This was the first LP I bought. I was in ninth grade and I thought the Stones were the coolest band. I loved the record. Man, playing it now I realized I misunderstood most of the lyrics. When I looked them up on line, I have to say there’s not much there.
Get Off My Cloud–I look out my window/imagining the world has stopped. What does that mean? I’ve been at the bar on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building, and I couldn’t see anything much. It was really very isolated unless you are standing at a window. If you sit on a sofa and look out or up, there’s nothing. Marianne Faithfull said As Tears Go By is a song about an older woman and having kids—I say Jagger and Richards didn’t have the maturity to imagine speaking for anybody but young men. Blue Turns to Grey is a song about the need for mental health services. The singer’s girl has gone; he thinks he won’t be lonely, but he is. Sadness turns into depression—isn’t that what blue turns to grey means? Nowadays they’d put a hotline number at the end. In a song about how the quality of the singer is important more than the song, the singing is just terrible. When I heard the vocals fall apart at the end of The Singer, Not the Song, I wondered if the Stones were joking. When they covered Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, it was fine.
converselyspeaking 