Rolling Stones 59101
Producer: Jimmy Miller
Track listing: Dancing with Mr. D / 100 Years Ago / Coming Down Again / Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) / Angie / Silver Train / Hide Your Love / Winter / Can You Hear the Music / Star Star
October 13, 1973
4 weeks
On Exile on Main St., the Rolling Stones were able to make one of their finest albums, in spite of heavy drug use. On the follow-up, Goats Head Soup, the drugs began to take their toll on the band, which continued to experience commercial success, even after losing favor with critics.
“It was getting a little more bizarre by then,” says Andy Johns, who served as chief engineer and mixed the record. “That album suffered from drugs and alcohol. You can hear it in the music. Just about everyone was getting high, except for Bill [Wyman, the bassist] and Charlie [Watts, the drummer].”
“Heroin was now playing a bigger factor in what was going on,” he adds. “It definitely was not helping. It was very negative.” The primary user was guitarist Keith Richards, but “Mick [Jagger] wasn’t exactly straight and I definitely wasn’t,” Johns says.
To make matters worse, Richard was to face charges for use, supply, and trafficking of cannabis and heroin in Nice, France, while Wyman’s wife, Astrid, was raped in her Jamaican hotel room. “That stuff was definitely on their minds,” says Johns.
With the exception of “Silver Train,” which was recorded in Ireland, Goats Head Soup was recorded at Dynamic Sound Studios in Kingston, Jamaica. “There was an attitude of ‘Let’s get it done,'” says Johns. “It was just pure momentum. I don’t know that there was much of a direction at all. It was like, ‘Let’s do an album,’ and those were the songs that came out during the four or five months.”
And, as was the case on the previous albums, the Stones spent days attempting to perfect the recordings. Johns recalls that Richards had a particularly rough time with “Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker),” which went on to become a number 15 hit. “The track was really out of tune,” says Johns. “Everyone was so out of it that instead of recutting the track, Keith spent four days trying to get the bass in tune, and there was no way to make it work, because the electric piano and the guitar were out of tune with each other. Things were getting a little fuzzy there.”
In all, Goats Head Soup simply wasn’t up to par with the Stones’ previous few efforts. “There weren’t as many good songs and the recording was pretty shabby,” Johns admits. “It’s not their greatest effort, although there are some gems on it.” Johns’s personal favorites are “Winter,” which he calls “one of the best things that they ever did,” and the coyly titled “Star Star,” (better known as “Starfucker”) which he says “is a classic rock ‘n’ roll song.”
The big hit from Goats Head Soup was “Angie,” an acoustic ballad that became the Stones’ seventh Number One single on October 20, 1973. It’s rumored that David Bowie’s wife, Angela, inspired the song.
The week before “Angie” went to Number One, Goats Head Soup hit the top in its third week on the chart. It wasn’t the Stones’ finest hour, but it was good enough to give the band its third straight Number One album of new material and fourth chart-topping LP overall.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of October 13, 1973
1. Goats Head Soup, The Rolling Stones
2. Brothers & Sisters, Allman Brothers Band
3. Let’s Get It On, Marvin Gaye
4. Los Cochinos, Cheech & Chong
5. Innervisions, Stevie Wonder