Only the second Rolling Stones song I’ve talked about on here. A lot of people love Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, all the other members associated and the albums too. I can take them in small amounts. I feel like a lot of the songs they do are indebted to the old-time blues rock of the US, which I’ve never had much feeling for anyway. There are however some songs by the Stones that I can’t deny must be regarded as ahem… ‘stone’-cold classics. And not the obvious ones like ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘Gimme Shelter’. Even I think those are both just all right. ‘Rocks Off’ though has to be one that almost every Stones fan appreciates. Not just because it opens what’s considered to be the band’s best album, but because of its general feel-good energy and the tight performance by the group as a whole. I got ’round to listening to Exile on Main St. around the same time I was going through a Best Ever Albums list on a website of the same name. At the time the website listed the album as the band’s best piece fo work, the best of its year, and one of the greatest of the ’70s as a decade. Gotta admit, I was excited for what I was about to hear.

It all begins with ‘Rocks Off’, a track that I could hear being played in those dirty, seedy underground nightclubs that I imagine were the places to be during the ’70s. Jagger’s confident “Oh, yeeeah” that he comes out with makes me screw my face up every time, just ’cause I think I know how he’s feeling hearing the guitar work of Richards and Mick Taylor and the rhythm section bring themselves into the mix and establish the groove. This song oozes coolness in all aspects. Jagger doesn’t ham up his vocals to a large extent, taking a sort of laidback approach for the verses and saving the more unrestrained approaches for the choruses. Richards joins in on harmonies. And a big round of applause has to go to those rousing horns that take the track to a higher level entirely. This a real good album opener. Probably one of the best of all time, I’d say the best in the Stones’ discography straight up.

I said the song has a feel-good energy in the first paragraph, which it does, but accompanying the uplifting music are the musings of a narrator who’s feeling disillusioned with life. They’re sort of losing themselves in places, they’re not able to absorb and take things in like they once did. Days are coming and going, they give in to their vices. They’ve lived a life of excess to the brim that they’ve become numb to it, and the only way they’re able to get any true relief and excitement is in their sleep. Sort of goes against the whole idea of getting rocks off. But that’s the way things are going for this person. The song’s about being as jaded as you could possibly get, but man, it’s delivered in such a celebratory manner that you can be forgiven for completely missing the cynicism. I know I did.