Black And Blue by The Rolling Stones was released in April 1976. Right as they started recording in December 1974, guitarist Mick Taylor quit the band. He was replaced by Ronnie Wood. He was Rod Stewart’s bandmate in both The Jeff Beck Group and Faces. And just like Rod Stewart, Ronnie is multiple decades older than his wife. She wasn’t even born yet when Ronnie joined The Rolling Stones.
But we should move on and talk about Black And Blue. The album’s promotional campaign, coordinated by Mick Jagger, had ads in print, on radio, and most notably on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The ads depicted a woman getting beaten and bruised, and she would say something along the lines of “Make me ‘Black and Blue’… I love it!”
Yes, it’s disgusting, but the album still hit #1 in the U.S., so that reflects poorly on Mick Jagger, Atlantic Records, and the listening public. Oh, and this feels like a good time to remind everyone that Mick Jagger is in the Epstein files.
Anyway, “Fool To Cry” was the album’s biggest Hot 100 hit. “Hot Stuff” and “Crazy Mama,” respectively the album’s opening and closing tracks, also got a modest amount of airplay on the rock stations. Also, like the album we talked about yesterday, this one has some reggae. There’s an original song unfortunately titled “Hey Negrita,” and there’s also a cover of the 1971 song “Cherry Oh Baby” by Jamaican singer Eric Donaldson. The original is a love song that’s mostly pleasant enough. However, at one point, he says to the woman that if she doesn’t believe he loves her, then “why don’t you try me?” I get what he meant to say, but given the ad campaign for Black And Blue, those words feel a little different coming from Mick Jagger.
Perhaps we should move on from talking about gross old men and focus on the actual songs. Black And Blue is usually regarded as one of the band’s weaker efforts. The songs are more jam sessions than anything with conventional song structures. Some of the songs are good, like “Hand Of Fate.” But even the better songs run longer than they should. That’s because the songs aren’t jazz fusion, like many records we’ve already discussed. There are solos, I guess, but no sections like a jazz song has – the songs just get repetitive. You could trim down a bunch of the songs by half and not lose anything of value. Some songs like “Memory Motel,” “Hey Negrita,” and “Melody” could be trimmed by half and you’d get the same result.
In brief, the album is not awful, but it is a skip.
Leave a comment