The Rolling Stones talk Blue & Lonesome, the album they’ve wanted to make since the Sixties
Legends return with their first studio album in eleven years
IT’S fair to say the roots of the new Rolling Stones album date back to October 17, 1961.
To borrow a line from their classic Temptations cover, that assumption is NOT just my imagination . . . running away with me.
On that fateful day, Keith Richards, then 17, bumped into Mick Jagger, 18, on platform two of Dartford Station.
Richards went to Sidcup Art School, Jagger the more salubrious London School Of Economics . . . but they shared a love of the blues. Jagger was clutching two prized LPs, Chuck Berry’s Rockin’ At The Hops and The Best Of Muddy Waters, while Richards carried a guitar.
Already acquaintances, they bonded during a short train journey over the raw, soulful music that had emerged from America’s Deep South and spread to Chicago and the world.
The rest, as they say, is history, with the pair going on to form the iconic band named after the Muddy Waters song Rollin’ Stone.
Soon they were giving the songs of Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon a cool British makeover in small clubs around London.
There’s even a blue plaque at Dartford Station to celebrate the Jagger/Richards meeting of minds, vividly remembered by Keith.
“I did used to bump into Mick here and there in town, not on a regular basis,” he told me earlier this year. “We’d just pass each other and go, ‘How you doing?’
“Maybe none of this would have happened without that meeting and him having those records in his hand and me drooling, ‘Where did you get those?!’
“It’s just one of those magical moments in time that put the both of us together and here we are, bless his old heart.”
Today, 55 years on, sees the release of Blue & Lonesome, the first Stones studio album since 2005’s A Bigger Bang, a high-octane salute to the pioneering bluesmen they still adore so much.
It’s a raw and explosive collection of 12 covers, not the most obvious choices, revealing deep knowledge of the genre.
Jagger’s clearly chuffed with the results and says: “This album is a homage to our favourites, the people that kicked us off. They were the reason we started a band.”
He suggests the bluesmen offered “a completely different style of music to the saccharine pop available at the time".
He continues: “It was very raunchy compared to most pop music. It spoke to direct experience and the sounds were more vibrant, the rhythms more interesting and more danceable. It had an instant appeal.
“For my generation, it was the equivalent of suburban white kids doing rap.”
Richards adds: “Blue & Lonesome encapsulates everything we wanted to do and so finally, after 50-odd years, we’ve made a blues album.
“But let’s not forget we took Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster to the top of the charts in 1964. No other band had taken a blues song and done that back then.
“All I ever wanted was to say, ‘I passed it on.' With Blue & Lonesome, my wish has finally come true.”
There have been great Stones blues over the years, such as the epic Midnight Rambler or the enigmatic Ventilator Blues, which takes its cue from the seminal Chess Records sound, but never a full-blown blues album.
Perhaps the nearest was their 1964 self-titled debut with its pin-sharp covers of I’m A King Bee and I Just Want To Make Love To You.
Wind forward to late 2015 and the band of Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood were intending to record newly written songs for a rock album.
In an interview with all four members released to SFTW, Jagger picks up the story: “We cut quite a few new songs but one day we got fed up doing this (new) song. We tend to do that a lot.
“So we did one blues, then another, then another. I said, ‘OK, let’s come back tomorrow and do three or four more.’ It was really quick.”
Richards reveals that he set the ball rolling: “I was an innocent instigator. I called Ronnie and said, ‘Get down this Little Walter song, Blue & Lonesome.’
“It’s always good to warm up in the studio with things we know and throw something in when there’s some dead air.
Mick is really hitting his spots on this record. He’s the only one left who can play harmonica like this. A lot of people might forget what a serious musician he is
“We get to London and spend a couple of days working on new stuff. I said to Ronnie, ‘Now’s the time, break out that blues song.’
“It came out very well. Then suddenly Mick says, ‘Let’s do Howlin’ Wolf.’ It just took off. After that, you couldn’t stop Mick. ‘Cool,’ I said. Let’s keep rolling, boys.’ In a way, it was a total accident.
“I just followed Mick’s enthusiasm. I was just letting the man roll. I was keeping my fingers crossed he didn’t get bored halfway through and say, ‘What are we doing cutting blues?’
“Once he got going, it was fascinating to watch. I’ve never seen Mick so intense on putting it down and getting it right.”
The title track is one of four numbers associated with blues maverick Little Walter, the others being Just Your Fool, I Gotta Go and Hate To See You Go.
