The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones by Rich Cohen

Author:Rich Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

According to the scholar Robert Alter, a character in the Bible is defined by the first words he or she speaks. King David, for example, starts by saying: “How much would a person get for killing that man?” This works with the Stones, too. If you want to know the mood of the band at a particular moment, look at the first line of the song. “Connection” opens with “All I want to do is to get back to you.” “Mother’s Little Helper” opens with “What a drag it is getting old.” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” opens with “I was born in a crossfire hurricane.” The mood is near-death and glorious return: Fuck you, we’re still here, having fun. In fact, it’s a gas. It was a smash—number one on both sides of the Atlantic. “The Stones had laid off touring for the best part of two years,” Norman Jopling told me. “They’d been a good working band when they stopped, but when they came back they were a legend. They’d changed their style. They’d changed everything. And they returned with such a bang.”

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What set off that golden run?

According to Marianne Faithfull, it began with that vision Mick and Keith shared during the acid trip at Redlands. They sketched a strategy in the weeks that followed, how the Stones might live beyond the first moment, which Jagger called the “youth wave.” Interesting that the Beatles, as a band, did not outlive that moment. What started in bowl haircuts ended in beards. They’d stopped touring in 1966. By 1969, they were as good as done. It became official in 1970. The split had a tremendous impact on the Stones—another key ingredient of the golden run. The Stones had always been defined in opposition. They were the alternative, the opposite, the anti. Their fame grew in a negative space created by the Beatles. The Stones’ first big hit was written by Lennon/McCartney, and many of those that followed were seen as responses to or copies of the Fab Four. “As Tears Go By” was said to be a response to “Yesterday.” Satanic Majesties was said to be a copy of Sgt. Pepper. But after the Beatles broke up, there was no longer a model. The Stones were alone on top and finally free to find their own path. What resulted was a new sound that would make them, in my opinion, even greater than the Beatles.

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What defined the golden run?

That string of perfect records that arrived, one after another, like summer afternoons: there’s a unifying quality that leads you to consider them a single work. Attention to detail, layers of sound, texture—these are albums made for people with Nakamichi tape decks and KEF speakers, beanbag chairs and leisure time. You can even make a case that producer Jimmy Miller was a secret author of the run. He’d been a drummer, Brooklyn born, before taking his place behind the glass. Tall and bearded, with a weakness for excitement, he was working with Traffic in Studio B when Jagger ran into him.

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