When the POLL Comes Down: The Stones' "Some Girls"

What other 70s (or 60s-70s) acts got a boost from punk and showed it in their 78(7?)-79 releases...

Well, Neil Young, obviously. And ZZ Top, on Deguello (listen to "Manic Mechanic," for instance.) And I think in Christgau's 1978 Pazz & Jop essay he mentioned the Who (and Warren Zevon, who was covering the Sex Pistols live apparently), though I'm not sure I've ever understood the claim in reference to Who Are You (maybe because I've never listened to it much.) (And then there's Queen, who were clearly punking out when they did "Sheer Heart Attack," in 1977.)

"shattered" is the only punk-funk classic i can think of that was in regular rock radio rotation when i was in high school

Well, I'm not sure when you were in high school, but there's also "Another One Bites The Dust," "Whip It," Flying Lizards' "Money" (assuming that got much AOR play -- definitely got some in Detroit), Herman Brood's "Saturday Night," and uh, "Emotional Rescue," for starters (though those were all a year or two later -- and since I graduated high school in 1978, all of out my own window, actually.)

I also didn't really start seriously keeping tabs on music until early 1979, so I had no preconceptions about the Stones when I first heard Some Girls. I think it's one of their best albums -- at least on a level with Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet, maybe better.

(Guess I'm also assuming all of those titles count as "punk funk," and as "classics," obviously. I suppose somebody could make the case, say, that "Another One Bites The Dust" and "Emotional Rescue" aren't punk enough, or "Saturday Night" isn't classic enough, or whatever.)

Also think you could easily make the case that punk/new wave helped revitalize Ian Hunter, on 1979's You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic, too (though Mott were kind of punk to begin with.)

What might make the Stones unique is how they were clearly revitalized by both punk and disco (and yeah, they'd shown some disco influence before, but not as blatantly as "Miss You," I don't think.)

Also, fwiw, I've always connected "Emotional Rescue" with punk/new wave in my head because, the first time I heard it on an AOR station in Detroit, the DJ actually said it sounded like the Flying Lizards to him!

And oh, there's also Peter Gabriel -- "D.I.Y." was on his second album, in 1978. (And he may have been listening to disco as well, but I'm not sure that manifested itself until later.) And Robert Wyatt from Soft Machine was on Rough Trade by 1980 (and covering Chic, duh), and then there's Hawkwind and Be Bop Deluxe guys (in Hawklords and Red Noise), but by now were talking real cult acts (at least in the States), so maybe they shouldn't count. And Ronstadt and Billy Joel were making new wave moves by '80, etc. etc. (Pretty sure we did a whole long thread on this once, but it was keyed more to a couple years later.)

I'm not sure I've ever understood the claim in reference to Who Are You (maybe because I've never listened to it much.)

Three reasons I can think of:

1) title track is apparently about Townshend's encounter with some punks in Soho;
2) The Who themselves -- esp. "My Generation" -- were obviously a key punk influence, so part of it was just good timing; virtually anything they released at that time (save an entire album filled with ballads, maybe) would've carried such an expectation;
3) further to #2... a certain amount of the "revitalized by punk" claims were, I'd argue, simply by default. Almost any of the '60s/'70s hard rock icons who appeared to have weathered the storm might've been awarded the tag (save, I suppose, Dylan who was busy being saved or something).

Actually, speaking of key punk influences, the Kinks circa Low Budget would be another old band who seem to have been inspired by both disco ("Superman") and punk ("Attitude," maybe other tracks) in 1979.

"punk"

This, Alfred, is madness! The Stones excel at ballads, in my view.

No, you're right, but something about the loping, ever so slightly lazy cadence of "Beast of Burden" lends itself to replaying (and I HATE "Angie").

can't listen to "Wild Horses" either

you better use scare quotes around " 'punk' " around here, pardner!

is "angie" the most 70s am gold the stones got? i'm always amazed that the old rock ppl who think some girls is when the stones started to suck (or really black and blue, but definitely when they 'went disco') aren't ott outraged by "angie" - it could be gilbert o'sullivan or terry jacks or harry chapin or something, makes james taylor sound like james osterberg. i love it for it's soppiness and get a bigger thrill from hearing it on oldies radio than i do from hearing "beast of burden" but thank god it's not played anywhere near as much as "wild horses".

wild horses is perhaps the most interminably excruciatingly boring song they ever did...or just overplayed?

