Goat's Head Soup - THE ROLLING STONES***

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

Goat’s Head Soup was released ten years after The Rolling Stones achieved commercial prominence. It topped both the US and UK album charts demonstrating the group’s enduring popularity. It features the US chart topper and UK No. 5 Angie. The final comment below reveals the diminution in popular musical quality which occurred about this time. Although there would still be some fine album releases, they would gradually become less frequent. This will be reflected in the reduced number of albums selected for review. (US:1 UK:1)

“The timeless Angie is easily the best thing here but as a ballad; it's clear the golden age has ended and the band was entering a new stage. What Goats Head Soup does show is a band that is much more versatile than most might think. It's not at the top of the heap but it's a very listenable album.”

“Nearly every song on this is strong melodically and lyrically. The only weaker tracks are Silver Train which is workmanlike but nothing outstanding, and Star Star which is dragged down by the uncharacteristically offensive and cloddish lyrics.”

“I loved the early Stones. They were dangerous, anti-social, bluesy, everything The Beatles at the time were not. But, that was then and by this time they had become almost a caricature of their earlier self. This is not terrible music, just mediocre and that is not what I expected from the Stones.”

“This is the first failure of the Stones' career, and it really hurt at the time of release. The music scene was drying up in 1973 anyway, and then this lacklustre, dull, tired effort came out and it was so disappointing. It is not so much that the songs are slight, although some are, but so many are performed in a tired out way, with sophisticated polish but without the passion that had been at the heart of their work up to this point. This is the first boring Stones album. Those of us who loved them from the beginning knew that it would never be the same again, and in fact it wasn't.”

“Goats Head Soup signifies a major breakdown in quality control, not just for the band, but for everyone, meaning 'people with certain countercultural inclinations at a certain point in history.' The burning embers of the 1960s were exhausted and extinguished by late 1973, and the arrival of Soup, was where it became clear: the masterpieces would no longer keep coming. They were burned out.”