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The Rolling Stones' U.S. discography is messy and haphazard but -- I think -- more fun and familiar to most Americans; they've never quite managed the canon-replacement tactic that the Beatles and the Kinks pulled off. That having been said, we will eventually examine the band's canonical UK discography, but for now: there's no "equivalent" to 12 x 5 in England. It's a bewildering construction that consists of two singles and their b-sides, a few scattered tunes from the band's second UK album, and the contents of an EP called Five by Five. Despite its chronologically confusing nature, it serves as a frenetic snapshot of the Stones in mid-1964, already progressing beyond the tepid and tentative R&B of England's Newest Hit Makers.
This is where the band begins to really sing, to attain confidence and to come across as a less juvenile outlet -- the beginnings of an intimidating force. The Chuck Berry cover "Around and Around" and the exploratory rooting around in blues origins typified by Jay McShann's "Confessin' the Blues" and their own composition "Good Times, Bad Times" show off some hint of a maturity and even sensuality that's hard to detect on the band's earlier, overly eager stumblings. "Around and Around," while it's no match for Berry's searing cut, even carries a bit of stuntwork in its arrangement and production -- the echoes of a distantly rollicking piano subsume all else until the song becomes a rumbling, restless wall of noise, the first evidence of an icon: the "bigness" of this band's sound.
Not that the tentative falterings are all gone; the Stones never had much of a way with rockabilly, so it's little surprise that their take on Dale Hawkins' "Susie Q" just sits there. The great comedic moment, though, is an adorably bad "Under the Boardwalk" which indicates little of lasting consequence beyond proving for future generations that Mick Jagger is not a crooner, and not a singer who can ever put across the life-dependent grace of a Johnny Moore, who famously and masterfully performed the Drifters' original under every imaginable kind of emotional duress. This is not really a criticism of the Stones, any more than it's a criticism of the Kinks that they couldn't pull off "Dancing in the Street." Less than two years into their career (context note: by the time the Stones became a functioning band, the Beatles had been one for over half a decade), they simply did not yet know their strengths.
Completely by accident, 12 x 5 captures more than one vital discovery to their development. The band's own composition "Empty Heart" -- that's like an empty life, in case you're wondering how closely the boys were listening to those blues records -- offers the most pronounced emphasis yet on rhythm guitar, which would finally be the Stones' sonic legacy. On "Congratulations" and a roaring revision of Wilson Pickett's "If You Need Me," they expose for the first time the depth of their way with a ballad. And if Jagger and Richards aren't exactly masterful tunesmiths just yet, let's give them the delightful shoutalong of "Grown Up Wrong," a perfect and flagrantly dishonest statement of purpose.
For American fans, the operative legacy of 12 x 5 is its introduction of two major moments, neither written by the band. "Time Is on My Side" presumably needs no introduction, but this record includes its superior and unfortunately sidelined organ-driven variant, which boasts not only a better arrangement but a stronger band and vocal performance, again an early investigation of Jagger's limited but expressive sensitivity as a singer. But "It's All Over Now" is the peak here by nearly every standard. Bobby Womack's lyric and composition are brilliant and unassailable, but the Stones do indeed make it their own, with a dusty, busy and aggressive blues-rock deconstruction that's more assured than anything prior, peaking with Keith Richards' manic, utterly peerless guitar solo. This is the moment when the Rolling Stones pulled out in front. It still sounds as strong as ever -- sneering, apathetic, dismissive, glorious. Rock & roll.
[SEE ALSO:]
England's Newest Hit Makers (1964)
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