SONG #20-- Neighbors

THE ROLLING STONES, TATTOO YOU, 1981

My friend Ben (a frequent contributor to the comments of this blog and a general pot-stirrer) and I will argue forever about whether or not the Stones are the greatest band of all time.  He thinks that they are.  I just don't.  I like the Stones.  A lot, in fact.  I have hundreds of Stones songs in my 20k list.  I've seen them at least four times.  In fact, I might even go so far as to say I love the Stones.  I like and recommend some of their crappy albums.  But I don't think they represent the pinnacle.  Because I won't acknowledge them as the greatest band of all time, Ben (who likes to win arguments almost as much as he likes the Tennessee Volunteers) always paints me as a Stones-hater.  Either I say they're the greatest ever, or I think they're terrible.  It's a brilliant though infuriating argumentative strategy of his.  You feel jailed in your argument, much like the four Vols basketball players who were jailed this weekend. (Ooh!  See what I did there?)

To me, since about 1975, the Stones are like the Friendly's of rock 'n' roll.  (For you West Coast readers, Friendly's is a restaurant chain that's about as good as a Denny's-style restaurant can get.)  As long as you stick to the one thing on the menu that's good (cheeseburger and a Fribble) you can count on a Stones record to deliver; you just have to make sure you don't go to the salad bar or touch the mixed vegetables.

The Stones crank out albums like no other band in rock history-- only Bob Dylan puts out product with more reliability than the Stones.  On their albums, you usually get two to three great songs, two to three good ones, and (lately) nine to eleven clunkers.  If you put out an album every two-three years, that adds up.  Ben could list 200 great Stones songs with ease.  The question is, however, whether because you can also list 200 weak ones, does that matter or tarnish the band's overall importance?  Moreover, it seems to me that, more than any other band, loving the Stones is not about the songs themselves as much as the sound of those songs.  Loving the Stones might be the same as being incapable of telling good Stones songs from bad ones.  Either the sound of the band wins you over no matter what, or it doesn't.

Let's take this Stones track and give it the once-over with that concept in mind.  It's a classic throwaway Stones album track.  It closes Side One of the strongest album the Stones have made in the last 31 years.  It's surrounded by classics: "Start Me Up," "Hang Fire," "Waiting On A Friend."  It's also joined by superduds like "No Use In Crying" and "Tops."  "Neighbors" is right in between.  If you like "Neighbors," there's a chance you could become a Stones fanatic, and you should start investigating the full catalog.  If your reaction is "Ehhhhh...," then Hot Rocks will probably suffice.  We might have the definitive "fan or foe," Tipping Point track for this band right here.

It's interesting that Tattoo You as an album is so good, because it's a desperate, rejects collection.  The band was touring America, and wanted product to sell, so they went into the vaults and pulled out tracks they had cut from albums made in the previous nine years.  This record should be terrible; instead, it shows that sometimes a band is its own worst critic and editor.  Seven of these songs are outtakes from and better than just about anything off of Emotional Rescue or Goats Head Soup, the records they were recorded for and summarily elminated from.  As such, Tattoo You is a grab-bag of stuff, which is part of its appeal.

"Neighbors" is actually one of only two tracks recorded for Tattoo You itself, and it's a great example of something I've always admired in the Stones: their ability to make a song out of almost nothing.  This song is so simple that "Wild Thing" and "Louie Louie" will seem revolutionarily complicated in comparison.  The entire song is E-B-A-E except for a bridge that adds a C#m, the relative minor to E, making four chords total for the entire tune.  These two patterns switch back for forth for three minutes, with no variation.  Sometimes it's a verse, sometimes it's a chorus, sometimes it's a solo, but always the same four chords.  The Stones are kind of like a rock version of a neo-Soul artist.  D'Angelo does the same thing-- he makes "songs" out of two chord grooves that repeat while he sings over them.  There's really no song here in the traditional sense of verse / chorus / verse, but there's still a sense of a beginning, middle and end.  It's a mystery how they pull it off, year after year, album after album, with pretty much the same four chords.  Now that I think about it, only one song on Tattoo You uses MORE than four chords (Keith's "Little T+A" uses five-- go easy, Keith!).

