At the time the Rolling Stones decided to record their fourteenth (British) studio album, the music scene was undergoing a far-reaching transformation. Disco reigned supreme, both on the dance floor and on the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, with Donna Summer (“I Feel Love”), Abba (“Dancing Queen”), KC and the Sunshine Band (“I’m Your Boogie Man”), and the Bee Gees (“How Deep Is Your Love”). At the opposite end of the spectrum, punk had made a twofold rejection—of traditional Western values on the one hand, and of rock music as a flourishing international industry on the other. The Sex Pistols belched out “Anarchy in the UK” and the Ramones stirred up the crowds with “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” while the Clash sang I’m so bored with the USA and No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones in 1977. These young punks, with their Mohican hairstyles and safety pins, unleashed their frontal attack on the rock establishment at the very moment that the future of the Rolling Stones seemed increasingly uncertain.
On February 7, 1977, with the five musicians from London booked to play at the El Mocambo club in Toronto, Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg were arrested in their hotel room for possession of heroin by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They were suspected of trafficking and faced the possibility of lengthy prison sentences. Keith and Anita were nevertheless given permission to leave Canada so that the Stones guitarist could undergo a detox cure in the United States (having obtained a visa thanks to President Jimmy Carter). “It took nineteen months from the bust in March 1977 in Toronto to the trial in October 1978. But at least now I was living in striking distance of New York [South Salem],” writes Keith Richards in Life.2
Having been granted a visa for France under certain conditions, Keith was able to meet up with the other members of the group in Paris to start work on what was to become the Some Girls album. “The sessions for ‘Some Girls’ always had a following wind from the moment we started rehearsing in the strangely shaped Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris. It was a rejuvenation, surprisingly for such a dark moment, when it was possible that I would go to jail and the Stones would dissolve. But maybe that was part of it. Let’s get something down before it happens.”2 This time, the stakes were high, the threat very real. Asked whether the band would break up if Keith went to jail, Mick replied: “We wouldn’t if Keith was only in jail for a month or two, but if he were in jail for a long period of time, I suppose we’d have to.”1
On February 16, 1977, the Rolling Stones had renewed their contract with Atlantic Records for the United States and Canada, and with the very British EMI for the rest of the world. Mick would make it clear that their choice had been influenced by patriotic feelings: “In this jubilee year I feel it is only fitting that we should sign with a British company.”1 Quite the opposite of the message delivered by the Sex Pistols in their hit “God Save the Queen,” which would be released three months later…
The ten songs on the original Some Girls album confirm that, contrary to what all the young punks wanted people to believe, the Rolling Stones had lost nothing of their energy or their taste for controversy. As in the glory days of the sixties, Mick Jagger even indulged in a new torrent of invective against women, starting with the title song, which would be considered disgracefully sexist and racist by feminists and the civil rights movements, but also in “Respectable” and “Beast of Burden.” As so often, however, the Stones singer was also able to adopt a softer approach, in this case in “Miss You,” which could well be his first declaration of love to Jerry Hall, and “Far Away Eyes.” His marriage to Bianca had been in a bad way for some time, and the thick-lipped sex symbol had now set his cap for Brian Ferry’s girlfriend.
The energy given off by the Rolling Stones throughout the two sides of the LP seems to have been inspired by New York. “And I was noticing that there were a lot of references to New York, so I kept it like that,”29 Mick Jagger would tell Jonathan Cott. Thus “When the Whip Comes Down” tells the story of a teenage boy from Los Angeles who prostitutes himself in the seedy districts of New York, while “Shattered” transforms the Big Apple into a kind of modern-day Babylon.
And the references to New York are just as striking on a musical level. “Miss You,” which takes disco to new heights, is redolent of the torrid atmosphere of Studio 54 (which had opened in April 1977), while “When the Whip Comes Down,” “Lies,” “Respectable,” and “Shattered” are more than a match for the nihilistic manifestos of the punk bands. At the same time, the Stones continue, as ever, to respect their own tradition. “Some Girls” and “Beast of Burden” are ballads, respectively, blues, rock, and soul, that would not have been out of place on Exile on Main St., while “Far Away Eyes,” another ballad, has a country feel (the one exception on the album!). Finally, “Before They Make Me Run,” as well as evoking Keith’s problems with dope and the Canadian authorities, demonstrates that the Stones magic was as strong as ever.
