Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/Dr. Doyle/Rolling Stones/track.txt

Text File | 1994-10-23 | 8KB | 167 lines

VOODOO LOUNGE - TRACK BY TRACK

Love Is Strong

KEITH: I started that one. To me, it's intimately related to "Wicked As It
Seems," which I did last year. All of our songs are like, this one's the
cousin of that one. They're all offshoots of themes and motifs.

MICK: We ran through it a bunch of times and I was playing harmonica, and I
started singing through the harmonica mike, so you get this strange sort of
sound. And then I started singing down an octave, so you get this kind of
breathy, sexy tone.

When we were in rehearsal, I'd come in quite early in the afternoon and put on
a bunch of CD's and play harmonica along with them for my homework, 'cause,
like any instrument, you can't just pick it up and play it. It was good to put
harmonica on a track like this. You always think of playing it on a 12 bar
blues, and it's kind of fun to put it on one which isn't. It's good to work
with another sequence.

You Got Me Rocking

MICK: The sense of this is like, "You've got me buzzin' again," or whateverword
you want to use.  It's about someone who was becoming a disastrous failure,
until they woke up. You know, the butcher that cuts himself, the surgeon who
shakes, the pitcher that's in a slump, the tycoon who loses all his money.

Sparks Will Fly

KEITH: We had a big bonfire going one night out in Ronnie's garden. I was
throwing all these logs on it, and these sparks started flying, and suddenly I
started running back to the studio "I've got one!  Incoming!"

Charlie was the only guy there, and he and I played the thing. Nobody else was
allowed to play it for months, until we'd got it right. It all has to do with
the rhythm and the guitar, and after that the rest of it fell into place.
Charlie's laying down the law on that one. You've got to know a guy so well to
play that tight together. It's unspoken, because it's all going by in front of
you in three seconds.

CHARLIE: Well you know, Keith Richards is the easiest person in the world to
play with, and so we just played like we normally play. I start off and he
comes in, or he'll start off and I come in. And we'd do three goes at it, look
at each other, and he'd say, "Let's try it tomorrow." He's writing the thing,
and he knows if it's right or wrong.

MICK: Keith and Charlie had never heard the vocals on that, and when they
finally did, they were sitting around going, "Did he say that? I can't believe
he said that."  Album 2

The Worst

KEITH: It's funny, but a lot of these songs were written in kitchens. That one
I wrote in the kitchen in Barbados, and I thought, "That's a pretty melody,"
but what to do with it, I really didn't know. I guess that's where Ireland
comes in, because Ireland has its own traditional music, and it's not country
music as such, but it's the roots of it, you know? It's that Irish feel.

MICK: That's very country, isn't it? Keith sings very pretty on that. I do his
backgrounds, and it sounds so Okie. When I listened back to it, I said, "Is
that really me singing?" It's really strange.

Moon Is Up

KEITH: That song had been around since Ireland, and everybody was fascinated
with it. The song was suddenly there, you know, and what are we gonna do with
it? To me, it was all tied in with Charlie. If Charlie Watts is willing to
experiment in the studio, then I'm the happiest man in the world. It so
happened that as we were trying this track out in different configurations, I
put an acoustic guitar throu a Leslie cabinet, Ronnie was playing pedal steel
through some tiny little amplifier, and Mick was singing through the harp
mike. The drums were the only thing that sounded unreal, because they were
real.

So we fished around for a bit, and I said, "Well, what about playing on a
suitcase outside?"  And before I knew it, Charlie Watts is out there in the
stairwell with a garbage can and brushes, and that's the sound. After that, it
was very hard to keep him out of the stairwell.

CHARLIE: We've often done tings like that, in loos or corridors. It's easier
to do that than to do it with echo chambers, you know? It's sometimes not so
good for an engineer, 'cause you've got this sound and you can't get rid of
it. Whereas if you record it dry you can always add things. But this was good.

Out Of Tear

MICK: There's no set way to write songs. I used to say Now we're writing
songs. I'm gonna sit at my desk.' "Out Of Tears" was a little bit like that,
where I'm sitting at the piano in Ronnie's studio going 'Da da ding, da da
ding.' Then you go and listen to it, and it's got this really good mood
because it's you on your own. No one else is there, and you're creating the
mood. There's a very sad mood to that song.

The Stones are mainly a guitar band, but I think with a ballad sometimes it's
nice to move away from that. And when a song is wntten on a keyboard, you get
a different sort of melodic structure.

KEITH:- Both Mick and I like to do that. You can have an idea for a song, and
you play it on guitar and it just doesn't work. And then you try it on piano
and suddenly it starts to make sense to you.  Album 3

Then you can go back to guitar and it all falls into place. To be able to
write on a couple of different insuments gives you a whole different feel on a
song.  q Go Wild

MICK: "Wailresses with broken noses" -- that's Ronnie Wood's specialty. He
knew every waitress in Dublin, and so I thought I'd put that line in for him.
I like that song. I really got into the lyrics on that one.

Sweehearts Together

KEITH: Mick and I were singing straight into the mike together, which we
haven't done for a long time. Mainly for technical reasons, we would do
harmony separately. In fact, Don Was was the one who said, "Go and do
ittogether." Mick and I have always been able to do that, because I can follow
him and he can follow me, you know? We know where to put it.

But this album is full of things that we used to do well and have deliberately
not done, because the Stones are always wary of repeating themselves
obviously. We're the guys that don't play "Satisfaction" on stage very often,
you know?

RONNIE: The great thing is that Mick and Keith are getting along so much
better now. Whenever they felt a little feud coming up, they would say, "I
guess we better do 'Sweethearts Together'," to cool things down. They do nice
harmony.

Suck On The Jugular

KEITH: Mr. Watts again. I mean, it's all drums. The arrangement is all to do
with the drums. Charlie laid down that beat and I said, "Well, if you can keep
that up for several minutes, we've got a track."  HHey, no problem." And he
always makes it look like it isn't.

CHARLIE: It used to be called "Holetown Prison," and we did that in Barbados
near Holetown.  That's what ve would loosely term a groove song. I like those
a lot. We did a whole bunch of those types of songs, but a lot of them didn't
get on the record, 'cause it wasn't the right time to use them, really. I like
those songs more than our type of ballads.

BIinded By Rainbows

MICK: I was wring it at the end of the Wandenng Spint album. I was sort of
half way through with it, and I thought, "Well, this would be better suited to
the Rolling Stones' next album." It was all kind of in my head, rather than
written down. But you know, it's pretty strong. I think it's good to have one
like that on the record, it shakesyou up a bit. Otherwise all the songs are
about girls and cars and immaturity.  Album 4

Thru And Thru

KEITH: It's a bit of a departure. I don't know where it came from. I was in
Barbados one night with Pierre de Beauport. He was doing the recording, and
he's also my guitar man I can't live without him. We went out to some clubs,
and around four or five in the morning we got back. He said, "Good night,H and
I said, HLet's go into the studio. Incoming. Incoming, Pierre." I had no idea
what it was, but something just clicked in the car on the way home, some
little thought. And if I let it go, if I go to sleep now, it's gone, you know?
It all came out at once. You love 'em when they come like that.

I didn't think it vould turn up on this record. It would've probably been a
back burner job if it hadn't been for Charlie, once again, saying, "Lemme take
the drums down in the stairwell." I had nowle for tEls song to go, but Charlie
provided me with the whole means of getting through it and out the other end.