Songs from '78: "Miss You"

This is the big one, folks--or at least, the beginning of the biggest, the first single from the band and the album that looms larger in my mind than almost anything else I associate with listening to rock music on AM radio as prepubescent kid in 1978. It's not hard to find praise for Some Girls; it is often labeled the final great Rolling Stones album, and maybe even their greatest ever (an opinion I concur with). And "Miss You" is a terrific song, making use of Jagger's preternaturally tired and lecherous vocals, Ron Wood's guitar meshing with Keith Richards, and Bill Wyman and Charlie Watt's providing an almost-but-not-quite disco beat. After "Miss You" came a host of other great songs, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to avoid talking about how they hit me, and continue to hit me, over four decades of time. Thus far I've only highlighted one single by each artist, and I'd like to stick with that--but I don't think I can with the Stones.

Why? Why wasn't I, the good Mormon boy, as freaked out by music from the Rolling Stones as I was by Van Halen or Rush (don't worry; we'll be getting to them later)? I suppose it was pretty simple: there was no easy or obvious hook upon which a Christian kid like me, taught to be suspicious of possible Satanism, could have hung this iteration of the Rolling Stones when I first heard them (yes, I hear you all shouting about Their Satanic Majesties Request and "Sympathy for the Devil," but I didn't connect those with the Stones until sometime later), and anyway, I was just too young to appreciate how creepy the Stones's lyrics here and elsewhere really were. At the same time, their melodies, their riffs, their energy (even when it was coiled and louche like it is here) was able to capture my still-forming pop music sensibilities. These guys have something going on, is what I suppose I thought about at the time. I knew little about the history of rock and roll, and I probably didn't start to piece together the story of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and all the rest for quite a while. Still, there I was, listening to KJRB 790 and getting my kicks from these songs that had such--though I wouldn't have used these terms back then even if I'd known them--bluesy, sexual, and ass-kicking power to them. And that power endures. I like the early Stones, sure, and I actually have a lot of fondness for some of their early 90s work, like Voodoo Lounge, which was the point, nearly 25 years ago, when I suppose you could say that Jagger and Richards came to an agreement that they were just going to consistently play the best damn Rolling Stones Tribute Show imaginable for the rest of their lives, and you have to admit: its worked really well for them so far. But 40 years ago, the power of the Stones was still fresh enough, and challenging enough, I think, to set a kid's mind on fire with their tunes. They did me, that's for certain.