WITH drummer Charlie Watts getting treatment for throat cancer and guitarist rockin’ Ronnie Wood in alcohol rehab (again) > it was left to star duo Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to come up with the goods > which they did.

“It’s just you and me, old cock,” Richards said he told his band mate/ best friend/worst enemy of more than 40 years.

Any thoughts the Rolling Stones would slow down or take a different tact other than sex, drugs and rock and roll were dispelled with A Bigger Bang opening number Rough Justice and its first verse, Jagger singing about relationship relegation to being “just one of your cocks.  [Oh, de poor little red rooter ain’t so special anymore. Oh, de poor old puddy kat.]

The Stones hit a hot patch with this one of their best studio albums in years and the previous double live album Live Licks also a great collection, from one of their best tours.

THE SONGS

 Rough Justice is the first of several good rockers on A Bigger Bang, an album on which Mick Jagger came up with most of the beats > with Charlie Watts putting them to drums later.

Oh No Not You Again is at punk-rock pace with Jagger bemoaning he might have another paternity suit on his hands > and all he was after was a quickie on his yacht with an old flame > “Oh no not you again, fucking up my life”.

A pet Jagger subject > sticking it to the female of the species > rears its head again on Look What The Cat Dragged In, a hard-edged rocker which serves it up to the bitch who just got home at breakfast > dishevelled en all. “Get outta my house, with your dirty old mouth,” he yells.

Also hard-riffing is the great  It Won’t Take Long, of a relationship split > the macho male announcing it won’t take long to forget about her. But he doth protesteth too much!

Driving Too Fast is a full-throttle riding down the highway rocker, which the Stones do better than most.

Dangerous Beauty has got to be a kiss off to then US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice > she of the infamous George W. Bush brigade.

And funk number Sweet Neocon, with multi-layered beats and hot harmonica, is an undoubted shot at US President Dumbo himself > George Walker Bush > and the futile Iraq War.

I SNORTED MY DEAD FATHER’S ASHES > KEITH RICHARDS

That’s what Keith Richards told British music magazine NME (April, 2007).

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared, he couldn’t give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

The tabloid press soon had a field day with the story and outrage ensured. Richards pissed on the fire a few weeks later by claiming he had just made it up.

There’s also a long-held belief that in 1973 Keith Richards had a complete blood transfusion > involving an embalming process > during drug addiction treatment in Switzerland to prepare for a Stones tour. Richards many years later denied this > saying he just made it up as he was approached by the press at London airport.

KEITH RICHARDS OFF HIS TREE > SUFFERS BRAIN INJURY

The Rolling Stones guitarist required brain surgery after falling from a tree > or part thereof > in April 2006, while holidaying in Fiji. He underwent surgery at a hospital in New Zealand to relieve a blood clot on his brain, and was there for several weeks. The accident caused a delay to the Rolling Stones tour of Europe.

Initial reports had Keith Richards falling from a coconut tree. But he later told Rolling Stone magazine:  “It’s embarrassing, really. I was sitting on this gnarled shrub about six feet off the ground. I was wet – I’d been swimming. I hit the ground the wrong way, my head hit the trunk, and that was that.”

In a video message in late 2013 as part of the On Fire tour, Richards gave his thanks to the surgeons in New Zealand who treated him, remarking that “I left half my brain there.”

> WORDS by MALCOLM LIVERMORE