Keith Richards | Born To Listen

Ain’t I rough enough
Ain’t I tough enough
Ain’t I rich enough
In love enough
Oooo, ooh please.

Some Girls was released in 8 June 1978 and it was their first full album with Ronnie Wood. It’s a great album, up there with the best albums in their catalogue. They mixed in some new wave sounds, added a bit of disco and kept their soul, blues and country tinged rock’n roll. Released on the height of the punk and disco era, The Stones made this masterpiece of an album. Some Girls is very much a product of it’s time, but when Rolling Stones made a record that gave a nod to these “fads,” they did so with such anger and speed that the young people in 1978 must have been struck with envy. They certainly made an album that has stood the test of time and it’s a definitive Stones album.

The Rolling Stones prove time and again that they still have what it takes.

Here are all the songs live:

1. Miss You (Texas – 1978):

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I love the title “Crosseyed Heart,” and I still can’t explain quite what it means. I wanted to make a record that gave thanks and praises to everybody that influenced me. So in a way, “Crosseyed Heart” was to Robert Johnson. And later on, I realized without realizing it that I was tipping my hat in a lot of directions: to Gregory Isaacs for “Love is Overdue,” and to Otis Redding, and to a whole lot of people. I was paying my dues!
~Keith Richards (Jim McGuinn interview @ thecurrent.org)

Naturally, there’s a dip into roots reggae: Gregory Isaacs’ 1974 lovers’ rock signature, “Love Overdue,” complete with brass and Neville’s sweet backing vocals. There’s also a straight read of “Goodnight Irene,” a folk standard that Richards likely heard as a kid when the Weavers’ version charted in 1950. Two originals are as strong as any Stones songs of recent decades: “Robbed Blind,” a “Dead Flowers”-scented outlaw-country ballad that echoes Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home,” and “Trouble,” all hiccup-riff swagger with a slide-guitar mash note from Wachtel to ex-Stone Mick Taylor. There’s a charmingly cheeky duet with Norah Jones (“Illusion”), and some beautifully telling moments (see “Amnesia”) where Keith’s guitar is nearly everything — his sublime grooves sprouting melodic blooms and thorny leads. It’s proof that, at core, dude’s an army of one.
~Will Hermes (review @ rollingstone.com)

Keith Richards on the Andrew Marr Show (Clips from Crosseyed Heart) Sept 2015:

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