My Life In the Cutout Bins: The Rolling Stones/Emotional Rescue

The Rolling Stones escaped almost certain doom in 1977, with Keith Richards’ future hanging on the horns of justice for a serious Canadian drug charge and a string of ramshackle, unfocused records in the rear view mirror, only to see Richards receive a suspended sentence and turn in an amazing comeback record, Some Girls, well, you had to believe that there was a deal with Lucifer somewhere in there.  But the Stones had been here before--with the controversy of Altamont tarnishing the memory of their 1969 concert tour they turned in a couple of their most iconic records in quick succession.

Some Girls represented a return of Keith Richards in a full time capacity, no longer distracted (as much) by drugs and alcohol and legal problems. And it was a fine collection of songs, from the late night street disco of "Miss You" to the punkish rock of "Respectable" and "Shattered" to the soul strut of "Beast of Burden." Not everything was a huge success--"Far Away Eyes" could be stricken from the record IMHO, but to each their own. The zeitgeist was that The Stones had made a comeback with Some Girls and so their next record would carry certain expectations.

Let's look at the 1970s scorecard for our lads. They entered the decade with Sticky Fingers, a bona fide masterpiece that introduced a new Stones sound, hazy and bluesy, riffy and filled with the promise of decadence and decay. Next up was Exile on Main Street, another fantastic record that spread the banquet of Sticky Fingers over a full four sides of music with almost no filler. In 1973 they made a lateral move with Goat's Head Soup, but there was a big development that was easy to miss--the band slipped into a dope sick dream filled with Hollywood stars, far from the American blues and roots music that fueled Exile, or even the funk and soul that helped inspire Sticky Fingers. Regardless of where they were from or where they chose to live, The Rolling Stones had become an American band. The star tracks here are "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" with its Billy Preston clavinet and horn section left over from Exile, and the closer "Star Star," otherwise known as "Starfucker."

This is where the Stones make debauchery seem like something of a chore. Like the choreography of elaborate sexual rituals enacted by rich libertines to alleviate boredom in the works of Marquis de Sade or Passolini's de Sade adaptation Salo, there is little pleasure to be found in the random days and nights of the world's greatest rock and roll band. Robert Frank's documentary of the Stones' 1972 Exile on Main Street tour, Cocksucker Blues, documents "the dull excess and suffocating ennui that sucked up the 22 hours of each day between Stones shows" according to David Fricke's Rolling Stone piece on the film.

It's Only Rock & Roll came out in 1974, and it's professional but ultimately uninspired. It was also Mick Taylor's last record with the group. In the short period between Sticky Fingers and It's Only Rock & Roll Mick Taylor had calculated that in order to survive—physically, mentally, and professionally—he needed to leave the band. Mid-decade saw the release of Black & Blue, a much-maligned album that has come to be seen as more of a transitional record that has significant highlights. Prior to this they released Made In the Shade, a collection of their seventies U.S. hits from Exile on, and which included "Bitch," a hard rocking track from Sticky Fingers released as the B-side to "Brown Sugar" that gained traction on AM radio.

On Black and Blue The Rolling Stones give us a look at the band as a jamming funk group a la The Neville Brothers. Because this is 1975, this is generally seen as a capitulation to the popularity of disco music, but I think that it's fairer to say that this was the time when the kind of dance music that was generally heard at black clubs or gay clubs broke through into mainstream culture and The Stones were both aware of it and participating in it. They included a funk/dance number on every album from "Fingerprint File," the sign off track from It's Only Rock & Roll to Emotional Rescue's opening track, "Dance (pt. 1)".

That track was also included on the 1981 compilation Sucking In the Seventies (the oral fixation again, together with a wry commentary on critics' remarks), as "If I Was a Dancer (Dance Pt.2)”. The song is clearly a different mix, though Ron Wood said "We did have various alternative mixes going at the time, but I can't really tell the difference between Part I or Part II or Part III. It was just a novelty, the Pt. 1 bit." A nod to all those two part James Brown singles like "Get On the Good Foot" and "Sex Machine" as well.

The Sucking In the Seventies mix includes more of Jagger's lyrics, really the crux of this version:

Everybody wants somebody's fantasy

Everybody wants somebody's crazy dreams

But “Dance Pt. 1” is all about that bass and drum groove, the locked down guitar riff and punctuating horn line. This is a groove record, a dance record straight and simple, and poo poo to those who would disown this part of the Stones' heritage.

