A two-album show starting with the amazing journey, to quote one of the song titles, that is the rock opera Tommy, released by The Who in 1969, followed by Between The Buttons (UK version), released by The Rolling Stones in 1967.
In between, a one-song bridge, Blame It On The Stones, leading into the Stones album, from the late great Kris Kristofferson, who died at age 88 last week. I’ll play a few more Kristofferson tunes on Monday night’s show, 8-10 pm ET, Oct. 7.
My album commentaries are below each record’s track list and the Kristofferson tune.
The Who – Tommy
1. Overture
2. It’s A Boy
3. 1921
4. Amazing Journey
5. Sparks
6. Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker)
7. Christmas
8. Cousin Kevin
9. The Acid Queen
10. Underture
11. Do You Think It’s Alright?
12. Fiddle About
13. Pinball Wizard
14. There’s A Doctor
15. Go To The Mirror!
16. Tommy Can You Hear Me?
17. Smash The Mirror
18. Sensation
19. Miracle Cure
20. Sally Simpson
21. I’m Free
22. Welcome
23. Tommy’s Holiday Camp
24. We’re Not Gonna Take It/See Me Feel Me/Listening To You
Tommy is arguably best digested in one go, which is natural in that it was designed as an opera/concept album. But – as in the case of, say, Money being pulled as a single from Pink Floyd’s concept The Dark Side Of The Moon – singles like Pinball Wizard and I’m Free were released from Tommy and, in Pinball Wizard’s case at least, landed on various Who compilations. So the album’s songs – The Acid Queen for me is another – can be appreciated outside the context of the larger work. It might just be me but in listening to the full piece for the first time in a while, I was reminded how many of the songs – 1921, Christmas, Cousin Kevin, Go To The Mirror!, Sally Simpson, Welcome among them – are perhaps not immediately recognizable by title but are instantly familiar, to anyone knowing the album, once the first notes of the tunes are heard. And of course there’s the interconnectivity of offerings like Overture, Underture and Sparks, although they are separated by other songs, with segments of them also sprinkled elsewhere within the album, all culminating in the epic We’re Not Gonna Take It/See Me, Feel Me/Listening To You suite that closes the album and The Who took to epic proportions live, particularly in the perhaps definitive version performed by the band at Woodstock. A remarkable record.
Kris Kristofferson, Blame It On The Stones
Lead track, from his 1970 debut album Kristofferson, a song written in defence of The Rolling Stones, who had just come out of the late 1969 chaos of the infamous Altamont concert, it references their 1966 drug-themed single Mother’s Little Helper and adult angst at the supposed antics and or ‘threat’ of younger generations. “Kids today’, in other words, when adults saying such things obviously forget they were once ‘kids today’. As Keith Richards once opined about what he considered the absurdity of the then to the Stones ‘elder’ establishment, particularly in home country of England, being worried about whatever damage a rock band could do, specifically discussing when he and Mick Jagger were briefly jailed after a 1967 drug bust:
“A country that’s been running a thousand years worried about two herberts running around? Do me a favor. That’s when you realize how fragile our little society is.” Herbert: (from The Lexicon of British slang) UK slang for a foolish person or used as a mild form of abuse. Normally prefixed by “spotty,” e.g. “Will ya look at that spotty Herbert!”
That and more such pearls of Keef wisdom are available in two books I recommend: Stone Me: The Wit and Wisdom of Keith Richards, compiled by Mark Blake and What Would Keith Richards Do? Daily Affirmations From A Rock ‘n’ Roll Survivor, by Jessica Pallington West.
As for Kristofferson, his debut album, beyond the Stones-related song, also included many of his perennials – Help Me Make It Through The Night, Casey’s Last Ride, Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down and of course his own version of his Me And Bobby McGee, which Janis Joplin took, posthumously, to No. 1 on her 1971 album Pearl, released in January of ’71, three months after her death. Kristofferson’s debut album, under its original title, was a commercial failure but after the success of the Joplin cover, was retitled Me And Bobby McGee in 1971 and – showing the power and name recognition of a hit single, cover version or otherwise – reached No. 10 on the country music charts and No. 43 on Billboard’s top 100.
The Rolling Stones – Between The Buttons (UK album track listing)
1. Yesterday’s Papers
2. My Obsession
3. Back Street Girl
4. Connection
5. She Smiled Sweetly
6. Cool, Calm & Collected
7. All Sold Out
8. Please Go Home
9. Who’s Been Sleeping Here?
10. Complicated
11. Miss Amanda Jones
12. Something Happened To Me Yesterday
I’ve never understood the noted English music journalist Roy Carr’s dismissal of this album. I respect Carr, who passed away in 2018, and music is of course subjective to everyone’s ears and tastes but when he – in his 1976 book The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record dismissed it as “a bunch of vaudevillian Kinks’ outtakes” I can only say:
1. Why criticize The Kinks, one of the greatest-ever bands?
2. Carr, you’re full of crap. Between The Buttons is a great, creative, inventive album. Amazing stuff like the beautiful She Smiled Sweetly and Backstreet Girl, the latter of which, along with the Bo Diddley-influenced rocker Please Go Home I first cottoned to via my older sister’s Flowers compilation. I’m fully on board with the so-called Big Four studio albums of Rolling Stones lore, those being, in order, the run from Beggars Banquet (1968) to Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile On Main St. (1972) but the band released loads of amazing material, not just hit singles like Satisfaction but deeper cuts as on Between The Buttons, throughout the earlier 1960s Brian Jones era. To each one’s own, obviously, in terms of liking or appreciating, but when one considers that all of it is part of the Stones’ output, throughout the now 60-plus years they’ve been around, the breadth and depth of what they’ve released is mind-boggling.
As mentioned atop the set list program, I’m playing the UK version of Between The Buttons. As was the practice, at least back then, in the UK singles were usually not placed on albums. There wasn’t conformity on track listings on UK and US album releases until 1968 for bands like the Stones and The Beatles. The US/North American version of Between The Buttons thus featured the hit singles Let’s Spend The Night Together and Ruby Tuesday.