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Name: Shattered
E-Mail:
Subject: Hot Stuff & Miss You's historical importance
Date: Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Time: 4:31:12 PM
Remote Address: 24.45.151.32
Message ID: 318245
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 318245
"Black and Blue", released in the Spring of 1976, was quite a challenge for The Rolling Stones, and is a further testament to their eminence in the music world to create such a high quality album that it is. This was a transitional album as Mick Taylor had just left the band before they started working on it, so they were handicapped in that sense. They were rehearsing guitar players at the same time, until Ronnie Wood was the chosen recruit. It would be a new historical period for 'The bad boys of Rock & Roll.'
At the time of Black & Blue's release, disco music was dominating hit radio stations' playlists and was much resented and hated by us rock fans, based on what was played on commercial radio. The likes of The Stones, Deep Purple, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Tull, Floyd and many others, had been producing real and exciting music. Granted, rock music certainly had its share of guy/gal and party lyrics, but it also had songs that said something, lyrics that had meaning, that made you feel, and think, perhaps even bring a tear in the eye. Disco on the other hand was dull, too linear and unmelodic, stupid lyrics with very rare exception, and phony studio push-button bullshit.
Yet here's the irony. Unbeknownst to us polarized radio listeners and music fans, we were being used as unwitting pawns to line the pockets of the beneficiaries of the almighty ratings points. What the ACTUAL DISCOS were playing didn't sound like what was played on the radio. It was like night & day. It was actually quite good, in fact great! But who was to know unless you've actually been to a real live disco.
Which brings us to the album's lead song, "Hot Stuff", a marvelous pivotal crossover song that pioneered the move to 'rockify' disco music. In other words, the state of incompatibility which caused the seemingly irremediable chasm that polarized us music fans was slowly narrowing, thanks to the Stones. It appealed to people at both ends of the camp.
Most unfortunately, "Hot Stuff" didn't receive enough attention, and therefore not enough credit, that its importance and place in history deserved, despite the fact that as the flipside of the one and only single released from the album, "Fool To Cry", a top-ten hit worldwide (peaked at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100) it suddenly became a double-sided hit as the A-side was in its declining trajectory on the Hot 100, and actually reversed coarse and moved upward again for a few weeks.
But what "Hot Stuff" DID do was sow the seeds, the seeds of "Miss You" that came out exactly two years later. While disco music had created opposing factions, "Miss You" was the ultimate catalyst in bridging that gap of divisiveness, and hastily. Other acts soon followed suit: Rod Stewart, The Kinks, Blondie, David Bowie, Queen, Electric Light Orchestra, Wings, even Kiss, — KISS, thus effectively ending the schism.
Remember the t-shirts, the bumper stickers, the graffiti that said 'DISCO SUCKS'?
We owe a lot of gratitude to the Stones for Hot Stuff and Miss You.
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