So Old It’s New set featuring two albums released in 1989 – Steel Wheels by The Rolling Stones and Neil Young’s Freedom. Why 1989? Well, I was dipping into a book about the Berlin Wall, which fell in 1989 so, the way my mind works, one thing led to another, the year 1989 stuck and on with the show.
It was an interesting year musically with lots of great or at least solid ‘comeback’ albums, at least by critical assessments, released by so-called classic rock artists as the Stones and Young but also Eric Clapton (Journeyman), Bob Dylan (Oh Mercy), Lou Reed (New York), among others so this may be installment one in a short series of Saturday morning shows. But, who knows where I’ll go next? My thoughts on each album appear at the bottom of this post.
The Rolling Stones – Steel Wheels
1. Sad Sad Sad
2. Mixed Emotions
3. Terrifying
4. Hold On To Your Hat
5. Hearts For Sale
6. Blinded By Love
7. Rock And A Hard Place
8. Can’t Be Seen
9. Almost Hear You Sigh
10. Continental Drift
11. Break The Spell
12. Slipping Away
1. Rockin’ In The Free World (acoustic)
2. Crime In The City (Sixty To Zero Part I)
3. Don’t Cry
4. Hangin’ On A Limb
5. Eldorado
6. The Ways Of Love
7. Someday
8. On Broadway
9. Wrecking Ball
10. No More
11. Too Far Gone
12. Rockin’ In The Free World (electric)
My thoughts on Steel Wheels:
As the narrative goes, Steel Wheels was a reunion album by an apparently broken band that was in tatters or not even existing given what’s been termed “World War Three” as chief Stones’ songwriters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were at odds in the mid-1980s thanks in part to Richards’ emergence from a decade-or more long dalliance with booze and drugs.
What’s maybe weird is, while I knew via reports of the Stones’ internal dynamics around this time, I as a fan didn’t make much if anything of it. They’d released an album (the under-appreciated in my book Dirty Work, 1986) and were working on the next one which came out as Steel Wheels. Three years between albums, by that time, didn’t seem like a lot even to those of us who grew up on an album (or 2 in Elton John’s case via his then-contract) a year by most artists.
But to the gossipers among the citizenry who seize on things . . . As the story goes, Richards was now at least relatively clean and coherent and seeking to reassert more influence in group activities beyond merely playing guitar. Jagger, meanwhile, who had essentially been the lone man at the tiller since the 1970s for the most part, certainly in a business sense, and become used to full leadership, bristled at his old friend’s desire to more fully direct Stones’ activities.
This was exacerbated by Jagger’s pursuit of a solo career which annoyed all of the band but mostly Richards. Keith famously said he’d ‘slit his throat’ if Jagger toured without the Stones and Mick did, with the brilliant Jeff Beck on guitar and survived, slitless. I have a couple bootlegs of those shows and they’re good but I must say don’t really have that ‘Stones’ sound, which maybe Mick didn’t want. They missed the Richards’ raunch which the technically obviously brilliant Beck didn’t arguably best provide but again, maybe that’s what Jagger wanted. Yet if you’re going to play Stones tunes . . .
What truly annoyed Richards primarily and the rest of the Stones was that Jagger largely built his tour on a Stones set list. Jagger had refused a Stones tour after the 1986 album Dirty Work yet subsequently goes on the road playing . . . mostly Stones tunes. I like and admire both guys, but I think Keith and the others had a point.
At any rate, Keith crowed, lyrically, once he decided, eff it, I’ll do my own album. Out came Talk Is Cheap in 1988. Keef’s critically-acclaimed as the best Stones albeit not exactly Stones release since whenever (although lagging way behind Jaggers’ solo album sales). Talk Is Cheap contained the song You Don’t Move Me including the lyric passage ‘Now you wanna roll the dice you already crapped out twice’ in reference to Jagger’s solo albums She’s The Boss and Primitive Cool which, certainly sales wise, actually did well on the charts and by far better than any Richards’ solo release. But the musical point was made, the boys buried the hatchet and Steel Wheels was the result. Listened to objectively without any baggage of who the Stones have been, it’s quite the great album including the nice touch of Continental Drift, a compelling, intoxicating track which via the use of the Master Musicians of Joujouka paid homage to founding Stones’ member Brian Jones and his work with that musical assemblage in 1968. The Stones used excerpts from Continental Drift as intro music on the Steel Wheels tour.
Overall, beyond the studio album itself Steel Wheels and its supporting tour opened a new phase in the career of The Rolling Stones in terms of their massive tours, huge stages and so on. It was now a tight, arguably scripted show, full of backup musicians and singers live band, a revue, almost. Not to all tastes yet still undeniably The Rolling Stones who at various times – the stripped down No Security Tour, the Stripped album and concerts from the 1990s, the 2013 killer unvarnished show I saw in Toronto among many of mine starting with the raunchily ragged resounding 1978 Some Girls tour stop in Buffalo with the Stones – were at their rawest.
I mentioned earlier in this ramble how Steel Wheels was seen as a return to form from the 1986 album Dirty Work which to me is groupthink at work. Say something often enough and people apparently believe it, even if they haven’t read or listened to whatever it is the media shapers are talking about.
Yes, I’m a huge Stones fan thus will arguably find merit in whatever they do but I immediately liked Dirty Work, despite reviews few of which I actually read before buying the album because the Stones were always just an automatic buy for me.
I do distinctly recall Peter Goddard, then a respected music writer at the Toronto Star, calling it an ‘angry’ and great album. Goddard didn’t expound on it very much as I recall, just reviewed the songs and the album overall, so can’t be sure if he meant the ‘anger’ in terms of the aggression in the music – which is what I took from his review, simply musically – or the anger that then existed between Stones’ songwriting principals Jagger and Richards as imposing itself on the music, as most other critics suggested.
Whatever. All in all it maybe proves another point, that being: just listen to the record and make one’s own judgement. Often, and obviously, the less you read in terms of critics’ reviews, certainly at least before consuming a book or listening to an album the more you come to things unvarnished and uninfluenced and thus make your own judgments although it can be interesting reading other viewpoints but, I’d submit, only after you’ve read or listened and formed your own opinion.
And my thoughts on Neil Young’s Freedom:
Best track on this album to me is Crime In The City, which I’ve played independently on the show. Just a brilliant story song, lengthy at nearly nine minutes but well worth the trip. Just a terrific album all of it, a combination of all Young does/has done well, acoustic tunes, rock, hard rock, everything Geffen was expecting when that record company signed Young earlier in the 1980s but were met with a shift in Young’s creative muse, resulting in albums like Trans and its Kraftwrerk-like electronic sounds, the rockabilly of Everybody’s Rockin’ and the pure country of Old Ways. Geffen was appalled, sued Young as being un-Young like, he counter sued in the name of artistic independence and a settlement was quickly reached.
In the meantime Young returned to his former longtime home Reprise Records and in 1988 released a quality jump blues album This Note’s For You which also led to some legal issues. It was first sold as Neil Young and The Bluenotes. But after a lawsuit from Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes original R & B band dating to the 1950s, Young had to change the album labelling from Neil Young & The Bluenotes to just Neil Young . . . I have both versions. Not sure if the one with ‘Bluenotes’ on the cover is rare or worth anything, just as I have the original Rolling Stones vinyl album cover of Some Girls which later, due to threatened lawsuits by various movie stars depicted on the cover, was amended to ‘under reconstruction’. The Stones one I’d submit probably is worth more, if it’s worth anything but I probably stupidly completely reduced any value it might have via me putting my initials on it for organizational purposes during a move. But, actually, I’m happy to still own it as well as the original Neil Young album cover.