"Neighbors" also reveals so much of what makes the Stones unique and uncoverable by other bands.  (Are there any truly great Stones covers besides The Sundays' "Wild Horses?")  If one word describes the post-Exile On Main Street Stones, it's sloppy.  If a new band turned this track in as a demo, they'd never get signed.  The drums are hilariously high in the mix; the snare in particular is like a jackhammer by the end.  Moreover, Watts' drum fills are pretty tragic-- it all sounds like a first take.  Over that, Bill Wyman seems to be playing a game with the bass line: what are all the notes I can play that aren't the root note?  He is all over the place, and genuinely lost at least twice.  The guitar players are sometimes barely playing, and other times soloing over one another like kids having a conversation at a playground ("I ate pizza for dinner!"  "I like the Road-Runner!"  "My butt itches!")  The fact that the thing coheres at all is a testament to their being in a band together for 20 years at this point.  The Stones do shambolic better than anyone ever has.

Finally, the singer here is a clown, yelling the word "Neighbors" like a cartoon character.  He also has nothing to say; the song makes almost no sense.  Here are the lyrics, courtesy of lyrics365.com, in case anyone would like to do a scansion for us:

Neighbors, neighbors, neighbors

Have I got neighbors?

Have I got neighbors?

All day and all night

Neighbors

Have I got neighbors?

Ringing my doorbells

All day and all night

Ladies, have I got crazies?

Screaming young babies

No piece and no quiet

I got T.V.'s, saxophone playing

Groaning and straining

With the trouble and strife

Is it any wonder

Is it any wonder

Is it any wonder

That we fuss and fight

Neighbors, do unto strangers

Do unto neighbors

What you do to yourself, yourself, yourself

Is it any wonder

Is it any wonder

Is it any wonder

That we fuss and fight

Neighbors do unto strangers

Do onto neighbors what you do to yourself

Yourself, yourself, yourself

Neighbors, neighbors, neighbors

Neighbors, neighbors, neighbors

Do yourself a favour

Don't you mess with my baby

When I'm working all night

You know that neighbors

Steal off my table

Steal off my table

And doing alright, alright, alright

Neighbors do unto strangers

Do unto strangers

What you do to yourself

I feel like Mick had the word "Neighbors" in his head, and just took it from there.  These are filler lyrics, the kind of thing a singer makes up so the band can learn the song.  Leave it to the Stones to stop there-- "I think we got it, fellas.  I'm working on a song about rockin' with hot girls for the next one!"

                                                                                                  Mick Jagger, on tour in 1982: Yum!

So here's a first-draft, off the cuff run-through of a simple tune performed by a band morphing into a cariacature of itself.  If you listen and think "What is the deal here?  These guys kinda suck!" then you're probably at least two of these: a) a professional drummer under 30 b) a Heavy Metal fan c) sober.  It's never going to be about the sound of the band for you, so plan on disliking most of their catalog.  That still leaves 100 classic songs, though, so don't despair.

Or, if you find yourself (as I do) wanting to listen again and make sense of it (for me, after the third or fourth listen, the two guitar parts seem to start to speak to each other in all kinds of cool ways-- the bass part becomes clever and adds non-traditional tonal colors to the mix-- the drummer is having a ball) then you're a Stones fan, and it's about the sound as much as anything, and there are 30+ albums waiting your discovery.  Welcome.  Ben would like to buy you a Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz shake from Ben and Jerry's.  (He would have bought you a beer fifteen years ago, but like the Stones, we're old now.)

Finally, I'll always have a soft spot for this particular song because it came out right around the same time as a terrible John Belushi / Dan Aykroyd film called Neighbors.  It's a coked-out unfunny freakshow of a movie.  The timing is all off and weird, and there's a reason it never shows up on Comedy Central or TBS.

For whatever reason, it became a cult classic at our school.  I can remember at least three parties that ended with a huge crew of people sitting down to watch it.  There were drinking games connected to certain moments, and some folks had it memorized like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  When Kathryn Walker throws the jug of wine into the trash with a no-look twenty foot toss, it was a huge moment for all of us.  I believe we used to yell "THREEEEEEE!!!!" when it happened.  You can check it out here, though I warn you; it's more disturbing than anything else.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7SM6DgticE

LINK:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atjz1_CoQUM