The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [68]
Not all distinctive Stones grooves are Keith’s, probably, but these are among Keith’s most distinctive grooves. For example, there is also “Beast of Burden,” which is devilishly hard to get right, and that is partly because it’s actually much faster than it seems like it would be, it’s just that the snare slap is trailing in an almost unnatural way, but I have a feeling this groove was Charlie’s doing more than Keith’s. And there’s the stupendous groove of “Shattered,” but I think that one may need to be credited to Bill. More on all that in a minute.
There are lesser known original Stones grooves, like “She Said Yeah,” which was way ahead of its time. It only re-emerged in the era of the Ramones, and the list could go on. I say these are “original grooves” but what I mean is that I haven’t heard anything earlier that was precisely the same, and when rock musicians communicate grooves to each other, they often call these grooves by their Stones names. (“It’s goes like ‘Start Me Up’” they’ll say, and so on.) I haven’t made an exhaustive survey, but I’m fairly confident about these grooves I’ve named. Of course, plenty of Stones songs have ordinary rock grooves, or blues grooves, or even country (like “Far Away Eyes”) or disco (like “Miss You”). It’s not like our boys discovered them all.
There may be no definite limit to how many rock grooves there are, but I doubt any other single person has contributed more previously undiscovered grooves to rock music than Keith Richards. Maybe Chuck Berry did, and he is a great study in grooves because if you don’t hit exactly the right groove in playing one of his songs, they all sound too similar to one another. Apart from being a daring and brilliant lyricist and tremendous innovator on the guitar, the third prong of Chuck Berry’s great genius lies in the tiny variations in the rock grooves he discovered. But with the Stones concert, it is Keith who first draws the grooves down from the atmosphere to the ground, and then back from the ground and out into the ionosphere, and we all just have to hop around like worms on a hot rock—especially Mick, who shows us just how It should be done. I defy you to stay still when “Brown Sugar” kicks in.
Riffing
In spite of the dominance and heedlessness of Mr. Groove, Mademoiselle Sound does get her say, because only she knows what she likes. Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome. Having been captured and tied down by Bad Boy Groove, she says, not so coyly, “not like that, do it like this … if you wanna hear me squeal …” and suddenly she has all his attention. After all, he does want to hear her squeal. (And so do I, at this point. Is it getting warm in here, or is that just me?) Anyway, when it comes to the Mistress Sound, she’ll only get happy for a fellow if you turn all her knobs the right way and caress her taut body just so. Keith knows the right moves, most nights. He had the gift, but it takes patience and practice too. At least, judging by what I hear, I’d say the good Lady Sound actually likes to go slumming with him.
So the riff has two legs, and one of them is the tone. You have to get a hold on that leg first, adjust it this way and that until you hear something you can work on. There are so many different things an electric guitar can sound like, from these smooth Chet Atkins country hollow-body tones, to Duane Eddy’s reverb-laden, rebel rousing pluck tone, to Jimi’s famous feedback-on-the-edge-of-forever, to Tom Petty’s cool clean “Breakdown,” to the Angus Young “fuck-tone” in “You Shook Me All Night Long.” All electric guitar players explore tones, and it’s common for them to be very picky about it. Keyboard players once shared in this arcane science, but then they got spoiled by the electronic overhaul of the keyboarding world, synthesizers and samplers. The keyboard player who is a master of amplifier and instrument tones is rare these days,