#357 - The Rolling Stones - Between The Buttons (1967)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY BEN AUSTIN-DOCAMPO:
Between the Buttons from Allmusic
The Rolling Stones' 1967 recordings are a matter of some controversy; many critics felt that they were compromising their raw, rootsy power with trendy emulations of the Beatles, Kinks, Dylan, and psychedelic music. Approach this album with an open mind, though, and you'll find it to be one of their strongest, most eclectic LPs, with many fine songs that remain unknown to all but Stones devotees. The lyrics are getting better (if more savage), and the arrangements more creative, on brooding near-classics like "All Sold Out," "My Obsession," and "Yesterday's Papers." "She Smiled Sweetly" shows their hidden romantic side at its best, while "Connection" is one of the record's few slabs of conventionally driving rock. The best tracks on the American edition were the two songs that gave the group a double-sided number one in early 1967: the lustful "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the beautiful, melancholy "Ruby Tuesday," which is as melodic as anything Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would ever write.
The Rolling Stones from Allmusic
By the time the Rolling Stones began calling themselves the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the late '60s, they had already staked out an impressive claim on the title. As the self-consciously dangerous alternative to the bouncy Merseybeat of the Beatles in the British Invasion, the Stones had pioneered the gritty, hard-driving blues-based rock & roll that came to define hard rock. With his preening machismo and latent maliciousness, Mick Jagger became the prototypical rock frontman, tempering his macho showmanship with a detached, campy irony while Keith Richards and Brian Jones wrote the blueprint for sinewy, interlocking rhythm guitars. Backed by the strong yet subtly swinging rhythm section of bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, the Stones became the breakout band of the British blues scene, eclipsing such contemporaries as the Animals and Them. Over the course of their career, the Stones never really abandoned blues, but as soon as they gained popularity in the U.K., they began experimenting musically, incorporating the British pop of contemporaries like the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Who into their sound. After a brief dalliance with psychedelia, the Stones re-emerged in the late '60s as a jaded, blues-soaked hard rock quintet. They had always flirted with the seedy side of rock & roll, but as the hippie dream began to break apart, they exposed and reveled in the new rock culture. It wasn't without difficulty, of course. Shortly after he was fired from the group, Jones was found dead in a swimming pool, while at a 1969 free concert at Altamont, a concertgoer was brutally killed during a Stones show. But the Stones never stopped going. For the next 50-plus years, they continued to record and perform, and while their records weren't always blockbusters, they were never less than the most visible band of their era; certainly, none of their British peers continued to be as popular or productive as the Stones. And no band since has proven to have such a broad fan base or such far-reaching popularity, and it is impossible to hear any of the groups that followed them without detecting some sort of influence, whether it was musical or aesthetic.
Cocksucker Blues (wiki)
Cocksucker Blues is an unreleased documentary film directed by the still photographer Robert Frank chronicling The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972 in support of their album Exile on Main St.
Production
There was much anticipation for the band's arrival in the United States, since they had not visited there since the 1969 disaster at the Altamont Free Concert in which a fan was stabbed and beaten to death by Hells Angels and the incident was caught on camera. Behind the scenes, the tour embodied debauchery, lewdness and hedonism.
The film was shot cinéma vérité, with several cameras available for anyone in the entourage to pick up and start shooting. This allowed the film's audience to witness backstage parties, drug use (Mick Taylor is shown smoking marijuana with some roadies and Mick Jagger seen snorting cocaine backstage),[1] roadie and groupie antics, and the Stones with their defenses down.[2] One scene includes a groupie in a hotel room injecting heroin.[3]
Fate
The film came under a court order which forbade it from being shown unless the director, Robert Frank, was physically present.[1][4] This ruling stemmed from the conflict that arose when the band, having commissioned the film, decided that its content was embarrassing and potentially incriminating, and did not want it shown. Frank felt otherwise, hence the ruling.[1][3]
According to Ray Young, "The salty title notwithstanding, its nudity, needles and hedonism was supposedly incriminating and the picture was shelved—this during a liberal climate that saw the likes of Cry Uncle! and Chafed Elbows playing in neighborhood theatres."[5] Deep Throat was released in the same year. A Rolling Stones concert film, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones, was released instead, and Cocksucker Blues was indefinitely shelved.