The Rolling Stones song Mick Jagger loved writing: “One of the wordy ones”
Post-Tattoo You, the 1981 LP that largely featured completed sketches and studio outtakes, which explains its high standard, The Rolling Stones‘ following output has always nagged with a feeling of perfunctory obligation, a means to flog their monster Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle or A Bigger Bang Tour.
There are certainly gems, though. Undercover‘s ‘Too Much Blood’ is a criminally overlooked cut from one of their most sonically unique records, and ’13 single ‘Doom and Gloom’, promoting their GRRR! best-of compilation was a surprising banger that genuinely sat nicely along the rest of their 50th-anniversary tour setlist.
1994’s Voodoo Lounge, the first album after longtime bassist and founding member Bill Wyman’s departure, offered more of the same. The creative tussle between Mick Jagger’s eye for developing contemporary trends and Keith Richards’ dogmatic commitment to artistic purity still bristle as it had done throughout the ’80s, and while it’s miles better than their Dirty Work nadir (‘One Hit (To the Body)’ is a guilty pleasure, to be honest), Voodoo Lounge was ultimately ‘just another post-Tattoo You‘ album.
It seemed that the band had more fun producing it than fans did listening. Singer and frontman Mick Jagger expressed a particular fondness for the album’s final single, ‘I Go Wild’, a song that reportedly came together swiftly after Jagger was jamming with drummer Charlie Watts. The use of a red Kramer guitar informed the track’s raunchy strut and “nasty vibes” in its lyrical approach.
Jagger elaborated in ’94 when he said: “‘Waitresses with broken noses’ – that’s Ronnie Wood’s specialty. He knew every waitress in Dublin, and so I thought I’d put that line in for him. I like that song. I really got into the lyrics on that one. One of the wordy ones.” And “get into it” he did. A textbook Jagger-Richards stomper replete with treacherous femme fatales and beckoning wenches, tasty lines like “politicians’ garish wives with alcoholic cunts like knives” are sung with relish on Jagger’s part, flirting with misogyny that’s dogged the Stones since ‘Little T&A’ or ‘Brown Sugar’, landing them in hot water of late.
Recorded between Ireland’s Sandymount Studios and A&M in Los Angeles, ‘I Go Wild’ was curiously the only track not produced by Don Was, Bob Clearmountain stepping behind the desk for recording duties, and the Allman Brothers’ Chuck Leavell is on the organ. Despite the team behind ‘I Go Wild’ and Jagger’s open affection for the song, it’s still merely a plug for the lucrative Voodoo Lounge tour that’s only of interest to the most committed Stones head, despite its respectable 29 in the UK singles chart.
The genesis of the album’s title was the only headache for the band. Richards’ recalled: “The record company’s screaming at us, “We need a title, an angle, artwork.” Then, suddenly, Mick turns around and says, “Your sign”.
He added: “I’m the doc. It’s like a ritual, a fetish… We agonized over (the title). And it was staring us in the face. Finally, it was Mick who said, ‘What about Voodoo Lounge?’ Why not? Kind of like Beggars Banquet. Right number of syllables. I was really pissed with myself, though, after painting the sign and all. I’m usually the one with the cheap ideas, not Mick. His are usually real expensive.”
