It’s fun to discover on your own a link between two different recordings. Perhaps the experts have already written about it, who knows? The immense river of literature about music expands as one’s wherewithal to follow it shrinks.
The Rolling Stones, like all creative musicians, started out covering others’ work, and still do occasionally. They’ve covered only a handful of records by white acts: “Not Fade Away” by Buddy Holly, “Suzie Q” by Dale Hawkins, “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Beatles (seeing Lennon and McCartney go into a room and write it in a half hour for them inspired them to start writing their own songs), and recently “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan. Of the songs that the Rolling Stones have written, here is the only one I’ve found whose vocal melody sounds as if it was copied from another act’s record, in this case a white act. Consciously done? Inadvertent? Pure coincidence?
The Stones song is in the first comment.
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Popular music has many incestuous relationships.
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You're onto something, methinks. It has pretty much always seemed to me that Iggy was trying to out-Jagger Jagger in the first two albums, and intermittently in the later work (when he discovered his mature style, as it were). It sounds like what Jagger has done is pretty much rip the Jagger imitator off wholesale, which is allowed in rock and roll. It's a shame that the Stones tune has let those generic funk elements creep into the tune.
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"It’s a shame that the Stones tune has let those generic funk elements creep into the tune." Want to try again?
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Stung by your chiding, I listened to it again. The bass player, while proficient (Wyman was gone by this time, right?), plays a series of standard, unimaginative lines. The second guitarist - Wood, one presumes - is also relying on time-tested funk tropes, like those Shaft-ripoff wah wah lines. And the less said about that piano part, the better. Not faulting Jagger here, who is clearly in top form. But the song is second-rate by Stones standards.
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Hey, before coffee, man. Cut a brother a break?
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MOG is misbehaving again. My second comment should come after DM's third. Just for the record.
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I was speaking of the sentence.
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As should my third consecutive comment. This one will probably be the fourth.
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Yeah, that's what they all say!
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Not a bad repartee For before coffee.
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Never really heard to much of the Stooges, but loved every thing I hear so far. Thanks for the post. Oh I'm also a big Watt fan and admire of his philosophy on bass...
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What is his philosophy on bass? The Stones have had a great bass sound, but, like many arts or crafts, it often succeeds best when it doesn't call attention to itself enough to cause us to analyze it. I'm guessing that bassist Bill Wyman quit sometime in the nineties. He once expertly and charmingly narrated a playlist of pre-war blues recordings he had put together for an airline I was a passenger on. I once heard drummer Charlie Watts interviewed on NPR's "Fresh Air," and he was articulate also.
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Well for one he thought like I did about heavy music that one doesn't need to play mellow or even slow music with age. Also he stated playing his Gibson EB bass that is a short scale neck many because he said his fingers weren't as limber anymore. Been his main bass for years, plus he's a very versitale player, and I been following him through bass player interviews. The Stones bassist now is the Nephew of Miles Davis from what I remember. Think he was "Stings" old bassist when decided to play guitar for a bit.
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Both bands were on the same drugs but The Stooges had youth on their side. A-grade Stooges, but Mr. Clinton would say that The Stones' funk has been badly cut.
BTW, the Wyman blues story you mention was a TV show he did tracing the blues up Hwy 61 from Clarksdale to Chicago - and a very good show it was too. Also available as a book, a CD (found mine for £1 on a market stall) and no doubt a DVD.
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Mr. Clinton being Bill, yes? I profess ignorance about the exact meaning of badly cut funk, but I trust him on this even though I read somewhere that he had been known to cheat at golf.
I hope to come across the Wyman material in any format.
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Mr. Clinton being George, aka Parliament/Funkadelic. The p-funk is uncut funk, the pure funk, and so on and on as declaimed on Chocolate City and about 400 other Clinton records. I don't know if George cheats at golf, but there are some "interesting" stories about how he grinds his, um, funk.
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George, of course, right, I meant George. Now _his_ bass player was something else, now we're really talking about some real funk bass playing! But doesn't necessarily mean that my "Fingerprint File" is totally terrible, does it?
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I don't think "Fingerprint File" is terrible by any means, Spike. But it's probably not one of the great Stones cuts....
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Fingerprint File is OK - I like the lyrics and concept best. But it's not 'Moonlight Mile'. It's not 'Penetration' either! Or ZZ Top! ;-)
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Ah, 'Moonlight Mile,' the high point for me of _Sticky Fingers_. Jagger said to an interviewer that it was the only cut on that album that Richards had no hand in writing or recording.
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There's a quick jibe there... :-D