I dunno why Bowie got flak for being an 'affected' singer when Jagger's singing on "Angie" is ludicrous. I don't mind Jagger at all on "Dead Flowers" or "Lady Jane" but the ironies are pinned down on those numbers.

i kinda like "angie" -- especially for jagger's hilarious pronunciations ... "annnnjuh!"

o it's the whispers that makes it for me

(Guess I'm also assuming all of those titles count as "punk funk," and as "classics," obviously. I suppose somebody could make the case, say, that "Another One Bites The Dust" and "Emotional Rescue" aren't punk enough, or "Saturday Night" isn't classic enough, or whatever.)

well, yeah. maybe i mean "shattered" was the most punk-funk song that was in the classic-rock canon by the mid-80s. anyway. i get matos' point, that it was left out of the revivalist reference points. maybe because it's so familiar it's easy to forget.

i <3 u guys! picked the title track cause of mine ever so fond summer of '79 then 14-year-old's memories of strolling up and down the beach and checkin' out the babes as it blasted out ye olde tape recorder (also for featuring a most BADASS harmonica performance!!!).

In response to something upthread: the established artists who were most affected by punk were, not surprisingly, the ones who felt (correctly or not) they'd had a hand in inventing some aspect of it. I posted a poll on this very thing last year. Reed, Thunders, Johansen, and Iggy were the four most obvious examples, but I think more or less the same dynamic was at work with Some Girls and the late-'70s work of Neil Young, David Bowie, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, and probably a few others. Seals & Crofts, on the other hand, seemed largely unaffected by punk.

"shattered" is awesome. "go ahead, bite the big apple, don't mind the maggots, uh huh." somehow it's more sinister to me than "sympathy"

"shattered" was the most punk-funk song that was in the classic-rock canon by the mid-80s

Not gonna argue with this (whether any of the songs I named before count as competition or not), but I will say that, in the 32 years since it came out, yesterday is the first time I ever saw somebody refer to "Shattered" as "punk-funk". I remember people noting a possible punk influence back when it was new, but they seemed to leave out the other half. (Or maybe they didn't, and I just never noticed.) (Actually, I could argue that there were classic-rock-canon songs that sounded more punk and funk but that preceded punk -- by, say, Hendrix, Aerosmith, Zep, whoever -- but I assume those don't count.)

And yeah, Bowie was obviously another '70s guy who was seemingly taking lessons from both punk and disco by decade's end, duh - arguably even more than the Stones, come to think of it. And Johansen had a disco track or two on '79's In Style. And Queen swung both ways by The Game in '80. So the Stones weren't unique after all. (Also don't get at all why somebody would put punk in quote marks in these cases. Just because all these bands were trying to do what they thought punk had done doesn't mean they wound up sounding like the Sex Pistols. Being inspired by something isn't the same as being something.)

"punk" cuz this whole narrative is boring and done and it's sad that like half a century after the fact rock critics still can't talk about rock without sticking closely to the script. laziness + wasted opportunities = one hack profession no one can be too sad to see die.

As somebody who has spent a good quarter century "sticking closely to the script," I, for one, appreciate your incisive comments, "balls". (Fwiw, I haven't much thought in terms of "punk" for forever. But that doesn't mean I'll pretend it never happened, if somebody brings it up.)

someone bringing up corny rock crits lazily parading out the same old boring lines isn't actually a cue for some corny rock crit to lazily parade out the same old boring line.

unless you're lenny and squiggy (or maybe you're chiming in about lenny and the squigtones punk move).

Gotcha -- Unlike people whining about rock critics, which isn't corny or lazy at all. (In fact, it's never been done before, iirc.)

you've been doing that for a living for 25 years also right?

Nope, I just stick to the script.

ppl gotta eat

butthurt is so embarrassing

ppl gotta eat

― balls, Sunday, June 27, 2010

so chew on a dick.

people, people! brothers and sisters! everybody be cool! who's fighting and what for? (Mick Jagger, Altamont)

Queen? Hmmm...not so sure about that one. I don't know their music beyond the radio hits I flee from--I owned Night at the Opera in high school; "You're My Best Friend" still sounds good--so while there may indeed be a song or two on The Game that sounds vaguely punk, I'd be surprised if Freddie Mercury ever saw himself as a punk antecedent (which, for me, would have to be true to throw him in with Iggy and the rest--not even necessarily that he was a punk antecedent, just that he viewed himself that way). I can definitely see where Queen would belong to the whole old-folks-doing-new-wave moment that came along in '80 (Glass Houses, Mad Love), which I see as a connected but separate thing. (Should I be using quotation marks to keep Mr. Balls happy?)

i don't think anyone's arguing that queen were punk antecedents?

i mean there was mention of sheer heart attack in 77 but that was clearly on the bandwagon stuff

I'd be surprised if Freddie Mercury ever saw himself as a punk antecedent

well, does it matter? What matters is if we do.