Emotional Rescue ended up in the cutout bins because of the perception that it had a bit too much of the funk, dance jam, and disco. But "Summer Romance" and "Where the Boys Go" have all the sharpness of a track recorded for Some Girls, while "Let Me Go" and "She's So Cold" are less than, but still strong tracks.

In between these points Mick and company provide the usual grab bag of styles that's been the norm since Goat's Head Soup--there's the reggae number, the uncomfortable ballad, a blues, a song by Keith, and, let's not forget THE ALBUM'S TITLE TRACK.

The ballad, "Indian Girl" would have been much better left on the cutting room floor. Its lyrics would have seemed questionable in the sixties, much less the dawn of the eighties. Musically it's a mess, with the background shifting from a Caribbean sound to country and western to mariachi. None of which makes sense. "Down In the Hole" is there to prove that yes, The Rolling Stones are still a blues band that can whip up a frenzy with blues guitar and harmonica.

The Keith song, "All About You", reportedly about ex Anita Pallenberg, is an old school ballad that shifts into a curiously downward mood considering it's the closing track.

The reggae number, "Send It To Me" is a questionable premise that creates its own energy to the extent that it's impossible not to get caught up in its ebullient spirit even if it seems somehow wrong. Mick is a bored first world-er who contemplates the sexual (I mean, let's just face it) menu available via international trade. "She might work in the factory/right next door to me/and be my fantasy/send her to me" he sings before launching into a list of things she doesn't have to have--she needn't be rich, she doesn't have to be five foot ten or have a specific hair color or be a hostess. Then there is a list of nationalities that would suffice, and rest assured, these are merely examples. Mr. Jagger is no doubt prepared to go to the ends of the earth to obtain a mate at this point.

The record slides along until the eighth track, "Emotional Rescue," a song that was a bridge too far for listeners who had already accepted "Miss You" and all of the other funk jam-based material discussed in this article, which has to be because of the year, and that all dance music would be punished for the sin of disco piercing the straight white world of rock and pop music.

Emotional Rescue is the perfect summer album, a hot pavement humid night siren and gunshot kind of record that creates its own heat, or adds to what's already on the street. It has the same devil may care insouciance as Some Girls, but it's less forced, more off the cuff, which some regard as a sign of hastily written and recorded tracks.

Some Girls was a summer album for me also, but it was a very different summer. The year it came out I was at a jazz camp at University of Wisconsin Madison. It was an amazing however many weeks of  being exposed to incredible music--I played in a jazz ensemble led by the incredible jazz bassist Richard Davis, who played on Astral Weeks as well as scores of jazz and pop albums and was in a woodwind class where the teacher talked about Julius Hemphill's Dogon A.D., which was completely new at the time. I also lived in a dorm room with a poster of Cheryl Ladd, saw Dylan's Renaldo & Clara in a movie theater, and contemplated for the first time with any real degree of seriousness, that everyone was going to die someday.

Emotional Rescue came out as I graduated from high school, headed to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston in the fall, so it was the last fling summer record, the one where all the kids in the group know that they will be spun off in different directions in life and that this is the last time they'll all be together with so little, seemingly, to worry about. I spent the summer working in an aluminum siding factory, observing daily the small but powerful dramas that played out around race and status in the work environment. At night my friends and I got high and drove around the darkened streets listening to mix tapes and entertaining one another with wacky ideas, skits, pronouncements—kind of like social media, but in person. We tried to appear self assured in the face of a future that we could only murkily begin to feel out, like every generation.

The eighties would be very different from the world in which we had grown up in a lot of ways. Musically things would change a lot, but  the changes brought fresh sounds that bolstered our shaky moves into adulthood.

Emotional Rescue widened a developing rift between Jagger and Richards both during the sessions and afterward, when Jagger declined to tour behind the record even though Richards was strongly in favor of touring. For Richards, who was attempting to come clean, touring imposed a supportive, familiar routine. For Jagger it was work, and it got in the way of his jet setting, partying lifestyle.

The Stones released Tattoo You in 1981, and it was hailed as a real return to form even though it was made up of songs that were outtakes from the Some Girls and Emotional Rescue sessions and even old songs that never made it past the demo stage. One thing that it doesn't have: any dance music or extended groove songs. As disco faded and the true sources of dance music--the Black, Latin and Gay clubs, DJs and performers-- began to influence pop music, especially the high riding new wave genre, The Rolling Stones returned to their rock, blues, and R&B bread and butter sound, to the satisfaction of their legions of fans the world over.

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