Rolling Stones – "Soul Survivor" (1972)

I wish I never had brought you

It’s going to be the death of me

I could have simply cut and pasted my January 6, 2011 post about today’s featured song, but I’m all about going the extra mile for my readers – so I wrong a brand-new post instead.

Click here to read the 2011 post.  (You should know that my opinion of Mick Jagger has changed since I wrote it.  I no longer think he’s a poseur, or “too cool for school.”  As good as Keith Richards and Charlie Watts were, Jagger was the sine qua non of the Stones – or at least the sine qua multo minus of the Stones.)

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There are already three Rolling Stones tracks in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME, and you can best believe that there will be more inductees selected from the great Stones albums of the late sixties and early seventies in the years to come.  The Stones are the G.O.A.T., after all.  

(“What about the Beatles?” you say.  You can’t be serious!)

I initially planned to include a track from the Stones’ much-maligned 1967 album, Their Satanic Majesties Request in this year’s group of inductees.  I would have gotten a lot of grief if I had followed through with that plan, of course.

Not that I give two sh*ts about that – in fact, I take perverse pleasure from the howls emitted by those who disagree with my hall of fame choices.  Certain people are still bemoaning my decision to include “MacArthur Park” in the first group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  (Here’s what I have to say to those people: You’ll suck on it and you’ll like it.)

The “Exile on Main St.” album

But I eventually decided I couldn’t justify going with a track from the Satanic Majesties album when I had yet to induct a track from either Sticky Fingers or Exile on Main St. – three LPs (Exile is a double album) that are chock full of great tracks.

I seriously considered “Sway” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and “Dead Flowers” and “Rocks Off” and “Torn and Frayed” before settling on the final track from Exile on Main St. – “Soul Survivor.”

Quite a few critics have posted their rankings of the individual tracks on Exile.  “Soul Survivor” is rarely  ranked near the top, which I just don’t get – I think it’s clearly the best song on the album.  

“Soul Survivor” is nothing like “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” or “Sympathy for the Devil,” each of which followed a detailed musical blueprint that was carefully prepared in advance.  

“Soul Survivor” – like many of the songs on Exile – was a little more helter-skelter.  It was stitched together from a lot of somewhat disparate bits and pieces, and could have easily been a big gloppy mess – like a late-night meal you throw together from whatever random odds and ends you find in the refrigerator when you come home after drinking too much.  But it works despite its on-the-fly structure.

It was an inspired choice for the final track for Exile.  All the repetition in the song makes it function as  a sort of coda for the entire double album.

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Click here to listen to “Soul Survivor.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: