Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by an anonymous writer who’s contributed to several of those titles–or maybe even all of them! After the click-through, a look at the new issue of Rolling Stone:
Few relationships between supplicant and master reflect the “law of identity” as keenly as that between the magazine considered in this space this week and two of the three men on the cover of its April 24 issue. When a major project involving the Rolling Stones is nearing commercial release, the magazine named for the band is right on time. A is A, dogs piss on fire hydrants, commenters complain in Internet fora, and Rolling Stone puts Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on the cover. This is the magazine’s nature.
Jagger and Richards share the cover with Jack White, a musician many people over fifty believe makes rock and roll music the correct manner and is thus an artist RS can endorse with gusto. White appears with the pair in Shine A Light, the new Martin Scorcese concert doc capturing a two-night stand from the Stones at NYC’s Beacon Theatre in 2006; he also has a new album out with the Raconteurs that’s emblematic of emerging music business paradigms, etc., etc.
Senior editor David “this new Stones album is a stunning return to form; its switchblade six-string brings to mind Sticky Fingers” Fricke facilitates “Blues Brothers,” a friendly conversation with Richards and White. He calls the Stones’ current onstage M.O. “feral” in the piece’s intro and goes straight into pig-in-shit mode as his charges hold forth regarding the blues tradition and Stones Cinema. (Fricke doesn’t ask White any Raconteurs questions.) There isn’t much evidence that Richards is interested in White; he appears to have a vague knowledge of the White Stripes, but he’s more invested in conversation along the lines of “heh heh, rhargh, Bo Diddley, ghargh, Chuck Berry, arghle, back in the old days, heh heh.”
White doesn’t seem at all to bristle at Fricke’s frequently retrograde line of questioning: “Do you feel cheated that you won’t meet and play with your favorite bluesmen because so many of them are gone?”; and “Despite the generation gap, the blues shaped your lives in similar ways.” This is probably because, in all likelihood, White believes that he did miss out on the time when music was rilly rilly great. He nonetheless elects himself for the blues priesthood alongside Richards, Charley Patton, and others: “When you see someone play, you immediately know whether you can connect with them or not. You know you’re in the same family. And [gestures towards Richards] I think we are.” Kumbayah, my lord…
As for associate editor Brian Hiatt’s companion interview (titled “Mick Jagger”), it’s clear to Your Correspondent that the interviewee devoted the same amount of time and thought to Hiatt’s questions that he would for the Topeka Pig Testicle stringer who was slotted in between 3:45 3:50 p.m. on Shine A Light’s New York Press Day. Which does make YC ruminate on just how Jagger regards Jann Wenner. According to Robert Draper’s Rolling Stone: the Uncensored History, Wenner more or less devised Rolling Stone as a way for him to meet Jagger, who has since clearly been the crown jewel in Wenner’s constellation of fancy friends.
But YC wouldn’t be surprised if the notoriously cold-eyed Jagger considers Wenner his plaything, a sycophant who can be counted on to do his bidding and marshal every available resource to emphasize the greatness of his band while Jagger himself exerts little effort (and does Richards have less disguised contempt for Wenner?). Given the special relationship between his band and Wenner’s mag, YC thinks that Jagger might lift a finger to make this interview more substantive, but no dice–although he repeatedly refers to his band in the piece in the third person (”they have lots of other kinds of facets which make them kind of interesting”).
YC did learn some things from senior editor and film critic Peter Travers’ interview with Scorcese. Travers notes that “no one asks ‘Who Killed the Kennedys?’ in ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ and in ‘Some Girls,’ Jagger never sings ‘black girls just wanna get fucked all night…” in the film’s performances, to which Scorcese replies “that was the band’s decision.” Boy, them Stones don’t shy away from confronting middle-class prudishness, huh? Scorcese also says that Richards sings but doesn’t play guitar on the film’s performance of “You Got the Silver”; YC is fairly sure that Richards croaking away onstage without a guitar is unprecedented (set YC straight if he’s wrong, y’all commenters who bother with music recorded more than 30 years ago).
Of course, the Stones luv ain’t stop there! In the reviews section, Rob Sheffield gushes purple in a four-star review of the deluxe edition of Shine a Light’s soundtrack: “like any live Stones album,” he writes, “this one is about the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band rediscovering how great they are.” YC hasn’t seen the film nor heard any of the album’s cuts, so he’ll just say that any of the audio-centric souvenirs released after every Stones tour he’s heard in the last twenty years struck him as the band rediscovering that enough goofballs will buy anything bearing the band’s name. He’ll also say that he’s pleased to hear that the band has dusted off “She Was Hot,” YC’s favorite of their ’80s tunes.
