The Rolling Stones - Child of the Moon

 #The Rolling Stones #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #British blues rock #rock & roll #folk blues #garage rock #R&B #1968 music video

The promotional film for the Rolling Stones’ 1968 track “Child Of The Moon” has been newly restored in 4K resolution. The clip, again directed by the group’s frequent collaborator of the time, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, is the latest in ABKCO’s series of restored clips from the band’s 1960s era. “Child Of The Moon” is perhaps one of the lesser-known songs in the Stones’ canon, largely since it was the non-album B-side of their May 1968 smash “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” It was recorded at Olympic Studios with producer Jimmy Miller that March, as sessions began for what became the classic Beggars Banquet LP. Miller’s voice is heard at the beginning of the track, which was sufficiently rated by the band to earn its own promotional video, recently described by Mojo as “an early semi-narrative work” by British director Lindsay-Hogg. The visually striking clip was filmed, in monochrome, in the Surrey countryside. “‘Child Of The Moon’ plays like a British sci-fi/horror short,” wrote the magazine, “seemingly referencing Italian giallo, Village Of The Damned and J. Lee Thompson’s 1966 pagan horror (and Wicker Man forerunner) Eye Of The Devil. The film possesses the dusk-light glow of a peaking acid trip, magic-hour euphoria tinged with a chilly unease, yet also tunes into the darker subtext of the Stones’ occult dalliances.” The song featured keyboards by Stones alumnus Nicky Hopkins, with the saxophone played by Brian Jones. It went on to be included in the More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies) compilation in 1972. Allmusic’s review notes that it “was indicative of their slide toward a slightly more laid-back, funkier rock sound than they’d pursued on their more pop- and psychedelic-influenced 1966-1967 releases.” The Elsewhere website describes the song as a “droning little gem” and “certainly the last gasp of the Stones in psychedelic mode.”  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/watch-restored-promo-film-rolling-stones-child-of-the-moon/

At end of the European tour in 1967, the Rolling Stones found themself in huge troubles. The tension inside the band was really high. The failure of their new psychedelic Lp “Their Satanic Majesties Request” few months later put them into a limbo, that paradoxally spurred the Stones to record one of the best rock’n’roll singles of all the times. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” was a karma: an anthem never heard before. It came out May 24th, 1968, in England and the 1st of June in Usa, with a strange B side called “Child of the Moon”. As with “Jumpin Jack Flash”, “Child of the Moon” was recorded during the session for the seventh studio album of the band “Beggar’s Banquet”, on March 28, 1968, at the Olympic Studios in London. Unlike the “A side” of the single, “Child” has a gothic sound, introduced by a country blues riff and by a chilling scream sang by the the producer Jimmy Miller just like apocalypse was nearly done. A strange mix for a single that is still recognised as one of their best records ever. “Child of the Moon” was a love letter from Mick Jagger to Marianne Faithfull, fixed with a lot of references to pagan rituals: a gloomy vision in the dark side of love. The band thought enough of the song to accompany it with a promotional video. Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, this video was inspired by “Village of the Damned”. A sort of horror movie to give emphasis to the obscure mood of the Stones, according to their colder and satanic soul, in which a band of five men blocking the path to three figures: a child, an elder and a young woman. Maybe it’s the representation of most rebel side of The Stones or maybe it was the representation of the future in the middle of the Sixties for the youngest generations. A decade in which very soon things would have changed and everything would not have been the same again.  From: https://medium.com/@massimilianoleva/child-of-the-moon-the-psychedelic-vision-of-the-rolling-stones-65d932f61604

The Rolling Stones - Jumpin' Jack Flash

 #The Rolling Stones #Kieth Richards #Mick Jagger #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #British blues rock #rock & roll #folk blues #garage rock #R&B #British invasion #1968 music video

