 A
deafening bang, between hips and cigarettes
by Christian Diemoz
Musically
speaking, “A Bigger Bang” is a safe hit. But lyrically? No doubts: Jagger
and Richards opened the right drawer of their song writing desk, as Christian
Diemoz digs out in this song-by-song analysis
Look
ahead to September, then sit down, chill out and just watch “A Bigger Bang”
climb the charts as quickly as the Shuttle leaves the atmosphere after lift-off.
It will happen. It has to happen. The marketing engine already runs at full
throttle, and all systems go. Even the specialized press, which played the
zap’n’bang game on the Stones for years, this time agrees quite unanimously:
their upcoming work will deliver fans all what they’re waiting for.
Guess
that even “Uncut”, normally a cove of very composed guys, not looking at all
like Stones addicts, featured a huge story on the 21st century studio
kick-off by the lads (let alone the four new, forgettable, if forgivable, tracks
on “Forty Licks”), and dared to suggest as its sub-title “How the Glimmer
Twins got their groove back”.
For
sure, musically speaking “A Bigger Bang” will hit the nail on the head, but
what about it lyrically? Truth has always to be spoken fiercely and loud: Mick
and Keith threw into the bunch the most classic and tasty ingredients to cook
their maybe-last-studio-cake. So, echoes of the bang will be heard between hips
and cigarettes, too, in women-missing places, in the veins of lonely men, tired
of sipping champagne in exotic paradises, and – last, but not least in Stones
grammar - in the mind of two persons making sweet love, while a phone rings in
vain.
Didn’t
you recognize the Glimmers? Well, so be aware that in “A Bigger Bang” Keith
whispers in a girls’ ear “I’m still learning my lines, baby / since
you’ve rewritten my part”, as Sir Mick plays the American Gigolo by
disclosing “She saw me coming / I felt like I was a clone”. Sex, feelings,
loneliness, frustrations, resentment, hopes and ambitions – in a word: life
– mix themselves in a lyric cocktail so marvellously recalling the stylish
cipher brought to fame by one of the most underrated composing duo.
Let’s
follow an order, tho’. In the international single, a man who’s just lost
his better half walks along the “Streets Of Love”, “and they’re full of tears / and they’re full of fears”. A hard
march (even an interior one), to which he’s been forced by an “awful bright”
and “awful smart” woman. Even the proudest male on Earth (would it be you
Sir Mick?) in front of such a character, would speak the “awful truth”: “I
must admit you broke my heart”. Verses reminding, as the melody does, of some
“musical artworks” from Jagger’s last solo work “Goddess In The Doorway”
(2001).
Less
cheap, for sure, is the path defining the “Rough Justice” journey. “One time you were my baby chicken / Now you’ve grown into a fox” is the
opening line of the song. A mutation leading to an unusual evolution of the male
partner too: “once upon a time i was your little red rooster / but now I’m
just one of your cocks”. Are you calling it cheeky? Wait to hear the following
verse, please: “so put your lips to my hips baby / tell me what’s on your
mind / I know you’ve still got the animal attraction for me”. Hard to keep
the mind far from those “Two tongue kisses” in “Star Star”, or to “I
can feel your tongue on mine”, in “Almost Hear You Sigh”.
 Raw,
as any southern comfort blues should be, “Back Of My Hand” sounds too. While
a slide howls to the sky like a blessed beast, and Lord Richards unrolls a
rhythm carpet hunting Robert Johnson’s phantom, Jagger tells of
“a preacher / on the corner / ranting like a crazy man”. The
mysterious creature “Says there’s trouble / troubles a comin’ / I can read
it like the back of my hand”. In all this mayhem, Sir Mick “see dreams / I
see visions / images I don’t understand / I see Goya’s paranoias”. If
“Fancyman Blues”, from “Steel Wheels” wasn’t about a woman (“you’re
looking good baby”), these lyrics would have fit as a glove.
A
Venus, not surely a missed one, is the pivotal figure for “Oh No, Not You
Again”, the song performed during the “Corn Flakes concert”, held on 10th
May at
New York
’s
Juilliard
Music
School
, as a press conference for
the tour and album launch. The refrain pulls up the curtain on the whole thing:
“Oh no, not you again / fucking up my life / it was bad the first time / I
can’t stand it twice”. Too bad “the setting’s so romantic / love is in
the air / all is perfect / but I’m allergic to your business stares”.
An
intimate phone call provides a spicy storyboard for “Take Me Down Slow”.