As for Jack White, senior editor Melissa Maerz concludes in a three and a half-star review of the Raconteurs’ Consolers of the Lonely that the record “feels like a jam session.” Her judgment seems to preclude the half-star necessary to hasten the album toward classic status, so it seems that no matter how many rockist values he holds dear, White will have to wait another 15 years before he joins RS‘ automatic five-star club.
When I was younger, I wanted to grow up and have Jancee Dunn’s job at RS. And now that I’m grown-up, RS just makes me sad. Also, the combination of Jack White’s smile and hat is just very odd. He looks almost manic.
@Varina: He’s trying for that Pete Doherty money.
Spot on, especially the commentary re: Sheffield’s “review” of the latest live disc from Jagger, Richards, Watts, Wood LLC. One needn’t listen to the Shine a Light disc to know that it’s a gratuitous, perfuctory attempt to squeeze a few more bucks from Stones fans with more money than sense.
Are there any music mags that you actually like, Anono-critic? If not, isn’t this column then kind of masochistic?
The auto-dismissive thing has become really tiresome.
Y’know, Anono-critic, you’ve done a great job of pointing out RS’s usual hand-job when it comes to the Stones. My compliments.
But you really should “bother to listen” once in a while to music that’s older than 30 years old, just upon occasion. I know it may not have the hip cachet that, oh, Vampire Weekend may have, but some of it is quite good, holds up very well, and maybe, just maybe, your fellow snarkmeisters and cynics (redundant, I know) might not tease you too much- a fate to be avoided at all costs, I know.
Rolling Stone/Rolling Stones The magazine is named after the band? Really? Not the Bob Dylan song? Not Muddy Waters, who wrote the song the band took their name from to “prove” their Blues Power?
Appropo of nothing, I haven’t read an issue since to one that came out right after Mr. Waters passed on to that great gig in the sky. The cover that week? Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s Men At Work.
Yes, I’m old - also, I was one of the parents in your photo-essay (after the Paramore concert I took my kids to). But I’ll never say which one…
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You rock. That’s why Blockbuster’s offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
@Ned Raggett: That’s it!! It’s even worse than I thought.
Nice. Couple comments:
1. I’m no expert, but at least recently, Keef does sing “Silver” sans guitar. It so happens that the only Stones concert I’ve ever seen in the flesh (complete fluke; friend had a plus-one) was on the same 2006 tour chronicled in this flick. (I saw them in the Meadowlands, however, not the Beacon, natch.) And “Silver” is kind of Keef’s showcase piece - Mick goes offstage for a pee break or a blowjob or a Vitamin Water or whatever, Ronnie steps back, and KR kind of holds court, ciggy in one hand, the other on the mic stand. It works theatrically, but I can’t say it works all that well musically.
2. You’re dead right about the White Stripes’ rockist relevance to the target RS demographic, but to give Jack props for a second: You’d think he’d be on the cover twice a year, given his contemporary relevance plus Boomer appreciation. And yet, it’s interesting that Wenner’s army couldn’t get an interview worthy of the cover from White until 2005 and Get Behind Me Satan, and this is (I believe) his first cover appearance since, despite two records (one Raconteurs, one WS) in between.
Say what you want about Jack and his retrograde old-schooliness, but at least he’s choosy about playing ball. I seem to recall that, in the ‘05 cover interview, they got him to half-admit for the first time ever that Meg is his ex-wife, not his sister — i.e., the most poorly kept “secret” ever — and that begrudgingly. It was all they had to hang the interview on. I’m actually a bit annoyed with Jack for kowtowing to the RS Stones Mandate this time around, but Jack’s bought enough goodwill from me for mostly sticking to his ornery guns thus far.
@JohnnyBacardi: if it isn’t obvious that anonodude is making jokes re: music 30 years or older, you aren’t paying any attention at all. (he has a favorite ’80s Stones song ffs.)
I’ve seen the movie and it was pretty good—just make sure to see it in IMAX, else it’s just another concert film. The album is pretty good, too, but not exactly essential. If you want to hear the Stones at their live peak(1972-’73) pick up a bootleg like “Brussels Affair” and listen to the wonderful interplay between Keith and Mick Taylor—the best guitarist they ever had.
The only thing worse than reading Rolling Stone is wading through Anonodick’s awful writing.
This feels like the tenth time RS has paired a younger artist with one or more Stones on their cover. But I may just be magnifying in my mind that heinous Depp/Richards cover a year or so back.
Comment on “Rolling Stone” Shines A Light On Its Inspiration Ya gotta wonder about the skillz of an alleged journalist who
supposedly waded through all of RS’s “Shine a Light” coverage and still
managed to misspell Martin Scorsese’s name throughout his post. Get a
grip, yo — he won an Oscar and shit.
And some still wonder why old-media types continue to tsk-tsk about
online “journalism.”