The Rolling Stones - It's Only Rock 'n Roll
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 18.10.1974
"I did have a falling out with Mick Jagger over some songs I should have been credited with co-writing on \"It's Only Rock 'n Roll\". We were quite close friends and co-operated quite closely on getting that album made. By that time Mick and Keith weren't really working together as a team so I'd spend a lot of time in the studio."
The speaker is Mick Taylor, who joined "The Rolling Stones" in June 1969 and made his live debut with the band at the famous free concert in Hyde Park on July 5, 1969, before an estimated crowd of 250,000. Taylor maintained that he had worked closely with Jagger on the songwriting for their twelfth British studio album, "It's Only Rock 'n Roll", released on October 18, 1974.
A little over a decade after their formation, "The Rolling Stones" were beginning to look like a band that had grown comfortable, and they seemed ready for a change. It started with a shift in atmosphere from their previous album, "Goats Head Soup", recorded mainly in Kingston, Jamaica. Leaving that Caribbean setting behind, they moved into a cooler European environment at "Musicland" studios, established by Giorgio Moroder in Munich.
They thanked longtime producer Jimmy Miller, who had produced their previous five studio albums, and began producing themselves under the pseudonym "The Glimmer Twins".
Keith Richards explained that Miller's contribution had diminished as producing an annual Stones album became a routine, almost a way of life. He and Mick felt ready to try it themselves, having learned more about recording techniques and developed their own ideas. It was clear to them that this part of the record-making process needed a change.
After once again receiving no credit for his songwriting contributions, Taylor announced in December 1974 that he was leaving the band after five and a half years. That was not his only reason for leaving. He later spoke about needing to escape the drugs that surrounded life in the band. His eventual replacement was Ronnie Wood, who had participated in the recording of the title track, "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)". David Bowie also took part in the original session, contributing backing vocals.
Although Taylor's departure from "The Stones" struck a sour note, his connections with the band members endured, and he was occasionally invited to join them onstage.
The song was promoted with a video directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, showing the band dressed in sailor suits and playing inside a tent that gradually fills with bubbles. It was one of Taylor's last filmed appearances as a member of the band.
The foam was detergent, and according to Richards, the sailor suits were a last-minute idea because none of the musicians wanted to ruin their own clothes. Jagger said the filming was difficult and unusually time-consuming. The cameras and lights had to remain outside the tent because of the risk of electrocution, and the band took out insurance. Richards recalled that poor Charlie Watts almost drowned because they had forgotten he was sitting down.
The title track set the tone for the album's reception as a renewed commitment to the pure rock 'n' roll of "The Rolling Stones". It took shape with considerable help and inspiration from "Faces" guitarist Ron Wood, who had let Richards stay at his house for a while. That friendship eventually paved the way for Wood to replace Taylor.
Although it did not match the success of some of their earlier records, "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" was an important transitional album for "The Rolling Stones". Taylor, bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts played on most of the tracks, while Ian Stewart, Nicky Hopkins and Billy Preston added their distinctive touches. It also marked percussionist Ray Cooper's first appearance on a band album. He would continue working with "The Rolling Stones" into the 1980s.
The record was initially conceived as a half-live, half-studio project. One side would feature performances from "The Stones"' European tour, while the other would contain newly recorded covers of their favorite R&B songs.
The covers recorded included "Drift Away", popularized by Dobie Gray, Jimmy Reed's "Shame, Shame, Shame", and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by "The Temptations", which ultimately became the album's only cover. Before long, the band began working on riffs from Richards and new ideas from Jagger, abandoning the original concept in favor of an album made up almost entirely of original material.
The Philadelphia sound had a considerable influence on both "The Rolling Stones" and Bowie, who would explore that connection further on "Young Americans". Among the groups working in that style was "Blue Magic", which recorded sweet soul music for "Atlantic". Other acts in a similar vein included "The Delfonics" and "The Stylistics". Members of "Blue Magic" contributed backing vocals to "If You Really Want to Be My Friend", which can be heard as Jagger asking his wife Bianca to give him some freedom.
The album's first three songs expose the band's vulnerable side, but much of the record also reveals a sexist, misogynistic streak. That hostility toward women surfaces bluntly in a passing line in "Time Waits for No One", about time destroying a building or a woman's face, or across an entire song such as "Short and Curlies".
Jagger's tendency to treat women and work as extensions of the same burden turns up in the strangest places and in the funniest ways. On "Luxury", he plays a Jamaican factory worker with two monkeys on his back. He works hard for the company and works hard to keep his partner living in luxury.
If one song captures the band's state of mind at the time, it is "Time Waits for No One", a meditation on the value of time. Before reconvening to record, the musicians had taken some time off and gone their separate ways. Taylor traveled to Brazil, and a Latin influence echoes through his playing on the track. The percussion is played by Cooper, who also worked with Elton John.
The album closes with "Fingerprint File", a song that can be heard against the backdrop of American politics, the Watergate scandal and John Lennon's difficulties obtaining a U.S. green card. Its sense of "Big Brother is watching you" emerges almost in parallel with Bowie's "Diamond Dogs", which explored related themes roughly six months earlier.
It is one of "The Stones"' clearest moves toward funk with an electronic edge, with a strong resemblance to the style of "Sly and the Family Stone". Key ingredients include Jagger's rhythm guitar, colored by the prominent phaser effect of an MXR Phase 100 pedal, and Taylor's jazz- and funk-oriented bass playing. Richards uses a wah-wah pedal on his guitar. Wyman plays synthesizer, Watts drums, Preston clavinet and Hopkins piano.
Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, a painter, illustrator, comic artist and photographer, created the album cover. He also produced the rock-star portraits that make up the beautiful book "Rock Dreams".
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