Given the Rolling Stones have not released any new material in eight years, the longest barren spell of their illustrious fifty eight year career, we could be forgiven in thinking the moment had finally passed when they would emerge with anything fresh and original again.
Indeed, it could be asked, what else is there for these gentlemen of wealth and taste to say having created the template long ago on the way every self-respecting rock band should lout, flout, spout and sound.
But with enormous satisfaction it is a pleasure to report ‘LIVING IN A GHOST TOWN,’ the first new Rolling Stones song since 2012, is an agreeable, pertinent slice of reggae-infused rock.
Given impetus by the Covoid-19 pandemic to complete a track worked on during stop-start sessions for a new Stones album, the lyrics have been amended to include phrases such as ‘lock down‘ in reflecting the current global health crisis.
Despite its different origins, by all accounts Mick Jagger changed various lines in ‘Living In A Ghost Town‘ to give it immediate resonance, no more so in the line:
‘Life was so beautiful/Then we all got locked down/Feel a like ghost/Living in a ghost town.’
Exploitative?
Not for me, the song having more than enough grit and gusto to stave off such claims, the strident guitars, wailing harmonica and insistent organ giving the piece instant intensity – and that is before making reference to a razor sharp drum sound that is first rate, but second nature to Charlie Watts.
Along with their meshing guitar work, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood contribute chorus background vocals, cries of ‘Whoa, oh, whoa, oh‘ reminiscent of ‘State of Confusion‘ by The Kinks.
But the band most evoked by the taut playing on ‘Living In A Ghost Town‘ are Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – the late Tom and his boys beginning their career with ‘Breakdown‘ the best Rolling Stones sounding-song of 1976, the circle completed late in the day as the Stones deliver here with Heartbreaker-like urgency.
Either side of some impressive blues harp work, Jagger gives a vocal performance of customary panache, his phrasing nicely attuned to the eerie sight of deserted streets at this time of social dislocation.
‘If I want a party/It’s a party of one,’ he sings in bringing ‘Living In A Ghost Town,’ to a close, a line that would not have been out of place in the superb ‘Streets of Love‘ from the 2005 ‘A Bigger Bang‘ album.
And they we were thinking that would be the last great Jagger/Richards song.
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller available as an Amazon Kindle book.