Jimmy Miller

2005-09-18

I’ve now listened to the new Rolling Stones album A Bigger Bang for the second time and I can honestly say it’s at best just OK. It’s certainly not a great album. Unfortunately, the Stones have written and recorded so much great music in the past that they will always be held to the highest of standards.

As is the case with many albums recorded over the past 10-15 years it’s about five or six songs too long. I think the album would be so much stronger if they would have just picked the best 10 or 11 songs and left the rest off. With the advent of digital, they could have always made the lesser material available online for those who have to have everything. I will never understand the desire to fill up every last second of space available to an artist on a compact disc.

That said, even if they would have boiled things down to the cream of the crop, A Bigger Bang is still not an album that belongs in the great Stones Pantheon.

Let’s face facts, every legendary group or artist, and I don’t care who we’re talking about, has a golden period of brilliance. A moment when all pistons are firing in sync, when magic is taking place. And then, just as unexpectedly as it came, it disappears – obviously in varying degrees according to the act in question.

The Stones are no exception to this rule. They’ve made great albums, and, well, some not so great albums. Don’t get me wrong, even when the Rolling Stones are at their worst (ever listen to Emotional Rescue?) they’re still light years ahead of just about any other band out there. But they’re not infallible, and A Bigger Bang is an example of one of their albums that I do not plan to delve into any deeper.

The purpose of this piece of writing, however, was not to review or deconstruct the latest offering from the Stones, but rather to shine some light on what I consider to be that period of brilliance when the band could do no wrong.

While listening to A Bigger Bang for the first time last week, Rhino’s very own John Srebalus, upon entering my office remarked that what they need to do is bring back Mick Taylor. This is something I’ve heard so many times I’d like to have a nickel for each one. I have many friends who believe that Mick Taylor was the key to the golden age of the Rolling Stones. That it was Taylor’s involvement that led to the most experimental, important, and expansive Stones material. I have another theory though.

I certainly don’t dismiss Mick Taylor as either a guitarist or inspirational force that helped Mick and Keith find that inner voice, but in my opinion, the force behind the great era was none other than the band’s producer Jimmy Miller.

The Rolling Stones can be broken down into three distinct periods of productivity: The Andrew Loog-Oldham years when they were covering blues songs and cutting their teeth on songwriting and performing; the Jimmy Miller years which I’ll discuss below; and the Glimmer Twins years where Mick and Keith handled the majority of all creative studio decisions.

I’m with a doubt a fan of the early years, and there are many outstanding songs that were the result of the band working to find their voice. They would certainly never have found their muse had they not 1) worked tirelessly both in the studio and on the road to learn how to be professional musicians, and 2) had the support of savvy music industry executives who, as they were in the old days, understanding that an artist needs to “develop” and be nurtured. Can you imagine if the Stones had come along today? They would have probably been dropped somewhere around Out Of Our Heads.

The Loog-Oldham days are the topic of another piece, but in my humble opinion the breakthrough album for the Stones is Beggars Banquet. I don’t think I’m alone in stating this, but as with anything aesthetic, this is in the ear of the beholder.

It was with Beggars Banquet that the Stones went to a whole other level of genius. This album found the band not only stretching in their songwriting, but in their overall sound. Prior to Beggars, the band’s sound was thinner, less in your face, and less sophisticated. Beggars was a whole new world for the band, much in the same way Rubber Soul was for the Beatles.

Beggars Banquet was also the first album helmed by Jimmy Miller, an American who had the unique ability to pair classic rhythm and blues textures with the emerging British rock scene.

While Beggars Banquet was Miller’s first full album with the band, his first production effort was earlier in 1968 for “Jumping Jack Flash” which came out as a single several months prior.

Neither “Jumping Jack Flash” nor Beggars Banquet features the work of Mick Taylor, as Brian Jones was still in the band. The next Stones album after Beggars, arguably their best ever, was Let It Bleed. This was the transition album from Jones to Taylor with each playing on different parts of the album. But Miller was the man behind the scenes pulling the strings.

In all, Jimmy Miller produced five studio albums for the Stones, and in this writer’s opinion, the first four were not only the four best Rolling Stones albums – still to this day – but four of the best albums in the history of rock: Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, and Goat’s Head Soup (the last, while still a good album, is certainly the weakest of the bunch and the one I would omit from the five).

As a group, the Stones were only bested by The Beatles in the ’60s. They made great music before hooking up with Jimmy Miller, and they absolutely had moments of brilliance when Mick and Keith decided to produce the band’s albums as the Glimmer Twins when Miller left the scene, but they never were as good as they were while Jimmy Miller was in charge.

I don’t spend a lot of time trying to win the argument with those who believe that it was Taylor’s leaving in 1976 and Ron Wood’s joining the group for the album Black And Blue that was the beginning of the end for the Stones. It’s a perfectly valid position. It’s just that I think Jimmy Miller had more to do with it. If any producer belongs in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, it’s this guy who hit four grand slam home runs in a row.