Keith Richards dedicates in his extensive memoirs (Life, 504 pages) just 20 lines to the Rolling Stones album from 1976 Black and Blue. And in that small space it focuses, more than on the content of the album, on how traumatic guitarist Mick Taylor‘s departure from the group was, just before starting to record the album, and on his dependence on heroin. This is how he described the atmosphere of the recording of that work: “To hell with everything. It’s the mono, uncle. But I apologized to the Stones. Hey, warm up, start pumping out the sound, give me another 24 hours. Until I am in condition I will not appear.”
When the guitarist got the material, the recording session could really begin. The corrosive music critic Lester Bangs condemned the group in his review of the album: “With the Rolling Stones everything is over.” The specialist of NME was no more benevolent: “A disappointment of gigantic proportions.” For a long time, Black and Blue It was called “the worst Rolling Stones album.” After this time, opinions have changed and many stonianos They perceive undoubted strengths. They even praise him, perhaps because of the mistreatment he received. The group also wanted to highlight it since they have just reissued it with unreleased material.
Rubén Pozo, who has just published the album 50town and was part of Pereza, he has a doctorate in the Rolling Stones. He knows everything about the English band. “I never understood those lists where Black and Blue It appears as their worst album. I think it’s unfair. It’s a strange job, yes, but over time the stonianos We have known how to value it and we have even ended up loving it. They were living through a turbulent period. In reality, it was not known what was going to happen to them. Richards was heavily into heroin, Jagger was flirting with jet set and they were still knocked out by the departure of Mick Taylor. The same title of the album, Black and Bluebruises, it’s strange,” says the musician.
At Christmas 1974, Mick Taylor announced that he was leaving. Richards’ partner in building the sound of the group’s most glorious albums (Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St.), got off the pirate ship. Taylor did not explain the reasons clearly to the bosses, but in subsequent interviews he let it slip: the frustration that caused him that Jagger and Richards did not signify him as the author of some songs in which he contributed things, and his intention to disengage, an issue that he did not see as plausible within an ecosystem where drugs were rampant.
But the Stones couldn’t stop. They needed to pump money into their checking account: they were still persecuted by the English Treasury and were enraged by the accounting tricks of their former representative, Allen Klein. They had been on the run for years, especially at this time with Richards surrounded by the police, eager to lock him up as a degenerate drug addict. “We had discovered police officers with binoculars up in the trees. They were watching us all the time, we were surrounded,” says the guitarist in Life about him and his partner at the time, Anita Pallenberg.
The bar to replace Taylor was set high. They spoke to Steve Marriott (Small Faces), Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher and even Eric Clapton. Neither wanted to give up their ambitions as soloists. Ronnie Wood fit in perfectly, because in addition to being a good guitarist he brought a scrupulous character. Stonian to twin with Richards. He was just another privateer and also evaded the leading role that Clapton or Beck embodied, which guaranteed submission to Jagger and Richards. But Wood did not want to leave his group, the Faces, which he led with vocalist Rod Stewart.
They chose a studio in Munich (Germany) to shape Black and Blue and they summoned several guitarists: Harvey Mandel, from Canned Heat; Muscle Shoals studio regular Wayne Perkins and Ronnie Wood. Each one contributed their skill, but none could claim to be the substitute. Things took a turn for the worse after recording. Wood went on tour with the Stones, Rod Stewart decided to pursue his solo career, the Faces broke up and Ronnie was free. They made his signing official and he appeared in the album photos. Also important were the contributions to the piano and organ of Billy Preston and Nicky Hopkins.
Mariano Muniesa, author of several books about the Rolling Stones (the last That wasn’t in my Rolling Stones book) analyzes the album for this report: “The main strength of the album is that, although it may not seem like it, it is a work very typical of the Stones, because it is varied. They have always been concerned, especially Jagger, not to always do the same thing, to demonstrate that they can move in many musical fields, and on this album they practice it very well: they have disco and funk music (Hot Stuff, Hey Negrita), rock guitarrero (Crazy Mama, Hand of Fate)ballads (Memory Motel, Fool to Cry), a jazz experiment with Billy Preston (Melody) and reggae (Cherry Oh Baby). The weakness of Black and Blue is that he has had to pay the toll of being in the middle of two very big albumsIt’s Only Rock and Roll y Some Girls. And also because it is an album by a band in transition, without a second guitar.”
“For me the theme of the album is Memory Motel“, a long ballad (seven minutes), beautiful, which has the peculiarity that Jagger and Richards sing it,” says Rubén Pozo. Muniesa agrees: “I think it is among the Stones’ best ballads, superior to Angie”. In fact, some songs by Black and Blue They seem almost the product of improvisations rather than an elaborate plan. But far from being a defect, this concept of jam makes it more interesting. Rubén Pozo speaks of a work that is “decadent, in a good way, in the terms in which the figure of Oscar Wilde is analyzed.” Surely the most determined Black and Blue offers a sonic coherence outside Charlie Watts, who with his impeccable drums equipped with swing He casually leads the album along welcoming paths. In the rankings of the Stones’ albums after 1982, Black and Blue he abandoned the last position to leave it to debatable albums like Undercover (1983), Dirty Works (1986) o Bridges to Babylon (1997)
“In Black and Blue It’s the Rolling Stones doing not only rock and roll“, Franco Fernández, host of the program and podcast, contributes from Argentina Es solo Rolling Stonesnow in its tenth season. “On this album we can hear them performing funk, reggae, ballads, touches of jazz, and also rock songs with powerful riffs. Furthermore, it is an opportunity to listen to them with other guitarists that few remember, but who for a short time were part of the band for these recording sessions, such as Wayne Perkins and Harvey Mandel, who contributed a sound that at times sounds galactic and that was not repeated again,” adds Fernández.
Black and Blue It was released in May 1976 and reached number one in sales in the United States and two in the United Kingdom. Not bad for a transition album. Another honor of the album: in the sessions it was tested Star Me Up in an original reggae version, a song that would be recovered in a rock version in 1981 and that would be the last great Rolling Stones classic.
