Earlier this week, as I was walking down Broadway to work, I passed by a clothing shop just north of Canal Street that was using a crate of vinyl LP’s as some kind of prop in their front window, with various albums strewn around artfully. One such record was a weathered copy of an old favorite of mine, Emotional Rescue by the Rolling Stones, which was oddly fitting, as said album always reminds me of the summer, and one specific summer in particular.
Back in 2009, I wrote up a little post for a since-vanished blog called The New York Nobody Sings, extolling the merits of a particular track that mentioned an arguably iconic Manhattan street corner by name. Sadly, the blog no longer exists, but here’s what I wrote back then … which I’ve edited/updated slightly, as warranted.
Sure, there are plenty of Rolling Stones songs that cite New York City ("Honky Tonk Woman," "Harlem Shuffle," "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo [Heartbreaker]," "Shattered" and, of course, "Miss You" spring immediately to mind), but, to my recollection, they've never cut a song that references such a specific New York address as they did on "Dance Pt. 1," the opening number off their transitional album from 1980, Emotional Rescue. Ten seconds into the track, Jagger starts lipping off to Keith, rhetorically postulating as to why they're "standing on the corner of West 8th Street and Sixth Avenue." Why indeed?
It's a fair question, I suppose, being that said main drag into the formerly most-traveled area of Greenwich Village hardly seems like the hippest stretch of real estate for the fabled Glimmer Twins to be loitering on (although they were known to favor a block just across town a couple of years later). I'd imagine the explanation for the location is that portions of the Emotional Rescue album were recorded just up the street at Electric Lady Studios. Still, I've always loved the fanciful image of Mick & Keef in full-on flouncy rock-fopp mode, striking any number of ridiculous poses in front of what would have been Gray's Papaya, at the time, wondering what to do with their evening.
The previous album, Some Girls, had found the Stones capably keeping up with the times, crafting soon-to-be classic rock radio staples like the afore-cited "Miss You" and "Shattered" that stylistically borrowed from the pulsing disco and raging punk rock of that era. The Emotional Rescue record, however, was lambasted as more of a forced effort, one that breathlessly strove to mimic the more organic sounds of its predecessor. In truth, many of the tracks were actually leftovers from the Some Girls sessions. While not as maligned as later tepid endeavors like Dirty Work or the entirely needless A Bigger Bang, Emotional Rescue is rarely touted as a stand-out effort in the burly Stones catalog.
It's rare, but it happens. This is one of those times.
The album was released in June of 1980. At the time, I was 13 years old, and had been sequestered -- largely against my will -- to a camp in the verdant environs of Maine called Great Oaks. All the kids at the camp were split up into a dozen cabins, each named after a state (I lived in "West Virginia," a cabin almost immediately re-christened "West Vagina" for the purposes of tirelessly prurient juvenile comedy). Each cabin was looked after by a designated counselor. My cabin's counselor was a Swedish twentysomething named Eric, who had long, shaggy blonde hair much like that of his more celebrated countryman, Bjorn Borg. Eric was also a Rolling Stones freak. While he tolerated the endless airings of the Devo and Ramones tapes we'd insist on playing, there were fewer things Eric enjoyed more than hearing the Stones. So, when he got his hands on a cassette of Emotional Rescue during a field trip into town, one day, it was pretty much solidified that we'd be listening to precious little else for the remainder of the summer (although Joe's Garage Act I by Frank Zappa was also a West Vagina favorite, if memory serves). By the end of the summer, I knew Emotional Rescue back-to-front. To this day, I still think it's an excellent album. You can read more about my Great Oaks experience here.
While "Dance Pt. 1" has never been my favorite song on the record (that honor goes to "Where The Boys Go"), I've always dug it. Not just for the shoutout to West 8th Street -- a strip I'd soon-after become a regular on thanks to its then-thriving (and now vanished) network of record stores -- but for its shameless espousal of grooving. While many would decry the band for trying to jump on some sort of disco-rock bandwagon, "Dance Pt. 1" (which was evidently recorded several times -- there are seemingly handfuls of alternate versions floating around out there) is a million times funkier -- and more legitimately danceable -- than similarly-inclined efforts by, say, Kiss ("I Was Made for Loving You") or Pink Floyd ("Another Brick in The Wall Pt. II"). I'd suggest that Queen surpassed them in the credible funk department with "Another One Bites the Dust" (released the same year) but blame it on that bass line. And while gratuitously hedonistic, "Dance Pt. 1" still retains Keef's signature dirty guitar, sneerily reminding you at every turn that even when wearing their boogie trousers, the Stones still rocked harder than you.
Here in 2023, Electric Lady is still holding court on a West 8th Street that is entirely unrecognizable from its 1980 incarnation. Without fail, though, I absolutely cannot cross that corner of 6th Avenue without the opening of "Dance Pt. 1" shimmying into my head. Get up, get out....
So, that was the end of my post for The New York Nobody Sings. I didn’t even begin to delve into some of the other great tracks on the album in question, notably the endearingly yobbish “Where The Boys Go,” the frankly ludicrous “Send It To Me” (wherein Mick recites a laundry list of ladies of various nationalities he wouldn’t turn his nose up at), the frantically priapic “She’s So Cold” and, wait for it, the slow-loping disco-rock of the title track, replete with Mick’s bizarre recitation about being “your knight in shining armor coming to your emotional rescue, riding across the desert on a fine Arab charger.” These are all amazing moments.
On the not-so-great front, there are admittedly clunkers like the deeply inappropriate (but still kinda fun) “Summer Romance,” the roundly wrong-footed “Indian Girl,” the dirgey “Down in the Hole” and the mean-spirited “Let Me Go,” but I never said it was a perfect record.
It's not a perfect Stones record, not by a long shot (if they have one, I'd probably suggest it's Let It Bleed, but you may beg to differ). But I still love it. Beyond all the personal associations I've assigned to it, I just think it's a fun, interesting slice of the Stones' history. I was also a big fan of the artwork. Ironically, the aesthetic they were mining for a modern, futuristic look -- those distinctive, thermographic photos -- looks irretrievably dated today. I remember taping the massive poster that came inserted with the original LP to my bedroom door out at our old house in Quogue, and my mother practically hissing every time she saw it (as I mentioned here, she was decidedly not a fan).
Given that I travel in idiotic, rock-dork circles wherein canonical albums and hallowed artists are routinely subject to endless rankings and needless re-appraisals, my invocations of the under-appreciated greatness of Emotional Rescue have been plentiful, over the years. But I've yet to find that many people that agree with me.
Give it another chance.
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