Many people like this album. Its Wikipedia page starts, “Considered by music scholars to be an artistic breakthrough …” I say not so fast. It is the band’s first record of their own work, which is a step on the road to musical maturity. But they had been covering Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and Marvin Gaye, to pick a few, so it’s not as if their songs replaced Bobby Goldsboro. Their material includes signs they had toured too much—Going Home is an 11-minute wish and Flight 505 is a first-person report of a plane crash. They needed some home cooking. The songs about women and relationships are high-school exaggerations—her eyes are just kept to herself, while I, I can still look at someone else. Under My Thumb is easy to parody—I thought I remembered Bianca’s Tune that said Mick was under her heel. Lady Jane is a D.H. Lawrence euphemism for genitals. Dontcha Bother Me is two and a half minutes describing vapid behavior; I couldn’t tell whose. Think repeats ‘tell me whose fault was that, babe’—if they don’t know, I can’t help. The songs seem less than I remembered.
Paint It Black, on the other hand, keeps growing. It now represents the chaos of the mid-Sixties. Movies about Vietnam and shooting video games use it effectively. The song is about the devastation of a sudden loss—something we are all very aware of anymore.
converselyspeaking 