Rolling Stones "Emotional Rescue" Song By Song Discussion

Meh, I'm not a Leavell basher. Hell, if anything we should all be a bit grateful to Chuck Leavell because I'd be brazen to say that certainly at this point the Stones couldn't tour without him. Been as Mac, Stu and Nicky are all dead Chuck is as close are we're gonna get to any of 'em at this late date. Let's not forget, Chuck Leavell had Ian Stewart's personal endorsement as the Stones' keyboardist.

 

Chuck is also one of the proponents of changing up the set lists even if he is sometimes vetoed by the others.

 

Indeed- like I say, he's more or less indispensable to the Stones at this point. Leavell's been playing with the Stones only seven years less than Ron Wood has.

 

I never liked Chuck Leavell. He gets in the way all the time.

I made a Chuck Leavell Style Piano Tutorial. You can check it out at 03:00:

 

What does THAT have to do with the price of coffee in Nicaragua? I used to think Black and Blue was the best “summer” album by the Stones but Emotional Rescue is just as good in its way.

 

Martha my dear it's not but certainly more difficult than the stuff Lennon normally played on the piano.

I'm too tired for a "funny" reply, so here we go: I was commenting on a post of someone comparing Keith's piano skills to the one's of Lennon and McCartney, saying that Keef was even better than Paul. Most people agree that "Martha my dear" is one of the mos difficult pieces Paul wrote and played on piano. In my opinion the part Keith played in the clip posted was less complicated technically than Martha my dear, okay? Now, enjoy your hopefully not too expensive coffee from Nicaragua. I'll have a Beast of Bourbon.

 

Thanks for clarifying- and you still managed a funny enough reply! - so kudos! I think I’m just one of those who has a knee-jerk reaction to what I perceived as a meaningless Beatles-Stones comparison in 2018 but that’s on me and not you. So carry on!

 

Because it's great!

 

"All About You" follows in the mold of "Before They Make Me Run," where once he got the basic track down with Charlie's drums, Keith went back with a fine toothed comb and put everything else in place, exactly the way he wanted it, mostly by himself alone in the studio, with no input from Mick being around whatsoever. On earlier Keith studio tracks, Mick would still help out with the overdubs and mixing (he's very much in the background on "Happy" for example), but after Some Girls, not anymore, that was pretty much it, and Keith's solo spots on albums became exactly that, true solo spots.

If you listen carefully you can hear a faint ghost saxophone in the intro, that's been muted out of the mix, but still shows up as leakage on one of the other tracks. At some point early on Bobby Keys must have played a different line, and then they replaced it later with a different part. It's in the very very beginning -- a faint ghost of a counterpoint line, in the first few seconds.

What's really interesting to me is Charlie Watts' comment about (paraphrasing from above): "I don't know how he got a song out of that." Because if you heard the song without the vocal line, the chords are meandering and the guitar is erratic. They were all just stumbling along, through the changes, and in fact you can even hear Keith (or someone) shouting faintly in the background right before they get to the "you want you want you want" break at the very end -- okay guys, everybody hold up, here it is! (The shout is right after the final "What should I do?" line.)

I've always loved the layered backing vocals on this song, especially the "You want, you want, you want" part at the very very end. It has sort of a Jamaican feel to me -- like something a Jamaican would say. A lot of people don't like Keith's ballads, but this is one of my all-time favorite Stones tracks. A lot of the fast numbers on Emotional Rescue are sort of accused of being throwaways, and rightly so, but when it comes to the sweet ballad, Keith -- the musical writer of "Wild Horses' and "Angie" among others -- really turned in a gem on this one.

 

Oh, absolutely- most days "Down In The Hole" is my favourite song on the album. I guess I was surprised at just how well liked the song is; at the outset of this discussion I sorta figured it would have been something like "Let Me Go" getting all the praise, so I was pleasantly surprised!

