The Rolling Stones - A Bigger Bang
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Written By: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 05.09.2005
In mid-August 2004, "The Rolling Stones" drummer Charlie Watts announced that he had throat cancer. His bandmates received the news with shock.
In the period leading up to it, in a process that had been developing slowly, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger would arrive at the studio with different song ideas, after beginning the creative process from a distance. Charlie Watts' diagnosis changed all of that. They realized they might not have all the time in the world.
Keith Richards told Billboard in 2005 that suddenly he and Mick looked at each other and thought they might end up as the only two remaining founding members of the band. They thought about it, but did not talk about it.
As a result, "The Rolling Stones" gathered about two months after Watts' diagnosis and began recording their 22nd studio album according to the British catalog, "A Bigger Bang", released on September 5, 2005.
It would become the last "Rolling Stones" studio album of newly written original material recorded entirely with Watts.
It was also their first studio album in eight years, since "Bridges to Babylon".
The sudden sense of urgency changed their working habits. After years of becoming accustomed to working remotely, Jagger and Richards returned to working closely together.
They wrote and performed the album demos by themselves. Both Jagger and Richards played bass guitar, and Jagger even played several drum parts. Their only rule was to keep things simple.
Left on their own, Jagger and Richards rediscovered their musical partnership, that special point of connection that originally drove "The Rolling Stones" to greatness. The Glimmer Twins were back in a big way.
Richards said in an interview with CBS that, for him, and he believed for Mick as well, the closer they worked together, the better it became.
He added that after "Exile On Main Street" they had become used to writing songs while 3,000 miles apart, and thought that would be their method from then on, but this time proved them wrong.
Eventually Watts returned, and his rhythm tracks, cleverly arranged, largely completed the album. Ron Wood added some slide guitar, but the music remained simple and recalled the great days of "The Rolling Stones" in the sixties and seventies.
Jagger and Richards also wanted minimal outside interference when it came to musicians. Apart from Darryl Jones on bass, Chuck Leavell on keyboards and multi-instrumentalist Matt Clifford, most of the basic tracks were recorded by Jagger-Richards-Watts.
The main key to the album's success, including on the charts where it reached No. 3 in the US and No. 2 in the UK, was the way it was built around the spark created when Keith's guitar and Charlie's drums lock into the groove.
There may never have been another team capable of driving a band as efficiently as those two, but in much of their work after the seventies that magic tended to disappear somewhat into the mix.
On hard-rocking songs such as "It Won't Take Long" and the single "Rough Justice", "The Rolling Stones" reclaim the title of the greatest rock and roll band in the world, rather than merely the greatest live band on the planet. Mick and Keith always said they wanted to grow old like the bluesmen they admired, and on "A Bigger Bang" they finally understand how that is supposed to happen.
Lyrically, Jagger returns throughout much of the album to the pattern of the cheating man and the betrayed man, because with him there have always been two sides to the coin.
Six years had passed since the highly publicized separation between Mick Jagger and his former partner Jerry Hall, the mother of four of his children, and Mick did not miss the opportunity.
The first three songs on this long and packed 16-track album, "Rough Justice", "Let Me Down Slow" and "It Won't Take Long", were written about women and love from several perspectives.
On the funky "Rain Fall Down", Jagger, almost like a prophet of doom, looks at London with concern about what lies ahead. He said that the feeling of living in a battleground, with everyone on edge, was already in his head.
Jagger explained that there were so many armed police in the streets, that walking around and seeing machine guns was not how he imagined London, and that if things continued down that path there might be no way back to what it had been.
The song reflects Jagger's discomfort with contemporary society, especially in London, which he imagines as a battleground marked by growing militarization and a sense of social decline and possible collapse, symbolized by peeling paint and brown skies. The lyrics convey a bleak outlook, criticize corrupt bankers and express concern about humanity moving away from its original values because of sweeping imperialism and social problems.
On "Streets of Love", Jagger returns to reflecting on his broken heart. He admits that his heart has been broken, that the truth is sad and that he himself behaved badly. These words immediately reveal the song as a sincere apology from a former lover who regrets his past behavior.
The imagery in the song is filled with sorrow and anxiety, reflecting the speaker's deep regret and emotional turmoil as he deals with the consequences of his actions.
When Mick Jagger wrote these words, he may have been reflecting on his turbulent relationship with Jerry Hall, which ended in 1999, largely against the background of his repeated infidelities.
On the blues song "Back of My Hand", Keith Richards recalled sleeping downstairs while the studio was upstairs. One night he thought he was hearing an old Muddy Waters song he did not know, but it turned out to be Mick working on a part for "Back of My Hand".
The song has the heavy, slow atmosphere of blues forefathers such as Lead Belly and Bukka White, artists closely associated with prison songs and the harsh discipline of incarceration. It also contains one of the familiar blues characters, the street-corner preacher announcing that trouble is coming and hearing a sad tune he can read like the back of his hand. Mick Jagger plays slide guitar here.
Jagger continues to write about women and relationships from the position of a vulnerable and weakened man on "She Saw Me Coming", "Biggest Mistake" and "Laugh, I Nearly Died". In between, Keith Richards also indulges in writing a love song for his wife Patti Hansen on "This Place Is Empty".
One evening, while alone at their home in Weston, Connecticut, with Patti away, Richards found himself surrounded by a deep sense of loneliness. That melancholy mood led him to create the gentle melody and touching lyrics about the place being empty without her and about neither of them wanting to be alone.
Richards may have drawn inspiration from popular Broadway and classic American songwriters such as Hoagy Carmichael and Cole Porter when writing the song's delicate notes.
The harmonies in this soft Keith Richards ballad are quite distinctive, combining elements of blues, jazz and country, while Richards' voice carries a rough quality that at times recalls Tom Waits.
The album breaks away from its recurring man-woman themes on "Dangerous Beauty", a song written about Private Lynndie England and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib was used by American forces in Iraq. Guards abused prisoners in 2003, and the photographs became public in 2004. England appeared in several of the images and became involved in the scandal. She was sentenced to three years in military prison.
On "Sweet Neo Con", "The Rolling Stones" take a political position against the George W. Bush administration and neoconservatism. The song also deals with the Iraq War, Halliburton and gasoline prices. After the album was released there was concern that sponsors of "The Rolling Stones" might abandon them because of the political stance, but there were no significant consequences.
Jagger continues to express his feelings, whether about himself, the country or the band, and everyone can interpret it differently, on "Driving Too Fast". A car races at top speed in the middle of a violent storm outside. When Jagger sings, there is more happening here than the possibility of a crash. There is also a message that too many roads lead nowhere.
The album cover shows the band members huddled together beneath an explosion of light, their faces illuminated from below. The photograph was taken by Nick Knight and designed by Michael Nash Associates. It has been described as revealing and slightly frightening, with the band members' faces resembling shrunken apple heads. The design also includes a separate and different image of the band at the bottom of the cover, creating a layered and somewhat mysterious composition.
By coincidence, a little less than two years after the release of "A Bigger Bang", a new American television series called "The Big Bang Theory" debuted. The series, whose main characters Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter are physicists at the California Institute of Technology, became a major success.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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