"You Always Saw the Best In Me"...The Rolling Stones-"Following the River"

Heart Songs: The Rolling Stones-“Following the River”
By Anthony Kuzminski

I love pop music, but most of it doesn’t have teeth. It may jolt your senses you like a pixy stick but when it’s over, the come down from the high still leaves you just as bewildered as you were before. I listen to happy-go-lucky pop songs daily and like a greasy burger, it can be the medication for a bad day, but will it continue to untangle and uncover itself to you listen after listen? When you see an artist sing or perform, you want to believe they’re experiencing pain, loss and are subscribing to the same channel of the blues you are. Without this connection, careers fall to the wayside. Look at Mariah Carey, someone who has continually made hit after hit for two decades and numerous labels, but can she even fill a theater despite selling over 100-million records? No, and the reason why is people don’t see themselves in her slutty-wannabe attire. To make a true and lasting connection, your audience must bond with you and believe your pain is their pain, even when it comes from the most unlikely of sources.

The Rolling Stones have always been about menace. These weren’t guys you tried to emulate as much as we all secretly wished we did, the truth is if any of them were walking down the street, we probably would have run the other way. However, one of the enduring components to their on-going success is their ability to branch out and fashion music that’s based on more than Chuck Berry riffs. Despite writing some of the most misogynistic songs ever put on tape (“Under My Thumb” “Star Star”), they also have a side filled with tenderness and heartrending abandon. There’s something outright enlightening about a swaying ballad by the Rolling Stones that only they can pull off. Whether it is the insistent “Time Is On My Side” or the loss of love in “Angie” or the weight of “Beast of Burden”, they slash through sincerity like no one else and the cynic becomes a believer. Known for their cockiness and their “don’t f**k with us” attitude, they’re often viewed as villainous criminals’ more than earnest lovers, yet when they let the bravado loss and let go, that’s when the real fireworks are lit.

One of the unreleased songs on the upcoming deluxe edition of Exile On Main Street is a soulful ballad entitled “Following the River” which is awash in shrewd soul showcasing female backing vocals (recently added by Lisa Fischer and Cindy Mizelle) and a gut wrenching vocal from Jagger. The rhythm section of Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass anchors the song while the acoustic warmth of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger (who adds some guitar) is downright resplendent with Nicky Hopkin’s piano adding a specific color shade to the song that’s an integral part of its DNA without being overshadowing to gentle beauty of the rest of the song. The song is about coming to terms with a relationship that is set for ruin, despite a longing for their touch. Jagger sings the line of “I don’t think there’s much future there for me and you” with such utter believability you are in disbelief. Known for his overconfidence, this song finds him beseeching for someone beyond his reach. He sings it with desperation as if his life depended on it, where there’s no prescription for the pain other than to sing and purge your problems away. Jagger doesn’t play this by the books, but reaches and pulls the pain from within in a performance that reaches for the heavens hoping he can pull salvation from the sky.

There is a pining in all of the performances. We associate the Stones with swaggering cockiness where nothing can be thrown at them and brought down, but here, they reveal gloomy ache. Make no mistake, I’m disciple of all eras of the Rolling Stones and believe all have something vital and imperative to enhance their overall legacy, yet there is a depth and richness to these unearthed Exile tracks proving once again that between 1968 and 1972, in the realm of creativity and potency, they were untouchable. It’s not so much that their latter material wasn’t high-quality, it’s just that over the course of four albums and four years (1968-1972), they set the bar so high that virtually no one in nearly forty years has been able to touch and with songs like “Following the River” finally being unearthed, it leads credence to the fact that no one will ever reach that level of creativity again.

Buy the deluxe edition here.

Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network. His daily writings can be read at The Screen Door. He can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com and can be followed on Twitter