The 1972 Rolling Stones album Mick Jagger thought missed a trick: “No pretty tunes”
For Mick Jagger, rock and roll was only one facet of what The Rolling Stones were capable of.
They were going to be the face of the genre for the rest of their days, but they could at least make the kind of music that they wanted to without having to go back to the blues drawing board every single time they played. There were far greater avenues for them to explore, and for Jagger, the idea of being a pop band was never a bad word as long as they went about it in the right way.
Granted, it’s not like Jagger’s vision was always going to work, either. Dirty Work is still one of the more regrettable albums in their catalogue, and while ‘Miss You’ has endured as a staple of their discography for bringing in the sounds of disco, it’s not like every one of their tunes from around that time showed them to be the best Studio 54 band. They were a lot more grizzled, and that didn’t lend itself all that well to making records that were meant to be loved by the masses.
If anything, their time trying to chase after what The Beatles did was almost uncomfortable to listen to knowing what else was going on. The band were clearly their own entity, but after they put out a record like Their Satanic Majesties Request directly after Sgt Peppers, it’s no wonder that they finally came back to the blues after years of straightahead rock and roll. They needed something a bit more rootsy, and Exile on Main St is everything great about them on parade.
No one would have imagined that the band would be able to make so many great songs at once, but it’s not like they were working too far outside their wheelhouse or anything. Over half of the record is relying on the traditional bluesy vamps that they were used to, and when they weren’t going down the same avenues that they used to, getting the odd country tune like ‘Sweet Virginia’ was a decent way of breaking things up whenever they toned their sound down a notch.
But while Jagger has always had a standoffish relationship with the record, he felt the one thing holding it back was the fact that it didn’t have any traditional pop songs, saying, “It’s a very mixed bag of musical styles; it doesn’t include any pop music – there’s almost no pop in it. There are no pretty tunes as such. There’s no great ballad on it – in fact, there are almost no ballads. There’s ‘Shine A Light’, but that’s a gospel song really. But there’s everything else: there’s a bit of country, there’s a bit of blues, straight covers, kind of hard rock.”
And to that I say: ‘Yes; that’s why it’s good.’ No standard album is supposed to have the same tone throughout its entire runtime, and the reason why their double record works so well is because it refuses to settle into a groove. All the songs belong in their own unique world, and even if the tunes don’t exactly have the same kind of dramatic flair of ‘Wild Horses’, that doesn’t mean they’re substandard.
If anything, there are moments on the record that were a bit ahead of the curve as well. Keith Richards already saw it as the progenitor to what grunge was going to sound like, and since it flipflopped between genres, there’s a reason why Jagger ended up making a mixed bag when working on albums like Some Girls a little later down the line.
Pop may have been where the money was half the time, but even the best later Stones records like Voodoo Lounge weren’t concerned with getting on the charts. The biggest stars can have a bit more depth to them if they’re willing to take a chance, but even if there are some insightful artists on the hit parade, The Stones didn’t need that to define them as a rock and roll juggernaut.
