The Last Time

Mick and I knew by now that really our job was to write songs for the Stones. It took us eight, nine months before we came up with "The Last Time," which is the first one that we felt we could give to the rest of the guys without being sent out the room. If I'd gone to the Rolling Stones with "As Tears Go By," it would have been "Get out and don't come back." Mick and I were trying to hone it down. We kept coming up with these ballads, nothing to do with what we were doing. And then finally we came up with "The Last Time" and looked at each other and said, let's try this with the boys. The song has the first recognizable Stones riff or guitar figure on it; the chorus is from the Staple Singers' version, "This May Be the Last Time." We could work this hook; now we had to find the verse. It had a Stones twist to it, one that maybe couldn't have been written earlier-- a song about going on the road and dumping some chick. "You don't try very hard to please me." Not the usual serenade to the unattainable object of desire. That was when it really clicked, with that song, when Mick and I felt confident enough to actually lay it in front of Brian and Charlie and Ian Stewart, especially, arbiter of events. With those earlier songs we would have been chased out the room. But that song defined us in a way, and it went to number one in the UK.

K.Richards. Life

When we put out "Little Red Rooster," a raw Willie Dixon blues with slide guitar and all, it was a daring move at the time, November 1964. We were getting no-no's from the record company, management, everyone else. But we felt we were on the crest of a wave and we could push it. It was almost in defiance of pop. In our arrogance at the time, we wanted to make a statement. "I am the little red rooster / Too lazy to crow for day." See if you can get that to the top of the charts, motherfucker. Song about a chicken. Mick and I stood up and said, come on, let's push it. This is what we're fucking about. And the floodgates burst after that, suddenly Muddy and Howlin' Wolf and Buddy Guy are getting gigs and working. It was a breakthrough. And the record got to number one. And I'm absolutely sure what we were doing made Berry Gordy at Motown capable of pushing his stuff elsewhere, and it certainly rejuvenated Chicago blues as well.

K.Richards. Life

Made in U.S.A.

The source.

Д. принес задачку из психометрии:

"После того, как у Белоснежки сгнило четверть яблок в корзине, то число "хороших" яблок оказалось на восемь больше, чем гнилых. Сколько яблок было в корзине?"

После 10 минут умственых усилий, в которых были задействованы почти атрофирующиеся участки мозга, мне удалось найти правильный ответ.  Вспомнил, что на мой вопрос "ради чего вы учитесь?" несколько детей ответили, что "чтобы не ударить в грязь лицом перед своими детьми". Йа, йа. Натюрлих.

Dondate

A.S. 1 По сведениям ди-джея на 88FM только 5% рок композиций начинаются с ударных.

A.S. 2 "I didn't care much for the Beatles. I kind of secretly liked them, but I saw the death of the saxophone unraveling before my eyes. None of these guys have saxes in their bands, man!" (Bobby Keys in "Life" by K.Richards)

В День Памяти Холокоста небо над Израилем было сковано песчаным панцирем. Когда я вышел из самолета в Эйлате было светло, но неба не было видно. В помещении приходилось включать свет. Когда таксист сообщил мне, что в городе всего лишь +30 я был разочарован. Прогноз погоды готовил меня как минимум к 38-40.
Как и предполагали месстные жители, все вечерние рейсы были отменены. Все авиакомпании предлагали на выбор бесплатный автобус или утренние рейсы на следующий день. Ехать 2 часа (всего 4.5) по ночной пустыне в песчаную бурю мне не очень улыбалось (в новостях сообщили о большой аварии возле Ницаны) и я поменял билеты на утренний рейс. Благо  гостеприимные коллеги в кибуце всегда готовы предложить мне комфортабельный ночлег.

Утром благополучно вернулся в ясный и солнечный Тель Авив. 

A.S. В этом году фортуна повернулась спиной к любителям футбола. Оба матча Барса - Челси выпали на Дни Памяти, во время которых нет трансляций развлекательного характера. В СМИ проходила бурная дискуссия по поводу запрета трансляции. Были предложения транслировать матч без комментаторов. В итоге не транслировали. Желающие могли посмотреть матч в интернете. Я. рассказывал, что несколько мужиков из кибуца поехали смотреть матч в египетский Хилтон Таба, расположенного прямо у границы.

Чу рассказывает, что Д. соб ирался смотреть игру в сети вместе с друзьями, но в последний момент передумал и остался с ней дома смотреть "Жизнь прекрасна" по ТВ.

The Pop

The famous day when Andrew locked us in a kitchen up in Willesden and said, "Come out with a song"--that did happen. Why Andrew put Mick and me together as songwriters and not Mick and Brian, or me and Brian, I don't know. It turned out that Brian couldn't write songs, but Andrew didn't know that then. I guess it's because Mick and I were hanging out together at the time. Andrew puts it this way: "I worked on the assumption that if Mick could write postcards to Chrissie Shrimpton, and Keith could play a guitar, then they could write songs." We spent the whole night in that goddamn kitchen, and I mean, we're the Rolling Stones, like the blues kings, and we've got some food, piss out the window or down the sink, it's no big deal. And I said, "If we want to get out of here, Mick, we better come up with something."