His version of Key To The Highway, a famous old blues standard not covered on Blue & Lonesome, is one of Richards’ all-time faves.
“Little Walter Jacobs . . . his voice is so smoky. That voice!” he enthuses. “He was probably the best blues harp player of all time.
“Apparently he learned his stuff from Louis Armstrong but he couldn’t afford a trumpet, so he started to work it on a harmonica. He was also Muddy Waters’ harp player on all those great records.”
Richards is infatuated not only with Little Walter’s music but also with his extraordinary life . . . and death. “They found him in a garbage can after he died,” he reports. “Man, well I guess that’s the blues, isn’t it? He probably asked for it. Bit of an erratic temper!”
One of the most pleasing aspects of Blue & Lonesome is Jagger’s intuitive harmonica playing, the way he nails the Little Walter passages with brio and skill.
The ever-energetic frontman is self-effacing about his efforts. “I don’t really play much harmonica. I’m really lazy. If I’d known I was going to do this, I would have been practising for weeks.“It’s not like a guitar or a keyboard where you can see what you’re doing. You can’t see the holes. You can only feel them with your tongue.”
Richards is mightily impressed by his old mucker’s contribution and is generous in his praise.
“Mick is really hitting his spots on this record. He’s the only one left who can play harmonica like this. A lot of people might forget what a serious musician he is.
“This album sets Mick up. His singing and his harp playing are beyond par.”
One of the most eye-catching credits is for guitar hero Eric Clapton, who adds class performances to Everybody Knows About My Good Thing and I Can’t Quit You Baby.
Ronnie Wood gives this insight into the arrival of Slowhand at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios in Chiswick, West London, where the three days of recording took place. “That was another simple twist of fate,” he recalls. “Eric was a wallflower while we were cutting one of the songs.”
The band couldn’t resist asking Clapton to play. “His hands were hurting at the time,” says Wood. “He did one song finger-style and one on slide.
“Eric excels when he plays with the Stones. Something magic happens. It’s the relief of not being the band leader and calling all the shots. He loves that.”
Stones aficionados will remember that a previously unreleased take of Brown Sugar, featuring Clapton, appeared on last year’s expanded version of Sticky Fingers.
For Wood, a relative latecomer who joined the band in 1975, Blue & Lonesome is part of his rite of passage. “I’ve come full circle from being a Stones fan in the early days to cutting the blues with them now.”
Blue Lonesome
4/5 stars
1. Just Your Fool
2. Commit A Crime
3. Blue And Lonesome
4. All Of Your Love
5. I Gotta Go
6. Everybody Knows About My Good Thing
7. Ride ‘Em On Down
8. Hate To See You Go
9. Hoo Doo Blues
10. Little Rain
11. Just Like I Treat You
12. I Can’t Quit You Baby
Of the 12 tracks, he says: “Some of the titles were new to me like Ride ’Em On Down. Others I knew by ear. Others, give me the key and the arrangement and I’m ready.”
The new dad picks out Little Rain by Mississippi-born legend Jimmy Reed as “a very unusual choice. I use it as a lullaby for my little twin girls. They love to go to sleep with that one.”
Wood’s fluid rhythm guitar interplay with the equally on-fire Richards is another reason to celebrate Blue & Lonesome.
“Some of the stuff we hadn’t played since the club days of ’62 and ’63,” says Richards. “It was quite amazing . . . your fingers are remembering.
“There was a real sense of déjà vu. It’s stuff we used to play whenever we had a gig, Southside Chicago blues from the late Fifties.”
Let’s not forget the tight, expressive drumming of ever-dependable Charlie Watts, who is so adept at using his jazz sensibilities in a blues or rock setting.
He says: “The Rolling Stones are a very good blues band. This is an example. When we let go, that’s what we sound like.
“I am personally very pleased with it. I know Keith particularly, but me as well, always wanted to do an album like this. It’s a good piece of work to put out.”
Watts says the performances have “an authentic ring to them. We played them more like a Chicago band than we’ve ever done.”
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Of course Chicago blues bands are to be found in small, smoky dives, not in the giant stadiums the Stones can sell out in a flash.
Wood believes the Blue & Lonesome songs “are natural contenders for a Stones’ club gig. I would love to see it happen down the line.”
The last word is with Watts, who riffs off that thought with typical dry humour: “For me, these songs need a room, a club.
“I’ve never been to a football stadium to see anyone. I think it’s the daftest place to see music. And I make my living doing it!”