The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [60]
One clue that Phair knew exactly what she was doing, philosophically speaking, is Guyville’s closer “Strange Loop.” As the song and album end, her guitar riff morphs gradually into the opening chords of “6’ 1”.” She’s pointed us back to the beginning, to the start of her album. But since she’s also pointed to Exile on Main Street with her “song-by-song” claim, why not go back to that album and revisit, if not revise, our knowledge and appreciation of that album? It is a great album, obviously. But that doesn’t mean it’s finished and done, that it’s the last word on exile, on America, on alienation and the rest of the human circus. Since she wrote Guyville in Chicago, home to Chess Studios and the legendary Checkerboard Lounge—Mick and Keith’s unofficial musical mecca of Chicago blues—Guyville traced a hermeneutic circle in more ways than one.
Phair’s Song-by-Song Responses to Exile on Main Street
Songs about Romantic or Sexual Exile
TRACK 1: “Rocks Off ” and “6’ 1”.” Mick’s take on life in the sexual fastlane, and Phair’s observations about a similarly oversexed, unhappy guy who’s searching for satisfaction.
TRACK 9: “Loving Cup” and “Mesmerizing.” Unrequited lust from a male and then a female perspective. Mick wants to be intoxicated; Phair wants to do the intoxicating and nods to the middle-eight in “Rocks Off ”—“It’s all mesmerized all that inside me.”
TRACK 10: “Happy” and “Fuck and Run.” Keith’s loves stick around, and that’s all he needs to keep him happy. Phair’s never do. She’s not happy.
TRACK 11: “Turd on the Run” and “Girls! Girls! Girls!” Mick gets dumped and he’s angry about it. Phair toys with her guys all the time and gets away “with what the girls call murder.”
TRACK 12: “Ventilator Blues” and “Divorce Song.” There are tense times when that “your gun in hand” becomes your code of living and “everybody’s going to need a ventilator.” Phair needs air, too, and she pulls the trigger on a relationship. “You put in my hands a loaded gun,” she sings, “and asked me not to fire it.”
TRACK 16: “Stop Breaking Down” and “Gunshy.” Mick’s “Mama got a pistol” and “laid it down on me.” Phair takes “rifle in hand” to steel herself against the routine of being someone’s “wife.”
TRACK 18: “Soul Survivor” and “Strange Loop.” Mick sees himself drowning in a shipwrecked relationship (probably with Bianca). Phair needs to end a relationship because she’s “tired of fighting” and must be “adamantly free.” Mick would “rather drink seawater” than stay on this ship, but Phair thinks her guy will be back: “nothing feeds a hunger like a thirst.”
Songs about Geographical Exile or Place
TRACK 2: “Rip this Joint” and “Help Me Mary.” Mick and Co. bounce from city to city in America, while Phair “locks [her] doors at night” to keep out the hordes of guys who invade her apartment and “leave suspicious things in the sink.”
TRACK 6: “Sweet Virginia” and “Soap Star Joe.” The Stones praise California’s wine and sand, but they sing for Virginia. Phair sings about a wandering “hero” who rode into town and believes he is the embodiment of America—“you’re looking at it, Babe.”
TRACK 15: “All Down the Line” and “Johnny Sunshine.” Mick’s train is moving through town quickly, so won’t you be his “little baby for a while”? Phair’s been dumped and taken for “everything” she owns. He stole her car and her horse. He did-n’t take a train.
TRACK 17: “Shine a Light” and “Stratford on Guy.” Two laments for struggling individuals—a dear friend of Mick’s away from home in hospital room “10-0-9” and the “movie-sized” drama of Phair’s own life that she observes in the glittering lights below her seat “27D.”
Songs about Existential Exile or Self-Alienation: