Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
When a particularly good guitar riff hits the air, time freezes for a moment. It may be few notes or an easy chord progression, but the idea is simple. It’s about a guitar in the right hands. A killer guitar riff can part dark clouds, cause stiff neck muscles to loosen, and dormant brain cells to awaken, ready to sing along to the rest of the song. You don’t even need lyrics. Just listen to the Surfaris’ instrumental classic “Wipeout” which opens with a drum roll and within few three seconds of the guitar jumping in, your toes will want to dance in the hot sand.
There are other musical alleys that have a similar effect. A familiar piano refrain immediately creates a mood, channeling memories, creating new ones. An opening percussion beat can bring a song to mind. But today, it’s all about guitars. And guitar riffs. They are the hot, sour, salty, and sweet sauces of life all rolled into one.
All the riffs through all the music through all the years swirling around my brain, at this moment, today, I’m listening to a new album where guitars are the stars. In this one, Keith Richards and Ron Woods’ fingers bend the guitar strings in the opening salvo of the new Rolling Stones album, Foreign Tongues. Their 25th studio album. The blazing opening track, “Rough and Twisted” is classic, boozy, bluesy Stones. It’s a rocker that will be added to their myriad classics that are part of the band’s catalog stretching back to 1962.
The sound is unmistakably Rolling Stones. At once familiar and new. There’s no need to fuss over who plays what. It’s about plugging in and getting to work, gathering a lifetime of twists and turns and writing them into songs that become songs for the ages.
The album dropped a day before my birthday this year, a gift from the old blokes to a graying fan. An appreciative fan who has been listening to the band for nearly five decades beginning as a skinny young immigrant kid slowly diving into musical realms while living in the blocks of high rises in Queens, NYC. It began in the mid-70s on AM stations on crappy radios and continues now on formats, equipment, and level of sound unimagined in those days.
The Rolling Stones were among the early staples of that musical awakening, which began a few years earlier in India with a music loving Mom and an engineer Dad who craved an alternate life of a professional performing musician. His engineering day job never went away, but he gave many live performances in audiences ranging from living room gatherings to large crowds and garba nights during Navaratri.
“It’s Only Rock and Roll” was one of the first Rolling Stones songs I heard in those formative years in NYC.
The band was never political, but in the new album there are shards of intrigue, especially the song “Ringing Hollow,” where Mick Jagger sings about the band’s love of America, paying tribute with his fellow Stones, a trio of America loving Brits. The song is a sharp commentary of current environment steeped in American birthed music – rock, blues, country. You just gotta listen to it.
Was it a coincidence they dropped the album in July? The 250th independence anniversary of this lovely nation? No matter. The album is packed with 14 tracks and pretty much all of them help complete a fantastic record.
This is quite likely their last studio album. But wait a minute. That has been said before, especially for a rock band that’s been around 60 plus years. They could have imploded along the way at any number of junctions, but for the joy of music lovers, they didn’t and still perform and record such essential music.
I surely appreciate the album being released the day before my birthday. Thanks Mick, Keith and Ron. I know it’s only Rock and Roll, but I like it, um, no, love it. The Stones have nothing left to prove. They’ve been there, done that.
The outlook on life and its fragilities appear different as you race through time in the final third of your life. The hazy possibility of a creative nonretirement beckons while splotches of inspiration come at you from those already ahead of you in line.
I take this record as an inspiration from elders to the ode of creativity, akin to a 93-year-old Clint Eastwood directing a movie, or here three guys in their 80s putting out a smashing new record. Who says creativity is in the hands and minds of the youth? I may yet shake the dust off the old guitar I bought oh so many decades ago. Ok, that’s not likely, but I’ll continue to take large stacks of papers and put pen and ink to work and turn those blank pages into dancing words. These are my riffs.
“Time is On My Side,” is a song the band recorded long ago. Well, of course that rascal time is never on anyone’s side, but at this moment, this day, while the Rolling Stones pour out of the speakers, all I’m thinking about is all the time, through all the years, those lovely riffs, how those rolling, rolicking, restless riffs rock guitars.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine
Contact: samir@saathee.com
Twitter / X: @ShuklaWrites
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