The Rolling Stones - Some Girls

Some Girls (COC 39108) 

Released 1978

Miss You

When The Whip Comes Down
Just My Imagination
Some Girls
Lies
Far Away Eyes
Respectable
Before They Make Me Run
Beast Of Burden
Shattered

With the awful, suspended longing of "Just My Imagination", the cosmic rush of "When the Whip Comes Down," and the sleazy, sweaty embrace of the title tune, a sexual tour of everything under the sun. - Greil Marcus

This is New York 70's music.  Honky sax, the sound of the Saturday Night Live band.  It's New York from the discoid kick-off to the Manhattan litany on "Shattered."  It's a New York as The Dolls or The Velvet Underground and Nico.  You could do a whole shelf full of New York albums.  This would be on it.

This is the comeback.    Only RnR was rock star glitzy.  Black and Blue was flailing and funked-out.  This is closer to the big city sleaze of Exile.  This is also the beginning of the Ron Wood era.  A pricklier, tighter, punky/funky sound.  The map for the next 8 years is here.  

It's New York in the late seventies.  And Mick's lonely.  To a slick disco beat (an "eerie" disco single as one reviewer called it), he longs for his old lay.  Friends call to cheer him up ("Hey, what's the matter man? Were gonna come around at twelve with some puerto rican girls that are just dyin to meet you. Were gonna bring a case of wine. Hey, lets go mess and fool around
you know, like we used to.").  It ain't working.  So he walks Central Park after dark, singing to himself.  The stage is set.  The whole album's about sex and longing.  

"When the Whip Comes Down" is all sex and NYC.  "Yeah I'm coming from fifty-third street and they spit on my face/Well I'm learning the ropes and I'm learning the trade/Well the east river truckers are churning with trash..." Mick once cited the Velvets as inspiration for "Stray Cat Blues," but this is more Lou Reed-y than anything he's ever written.  "Just My Imagination" was a gorgeous, string-laden suite by The Temptations.  Here Keith and Ron turn the strings into gnarly, gorgeous guitar licks while Mick manages to sound simultaneously sincere and smirking.  The "runaway runaway runaway run run run run run" fade-out may the last transcendent moment on a Stones record.  Then he takes it all away on the "sleazy, sweaty embrace of the title track," extolling the virtues of girls of every ethnicity he can think of and lamenting their unreasonable demands.  This was a new (high)(low) in smirking sleaze for Mick's persona, and the music backs him every step of the way.  

"Lies" is a throwaway, but "Far Away Eyes" is the last of the Stones great country songs (until "The Worst" shows up on Voodoo Lounge 16 years later).  That its pure pedal steel in cheek is only part of its charm.  The Bakersfield reference tells us Mick`n'Keith hadn't forgotten what they learned from Gram Parsons, or which side their cornbread is buttered on.  

"Respectable" - classic Chuck Berry rocker.  I used to rewind the tape just to hear the guitar windout Keith plays at the end.  "Before They Make Me Run", Keef's last great outlaw anthem (who cares if he got off with a slap on the wrist).  Also his best voal.  "Beast Of Burden", Mick pleads for love.  It's great vocal acting - he sounds utterly insincere and yet you can't imagine she'll turn him down.  Much like the rest of the Stones career - us fans keep letting them back in no matter how much they disappoint us, because, god forgive us, we still love them.  

And then it's back to the streets.  Go ahead, bite the big apple.  Don't mind the maggots.  This was their "punk" number, and it only showed that the Stones could master any rock and roll move they set their minds too.  It seemed like in high school everyone hated this one.  Me, I've always loved it.  Pure monoto-rock.  Jagged and hard and you could dance to it.

As an epilogue to Exile, not bad.