For too many years it's seemed almost impossible for the Rolling Stones to make an album that hasn't involved – at least partially – the problem of being the Rolling Stones. This difficulty dogged them throughout the Seventies–it's part of the responsibility of having lasted so long, I guess–and they
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responded to both it and their audience's need for constant redefinition with snideness (who
wants to be told that "It's Only Rock 'n Roll"?), subterfuge and, often, a nearly total lack of grace. Sheltered from everyday concerns (the concerns that sing the blues), the Stones hid behind cynical denunciations of meaning, a pose that transformed everything – money, girls and ultimately the music–into so much disposable scenery. Musically, it meant grafting unwarranted
au courant attitudes onto the dependable drive of the rhythm section. Lyrically, it signified glorying in distance and turning stances, slogans and promises into false currency.
From today's viewpoint, much of the last decade consisted of camouflage – camouflage for an essential loss of nerve, an unwillingness to be seen unguarded for the length of an LP, or even a tune. But those years are over now, decisively, and with the triumphant release of Tattoo You, they seem shabby and sad. Just when we might finally have lost patience, the new record dances (not prances), rocks (not jives) onto the scene, and the Rolling Stones are back again, with a matter-of-fact acceptance of their continued existence – and eventual mortality – that catches Pete Townshend's philosophical maunderings in its headlights and runs them down. Tattoo You doesn't address the subject of maturity, or deny its onset, in a burst of satyriasis. Instead, maturity serves as the backdrop for rockers with real momentum and love songs with real objects, beginning with "Start Me Up," the catchiest Stones single in ages. "You make a grown man cry," Mick Jagger sings amid a clatter of handclaps and Charlie Watts' precision swing, almost as if he hadn't spent half his life trying to hold back the clock.
That same thread of reasoned recognition runs through the entire album, as though a decade of posturing had somehow been digested into fuel for moving ahead. Tattoo You is a compact, unified statement – despite the fact that some of its tracks (or segments of them) reportedly date back several years. This unity is partly the work of Bob Clearmountain, who mixed the finished tracks and gave them his characteristic vacuum-packed clarity (you could bounce a quarter off each of Watts' rim shots). Mostly, though, it sounds like the Stones simply decided it was time to challenge themselves again. Why else sign up jazz great Sonny Rollins as a session saxophonist? Rollins plays on only three of Tattoo You's cuts, yet his gutbucket sagacity sets the tone for the whole LP. He even turns "Slave," a standard Stones blues jam, into
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