Keith Richards – 50th Music Anniversaries and Other Musings

I’m participating in an album draft with nine other bloggers, organized by Hanspostcard. There will be ten rounds, with draft order determined randomly by round. My fifth round selection is the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers.

It’s just that demon life has got me in its sway…

When it comes to filthy, gritty, living in the moment, above the law, unforgiving, unapologetic rock bands, the Rolling Stones are the original standard bearers. Within their unlikely and absurdly long life as a group – fast approaching 60 years – the stretch of albums loosely termed by many fans as the “Mick Taylor years” stand out for their return to basics, while at the same time cranking it up about 100 notches (I also include the pre-Taylor Beggars Banquet with these releases). For me, at the top of the heap, even if only by a few degrees, is Sticky Fingers. This is the one. This album represents everything I love about the Stones, Brian Jones’s unique contributions notwithstanding.

There were a couple of periods of recording beginning in early 1969, with the bulk of studio work taking place the following year, concluding in December 1970. It was released on April 23, 1971. The album, with its distinctive Andy Warhol Factory designed cover which included, on initial pressings, an actual functioning zipper, topped the charts worldwide soon after. Sticky Fingers was the band’s first album of the 1970’s, and the first on their Rolling Stones label featuring the iconic tongue and lips logo. But, as always, it’s about the MUSIC, maaaan.

And the vibe. To my ears, the vibe or tone of the album is actually set with the count in to the second track, Sway, and it never lets up. Chances are you know this album well, or are at least familiar with it, and you know what I mean. And let’s give major credit where it’s due right now: The session players on Sticky Fingers were an all-star band in themselves, and are just as important to this record as the principals. Bobby Keys and Jim Price brought crucial sax and trumpet contributions. They rocked on tracks like Bitch, and displayed soul on the Stax ballad inspired I Got the Blues along with Billy Preston on the organ. Price also added the beautiful piano part to Moonlight Mile, with only he and the two Micks on the main track.

Other major contributions include Ry Cooder’s slide guitar and Jack Nitzsche’s piano on Sister Morphine (co-credited to Marianne Faithfull), and Paul Buckmaster’s string arrangements on Sway and Moonlight Mile. Other session players included stalwarts Nicky Hopkins, Rocky Dijon, Jim Dickinson, and Ian Stewart, and though he didn’t play on the album, Sticky Fingers wouldn’t have been what it is without the influence of Gram Parsons. The evidence is on Wild Horses and Dead Flowers. If we’re to include alternate versions, Eric Clapton and Al Kooper can be heard on the looser 2015 bonus disc cut of Brown Sugar. But the core, as always, was Mick and Keith and the boys, now including Mick Taylor, and it’s Taylor’s lead guitar interacting with Richards’s and Jagger’s rhythm playing that took the band’s sound to a place it hadn’t been before his arrival and hasn’t returned to in the 46 years since his departure, with all due respect to Brian Jones and Ronnie Wood.

I don’t know why, but I’m fascinated by bands from that era that stretched and often broke the rules and not only kept it together but seemed to thrive on the chaos. Perhaps guys like Elvis, Hank, and others raised eyebrows earlier, but the Stones flaunted damn near every taboo in society’s face in these songs and said what of it, mate? These years found them defying not only the law, but the Grim Reaper as well, bless Keith’s heart (and veins), and they survived. Sticky Fingers is truly a fly on the wall album for anyone who wants to know what they were about without the visual horrors of watching the cinéma vérité documentary of their 1972 U.S. tour, Cocksucker Blues, that make one want to take a shower after viewing (just remember, I didn’t tell you to watch it). It’s not the first “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” album, but along with Let it Bleed, Exile on Main St. and the others, it’s about as extreme as it gets, especially considering when it came out. It’s an album that makes Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, and certainly latter day examples like the Gallagher and Robinson brothers of Oasis and the Black Crows, respectively – great rock artists that they all are – look like silly wannabes (and I like all of those bands, too). It’s a perfect rock album, and it’s on my island if you want to kayak over and listen some time.

Tracklist

Side One:

Brown Sugar
Sway
Wild Horses
Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
You Gotta Move

Side Two:

Bitch
I Got the Blues
Sister Morphine
Dead Flowers
Moonlight Mile

-Stephen

WARNING: Reading about or listening to the New Barbarians may cause a context buzz.

Rock and pop music collaborations come and go. Some of them have had lasting impacts, and we might refer to them as supergroups. Cream and the Traveling Wilburys are a couple of obvious examples. Many of the ones we think of were singles releases as opposed to full albums. Queen/Bowie, Elton/Lennon, and McCartney/Jackson come to mind, among many others. There are also less heralded musical associations which are nonetheless interesting, such as Ginger Baker’s Air Force. Then we have the somewhat curious case of the blur known as the New Barbarians; curious because they never recorded a studio album yet they carried out a significant North American tour, and a blur because the group consisted of members of two of the hardest living rock bands on the planet: Faces and the Rolling Stones.

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The seed of the New Barbarians was planted in 1974 after the release of Ronnie Wood’s solo album I’ve Got My Own Album to Do. In an effort to promote the album, Wood enlisted the help of Keith Richards, his Faces band mates Ian McLagan and Rod Stewart, plus bassist Willie Weeks and drummer Andy Newmark, for a gig at the Gaumont State Theatre, Kilburn, in northwest London. The following year, Wood joined the Stones for a stint of 43 years and counting.

