Rolling Stones – "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968)

I shouted out, “Who killed Kennedy?”

When after all, it was you and me

A young person I know recently posted this online:

Hit rock bottom on the golf course today.  Truly a rotten, vile round.  The kind of round that makes you wish you never found golf in the first place. . . .

To say it didn’t go well is like saying that the Titanic didn’t go well.  

Or that JFK’s car ride didn’t go well.

I know that golf can be an extremely frustrating sport, and that a bad round can cause even a good person to say terrible things.  So I’m willing to overlook that truly tasteless statement about JFK.  (Given some of the stuff that I’ve posted online over the years, it would be the pot calling the kettle black for me to criticize someone for tastelessness.)

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I find it interesting that I reacted much more strongly to the line about JFK than the line about the Titanic.  After all, some 1500 people perished when the Titanic sank – the death of any one man pales in comparison to the loss of 1500 lives.

But while I winced when I read that reference to JFK’s assassination, I didn’t have the same kind of visceral response to the Titanic reference.    

Why was that?  Maybe because the sinking of the Titanic took place long before I was born.

Most of what I know about the Titanic comes from the 1997 movie.  And while that movie depicted the tragedy in very realistic fashion, viewing a fictional recreation of an event – no matter how vivid and dramatic – is not the same thing as living through the actual event.

I experienced the Kennedy assassination first hand.  I saw the graphic and traumatizing Zapruder film of that event over and over.  I remember seeing Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as President aboard Air Force One and Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.  And I was glued to the TV during Kennedy’s funeral.  (Who can forget the image of the riderless horse, with the pair of boots placed backwards in the stirrups?  Or the shot of Kennedy’s three-year-old son saluting his father’s casket as it was carried from St. Matthew’s Cathedral?)

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A few of us may be able to give the date when the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, or when the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed on the moon, or when Richard Nixon resigned.  But all of us remember November 22, 1963.  

Can you even name the year the Titanic sank – much less the exact date?

The person who wrote the message I quoted above is far too young to have lived through the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath.  For him, that event probably feels just as distant from the present day as the sinking of the Titanic feels to people who are my age.

But for people my age, JFK’s death is something that we remember very vividly.  I suppose that’s why I reacted much more strongly to his reference to it than I did to his reference to the sinking of the Titanic – even though that event was a much greater tragedy in objective terms.

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In case you’re wondering, the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 – exactly 114 years ago today.

The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, while Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969 and Richard Nixon left the White House in disgrace on August 8, 1974.  

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The lyrics quoted at the top of this post were the lyrics that Mick Jagger sang when the Rolling Stones began recording “Sympathy for the Devil” on June 4, 1968.

But when Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan on the very next day, those lyrics were changed from “Who killed Kennedy?” to “Who killed the Kennedys?”   

Click here to listen to “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Click here to buy “Sympathy for the Devil” from Amazon.

Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed (1969)

Yes, I’m a sack of broken eggs

I always have an unmade bed

Don’t you?

In 2010, the Royal Mail – the British postal service – issued ten stamps that depicted classic album covers.

(NOTE: Did you know that the Royal Mail is owned by a wealthy Czech businessman?  That’s right – the Brits converted their postal service from a government-0wned-and-operated operated into a publicly-traded stock corporation in 2013.  Last year, that corporation was acquired by EP Group, a Czech-based company owned by Daniel Křetínský, for £3.57 billion.)

Not surprisingly, all the recording artists whose albums were chosen for the series are British.  But the music on those albums is quite varied, ranging from classic rock (Let it Bleed by the Stones, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Led Zeppelin IV) to punk (London Calling by the Clash) to post-punk (New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies) to Britpop (Blur’s Parklife).

I was pleased that Primal Scream’s genre-bending Screamadelica was included – it’s an amazing album.

But I was puzzled to see Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells on the Royal Mail’s list.

If you had to pick one Pink Floyd album to put on a stamp, would you pick The Division Bell?  (One critic wrote that “avarice is the only conceivable explanation for this glib, vacuous cipher of an album, which is notable primarily for its stomach-turning merger of progressive-rock pomposity and New Age noodling.”)

The Tubular Bells album cover

And Tubular Bells?  If its opening theme hadn’t been featured in The Exorcist, that album would have attracted little notice – it’s interesting, but more of a novelty than anything else.

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Eventually, it dawned on me that the Royal Mail didn’t choose these albums for their music.  They chose them for the visual appeal of their album covers. 

Given that, I suppose we should be thankful that a number of the albums in the series contain first-rate music – including, of course, Let It Bleed.

It wasn’t easy for me to choose just one Rolling Stones album for this year’s 28 Posts in 28 Days.  I thought about an out-of-the-box choice like Between the Buttons or Their Satanic Majesties Request.  But in the end I decide to play it safe and go with the ne plus ultra of Rolling Stones albums.

Why Let It Bleed?  Start with “Gimme Shelter” – which is only the G.O.A.T. of classic-rock album tracks, you know. 

Follow that up with “Live With Me” and “Monkey Man,” two little-known cuts that I think are the equals of “Jumping’ Jack Flash.”

