Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have had their tiffs, once even threatening to rip the Rolling Stones apart at the height of their squabbling in the `80s. So one of the keys to making the Stones work in the `90s has been compromise, never more so than on the band`s new album, “Bridges to Babylon” (Virgin), due in stores Sept. 30.
“We each go out on our separate branches,” Richards says, “and we might both hang ourselves. But we`re always willing to let each other give something new a try.”
But that doesn’t mean there can’t be second-guessing and little games of one-upmanship afterward. Take the track, “Might as Well Get Juiced,” co-produced by the cutting-edge duo the Dust Brothers (Beck, Beastie Boys). It’s built around a distorted rhythm track, with reverberating guitars, atmospheric keyboards and a subterranean bass line, while Jagger’s vocal oozes menace over the top.
“It’s basically blues, with a couple of minor bridges,” Jagger says, downplaying the song’s status on the new record as the most radical departure from the Stones’ trademark blues-based, guitar-driven sound. “It reminds me of Howlin’ Wolf in some ways, the way I’m delivering it with the harmonica, just slightly twisted up for now.”
And the reaction of his fellow Rolling Stones: Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts?
“They loved it.”
In a separate interview, Richards is asked, “Do you love it, Keith?”
“Let me put it this way, I’ve got a more radical and better version of it in the drawer,” he says. “I’m not enamored with their (the Dust Brothers’) work. They took six months to do it. I think they’re in another area from what we’re doing, they’re more tape doctors than producers. But it was a tradeoff. You choose who you want to work with, and both of us had to swallow a bit of what we’d done.”
In talking to Jagger and Richards, the Stones’ longtime songwriters and producers, it’s apparent that they make albums not only as collaborators but as sometimes testy competitors, each vying to bring his vision of the band–Jagger as the cutting-edge trend spotter, Richards as the grizzled traditionalist–to the fore. Jagger says he was adamant that “Babylon” be a more diverse and experimental album than its studio predecessor, the 1994 “Voodoo Lounge.”
“I like to play the game, to make it more exciting for yourself and everyone else,” Jagger says. “I don’t want to be overly trend-conscious, but I think by definition if you’re in popular music, you better be in it, not just going up your own alley.”
By Stones standards, “Babylon” was a rush job–written and recorded in a scant few months in Los Angeles, as opposed to the leisurely visits to remote islands the band had favored on its recent recordings. “In the past we’d write and bring together what we had and reach a compromise,” Richards says. “This was more about throwing open the process to outside angles.” A bevy of co-producers and musicians, from drummer Jim Keltner to jazz saxophone great Wayne Shorter, had a hand in the sessions.
“Nothing earth-shattering was contributed by using all these outside people, but everyone chipped in with good ideas,” Jagger says. “The whole idea was that everyone was not locked into tradition, although tradition had its place.”
For all of the singer’s talk about pushing the envelope in the studio, he’s not about to test his fans’ patience in concert. This is, after all, a band that has turned stadium rock into its personal gold mine–outselling every previous rock tour in 1989-90 and then again in 1994-95. The Stones have done it by taking nothing for granted; this year they’re installing yet another elaborate stage show and hiring a new sound team with the idea of topping their stadium-rock competitors U2, who toured a few months ago. And they’ve done it up by increasingly relying on their stockpile of classics, most of which were recorded more than 20 years ago.
“They did too many new songs, for my money,” Jagger says of the U2 show he saw in San Diego. “I think it’s a mistake to do too many new songs, especially when the record’s not out or hasn’t had a chance to sink in. People just gaze at you blankly, and I hate that.”
The Stones, he says, will slowly roll out the “Bridges to Babylon” tunes because “the audience wants everything. They want to get drunk and not have a hangover. But only if the new ones are, dare I say, hits, are they going to love them. The songs they like are hits–that’s the deal.”
On that point, Jagger and Richards have no quarrel.
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