Aftermath (Rolling Stones album)

Did You Know?

• Allen Klein forced Decca Records to grant a $1.2 million royalty advance to the band, bringing the members their first signs of financial wealth.
• The album's original packaging idea and title, Could You Walk on the Water?, was rejected due to fear of offending Christians in the US.

Writing and recording

Aftermath was the first Rolling Stones LP composed entirely of original material, all songs credited to the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at the instigation of manager Andrew Loog Oldham. The pair wrote much of the material during the October–December 1965 tour, and recording began immediately after the tour ended. The band originally conceived the album as the soundtrack for a planned film, Back, Behind and in Front, but the plan was abandoned after Jagger met the potential director, Nicholas Ray, and disliked him. Recording sessions took place at RCA Studios in Los Angeles on 8–10 December 1965 and, following promotion for their single "19th Nervous Breakdown" and an Australasian tour, on 6–9 March 1966. Among the songs were four tracks issued as singles in the first half of 1966, including "19th Nervous Breakdown" and "Paint It Black". "Ride On, Baby" and "Sittin' on a Fence" were also recorded but not released until the 1967 US album Flowers. Richards noted that the sessions allowed the group to relax and take their time, unlike previous rush jobs. Wyman recalled that Nitzsche and Brian Jones would pick up instruments in the studio and experiment with sounds for each song. Wyman later criticized Oldham for nurturing Jagger and Richards as songwriters to the exclusion of the rest of the band, and complained that "Paint It Black" should have been credited to the collective pseudonym Nanker Phelge, since the song originated from a studio improvisation by himself, Jones, and Watts.

Lyrics and themes

The lyrics of Aftermath explore darker themes, with scholars describing the album as somber and echoing desolation, paranoia, despair, and frustration. Jagger's songwriting examines sex as pleasure and power, love disguised as hate, and hate disguised as love. The flower power ideology of the time is recast in a dark light on what some critics call tough, lean, desperately lonely songs, while others view them as songs of callow male triumph with alternating childlike charm and misogynistic scorn. Songs such as "Stupid Girl" and "Under My Thumb" are interpreted as dark representations of the narrator's hateful masculinity, with misogyny possibly serving as a tool for restoring fragile narcissism and arrogance. The American version of the LP is seen as having conceptual unity, functioning as a psychodrama around love, desire, and obsession that never turns out right, possibly constructed as a means of dealing with loneliness from broken relationships. The songs ping-pong between themes of love and desire for women and the desire to control them, with musical connections and subthemes of travel and feline metaphors suggesting that the characters portrayed by Jagger stem from the deep recesses of his psyche.

Critical reception

Aftermath received highly favourable reviews in the music press upon its release in 1966, just months before Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and the Beatles' Revolver. British critic Richard Green of Record Mirror called it the smash LP of the year, adding that it would take much effort to surpass their achievement, and praised Watts' drumming. Keith Altham of the New Musical Express hailed the Stones as masterminds behind the electric machines and described "Goin' Home" as a fantastic R&B improvisation, noting that "Lady Jane", "Under My Thumb", and "Mother's Little Helper" had potential as great singles. Melody Maker regarded the album as the group's best to date, applauding its focus on big beat, power, and interesting sounds, and noting how the use of dulcimer, sitar, organ, harpsichord, marimba, and fuzz boxes created an overwhelming variety of atmospherics and tones. While the lyrics' derisive attitude to women offended some listeners, this aspect received little attention in the British pop press or complaints from female fans. In the cultural journal New Left Review, Alan Beckett wrote that the band's lyrics could only be fully appreciated by an audience familiar with modern city life, particularly London, and described the Stones' archetypal girl as rich, spoiled, confused, weak, and using drugs. Responding in the same publication, Perry Anderson defended the band's message as an audacious and satirical exposé on sexual inequality, stating that in songs such as "Stupid Girl" and "Under My Thumb", the Stones had defied a central taboo of the social system by celebrating it.

Legacy

Aftermath is often considered one of the most important of the Rolling Stones' early albums and an inaugural release of the album era, during which the LP replaced the single as the primary product and form of artistic expression in popular music. Its commercial success foiled the music industry's attempts to re-establish the LP market as the domain of wealthier, adult record-buyers. In the opinion of musicologist David Malvinni, Aftermath was the crucial step for the Stones' conquering of the pop world and their much-needed answer to the Beatles' Rubber Soul. With their continued commercial success, the Stones joined the Beatles and the Who as one of the few rock acts able to follow their own artistic direction and align themselves with London's elite bohemian scene without alienating the wider youth audience. Speaking on its cultural impact, Margotin and Guesdon say it was, in a sense, the soundtrack of Swinging London and one of the brightest stars of the new culture that was to reach its zenith the following year in the Summer of Love.