When Mick Jagger, Bono and Pete Townshend collaborated
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Credit: Bert Voerhoff
The Rolling Stones song inspired by the bleakness of New York City
The Rolling Stones’ relationship with New York City has always been love/hate. Mick Jagger’s decision to relocate to ‘The City That Never Sleeps’ influenced his artistry as he got to grips with the whole spectre of NYC and refuted its glitzy image to see it in a darker light.
Before the recording of Some Girls, Jagger made the move out to the East Coast. Although it was already a place he was well acquainted with before making his stay out there permanent, the Stones frontman didn’t know the real New York until he lived out there. On the album track, ‘Shattered’, Jagger explored the bleakness of the ‘Big Apple’, which looks more glamourous in film or television than in reality.
Speaking about the record, Jagger explained: “I’d moved to New York at that point. The inspiration for the Some Girls album was really based in New York and the ways of the town. I think that gave it an extra spur and hardness. And then, of course, there was the punk thing that had started in 1976.”
Musically, the album was influenced by the burgeoning scenes that New York had to offer, like disco and punk, with the city acting as the LP’s overarching loose theme. Jagger continued, “I seem to like records that have one overriding mood with lots of little offshoots. Even though there’s a lot of bases covered, there’s lots of straight-ahead rock and roll. It’s very brass-edged. It’s very Rolling Stones, not a lot of frills. Respectable is the kind of edgy punk ethos.”
‘Shattered’ was the closing track for the album, and if Jagger wanted the album to feel like New York, then it was befitting to elect the song as the one to bring the sonic journey to an end. The origin of the Some Girls finale came from a yellow cab ride he took across the city, and the lyrics instantly flowed out of him.
On the track, Jagger talks about growing tired of the constant hedonism on offer in NYC and sings, “Laughter, joy, and loneliness and sex and sex and sex and sex, Look at me, I’m in tatters, I’m a shattered, Shattered.” Jagger also ridicules the preposterous fashion trends of residents, “People dressed in plastic bags, Directing traffic,” he delivers in sprechgesang.
New York was the place that gave him everything he wanted on-tap, 24-7, but after drinking the city dry, Jagger soon realised that the grass wasn’t always greener on the other side, and on ‘Shattered’, he was yearning for a quieter life after exhausting his time at the funfair.