Ronnie, Rod, and Keith, later known as First Barbarians, at Kilburn, 1974.

hqdefault — Ronnie in his rare role as front man.

Five years later Ronnie needed a vehicle to promote his third LP, Gimme Some Neck, so he revisited the idea of putting together a group of buddies and heading out on the road. The Rolling Stones were on hiatus, so Keith got on board. They were joined once again by McLagan, as well as Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys, fusion bassist Stanley Clarke, and drummer Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste of New Orleans group the Meters, who, as pointed out by author Rob Chapman, was not exactly a rock drummer but who joined at the recommendation of Charlie Watts (who apparently wanted nothing to do with what was sure to be another debauched musical excursion).

The New Barbarians, 1979 (L-R): Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste, Bobby Keys, Stanley Clarke, Ian McLagan, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood.

Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were also considered, but their management made arrangements too much of a challenge for Wood. Neil Young attended a couple of their rehearsals in L.A. and almost joined the group, but had other responsibilities at the time including the birth of his son and the editing of his concert documentary Rust Never Sleeps. Neil did give the band its moniker as a parting gift though, by referring to them as a bunch of barbarians. They added “New” to the name after learning of another band with the same name; thus was born the first “pub rock super group” as writer Jeff Giles called them. Only they played basketball arenas and not Buddy’s Saloon on the outskirts of town.

The would-be Barbarians – Beck, Page, and Young in 1979 (I know which one I would’ve predicted wouldn’t have survived a tour with Keith…):

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The shows would also serve a second purpose, at least initially. As part of his sentence for his 1977 heroin bust in Toronto (on my sixth birthday), Richards was ordered to perform a couple of charity shows benefiting the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. So, the first two New Barbarians shows took place in Oshawa near Toronto in April 1979 – as the support act for the Rolling Stones. From there they dropped down to the lower 48 for 18 US dates lasting into May. In order to mitigate any trouble Keith might run into in Canada, tour management booked the group into the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They would headquarter there for the Toronto and Midwestern US dates, flying in and out for each gig. (Wha-I-um-how-oh, nevermind. On with the story…)

Keith and common-law wife Anita Pallenberg heading to court in ’77.

Their sets combined rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, blues, and country, including a few Stones songs. Wood sang lead on most songs (the tour was to promote his album, after all), with Keith providing lead vocals on a few numbers. The shows have been described as “ragged,” “addled,” “sloppy,” “wired,” “half party, half rock show,” and as possessing a unique blend of “deceptively ramshackle grace” – kind of like Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame jam sessions, but much more soulful, raunchier, and with very naughty behavior taking place just off stage. Rob Chapman, in his book New Barbarians: Outlaws, Gunslingers, and Guitars, shares a funny anecdote as described by bassist Stanley Clarke: On one occasion Clarke offered Richards a health shake, to which Keith responded simply, “Stanley, Stanley…”

As with any outlaw rock band worth its salt, trouble was not far away from the New Barbarians. Rumors were instigated by Wood’s management and promoters that “special guests” would appear to add a little more excitement to a show that featured mostly Ronnie singing his original songs (again, they were tasked with filling arenas, not taverns or small clubs). But neither Mick, nor Dylan, nor Page appeared as many concertgoers had hoped. At the Mecca in Milwaukee this caused a riot and 81 arrests. (A makeup show took place the following year with a somewhat bizarre lineup which included Andy Newmark, Reggie McBride, Johnny Lee Schell, and…MacKenzie Phillips. No Clark, Modeliste, or Richards.)

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And, of course, there was heavy consumption of various substances. Another stipulation of Richards’s drug sentence was that he attend rehabilitation counseling, but this tour was the extreme opposite. Author Stephen Davis paints a rather bleak picture in his book Old Gods Almost Dead:

Living on alcohol and cocaine, Keith assumed a particularly spectral appearance as his hair began to gray and his face caved in, and rumors of his impending demise again spread through the music industry…Keith and Woody’s brotherly bond began to strain under financial pressures (they personally funded the tour’s excesses) and Wood’s rapid ascent into drugdom’s First Division.

Yet, a splendid time seems to have been had by all. As Stanley Clarke later described it, it was his “100% rock ‘n’ roll experience.” A few months later in August of ’79, the New Barbarians took the stage one final time (other than the Milwaukee make up show), on a Knebworth bill which included Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Todd Rundgren, and Led Zeppelin. And with that, the “ramshackle grace” of the New Barbarians slipped into oblivion until 2006, when the two-disc Buried Alive: Live in Maryland was released. Two years later, the 1974 Kilburn show was released under the title The First Barbarians: Live from Kilburn.

I stumbled upon the Kilburn show when it was released ten years ago. I’d never heard of the group or tour before, but it just seemed like something I’d listened to all along. It sounds like an audience tape or a soundboard bootleg at best, and for a show such as this it’s actually a perfect representation of the group as opposed to a clean live recording which might get a final studio polishing before its release. The sound quality of the Maryland show is actually quite good by comparison. There are those days (and very late nights) when these albums just hit the spot. I was very familiar with Wood’s song Mystifies Me from Son Volt’s 1995 version which I knew and loved, but I was not aware that it was a Ronnie Wood song or that it was on that impressive list of tunes which all share the same muse.