Is Some Girls the Rolling Stones’ last great album? Is it their best album with Ron Wood? A lot of fans think so. What is beyond dispute is that from the moment of its release on June 16 in the United Kingdom and the following day in the rest of the world, it would experience a success as vigorous as the energy committed to wax by the five Stones. It topped the album charts in the United States and Canada, and rose to number 2 in the United Kingdom and France, number 3 in Australia, Norway, and Sweden, number 6 in West Germany… Some Girls would also later rank 269th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
This time, Mick Jagger chose Peter Corriston to design the album cover. The graphic designer, based in Greenwich Village, came up with an idea for a distinctly kitsch visual, a kind of retro advertising look (inspired by that of the Valmor Products Company) in which the faces of the Stones would appear alongside those of the twentieth century’s most beautiful women. The gag was to deck them out in wigs and to make them up with bright red lipstick. In fact it is a double cover. The outer cover is an illustration in green, yellow, blue, and pink (from top to bottom) pierced by windows adorned with wigs, apertures into which a face would slot. On the reverse there is more retro advertising, this time for bras. On the inner sleeve, the five Rolling Stones found themselves in the glamorous company of icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Jayne Mansfield, Brigitte Bardot, Farrah Fawcett, Raquel Welch, Gina Lollobrigida, and Rita Hayworth (illustrations by Hubert Kretzschmar).
The album was released in this sleeve without it having occurred to the Rolling Stones’ attorneys to ask for permission to reproduce the portraits. Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Raquel Welch, Liza Minnelli (as the daughter of Judy Garland), and the estate of Marilyn Monroe threatened the Rolling Stones with an enormous lawsuit, as did Valmor Products Company, which was not happy about the copying of its design. This first cover having been censured, Some Girls was immediately rereleased with new artwork, the statements Pardon our appearance and cover under reconstruction replacing the various portraits of the wronged stars.
The Rolling Stones chose to record Some Girls at the Pathé Marconi EMI Studios on rue de Sèvres in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. This may seem a surprising choice for an album inspired to such an extent by New York, but the British musicians apparently had a strong bond with France, as this was the second time, after Exile on Main St., that they had recorded there. And they would remain faithful to that country for their next four albums. The real reason was that the studios were owned by EMI, with whom they had just signed a worldwide agreement (with the exception of North America). When they turned up, they were presented with three possibilities: there were two large, high-ceilinged studios equipped with 24-tracks, plus a more modest studio equipped with a 16-track. They opted for the latter as a rehearsal room, but Mick wanted to move when it came to recording, in order to take advantage of the fashionable technology of the day. It should also be pointed out that the control room could not accommodate more than four people at any one time and the two (JBL) playback speakers were not on the same horizontal plane. Chris Kimsey, the sound engineer who had worked as an assistant on Sticky Fingers and was now replacing Keith Harwood, who had been killed in a car accident in September 1976, tried to dissuade him, explaining that this technical limitation was actually a blessing: “Well, I think you should stay here—it sounds great in this room…”113 Jagger did not see things the same way, replying: “We can’t use that, it’s 16-track!”113 Keith came down on Kimsey’s side: “It was a great room to play in. So, despite Mick doing his usual ‘Let’s move to a proper studio’ that’s where we stayed, because in a recording session, especially with this kind of music, everything has to feel good.”2
The sessions got under way without the band having an apparent plan of attack. Keith Richards: “Nothing was prepared before we got there. Everything was written in the studio day by day. So it was like the earlier times, at RCA in Los Angeles in the mid-’60s—songs pouring out. Another big difference from recent albums was that we had no other musicians in with us—no horns, no Billy Preston. Extra stuff was dubbed later.”2 The “other musicians” mentioned by the Stones guitarist were Sugar Blue, an American jazz harmonica player who was living in Paris (“Miss You” and “Some Girls”); Ian McLagan, the former keyboard player with the Faces (“Miss You,” “Just My Imagination”); Mel Collins, the saxophonist with King Crimson and the Alan Parsons Project (“Miss You”); and in all likelihood Simon Kirke (Free, Bad Company) on the congas (“Shattered”).
