Mick Jagger looking ever so dainty in an asphyxiating stocking
- Songs
1. Dancing with Mr D
2. 100 Years Ago
3. Coming Down Again
4. Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
5. Angie6. Silver Train
7. Hide Your Love
8. Winter
9. Can You Hear the Music
10. Star Star
Goat's Head Soup
More yellow mellow than yer usual Rolling Stones album > and not every song’s a gem. But still plenty of good stuff here.
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- August, 1973
- Rock On Rock Recommends:
Star Star; Angie; 100 Years Ago; Coming Down Again; Heartbreaker; Winter.
Well, it really is worth getting the whole album
THE Rolling Stones had entered the 1970s as the most powerful force in rock.
The Beatles had recently split and the Stones reputation was enhanced by their past four studio albums > the cream of the Stones crop and among the best rock albums by anyone ever.
The Goats Head Soup album artwork features band members with stockings over their heads > Mick Jagger looking like a girl on the front cover and Keith Richards like the devil on the back.
It’s a good album > a softer approach than the charged rock of previous album Exile on Main Street > but with many good songs.
THE SONGS
Dancing with Mr D > as in the Devil > is more Halloween howler than a sequel to the menacing Sympathy for the Devil from the Stones’ Beggars Banquet album. A heavy guitar riff underlies a chorus of overdub vocals > but the song hardly stokes the fires of hell.
The guitar wah-wah pedal gets a working over on 100 Years Ago and Heartbreaker.
100 Years Ago builds through several changes of pace from ballad to funk jam and has a nice Mick Taylor lead guitar burst.
Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) is no doggy doo > criss-cross wah-wah guitars weaving around a solid beat as vocals wail in a tune of only two verses > one about a New York cop shooting a suspect dead in a case of mistaken identity; the other about a drugged up 10-year-old dying in an alley way.
The album’s best song and a top-notch Rolling Stones rock belter is Star Star, better known as Starfucker > they just weren’t allowed to put that title on the album in many countries.
Starfucker drips in the excess of groupie sex as Keith Richards lays down a hot rolling rhythm. “Oh, do it again” Jagger screams in ecstasy.
Goat’s Head Soup also has one of the band’s best ballads, Angie > delicate acoustic guitars accompanied by a wounded vocal of a love that has come to an end.
Coming Down Again is also a strong ballad >this time the subject is coming down from a drug high and sung by the man who should know, Keith Richards.
It’s a beautiful vocal > before Richards’ voice turned into something of a cross between Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.
The bluesy Hide Your Love starts with a lumbering piano melody and the casual sound is enhanced by hand-clapping and a nice slice of Mick Taylor guitar.
Pleasantly paced Winter ambles out of the deep thaw of a cold winter and looks forward to a summer of love.
Can You Hear the Music starts with an Arabic tinkering of bells and the like > but drifts fairly aimlessly. Mick Jagger seems to have given up on understanding women > “Love is a mystery; I can’t demystify, oh no.”
Silver Train also ends up going nowhere much and not even harmonica buried in the background can save it.
Blues guitar slinger Johnny Winter somehow released a version of this Jagger-Richards original several months before Goats Head Soup came out > Winter’s version trumps this one.
STARFUCKER
Yeah, I heard about you Polaroid’s
Now that’s what I call obscene
Your tricks with fruit was kind a cute
I bet you keep your pussy clean
Honey, I miss your two-tone kisses
Legs wrapped around me tight
If I ever get back to New York, girl
Gonna make you scream all night
> Jagger-Richards
KEITH RICHARDS > HEROIN HITS
The Rolling Stones guitarist had by now formed a full-on heroin habit.
Richards and family were renting a place in the Swiss mountains near Montereaux. When a friend cleaned out the retreat home after they vacated, he allegedly found 5000 used syringes stashed around the place.
> sourced from an article by Mark Blake in Mojo magazine
SAME OLD STORY > YEP, RICHARDS BUSTED AGAIN
Keith Richards and partner Anita Pallenberg were busted during a raid on his home in London’s Cheyne Walk in mid-1973. Found were drugs, a Smith and Wesson revolver and a shortened shotgun. A friend by the name of Stash was also there and charged.
In October that year, with the Rollong Stones on a European tour, the couple and saxophonist Bobby Keys faced a French court on cannabis charges.
In their absence, all were convicted and copped fines and suspended sentences.
The London court case was heard soon after. Richards was fined on the drugs and arms charges and the charges against Pallenberg, except for the possession of 25 Mandrax tables, were dropped.
> WRITTEN by MALCOLM LIVERMORE
