Luxury Album: It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (1974) Side 2 Track 6
Fingerprint File Side 2 Track 10
Short and Curlies Side 2 Track 9
by the Rolling Stones
Work began on It's Only Rock 'n Roll following the Rolling Stones' autumn…
Luxury Album: It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (1974) Side 2 Track 6
Fingerprint File Side 2 Track 10
Short and Curlies Side 2 Track 9
by the Rolling Stones
Work began on It's Only Rock 'n Roll following the Rolling Stones' autumn 1973 European tour. Production began in November at Munich, Germany's Musicland Studios. According to guitarist Keith Richards, "We were really hot (off the road) and ready just to play some new material." The recording sessions were attended by Belgian painter Guy Peellaert, who Mick Jagger invited to do the album cover after seeing his work in the book Rock Dreams, which featured illustrations of various rock musicians such as the Rolling Stones. Peellaert eventually painted the band as "rock deities", descending a temple staircase, surrounded by young girls and women worshiping them in Grecian clothing. The cover bears a very strong resemblance to Henri Gervex's painting, The Coronation of Nicolas II (1896). The artist refused to sign a deal of exclusivity, and in 1974 provided the album art for David Bowie's Diamond Dogs.
The album was at first developed as a half-live, half-studio production with one side of the album featuring live performances from the Stones' European tour while the other side was to be composed of newly recorded cover versions of the band's favourite R&B songs. Covers recorded included a take of Dobie Gray's "Drift Away", Jimmy Reed's "Shame Shame Shame", and the Temptations' "Ain't Too Proud to Beg". Soon the band began working off riffs by Richards and new ideas by Mick Jagger and the original concept was scrapped in favour of an album with all-new material. The cover of "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" was the only recording to make the cut, while the "Drift Away" cover is a popular bootleg.[6]
It's Only Rock 'n Roll marked the Stones' first effort in the producer's chair since Their Satanic Majesties Request, and the first for Jagger and Richards under their pseudonym "The Glimmer Twins". On the choice to produce, Richards said at the time:
"I think we'd come to a point with Jimmy (Miller) where the contribution level had dropped because it'd got to be a habit, a way of life, for Jimmy to do one Stones album a year. He'd got over the initial sort of excitement which you can feel on Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. Also, Mick and I felt that we wanted to try and do it ourselves because we really felt we knew much more about techniques and recording and had our own ideas of how we wanted things to go. Goats Head Soup hadn't turned out as we wanted to – not blaming Jimmy or anything like that... But it was obvious that it was time for a change in that particular part of the process of making records."[2]
Starting with this release, all future Rolling Stones albums would either be produced by themselves or in collaboration with an outside producer.
Most of the album's backing tracks were recorded first at Musicland; solo vocals were recorded later by Jagger, about whom Richards would say, text limit
