I Am Angry With You Because You Can't See How You Caused Me This Pain

A couple months ago I learned the Rolling Stones were releasing their first album of new music in ... years. Just how many years, I forget, but long enough to have been ... ages. Speaking of time, it's almost 62 years since the band first got together. As for their last listenable album, that's debatable, but most of those I listen to say 42 years ago, when they released Tattoo You (1981).

How old is the band's singer? often gets asked when this new album is mentioned. So I looked it up. Mick Jagger was born in July, 1943, making him 80. As for the album, it's called Hackney Diamonds, and in a recent CBC interview Jagger was talking about it as if it too were old -- having been mastered in March. Judging from the album's first single, "Angry", Jagger is still capable of hitting some high notes, some of them above middle C.

As for songwriting, listeners familiar with the Stones will recognize "Angry" as a pastiche of past licks (the video visually supports that). It's not unusual for bands that have been around long enough to write songs like this, especially those conscious of a come-back (yes, the Stones have been away long enough for those under 50 to have forgotten them), but something about "Angry" had me wondering if they used AI to make it? And if so, what instructions were added? You can hear the drum intros that signal past hits like "Get Off My Cloud" (1965) and Tattoo You's "Start Me Up" (1981). So a combination of the two? Certainly a nice way to say goodbye to the band's nice guy drummer,  Charlie Watts, whose died a couple years back of natural causes.

What is "new" about this song is its lyric, which very much speaks to our moment -- and just how difficult it is for some of us to converse with it. This is not a lyric designed to produce a memorable chorus (the world spins too quickly for that now, and besides, where this song might have a chorus, it has a bridge instead), but a refrain based on an emotion ("anger") and to whom it is directed (the singing "me"). Indeed, this refrain ("Angry/ Don't be angry with me") is a refinement of past "angry"s and "me"s and comes in the last 1:30 minutes of a 3:46 minute song that essentially runs out of itself at the end of the second minute.

Here's the lyric:

One, two
One, two, three, go

Don't get angry with me
I never caused you no pain
I won't be angry with you
But I can't see straight (Yeah)
It hasn't rained for a month, the river's run dry
We haven't made love and I wanna know why
Why you angry with me?
Why you angry?

[Chorus]
Please just forget about me
Cancel out my name
Please never write to me
I love you just the same
I hear a melody ringing in my brain
Just keep the memories
Don't have to be ashamed

Don't get angry with me
I'm in a dеsperate state
I'm not angry with you
Don't you spit in my facе
The wolf's at the door with the teeth and the claws
My mouth's getting sore, I can't take anymore
Ah, why you angry with me?
Why you angry?

[Chorus]
Voices keep echoing
Calling out my name
Hear the rain keep beating
On my window pane
I hear a melody ringing in my brain
You can keep the memories
Don't have to be ashamed

Don't get angry with me

[Outro]
(Angry, angry)
Yeah, yeah (Angry, don't be angry with me)
If we go separate ways
(Angry) Yeah, don't be angry with me
Let's go out in a blaze
(Angry, don't be angry with me) Yeah
Don't you spit in my face
(Angry) Oh
Don't be angry with me
Don't get, don't get
(Angry, don't be angry with me)
I'm still taking the pills and I'm off to Brazil
(Angry, don't be angry with me)
Please, don't be angry with me (Angry, don't be angry with me)
Come on
Don't, don't, don't, not (Angry, don't be angry with me)
Not, not, not, not, not, not, not

Concert Stop

The Rolling Stones kicked off their 1972 tour in Vancouver. Fairly certain this was the band's first tour since the expensively-priced 1969 tour that, as if to atone for its high ticket prices, was to end in a free concert at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, but ended instead at the Altamont Speedway, and we know what happened there.

The 1972 tour was also the one the band invited Robert Frank to document, which he did in a film the Stones took him to court over: Cocksucker Blues (1972). This is the final film in an inadvertent trilogy that included Gimme Shelter (1970) -- a document of the tour that concluded at Altamont -- and before that, Godard's Sympathy for the Devil (1968), which, in its construction of the titular song, shone a light on the destruction of the band's colourist, Brian Jones (1942-1969). 

The picture up top shows police escorting two young men in matching "Mac" jackets beyond its frame. They say it was a riot -- the Rolling Stones Riot -- but they said the same of the police action that came to be known as the Gastown Riot ten months before it. But those jackets -- Mein Gott! They look like they were purchased that morning at Woodward's West Hastings.

Did Everybody Pay Their Dues?

In an illuminating 2013 article by the Wall Street Journal's Marc Mayers, Rolling Stones rhythm guitarist and co-writer Keith Richards tells the story of "Street Fighting Man" -- how it began in 1966 as a melody based on the French police siren, but stalled because he could not find the right "texture." By the time the Stones recorded "Street Fighting Man" in March, April and May of 1968 (it was released in August of that year), the song had undergone a complete lyric re-write. Read the WSJ interview here. Original Mick Jagger lyrics below:

Did Everybody Pay Their Dues?

Chief to scorn his friends

Make love to his relations

He beats his wife

And makes her life

A total wet vacation

Now did everybody pay their dues?

Now did end up with tribal blues?

All the braves and the squaws

And the maids and the whores

Did everybody pay their dues?

He is the tribal chief

His name is called Disorder

His flesh and blood he tears it up

And actually fries his mama

Now did everybody pay their dues?

Now did any of them try to refuse?

All the braves and the squaws

And the maids and the whores

Did everybody pay their dues?

See all the children know he’s lying

What’s all the fuss?

To be grown up

Is to be good at dying

Now did everybody pay their dues?

Now did any of them try to refuse?

All the braves and the squaws

And the maids and the whores

Did everybody pay their dues?