Tell you what gentle readers, don’t you just hate it when you are happily wallowing in your own sweet melancholy, lost in your thoughts, possibly ensconced with a glass of some thing nice in your hand, maybe thinking about counting how many LP’s you own that begin with the letter ‘G’* and some lowbrow extrovert of your acquaintance calls you up trying to foist his company on you, in the guise of doing you a favour?
Your phone rings It's just some friends of mine that say "Hey, what's the matter, man? We're gonna come around at twelve With some Puerto Rican girls that's just dyin' to meet you We're gonna bring a case of wine Hey, let's go mess and fool around You know, like we used to"
I mean a bevvy of Puerto Rican girls and a case of wine can be all well and good, if a little rough on my bad back these days, but give me a break man! I’m with Mick on this one, just piss off and just let me wander around NYC feeling sorry for myself in a naff jacket; it’s my inalienable** right.
I might just have hinted earlier that I love Rolling Stones Miss You, their (Gasp! Quelle horreur!!) disco track. My daughter^ really started to get into the Stones a couple of years ago and being the kindly dad I am I bought her the 1978 pink vinyl 12″ version, for Christmas. It is a real beauty too, the sleeve front and back is superb, the neon pink sets of the yellow Rolling Stones Records perfectly. A perfect bright, disposable looking artefact of its’ time.
Soooo … I did what any loving father would do and thought ‘this is way too good for her, I’m keeping this’ and I did. I think she might even have been a bit ill at the time too. I’m not proud, just honest. Occasionally. I wanted it more.
So what didn’t my daughter get? well Miss You is a real gem. If it’s disco then it sounds unlike any other disco track I have ever heard, Sugar Blue’s harmonica gives the whole edifice a definite shift towards the blues, regardless of the (immaculate) beat. We need a big shout out to the shiftiest Stone of all, Mr Wyman his bassing is on the money here, good style.
There seems to be a bit of confusion knocking around somewhere, there is a 5:47 ’12” single mix’ in existence, which is okay BUT the 8:32 mix here is much better. The bass is clearer, the instrumental bulk and extra vocal asides that Bob Clearmountain allows/mixes in never seem like filler here, never break the slinky downbeat mood. More is definitely more in this context – this is a good 5″ better than the single version.
The whole point of a 12″ single was that because the grooves had more room they were cut deeper, longer and better, the whole resulting platter was louder and clearer. Miss You really does prove a point here it is an excellent cut.
There’s a B-side too, but let’s not go there.
Dodgy to their core, there is a very Stones-like injustice behind the genesis of Miss You. The song was initially workshopped via a jam between Jagger and Billy Preston. Bill Wyman, by his own unreliable It-was-all-me-what-did-it-all testimony AND other sources should have been given a co-writing credit too. As always though Miss You was credited solely to Jagger/Richards as was the norm, no explanation, no negotiation, no contributions, no writer’s royalties.
I love the Stones but I really would not have wanted to be a part of their cavalcade.
So in a few minutes, I’ll turn the lights off and lie on the floor when the posse of Peurto Rican girls comes around trying to meet me; I would appreciate it if they left their wine on the doorstep though, that’d be useful.
Then I shall turn the Anglepoise to the wall, slip on Miss You for the 487th time and throw some electric, yet melancholy shapes all on my own.
1025 Down.
PS: I did buy my daughter another pink vinyl copy of Miss You a few months later AND resisted the urge to check if the cover was marginally better than my own one (with a view to swapping). I miss her now she’s away at university.
*79 since you ask.
**not a word that gets used often enough in my view.
^currently locked-down and self-isolating in student halls in Glasgow, in conditions somewhat akin to early-Victorian slum living.