For whatever reason, my mother always had a tremendous problem with the Rolling Stones. She considered them the lowest of the low, which really is, in restospect, a bit rich, considering that Mick Jagger was friggin’ knighted in 2003. I would continually cite hundreds of more richly reviled characters – from Alice Cooper to Gene Simmons to Sid Vicious to GG Allin – as being a thousand times more worthy of her disgust and contempt, but as with so many things, once my mom had made her mind up about something, there was precious little hope in shifting it. In her world, Mick Jagger and his cohorts were essentially slovenly subhumans entirely beyond redemption.
Suffice to say, I begged to differ, and I pretty much immediately warmed to the music of the Rolling Stones as a wee lad upon first hearing an elder cousin’s copy of the fabled Hot Rocks: 1964-1971 compilation, their mystique only enhanced by my mother’s strenuous disdain for them. Their seamless ability to craft countless, genre-blurring, pop-culture-informing songs that went onto basically comprise the firmament of popular music was still (and remains) lost on my mother. Oh well.
When I was in eighth grade in 1981, the Stones released what was essentially yet another cash-in compilation of select songs and odds and ends, a revenue-generating practice they’d continue to perfect for several decades. While not a proper album by any stretch, this particular slab of wax featured a clutch of heretofore unavailable live tracks and alternate versions of some of their more recent material. Seemingly in an effort to provoke the easily offended, enhance their image as decadent lotharios and cheekily acknowledge their detractors who felt their best work was well behind them, the Stones titled this record Sucking In The Seventies.
While I don’t really remember my mom being anything of a regular shopper in any record stores, she somehow came across a copy of Sucking in The Seventies in her travels, one day, and if the title of the LP didn’t confirm everything she already perceived about the Rolling Stones, the album cover brought everything down to a whole new, unspeakable depth for her. If you’re not familiar with it, the sleeve of Sucking in The Seventies is essentially a highly stylized representation of the numerals for seven and zero, but rendered in a thick, inky font that almost resembles a Robert Motherwell painting. But over that image came a giant decal on the shrinkwrapping of the fabled Stones insignia, a plump, exaggerated pair of lips with a fulsome tongue extended. The tongue basically obscures the numerals, revealing only bulbous black curves poking out from behind the slick, salivating mouth.
When my mother came home, that day, she was practically vibrating with repulsion about it, describing the record cover in a manner that was even more gratuitously lurid than possibly the band’s original intentions. Upon hearing my poor mom’s vehement renunciation of it, I, of course, had to have it, and trotted pretty much immediately out to my local King Karol on 86th and Third to fetch my own copy, half-expecting to have my doe-eyed innocence decimated by the primal libidinous fury and Caligurlarian moral decay of the dangerous sleeve art. To say that I was let down by what I found, in that capactiy, would be a heroic understatment. I mean, I supose I could see what had been suggested, but it seemed pretty abstract and tame, to me. The image on the advertising for the record (above), meanwhile, is an entirely different story. Regardless, I bought it anyway.
Here in 2021, Suckng In The Seventies is, at best, a footnote in the gestalt of the Stones’ august discography, but it does feature an enjoyably feral reading of “When the Whip Comes Down,” which I still love to play. I have long since stopped trying to change my mom’s mind about the band.
Rest in peace, Charlie Watts.
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