“Let it Bleed” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” are classics, of course.  And then there’s “Midnight Rambler” – seven minutes of very scary stuff.  (It’s not quite as scary as “Stray Cat Blues,” but it comes close.)

The album’s cover is pretty cool, too – good choice, Royal Mail!

Click here to listen to Let It Bleed.

Click here to buy that album from Amazon.

Rolling Stones – "Down Home Girl" (1965)

And every time I kiss you, girl

It tastes like pork and beans

It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten pork and beans, but the dish used to be a regular part of my diet.  

Only Van Camp’s pork and beans would do – I eschewed other brands.

Pork and beans right out of the can were a perfect accompaniment for hamburgers or ham sandwiches.

But after a long night drinking 3.2% beer in Kansas, I wanted more.  So I would dump a can of Van Camp’s finest into a saucepan, add a couple of cut-up hot dogs, grated cheese, ketchup, and garlic salt, and heat the whole mess up.

I’d grab a couple of slices of white sandwich bread and a Dr. Pepper, and eat every bite of my concoction in front of the TV.

Mmmmm . . .

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I recently learned that Van Camp’s pork and beans have a long and honorable history.

In 1861, Gilbert Courtland Van Camp and his wife Hester moved to Indianapolis, where Gilbert got into the wholesale grocery business.  Hester came up with a recipe for pork and beans with tomato sauce.  Gilbert decided to can Hester’s dish and sell it to local grocery stores.  

Shortly thereafter, Van Camp signed a contract to supply canned pork and beans to the Union Army.  Van Camp’s business was relatively small, and one researcher has speculated that he sold pork and beans only to Camp Morton, an army training site located in Indianapolis, rather than supplying the entire Union Army.) 

Note that the current Van Camp’s pork and beans label claims that the product has been “satisfying families since 1861.”

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“Down Home Girl” was co-written by the legendary Jerry Leiber – who teamed with Mike Stoller to write most of Elvis Presley’s early hits– and the not-so-legendary Artie Butler.  (You’ve never heard of Butler, but he was a well-known Brill Building session pianist and arranger.  His many arranging credits include Neil Diamond’s “Cherry, Cherry,” Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Indian Reservation,” Vicki Lawrence’s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana,” and Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”)

The Rolling Stones cover of “Down Home Girl” was released on their second studio album (The Rolling Stones No. 2) in 1965.

It’s hard to picture Mick Jagger having anything to do with a girl who tastes like pork and beans.  But baked beans are part of a traditional full  English breakfast, so maybe that would have been a big turn-on.

Click here to listen to “Down Home Girl.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.

Rolling Stones – "The Lantern" (1967)

My face, it turns a deathly pale

You’re talking to me through your veil

I hear you wail!

Their Satanic Majesties Request is the Rolling Stones album that rock critics love to hate.  Hell, even Keith Richards and Mick Jagger hated it.  

Richards once said the album as a whole was “a load of crap.”  

“It’s not very good,” Jagger has opined.  “There’s two good songs on it.  The rest of them are nonsense.”

I’m guessing that the two songs Jagger likes are “2000 Light Years from Home” and “She’s a Rainbow,” because those are the only two songs on the album that the Stones have ever performed in concert.  (Richards also liked those songs.)

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I bought Satanic Majesties soon after it was released in December 1967, and I’ve always liked it.  (I admit that there are a couple of weak tracks on it, but I think most of the songs on it are winners.)

Did your copy have the famous
lenticular cover?  (Mine did.)

So when I decided to induct a track from that album into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME, it wasn’t to choose just one.

I thought about going with one of the two identified by Jagger and Richards as their favorites.  But which one?  

I went back and forth between them – both were worthy, and I couldn’t decide which one I thought was better.

2 or 3 lines isn’t afraid to zig where others zag, and that’s what I did when I picked “The Lantern.”  (I almost went with “Gomper,” which is pretty good.  But I couldn’t bear to sully my wildly popular little blog with such an ugly song title.) 

IMHO, the best element of the record is the piano playing of Nicky Hopkins.  He was as integral to the sound of the Rolling Stones in the late sixties and early seventies as Keith or Charlie or anyone else.

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I’m not the only rock music savant who gives two thumbs up to “The Lantern.” 

For example, Matthew Greenwald of Allmusic had this to say about the “underappreciated” track:

“The Lantern” is a psychedelic folk song . . . . Some excellent guitar riffs from Keith Richards on both acoustic and electric foreshadow his layered work on Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, and drive a subtle, but slightly bluesy melody that is one of the album’s best.  Lyrically, the song seems to have literary inspirations, not unlike some of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd songs of the period.  

Greenwald also praised the “very restrained and beautiful horn arrangement,” which he believed exhibited “true craftsmanship.”

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Enough of that blah, blah, blah.  You probably don’t care what some rock critic you’ve never heard of has to say about “The Lantern,” and I don’t either.  

We just care about what 2 or 3 lines has to say . . . right?

I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

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Click here to listen to “The Lantern.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.