Long before the advent of MTV, music videos (then referred to as promotional films, or “promos” for short) were few and far between, with very limited outlets to air them. The most popular bands, such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Who, made these “promos” with the intent of allowing broadcast in several different countries without the bands having to travel to perform in TV studios where there were “genuine security issues” according to Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who directed pioneering videos for all three acts. Top of the Pops, the aforementioned Ready Steady Go!, Shindig!, Hullabaloo and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the US were early participants in broadcasting such materials. The Rolling Stones, who were already international superstars by the mid-1960s, now had another tool to help push a single such as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Before capturing The Rock and Roll Circus on celluloid, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg had helmed many of The Rolling Stones’ promotional video clips: “She’s a Rainbow,” “2000 Light Years From Home,” “Child of the Moon,” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” as well as The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” “Rain,” “Hey Jude” and “Revolution.” Lindsay-Hogg is the legendary music video director behind The Beatles’ Let It Be feature film and many of The Rolling Stones’ seminal video clips.  From: https://www.musicconnection.com/kubernik-the-rolling-stones-jumpin-jack-flash-restored-in-4k/ 

The Rolling Stones - Torn and Frayed

 #The Rolling Stones #Kieth Richards #Mick Jagger #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #British blues rock #rock & roll #British R&B #1970s 

In May of 1972 the Rolling Stones released their 10th British studio album and first double LP, Exile on Main St. Although initial critical response was lukewarm, it is now considered a contemporary music landmark, the best work from a band who rock critic Simon Frith once referred to as “the poets of lonely leisure.” Exile on Main St. was both the culmination of a five-year productive frenzy and bleary-eyed comedown from the darkest period in the Stones’ history.
By 1969 the storm clouds of dread building around the group had become a full-blown typhoon. First, recently sacked member Brian Jones was found dead, drowned in his swimming pool. Then, as the decade ended in a rush of bleak portents, they played host to the chaos of the Altamont Speedway Free Concert, a poorly organised, massive free concert, which ended with four dead including a murder captured live on film.
Yet amidst all this the Stones produced Let It Bleed (1969) and Sticky Fingers (1971), two devastating albums that wrapped up the era like a parcel bomb addressed to the 1970s.
Songs like Gimme Shelter, the harrowing Sister Morphine, and Sway, which broods on Nietzche’s notion of circular time, exuded the kind of weary grandeur that would define Exile.
The story behind Exile on Main St. has become rock folklore. Fleeing from England’s punitive tax laws, the Stones lobbed in a Côte d'Azur mansion that was a Gestapo HQ during World War II. Mick Jagger was largely sidelined, spending much of the time in Paris with pregnant wife Bianca. The musicians were jammed into an ad-hoc basement studio, a cross between steam-bath and opium den, powered by electricity hijacked from the French railway system. The house was beset by hangers-on, including the obligatory posse of drug-dealers. Yet with control ceded to the nonchalant, disaster-prone Keith Richards – the kind of person a crisis would want around in a crisis – they somehow harnessed the power of pandemonium.
The result was a singular amalgam of barbed soul, mutant gospel, tombstone blues and shambolic country, as thrilling in its blend of familiar sources as works by contemporaries Roxy Music and David Bowie were in the use of alien ones. Jagger shuffles his deck of personas from song to song like a demented croupier, the late, great drummer Charlie Watts supplies his customary subtle adornments, and a cast of miscreants – most crucially, pianist Nicky Hopkins and producer Jimmy Miller – function as supplementary band members.
All 18 tracks contribute to the ragged perfection of the document as a whole. Tumbling Dice and Happy are textbook rock propelled by a strange union of virtuosity and indolence. And there is an undeniable beauty to the likes of Torn and Frayed and Let it Loose, albeit a beauty that is tentative, hard-earned. The package is completed by its distinctive sleeve art, juxtaposing a collage of circus performers photographed by Robert Frank circa 1950 with grainy stills from a Super-8 film of the band and a mural dedicated to Joan Crawford.
Exile confused audiences at first: Writer John Perry describes its 1972 reception as mixing “puzzlement with qualified praise”. The response of critic Lester Bangs was typical. After an initial negative review, Bangs came to regard it as the group’s strongest work. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine confirms that the record over time has become a touchstone, calling it a masterful album that takes “the bleakness that underpinned Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers to an extreme.”  From: https://theconversation.com/exile-on-main-st-turns-50-how-the-rolling-stones-critically-divisive-album-became-rock-folklore-181704

