"Ventilator Blues" by the Rolling Stones
Published July 27, 2003
SONG TITLE: VENTILATOR BLUES
PERFORMER: THE ROLLING STONES
SONGWRITER: MICK JAGGER / KEITH RICHARDS
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1972
COMMENTS: A nasty little jagged slide guitar riff defines this record. You'd best watch out, cause it's a slippery little thing. One misstep, and it'll cut you right to the bone. Fortunately, Charlie is right there to keep it under control with a taut back beat on the cymbals and a few sharp, dramatic snaps on the snare.
It's no big fancy guitar line, less than a dozen notes, but for my money it is the best one hook on the whole classic Exiles on Main Street album. Indeed "Ventilator Blues" was not considered a featured song. It's buried somewhere near the bottom of the double album. Nonetheless, this song kicks my ass much harder than the more pop oriented "Tumbling Dice." Keef and Charlie have the song just about on the list before Mick ever even starts with the actual tune.
Thankfully, Mick sings a tune good enough to develop the brutal precept of the guitar riff. It comes out hard, and cold. He draws out the notes to savor the ass kicking he's describing. "When your... spiiine is crack-ing, and your... hands, they shake." Not that it sounds much like him, but this comes about the closest to the brutal authority of Howlin' Wolf of anything they did after "Jumpin' Jack Flash."
- "Ventilator Blues" by the Rolling Stones
- Published: July 27, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Music: Blues, Music: Classic Rock and Oldies, Music: Rock
- Writer: Al Barger
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Comments on this articleComments
Oh, yeah. It's all good. "I don't want to walk and talk about Jesus, I just want to see his fa-aace"
As to releasing such a track today, they should come up with a song as good as either of these.
The production sound of Exile on Main Street is a little murky or rough, recorded in exile in a damp, musty basement, or so it sounds. However, it has an immediacy and a life of its own. I don't know if their basement was literally damp and musty, but the record sure feels like it.
Al,
No question Exile just exudes atmosphere. As I recall (second hand--I was about seven when the album was first released!) people just didn't know what to make of it--it was so dark, dank and murky sounding, especially compared to the slicker and more accessible Stones albums that bookended it, that it took a while for it to coalesce in its listeners' brains. There were reviews at that the time that hated it, but I remember a late-1980s "Rolling Stone" issue that rated it the number one or two most influential record of the 1970s.
Ed
Some records are more Jagger (high production values) and some are more Richards (sloppy, funky), and Exile is definitely the latter. Jagger himself said in an interview he never understood why people like it. It's not the very best Stones disc (that would be Beggar's Banquet) but it's among the best -- a kind of raw, drunken, excessive masterpiece, and it surely has one of the most perfect titles of any rock album in history, and one that suited the band perfectly.
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Al,
Wow, you really know your obscure Stones tunes! Ironically enough, it flows into an equally obscure song that I've always liked a lot, "Just Want To See His Face". It has an incredible groove from the Fender Rhodes and upright bass. It's hard to see the Stones releasing either of those tracks today, which were both probably 4:00-in-the-morning jams recorded in Keith Richards' French villa during the "Exile" sessions.
Ed