Growing up, I struggled to place the Rolling Stones. I knew they did songs with rude words, which was pretty cool, and I knew they did songs like “Satisfaction” and “Brown Sugar”, which were easy to like. But how to explain “Miss You”? That piece I wrote a while ago about my brief dalliance with smoking? I’m pretty sure this song was a part of the soundtrack to that time. Weary’s brother Tony had some Stones albums: “Some Girls” in particular comes to mind. I had this sense that, unlike much of the music I was then “into” (e.g. Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Supertramp), the Rolling Stones were loose and unclean (one look at photos of Keef would surely have confirmed that), and there was a certain amount of excitement that went with that.
I was unable to categorise “Miss You”, which, although it was fairly obviously a Rolling Stones song, found itself firmly in the column marked “disco”. Which, I suppose, it was, or at least some idea of disco informed its basic template. It would have sat as comfortably on “Soul Train” as Bowie’s “Golden Years” or “Fame” did, for example. But for a long time I was confused: probably until it finally dawned on me that the Rolling Stones had become irrelevant, and that “Miss You” might have been the point in their career when they started to see the writing on the wall and vainly attempted to do something about it, artistically, before deciding it was better for all concerned if they just coasted instead, all the way to the bank.
What do I hear in 2008? “Miss You” as the perfect showcase for Charlie Watts’ no-frills, precision drumming. (We love Charlie Watts at our house.) Archetypal Keith Richards guitar (if a bit Pablo Cruise in one or two places). Fluid and slippery. Plus, how many disco songs do you know that include a bluesy harmonica solo?