The Rolling Stones - She's A Rainbow

 #The Rolling Stones #Keith Richards #Mick Jagger #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #psychedelic rock #British blues rock #British psychedelia #rock & roll #1960s

Part druggy experiment, part musical rivalry with the Fab Four, and a total anomaly in the Rolling Stones' catalogue, Their Satanic Majesties Request contains at least three trippy classics in "Citadel," "She's a Rainbow," and "2000 Light Years From Home." That it also contains an extensive sample of Bill Wyman snoring and an eight-minute stoned jam that begins with the timeless phrase "Where's that joint?" is a measure of Satanic Majesties' breadth of genius and folly. There's a lot going on here - try comparing the wayward Eastern atmospheres of "Gomper" to anything on Beggar’s Banquet, and marvel that you're listening to the same band. The fact that Jagger and Richards could still come up with the unimpeachably charming "She's a Rainbow" - baroque pop at its finest - and a fair stab at heavy R&B in "The Lantern," while attempting to negotiate the band's rocky passage through Flower Power is a tribute to their vision, their perseverance, and their drugs of choice.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Satanic-Majesties-Request-Rolling-Stones/dp/B00006AW2M  

The Rolling Stones song ‘She’s A Rainbow’ was met with a mixed reaction when it was first released back in 1967 but, as the years have gone by, the track has quite rightly grown in appreciation. Now, the track is firmly seen as a highlight from the psychedelically twinged Their Satanic Majesties Request. Remarkably, John Paul Jones, who would of course later go on to conquer the world with Led Zeppelin, arranged the strings of this song during his days as a session musician. The backing vocals were a joint effort by the entire band apart from Charlie Watts who had managed to escape his duties. In truth, the whole recording process for the record was a giant mess. Their legal ongoings at the time were causing issues after the infamous Redlands bust that saw Mick Jagger and Keith Richards spend time behind bars immediately after the time they began recording. This meant that it took the band over eight months in total to record the album as the legal problems coupled up with their newfound adoration for psychedelic drugs created a recipe for professional disaster that somehow created incredible art.
In his 2002 book Rolling with the Stones, Wyman describes the situations in the studio: “Every day at the studio it was a lottery as to who would turn up and what – if any – positive contribution they would make when they did,” he said. “Keith would arrive with anywhere up to ten people, Brian with another half-a-dozen and it was the same for Mick. They were assorted girlfriends and friends. I hated it! Then again, so did Andrew (Oldham) and just gave up on it. There were times when I wish I could have done, too.” “Sometimes I think it was a miracle that we produced anything with all the emotional upheavals within the group,” Wyman also noted. The late Anita Pallenberg was rumoured to be the muse for the track, with a 2020 biography by Simon Wells on the late model even being titled She’s A Rainbow. Pallenberg had just come out of a relationship with Brian Jones in 1967 after he was physically abusive to her in Morrocco, Keith Richards saw the violence and took her back safely to England with the two falling instantly in love with one another — even going on to have three children together.
The trippy sounding track isn’t a sound that one would associate with The Stones outside of Their Satanic Majesties Request but ‘She’s A Rainbow’ has become a true cult classic with their ardent fans as the years have passed. It took 30 years before they took to performing it at a touring show and then, following that run of dates, it was yet again put back on the shelf until 2016 with it now finally being a deserved regular in their sets.
From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/story-behind-the-rolling-stones-shes-a-rainbow/