The Rolling Stones Tattoo You by: Steve Scully Mon:10-Sep-07 Label: Virgin Year: 1981 WB rating 68 out of 100

In 2007, it’s tough to have a conversation with someone about The Rolling Stones that doesn’t involve some joke about their age. Whilst not quite taking their Zimmer-frames on stage with them, it is inescapably obvious that they are, at least in temporal terms, getting on a bit. With 2005’s A Bigger Bang, The Stones proved that age was no barrier when it came to recording a brilliant, vibrant rock ‘n’ roll album. A Bigger Bang may be our most recent benchmark for return-to-form success, but the band’s most effective statement of the sort came in 1981 – more than 20 years prior – with Tattoo You.

The Stones turned it on with album opener, ‘Start Me Up’. Proving itself to be one of the most timeless and recognizable of their many hit singles, it’s a testament to the band’s traditional undercurrent of gritty, sexualised pop music: “You got me ticking gonna blow my top,” sings Jagger, barking amidst Keith Richards’ famous riff. Full of that indefinable cool, the song’s swagger reveals the Stones at their showy, arrogant best. From a different perspective, however, you could very well view this track as symptomatic of the rut the band found themselves in: fighting age, fighting vehement critics, they seemed to revert to the red-blooded, almost atavistic notions that underlay their music to this date. Often accused of misogyny, often criticized for overtly sexual imagery, the Stones, on Tattoo You, persist with that which made them great. A huge part of the album is made up of raw, visceral, rhythmic guitar and heavy, basic drums and bass; tracks like ‘Black Limousine’ harking back to the strong ties the band held with traditional rhythm and blues. Nevertheless, there’s an odd undercurrent throughout the record, at its most vivid on the slower numbers, but all-pervasive. Somehow, could Mick Jagger himself have mellowed with age?

The tinge of regret with which he sings the lines “I guess you know by now you ain’t the only one,” in ‘Worried About You’, and the fragile honesty of the album’s second masterpiece, ‘Waiting On A Friend,’ together suggest that, perhaps, the cocky Jagger persona is not impenetrable. “Don’t need a whore/I don’t need no booze/Don’t need a virgin priest/But I need someone I can cry to,” Jagger claims in ‘Waiting On A Friend’; we assume he’s seen them all in his life, and now holds a more mature view of the world. You wouldn’t expect it from the blatant sexual imagery of ‘Little T&A’, but Tattoo You sees the Stones growing up and – if a little obtusely – becoming a tad introspective. The soulful vocal harmonies through ‘No Use In Crying’ lend the track very sensual intimacy, and the honesty of Jagger’s vocal acrobatics in ‘Worried About You’ reveals both his showmanship and gutsy humanity as he switches from falsetto to chest voice.

Musically, the album rarely diverges from the traditional rock formula, but the moment they do go out on a limb, allowing Sonny Rollins and the late Billy Preston to lend a hand, Tattoo You truly takes flight. ‘Slave’ is a terrific bluesy jam session, with Rollins’ sax brilliance and Preston’s genius on keys completely taking the focus of Jagger’s falsetto meanderings. Rollins’ appearance at the end of ‘Waiting on a Friend’ adds another touch of class to a very impressive track: his solo is beautifully controlled, yet oozing with a chaotic sensuality in keeping with the song’s feel.

Tattoo You may not be as revolutionary as rock records can come; it may not even be one of The Rolling Stones’ greatest albums. The album is, however, one of the band’s most poignant moments. “Making love and breaking hearts/It is a game for youth,” Jagger laments in ‘Waiting on a Friend,’ the album’s mission statement given clarity. Amidst the bluster of ‘Start Me Up’, the traditional blues coarseness of ‘Black Limousine’ and the by-numbers rock of ‘Hang Fire’ sits an honest and very un-Stones like feeling of sentimentality. There’s enough on this album to satisfy the rock purists, and the glimmer of humanity offers depth enough to give the cynics something to praise. While Tattoo You covers all the bases, however, it does so with just a little too much haste, meaning only a handful of the tracks are memorable, and even fewer truly accomplished. The Stones hit hard with ‘Start Me Up’ and caress with ‘Waiting on a Friend’, they let loose with ‘Slave’ and ooze virility in ‘Black Limousine’; unfortunately, the remaining tracks are either completely forgettable, or merely basic and less-successful reproductions of the same statements.