Welcome to week seven of "The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962 to 1974". I've named this week, since it's the last week of the course, "The End of An Era?" And what we want to talk about this week is, you know, in a certain way kind of summarizing as far as we've gotten in the career of the Rolling Stones which of course we all know as fans of The Rolling Stones music continues on well past 1974. We want to kind of summarize up this period from 1962, when we started, through 1974. We spent a lot of time summarizing things from the group's career when we talked last week about "Exile on Main St." and we talked about that album "Exile on Main St." as maybe being a kind of high point of arrival for the Rolling Stones, and I used it as a kind of a lens to look back through the group's career going back to 1962. So, not only was it sort of a high point for the group but also a kind of a culmination in a lot of kinds of ways of much that came before it. Now, in many ways, the next two albums, the ones that we'll focus on this week, "Goats Head Soup" and "It's Only Rock 'n Roll", began looking in new directions. In other words, we'll start seeing things happening in these records that are really gonna point forward toward some of the things that lied beyond the scope of this course, music from The Rolling Stones since the later 1970s and into the 1980s, though these two albums are not without their continuities. In other words, they continue to have some of the same kinds of continuities we've been talking about but also seemed to be pointing in some new directions, and maybe there are some new influences I think we'll find on the Rolling Stones music from contemporary pop, rock funk, soul from the 1970s. So, that's a little bit of what we'll do. We'll try to keep an eye on both the continuities from the past as well as some of the ways in which these new directions will be explored. So as we conclude the class, having done a lot of our summarizing last week, we'll use these two albums to kind of reinforce some of those continuities but see a shift toward something, some new things, that will become a part of the Rolling Stones' sound and music. So with the rest of this video, let's talk about the year 1973, get an overview of that, and really we'll start that overview by having a look starting in late 1972. Now you may recall from last week, after the release of "Exile on Main St.", the Stones go on their seventh U.S. tour during the summer of 1972, during June and July. And not too long after they finished that big American tour, in November-December of 1972, recording of the next album, "Goats Head Soup", begins. In January-February of 1973, however, recording work is interrupted for a while, while the group does a tour of Australia and New Zealand. We've seen those tours of Australia and New Zealand come up a number of times during our story. And then by May through June of 1973, the recording of "Goats Head Soup" resumes. In August of 1973, the group releases the single "Angie", with the B-side of that being "Silver Train". That song "Angie" goes to number one in the U.S. charts and number five in the UK charts, and about the same time the album "Goats Head Soup" is released – that's August of 1973 – going to number one in both the U.S. and the U.K. After the release, there's a September-October period of 1973 where the group tours Europe, and then they get back into the studio in November right away for sessions in Munich to begin working on the next album "It's Only Rock 'n Roll". In December of 1973, to end the year, the group releases a second single drawn from "Goats Head Soup" and that's the song "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" / "Dancing with Mr. D". If it's okay with you, I'm just gonna call that song "Heartbreaker", but we all know that it's "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" in parentheses. Anyway, that track, as I said, released in December of 1973 goes to number 15 in the U.S. We've remarked about this before. Think about how much things are slowing down in terms of output from the group. Now, okay, in 1972, there's a big tour. The first half of 1973, there's several weeks in Australia, in New Zealand. There's a European tour in September-October of 1973. Most of the rest of the time is spent working on this one album, and then the sessions at the end of the year begin on the next record. And so, when we look at 1973, let's compare that with what we would do in 1963 overview and how much things have slowed down. We've accounted for that a number of kinds of ways. One of them is that the groups, most groups are now more, like the Rolling Stones, are more interested in albums than they are in singles so they haven't got to keep releasing a single every three months, even though during this period they do get a single out in August, "Angie", and "Heartbreaker" out in December. So, in other words, there's a lot of time spent in the studio and a lot less time sort of pushing the band as in previous years. Well that gives us kind of an overview of late 1972 and 1973. So let's turn to that album that was the big focus of 1973 for the group. How do you follow up on "Exile on Main St."? That would be "Goats Head Soup".