We sat there in the kitchen and I started to pick away at these chords.... "It is the evening of the day." I might have written that. "I sit and watch the children play," I certainly wouldn't have come up with that. We had two lines and an interesting chord sequence, and then something else took over somewhere in this process. I don't want to say mystical, but you can't put your finger on it. Once you've got that idea, the rest of it will come. It's like you've planted a seed, then you water it a bit and suddenly it sticks up out of the ground and goes, hey, look at me. The mood is made somewhere in the song. Regret, lost love.Maybe one of us had just busted up with a girlfriend. If you can find the trigger that kicks off the idea, the rest of it is easy. It's just hitting the first spark. Where that comes from, God knows.

With "As Tears Go By," we weren't trying to write a commercial pop song. It was just what came out. I knew what Andrew wanted: don't come out with a blues, don't do some parody or copy, come out with something of your own. A good pop song is not really that easy to write. It was a shock, this fresh world of writing our own material, this discovery that I had a gift I had no idea existed. It was Blake-like, a revelation, an epiphany.

"As Tears Go By" was first recorded and made into a hit by Marianne Faithfull. That was only weeks away. After that we wrote loads of airy-fairy silly love songs for chicks and stuff that didn't take off. We'd give them to Andrew and, amazing to us, he got most of them recorded by other artists. Mick and I refused to put this crap we were writing with the Stones. We'd have been laughed out of the goddamn room. Andrew was waiting for us to come up with "The Last Time."

K.Richards. Life

The Jazz

Back then I used to rag Stu and Charlie wicked about jazz. We were supposed to be getting the blues down, and sometimes I'd catch Stu and Charlie listening to jazz on the sly. "Stop that shit!" I was just trying to break their habits, trying to put a band together, for Christ's sake. "You've got to listen to blues. You've got to listen to fucking Muddy." I wouldn't even let them listen to Armstrong, and I love Armstrong.

K.Richards. Life

The Blues

The drive in the band was amazing among Mick, Brian and myself. It was incessant study. Not really in the academic sense of it, it was to get the feel of it. And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues. Preferably several times. At that time, we were taking it on a purely musical level, forgetting that these guys were singing about shit. First you've got to get in the shit. And then you can maybe come back and sing it. I thought I loved my mother and I left her. She still did my laundry. And I got my heart broken, but not right away.

K.Richards. Life

Проблемы роста

В нашей семье возникла новая ситуация – взрослый сын. Впервые за все время Д. оказался в ситуации, когда у нас нет объективных оснований его содержать. Теперь, когда ему нужно куда-то выйти, я не  тянусь автоматически за кошельком, а если он захотел поесть, я не бросаю все дела и организую что-то на плите. Теряющая градус вертикаль родительской обязанности перед учеником\молодым работником\солдатом плавно переходит на горизонталь родительского права на независимость и соучастие. Возникла та хрупкая ситуация, в которой обе стороны формально готовы к расставанию (повторяю ФОРМАЛЬНО), но предпочитают оставаться вместе из-за разных меркантильных интересов. Многие бытовые вопросы проявляются теперь в новом свете. Требуются новые правила игры.

Думаю, что суть этой метаморфозы мы с Чу более-менее когнитивно (повторяю КОГНИТИВНО) ухватили. По прежнему остаются открытыми практические  вопросы мер и пропорций.

Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry is fantastic, but he would weave by himself, with himself. He did great overdubs with his own guitar because he was too cheap to hire another guy most of the time. But that's just on records; you can't re-create that live. But his "Memphis, Tennessee" is probably one of the most incredible little bits of overdubbing and tinkering that I've ever heard. Let alone a sweet song. I could never overstress how important he was in my development. It still fascinates me how this one guy could come up with so many songs and sling it so gracefully and elegantly.

K.Richards. Life

Живьем и в цвете:



and "DON'T TOUCH MY AMP!"

Jimmy Reed

Minimalism has a certain charm. You say, that's a bit monotonous, but by the time it's finished, you're wishing it hadn't. There's nothing bad about monotony; everyone's got to live with it. Great titles--"Take Out Some Insurance." This is not your everyday song title. And it would always come down to him and his old lady having a fight or something. "Bright Lights, Big City," "Baby What You Want Me to Do?" "String to Your Heart," wicked songs. One of Jimmy's lines was "Don't pull no subway, I rather see you pull a train." Which actually means don't go on the dope, don't go underground, I'd rather see you either drunk or on cocaine. Took me years and years to decipher this.

K.Richards. Life

And we didn't want to make money. We despised money, we despised cleanliness, we just wanted to be black motherfuckers. Fortunately we got plucked out of that.

K.Richards. Life