I may not be a big fan of "All About You" but I will gladly admit that Keith Richards can write a helluva ballad. Hell, for the most part for the last thirty odd years Keith's ballads are usually his best songs...how many three chord Open-G rockers can you write, after all.

(Hmm...as a writer of three chord Open-G rockers myself maybe I should have put that another way)

 

I could never get All About You as a proper song. The structure, the vocals, the chord sequence and the horns sound to me not even like a demo, but just vague idea of what could turn into a song.

I like that loose vibe, but if being asked to sing the melody... I couldn't, 'cause I don't get it.

 

Way late to this thread. Well cant see everything on this forum that you’d want to comment on. Thanks to the OP for sending me here from the poll thread. If, as Mick said, Emotional Rescue was the leftovers from Some Girls then consider me one of those people that like Thanksgiving leftovers better than the actual meal. I can see how they were cut from the same cloth though, just prefer ER overall.

 

Hey, that sounds like you're describing any Keith solo song. Love him.

 

It's a very light night boozy ballad, a drink in one hand and a cig in the other. Like crying in your drink about a love gone wrong. It's heartfelt, and has beautiful sax work on it. Good closer to the side imo.

 

Is it really a swipe at Mick? Their relationship did not hit the rocks so soon. In fact, they were fine at this point. I get some of this is directed at Anita. Keith had kept her close in his inner circle for a number of reasons after they split as lovers and co-dependent junkies. Yet she just kept giving him reasons (constantly in legal and other trouble) to really push her out and away. So he was truly fed up with her at this point for sure. So some of this would seem to me to be about her. And Mick and his bust up as friends would come several years later.

 

I agree that much of the song is about Anita. That was the great thing about the Stones albums, you used to get a real honest news report about what was going on with the band and their lives.

However, there are lines that are not about her. "first to get laid, always the last bitch to get paid" I doubt is about her, unless Keith was that po'd and wanted to really slam her in his drunken rage, which may have been.

 

I'm inclined to think that "All About You" ended up being more about Mick than Anita only in retrospect. When Keith first wrote the song in '79, it was undoubtedly Anita he was thinking of. Years later, of course, it's an easy song to reinterpret.

 

I saw a drop dead stunning live performance of "All About You" on the Bridges to Babylon tour in LA. Keith said after "I wrote that on one of my better days" and he walked over to exchange guitars. There was a proud confidence about his walk, like he knew he nailed every line of the song. It was beautiful with Bobby leading the three piece horn section. One of the great moments of the night for me.

 

I have not followed this thread in detail, but this song seems to me to be about Bianca. Their divorce was not smooth sailing by any stretch.

Will all your money, keep you from sickness, keep you from cold, when your down in the hole. Bumming for cigarettes, bumming for nylons, in the American zone.

He keeps referring to a refuge from a war torn country, or otherwise destressed place. And the money this person has, or has just acquired. And it's a female I take it.

Am I way off here, just after their divorce was finalized?

 

That "Down In The Hole" could be a divorce song about Bianca is a possibility...Mick was ad-libbing the lyric, so maybe it was just his subconscious hiccupping or something Hell of it is, after all these years Mick probably couldn't tell ya what he was thinking when they cut "Down In The Hole" beyond possibly, "Oh, man, I was really drunk/high/both when we recorded that"...if, that is, he remembers the track at all, of course.

 

Your American night clubs, your jewelry, it's all that you know!

Ok, ad-libbing umm sure. Sounds to me like sharp barbs directed at one person. A hot enough person to get into Studio 54 night club, check. Has the jewelry, money, etc. check. Female for sure check.

Does not sound vague to me.

 

And she was also Respectable!

 

No. That was a big fuh you to Margaret Trudeau

 

Of course Maggie - Ronnie, but Bianca also had some kind of tryst with a presidents son yes?

 

Oh I didn't know that. Thought it was directly about the then Canadian Prime Minister's wife. 'Get out of my life...go take my wife...don't come back'