The Rolling Stones - Blue & Lonesome (Album Review)
Friday, 09 December 2016
Written by Simon Ramsay
They’ve certainly earned their reputation as the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, but the Rolling Stones have always been, at heart, a terrific blues outfit. It’s the genre on which their empire was built and the bedrock of their swaggering identity. It’s their first, most abiding love. And now, over 50 years since they formed, Mick Jagger and co. have returned to mother on a youthful and exuberant album of blues covers for the connoisseur. That’s right, Stones purists: Christmas has come early.
Today, Jagger and Keith Richards, along with drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ronnie Wood, have nothing left to prove. Their legacy is set in stone. They’re wealthy beyond measure. They don’t need to make new music and the gaps between albums – 11 years since ‘A Bigger Bang’ – suggested the group were happy to see out their days as a global touring entity. This record, though, is heartening proof to the contrary.
‘Blue & Lonesome’ is simply one of the most authentic blues albums released in years. As raw as a bloodied steak, dirty as the muddy waters of Mississippi and visceral as a howling wolf’s call, the band’s passion and vigour is every bit as scintillating as it was in the 1960s when they effectively sold the genre back to the Americans in a more electrified, sexually charged manner.
Going back to their roots in every sense, this album was recorded in just three days at British Grove Studios in west London, within spitting distance of the pubs and clubs they performed at in their infancy.
Helmed by producer Don Was and the Glimmer Twins, this economical set of 12 tracks was bashed out live, capturing loose-limbed kinetic grooves, seat-of-the-pants spontaneity and paint-stripping chemistry few bands can match.
Their take on Buddy Johnson’s Just Your Fool worships at the altar of the 12 bar, with its stomp sounding both vintage and vital. A glinting-eyed strut through Howlin’ Wolf’s Commit A Crime, meanwhile, finds the magnificent Watts and bassist Darryl Jones totally in the pocket as Richards and Wood’s guitars nip in and out. Their crackling licks are typical of how this band effortlessly finds the space to express themselves.
Memphis Slim’s title track begins with a coiled-spring tension that devolves into a taut, smoky angst as Jagger’s vocals smoulder and Richards’ instinctive, expressive stabs defy perfection with the understanding that bum notes work just fine. This is real, unvarnished and truthful.
The guitarist’s relationship with Jagger always fascinates and the call-and-response intro on Little Walter’s Hate To See You Go is musical snapshot of their dynamic. You can see Mick aiming brash harmonica flurries at his sideman in a manner that’s playfully arrogant, in your face and challenging. Keith’s licks, on the other hand, are steely, wry and nonchalantly cool.
Jagger is sensational on this record. Fiercely engaged and committed, he pulls primal yelps and cries from his soul on Magic Sam’s All Your Love and scatters masterful harmonica textures throughout, making his mouth organ dance over the joyous, spring-heeled charge of Little Walter’s I Gotta Go.
A British blues album wouldn’t be complete without a helping hand from the best in the business and Eric Clapton adds some super smooth slide work to Everybody Knows About My Good Thing and Willie Dixon’s I Can’t Quit You Baby. He nails it, but it would also have been nice for Mick Taylor to appear as he remains the finest blues guitarist to have passed through the Stones’ ranks.
If 2016 has taught us anything it’s that our rock ‘n’ roll heroes are far from immortal. This could obviously be the Rolling Stones’ recorded adios, in which case they’ll bow out with their finest album in decades. ‘Blue & Lonesome’, at its core, is a testament to music’s enduring power. Immune to changing times, impervious to the almighty dollar and undiminished by the aging process, it’s a love that lasts a lifetime, a bond that can never be broken.
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