The session dates for the individual titles recorded differ considerably from source to source. The Paris sessions took place between October 10 and December 21, 1977. It seems likely that nine of the ten songs on the album (“Lies,” “When the Whip Comes Down,” “Respectable,” “Far Away Eyes,” “Shattered,” “Beast of Burden,” “Some Girls,” “Miss You,” and “Just My Imagination”) were laid down during this period. To these should be added, notably, “I Love You Too Much” and “Claudine” (on the Some Girls bonus CD), “Everything Is Turning to Gold” (the B-side of the single “Shattered” and included on the compilation Sucking in the Seventies, 1981) as well as an initial version of “Start Me Up” (on Tattoo You, 1981). The sessions resumed in January 1978. However, with the exception of “Before They Make Me Run,” no track recorded between January 5 and March 2 is on the original Some Girls. “Don’t Be a Stranger,” “Keep Up Blues,” “Do You Think I Really Care?” “Petrol Blues,” “No Spare Parts,” “When You’re Gone,” “You Win Again,” and “So Young” would all be unearthed for the Some Girls bonus CD, “Hang Fire” included on Tattoo You, and “Summer Romance” and “Where the Boys Go” on Emotional Rescue (1980). Finally, Mick and Keith mixed the album at Atlantic Studios in New York between March 15 and March 31 (mid-April according to some sources). The recording was engineered mainly by Chris Kimsey, although in January 1978, Dave Jordan (the Specials, Bananarama, the Pogues) put in an appearance, mainly to work on “Before They Make Me Run.” They were assisted by Barry Sage (Brian Eno, New Order, Pet Shop Boys) and Ben King (Judas Priest, Meat Loaf).
The two large studios at the Pathé Marconi Studios in Boulogne-Billancourt were equipped with 3M 24-track tape recorders and Neve (8048 or 8058?) consoles. The third and smallest studio had a (Studer?) 16-track and an EMI console, probably the famous TG 12345 Mk Q, a model that was a combination of the Mark II and the Mark III. Keith provides a very good description of it: “The primitive mixing desk turned out to be the same kind of soundboard designed by EMI for Abbey Road Studios—very humble and simple, with barely more than a treble and bass button but with a phenomenal sound, which Kimsey fell in love with.… The sound it got had clarity but dirtiness, a real funky, club feel to it that suited what we were doing.”2 Finally, Mick Jagger’s voice was captured using a Neumann U47 mic.
Various new guitars were used during the recording of Some Girls. Keith supplemented his collection with a Zemaitis 5-string given to him by Ron Wood and immediately nicknamed the “Macabre,” a 1975 black Fender Telecaster Custom, a blond Gibson L6-S, a Travis Bean TB1000, and a Ted Newman Jones custom made by his guitar technician. He also made inordinate use of one guitar effect in particular: “What a lot of Some Girls was down to was this little green box I used, this MXR pedal, a reverb-echo. For most of the songs on there I’m using that, and it elevated the band and it gave it a different sound.”2 He would also use other effects from the same manufacturer, including the MXR Phase 100.
Ron Wood uses the same instruments that he played on the previous album, with the addition of a Gibson reverse Firebird, a 1956 Les Paul, a lap steel, a pedal steel guitar, and various Gibson acoustics, including an “Everly Brothers” model and a J-200 identical to Keith’s. Bill mainly plays a Travis Bean Koa TB 2000, while Charlie remains loyal to his Gretsch kit. As for the amps, Mesa Boogies (the sound of Carlos Santana!) make an appearance for the guitars, while Bill remains attached to Ampegs.