“Your face a little bit flushed / for a walk in the park / and you’re
clutching your phone / as you walk in the dark / and your smile got a twitch”.
From here onwards, Mr. Jagger won’t blush: “you’re looking so hardcore /
is it something I said?”. Who knows if British Mick found some inspiration in
the cell phone hard sessions between David Beckham and his lover?
There
is no heartache that a male can’t survive. Jagger is extremely sure about that
and in “It Won’t Take Long” he maintains “life is short / one look and
it’s over / causes quite a shock”. “All I got is some memories / stuck in
an old shoe box / and it won’t take long to forget ya / you know I’m never
wrong / it’ll all be over by Christmas / no it won’t take long”. A
subliminal message to his new fiancé L’Wren Scott, or the curtain going down
once and for all on the Jerry days?
Less
direct and more romantic, like it happened with “Thief In The Night” or
“Can’t Be Seen”, comes Richards lyric fingerprint. “This Place Is Empty”
makes the title for one of the two tracks sung by the buccaneer. The reasons of
that line are an easy guess. The room “it’s empty without you”. So,
“make me safe at home / you and me, we’re just like all the rest / and we
don’t want to be alone”. Not that far from “and you know this heart is
constant / I’m your lover, baby / thru and thru”.
Landscapes
of Jagger-ish extraction are what “Laugh? I Nearly Died” is made of.
“I’ve been to
Africa
/ looking for my soul /
kinda feel like an actor looking for a role” is the first snap. Then, allow
the time to change roll, and there he goes again with “I’ve been in
Arabia
/ seen a million stars /
been sipping
Champagne
on the boulevards”.
Obviously, the chorus reminds that “I’m so sick and tired / tired of turnin’
the tide / so I said my goodbyes / laugh? laugh? I nearly died”. We only miss
“Blinded By Love”, “Queen of the
Nile
”, but everything else is
in the right place.
Is
love just a teen-ager affair? No, states Sir Mick in “The Biggest Mistake Of
My Life”. “When love comes so late / it’ll really hit hard / it slams
through the gate / it’ll catch you off guard” being his opinion on the
matter. However, this is about the mistake of a lifetime, so, after “we’ve
been living together for over a year”, “now I’m down in a slump and I’m
eating alone”.
Urban
disease and daily routine stand behind “Rain Fall Down”, finding roots in
the same “Rock And A Hard Place” post-industrial ambience. The question is
as direct as you could imagine: “why do we live in this strange weird town? /
they build it up and let it all fall down / feel like we’re living in a
battleground / the paint is peeling / and sky turned brown”. It would be
interesting to ask Mr. Jagger if the Muse came while he was in NYC,
London
, or after a documentary on some Latin-American or Asian metropolitan
areas.
But
if you’re looking for a “Stones manifesto”, it’s at “She Saw Me
Coming” that you’ve to aim your GPS system. In fact, “she saw me coming /
she worked so fast / and she didn’t mess around / it was all over before the
sun go down”. It ain’t 1975 no more, so feminists won’t react like in the
days of the “I’m Black And Blue For The Rolling Stones” stand-up display,
headed by a roped and beaten girl, but be sure you won’t notice that many
chicks whistling this tune will reaching their offices.
The
album slips away with “Infamy”, the other Richards-sung ballad. Always
deserving a Lordship, our man whispers “I’m still learning my lines, baby /
since you’ve rewritten my part”. Fact is that “you’re living in a
nightmare / but I mistook it for a dream”, but one day
Donning Street
will be forced to reckon
Keith skills and contribution.
Before
calling it “end”, it still remains to discuss the mysterious “Sweet
Neo-Con”, in which the lads slap someone with an explosive “you call
yourself a Christian / I think that you’re a hypocrite / you say you are a
patriot / I think that you are a crock of shit”. Virgin America denied it
applies to any of the White House residents, soon to be contradicted by an
“anonymous source close to Jagger” maintaining the opposite. Anyone plays
his game, but – if you want to pick a side - don’t forget this other couple
lines: “it’s liberty for all / ‘cause democracy’s our style / unless you
are against us / then it’s prison without trial”.
As
a final period, “Dangerous Beauty” (in pure Wilde-ish mood – i.e. “you
can resist everything, but temptations”), “Look What The Cat Dragged In”
and “Driving Too Fast” distinguish themselves for following the classic
Jagger/Richards lyric footstep. To end this with “Uncut”, where it all
started from, welcome back Glimmer Twins.
Christian
Diemoz
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