Magazine of the Week #47

This week we take a look at the November 1974 issue of CRAWDADDY. The cover illustration is by BILL NELSON.


Click images to enlarge.







It features a nice 8-page cover story on THE ROLLING STONES by PAUL WILLIAMS, which really is a lot of fun.

A few excerpts:

"Between The Buttons is one of the major Stones albums because it just won't stop appealing on the musical and structural level. It is an enormously powerful (and complex) realization of the emotions of a moment. Perhaps a personal rather than historical moment, but the beauty of the Stones is that the two become virtually indistinguishable."

"A very different, but equally magnificent moment - perhaps the most sophisticated the Stones ever achieved (which seems odd, because it was so early) - is recorded in The Rolling Stones Now, their third album. Here the Stones sing (and play) Solomon Burke, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf. Not only are their performances brilliant, putting almost all subsequent white blues bands to shame, but the album as a whole offers the listener a special world, a world of endless (this is one of the few albums you can play over and over again, until it literally wears out) subtle and rich delights. It is the world of the Stones' experience of American R&B, probably.....the most profound emotional experience of their collective lives."

As for the then-recent Stones albums, "Exile On Main Street" and "Goats Head Soup", Williams writes:

"The Stones are still good, no question about it, but they've lost their musical preeminence, dimmed their courage and imagination, or allowed it to become dimmed. They don't have much to say. They've lost their immediacy."

And with the new single "Its Only Rock 'n Roll", they "are master musicians who've outlived their myth. They are their own descendants, the inheritors of their former mystique the way McCartney and Lennon are characterized still as ex-Beatles. For now, we are pointing to a very specific period when we speak of the Stones' greatness. But we are pointing at a kind of greatness no other rock musicians could even claim to have approached. And for the rest of their long lives, the generation who grew up with the Stones, who will eventually rule the country, etc, etc, will be shaped and guided by the music that touched them in their formative years."


















We also get 7 pages on JACK NITZSCHE, "Expecting To Fly: From Spector to the Stones to the Springfield to The Exorcist to a solo album he won't, or can't, sell". A great article (by DAVID TALBOT and BARBARA ZHEUTLIN), it includes the illustration (by DAVID PRESTONE) shown above.

And here's a little snippet:

"Nitzsche visits the Stones during their royal '72 tour of the States. The Stones, the undisputed kings and queens of rock 'n roll: they define what rock music is today. Nitzsche tells them bluntly that their music has gone stale - they are repeating their past sound and are destined to become the Chuck Berry of the '80s, faded but not forgotten."
















Lots of other stuff in this issue, including MUDDY WATERS, LITTLE FEAT, STUDS TERKEL, ETTA JAMES, and a review of ROBERT ALTMAN's new film "California Split".

And for more info on Crawdaddy, here's their website:

CRAWDADDY - THE MAGAZINE FOR MUSIC LOVERS