But it does matter. Lou Reed, Johnny Thunders, the Rolling Stones, etc. all clearly believed they'd been doing punk long before the fact (and for someone like Ray Davies, I think he would have believed he helped shape the sound of punk). So they made music that was a response to their probably conflicted feelings over the Sex Pistols and the rest. If it's someone who doesn't have those conflicted feelings--someone like Freddie Mercury--then you're ascribing a response to him that doesn't exist. (I say this as someone who almost always argues on the side of it's not what the artist intended that matters, it's what I hear. But in this specific case, I think intent matters.)

Totally don't get Clemenza's logic here. The idea that performers who most considered themselves punk antecedents were most likely to be inspired by punk is his theory, not anybody else's here. And why you'd have to consider yourself a punk antecedent to have conflicted feelings about punk in the late '70s is beyond me; maybe you just thought "hey, this is a pretty good idea, to sound like that." (I'm also not sure how, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'd know who considered themselves punk antecedents, but I doubt that's even relevant here.) In the case of Queen, it's hard for me to listen to "Sheer Heart Attack" (from '77) and think they weren't being inspired by punk somehow -- maybe they just thought "we can do that crap better than those idiots." Which, again, would not require them to think that they, in turn, had inspired said idiots (or non-idiots, whatever) to begin with.

I was specifically referring to your contention that The Game took lessons from punk; you've rather deftly switched over to "Sheer Heart Attack." If you want to connect that to punk, well, sure--I probably wouldn't, but go ahead. But, to reiterate, Street Hassle, So Alone, The Idiot, and David Johansen were all very specific reactions to punk by four people who I'm quite confident believed they invented punk; Some Girls and "Who Are You" were more oblique, but I'm equally confident that their creators felt both liberated and threatened by punk in roughly equal measure, and that punk was very much on their minds when those records were made. Neil Young's always off on his own plane a little bit, but Rust Never Sleeps very much fits in too, and (your idea initially, I believe) I can even see a case for Ray Davies. Do you really want to add Queen's The Game to that list? Freddy Mercury was show business and glamour and Cabaret, and I think your formulation above, that he probably had a kind of contempt for punk--which, whether you love it or hate it, was most definitely not those things--is quite likely the case. Which is fine, but is qualitatively different than what I hear in all those other records.

I hope I'm not being reductive in arguing for the results. If Some Girls, Squeezing Out Sparks, Who Are You, The Game sound punk or are punk-influenced, that's enough. I don't ever trust an artist's intentions.

A long back-and-forth is no way to spend a Sunday evening, so let me put it another way before I go back to my movie. Lou Reed sees the Sex Pistols, is very affected by what he sees (more than he might even be willing to concede), and goes off and writes Street Hassle. That makes sense to me. Freddie Mercury sees the Sex Pistols, is very affected by what he sees, and, after a couple of years of mulling things over, he goes off and writes..."Crazy Little Thing Called Love"? If you two guys sincerely believe that, then, well, we just disagree.

But would you say, "Paul McCartney sees the Sex Pistols, is very affected by what he sees (more than he might even be willing to concede), and goes off and writes `Getting Closer.' That makes sense to me"?

I'm not being glib. "Getting Closer" to my ears is as hard as "Junior's Farm" or "Girls Schoo" -- which is to say, not particularly punk or punk-influenced, but part of Wings' tuffer catalogue.

It's up to the critic to make the case. Rod Stewart's "Young Turks" totally sounds like he's attempting New Wave, but I'm willing to read someone else cite, I dunno, "Ain't Love a Bitch" or "Passion."

I don't think I know that song...so I'm not even sure what you mean! Generally speaking, I think the ex-Beatles were unusually immune to most everything that happened after their break-up, sometimes to their credit, sometimes to their detriment. (And not always--I can hear glam in some of their '72-'74 stuff.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G59EpuqmHs

Thanks. Pretty good song, though I much prefer "Junior's Farm," probably my favourite Wings single. Do I think "Getting Closer" has anything to do with punk? No--it's just Paul being Paul! Which is kind of my argument; if someone tried to sell me on the idea of "Getting Closer" as a response to punk, that just wouldn't make sense to me.

And let me add (every time I want out, they pull me back in) I totally agree that it's up to the critic to make the case. But making the case is more than just asserting something to be true. If you or Chuck can make a convincing case that The Game is a response to punk, I'm willing to listen. It'll have to be a very good case. So far I haven't heard it.

Only Geir Hongro can resolve this very complicated issue.

Thanks. Pretty good song, though I much prefer "Junior's Farm," probably my favourite Wings single. Do I think "Getting Closer" has anything to do with punk? No--it's just Paul being Paul!

oh yeah I totally agree. But watching that video (skinny ties! shorter hair!) and listening to the song (clipped rhythms!) you would be forgiven for thinking, "Hey, it's 1979, and Paul is obviously influenced by punk." Like I said above, it doesn't sound much different from what he'd tried for years (and he was always a super-sponge: do you think "Goodnight Tonight" sounds like any disco you and I know?).