![]() On “Luxury” he plays the part of a Jamaican factory worker with two monkeys on his back: “I’m working so hard, I’m working for the company/I’m working so hard to keep you in the luxury.” Jagger’s tendency to see women and work as extensions of the same burden shows up in the weirdest places and in the funniest ways. suicide right on the stage.” But it’s also there in an incidental line (“Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman’s face”) or an entire song (“Short and Curlies”). Their antipathy to women comes across most bluntly in their blast at the woman waiting for Jagger to “. On the basis of this album, they are plainly misogynists. On the basis of “Stupid Girl,” the Rolling Stones have been called sexists. The main focus of their aggressive instincts are, as has most often been the case, women. ![]() They’ve returned with a vengeance to the wildness of their early records and the fact that they are more self-conscious than ever about it doesn’t detract from the album’s impact. Instead of coming off like cynics they sound like they’re still vulnerable, afraid, capable of being hurt and able to respond with aggressive energy. On the album’s first three songs the band renews its claim to greatness. Jagger sounds like he hates, but he also sounds convincing, not ironic, when he belts out, “I know it’s only rock ‘n roll but I like it.” How can he? Because, in addition to desperation, the song reflects both the strength and vulnerability of someone who has earned the right to ask Bob Dylan’s question, “What else can you show me?” “If I could stick a pen in my heart/I’d spill it all over the stage …” It’s only when they get to the bridge that their real target comes into focus: “Do you think that you’re the only girl around/I’ll bet you think that you’re the only woman in town.” They’ve fused their many resentments into a single vitriolic statement.īut the song is more than an attack. The verses to “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” sound like an assault on the audience. That confusion is enhanced by the tightness with which the album’s producers, the Glimmer Twins, have welded it to the title track. By now, you can’t tell whether the Stones are singing about people who watch them or people they live with. Their “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” is still a lover’s plea but there’s an undercurrent of resentment directed at the listener. But it starts with, “The band’s onstage and it’s one of those nights.” Only the chorus turns it back into the anticipated and angry fuck song. “If You Can’t Rock Me” sounds like it ought to be about sex. The first cut sets the tone of the album by reminding us of pop’s ancient double-entendre: that the word rock refers both to music and to sex. At still another, in the best tradition of rock ‘n’ roll, it convincingly flaunts its own raunchiness. It’s a desperate album that warns at the end of one side that “… dreams of the nighttime will vanish by dawn,” and on the other that a Kafkaesque “someone is listening, good night, sleep tight.” It’s a rock ‘n’ roll album because it’s so goddamn violent.Īt its simplest level the album deals with the psychosis of being in a rock ‘n’ roll band and having made it as a star - and it does that better than the Who’s opus devoted exclusively to that subject, Quadrophenia. At another level it uses the relationship between a band and its audience as a metaphor for the parasitic relations between a man and a woman. It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll is a decadent album because it invites us to dance in the face of its own despair. The Rolling Stones It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (1974)įrom By Jon Landau October 16, 1974
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