I was tagged by Fancylady (fancylady.diaryland.com) a couple of months ago as part of a web-wide declare-your-top-six-favorite-songs-campaign (why six?).

I’m going with six tunes that I think are especially cool. They’re not necessarily songs that I think are emprically excellent, just songs that have continued to strike a chord with me over a long period of time.

The problem is, I decided to write little blurbs about each tune. And of course the blurbs turned into essays. I realize this is absurd, but some guy recently released an acclaimed and lengthy book about the writing and recording of Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ so I don’t think I’m going too far overboard.

Anyway, here’s my list, to be posted of the next few weeks in serial format. The songs are in no particular order of preference.

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Under My Thumb - The Rolling Stones

“A work of art...with regrettably mysoginist lyrics.” - Camille Paglia

Let’s start with the music. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are generally seen as the core of the Stones, yet at their best the band got a lot of input from what was sometimes a fairly large inner circle of musicians. This is a Jagger/Richards song, and a solid one, but the unsung heroes of the tune are Stones’ bassist Bill Wyman and rhythm guitarist/jack-of-all-instruments Brian Jones.

‘Under My Thumb’ uses a descending chord progression that has become fairly stock in rock music. You hear it, for example, backing the guitar solo in Stairway to Heaven, and the Stones themselves used a variation of in ‘Gimme Shelter.’ But in 1966, it was fresh.

What puts the number over the top is the ascending marimba riff that Jones lays down over the progression, and which is nicely countered by a groovy, curling bass riff by Wyman. It’s a neat song, resolving itself effectively in the chorus, but without these flourishes it would likely be a little more dated, a little less transcendent.

It’s notable that neither Jones nor Wyman got any writing credits for the tune. Today the contributions of the various members would be neatly documented, according to percentage of input, and royalties would be doled out accordingly. At the time, though, it was Jagger/Richards (just like Lennon/McCartney), and that was that.

Given how such songwriting contributions went unrewarded and unacknowledged in the Stones, one can perhaps see a potential partial explanation as to why the self-destructive Jones ended up going off the edge, and why the more stolid Wyman opted to become a time-card punching pseudo-employee, hanging in with the firm until the huge payoffs of the 1980’s and 1990’s tours set him up well enough to retire.

It’s also worth noting, in an age when a song is simply disregarded by industry gatekeepers unless it is hammered into a smooth piece of digitalia, that there are a number of flaws in the execution of the tune. For one thing, it speeds up noticeably at the end. This alone would be enough to get it banished from any radio airplay nowadays. There’s also a tuning problem in Keith Richards’ guitar solo. The song is a great document of a time when tunes were recorded quickly, almost as they were written, with any attendant flaws rendered insignificant next to the palpable vigour and freshness of the work.

As for the lyrics, sometimes some vitriol can give a piece of writing an added bit of fire. A case could be made that it’s because of the words, not in spite of them, that this song endures. I also think that the words to ‘Under My Thumb’ should be looked at within the context of Mick Jagger’s rise to fame.

In the mid-1960’s, the Stones went from a mid-level British Invasion act to the biggest badasses in rock in the span of about 18 months. In 1964, they were not only well back of the Beatles, but were also getting less chart notice than the likes of the Animals, the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits and the Dave Clark Five. But they struck big with 1965’s ‘Satisfaction,’ and from then on surged to the front of the pack on a string of hits.

During this time, Jagger was transformed from a rather odd-looking second fiddle to Brian Jones to a voice-of-a-generation prophet on parr with Bob Dylan and John Lennon.

Or go back a few years more. Try to image Jagger in his late teens. A goofy-looking young man from a bland English family, readying himself for some future white-collar position by enrolling in the London School of Economics. Not a particularly alluring prospect from a female perspective.

Five years on and he’s got the exquisite Marianne Faithfull at his side and all of groupiedom his feet. Brimming with bitterness and contempt, ‘Under My Thumb’ is a massive piece of hubris.

The ugly kid had triumphed.