era in which they produced a lot of fantastic grooves (Sympathy For The Devil, Jig-Saw Puzzle, Gimme Shelter). Jagger delivers an impressive array of metaphors with particular venom. As well as being a song you can dance to, it has a pervasive undercurrent of paranoia and violence; it reflects the time from which it comes, a time of radical social and political turbulence.

Complicated – 1967
Recorded in 1966 and released on 1967’s Between The Buttons, this track is from the Stones’ mid ’60s Swinging London period. Notable during this period is Brian Jones’ aversion to playing much guitar on record and instead trying his hand at sitar, organ, vibraphone, kazoo, saxophone, electric dulcimer, accordion, marimba and a host of other instruments then not common in rock n roll.

I Wanna Be Your Man – 1963
A chance meeting between Stones svengali Andrew Loog Oldham and Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the street lead to this song being the second Rolling Stones single. The two fabs finished writing the song in a corner while the Stones waited. Not one of the Stones’ best works, it did help maintain the group in the consciousness of the record-buying public while they found their sound. Their next single was their first top three in the UK, Not Fade Away. The Beatles later recorded a version with Ringo singing.