Friday, September 3, 2021

THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE: Get Off Of My Cloud

"Get Of Of My Cloud" was the first Rolling Stones song I remember hearing. Which means that distinctive drum intro by the late, great Charlie Watts was also my introduction to the sound of the Stones.

This will be the Rolling Stones chapter in my proposed book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). An earlier version of the chapter appeared previously as part of a different piece. It has been tweaked and expanded for its GREM! spotlight.

An infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!


THE ROLLING STONES: Get Off Of My Cloud
Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Produced by Andrew Loog Oldham
Single, Decca Records [U.K.]/London Records [U.S.A.], 1965

1965 was pop music's best year ever. I was five, and although I was old enough to know a bunch of songs I heard on the radio, I didn't start to truly appreciate the year's bounty until more than a decade later, when I began to discover essential '65 gems by the KinksWilson PickettJames BrownBuck Owens, the Yardbirds, the Beau Brummels, the Byrds, the Four Tops, the TemptationsPaul Revere and the Raiders, Fontella Bass, the Small Faces, the Dixie Cups, the Vogues, the Who, the Zombies, the Miracles, the HolliesGeorge JonesStevie Wonder, and so, so many more. Whatta year! The best stuff was popular, and the popular stuff was the best.

"Get Off Of My Cloud" was the first Rolling Stones song I ever knew, a radio smash in '65. 
Even if I had to wait until teendom to understand the splendor that was all around me when I was five, there was still much I knew as it happened. I certainly knew "Get Off Of My Cloud." I may not have had reason to believe the Rolling Stones were substantively different from contemporary hitmeisters like the Dave Clark FiveHerman's Hermits, the Castaways, or Gary Lewis and the Playboys, but I remember that voice bellowing out of transistor radios: Don't hang around boy, two's a crowd! At five, I thought the twisting of the familiar "Two's company, three's a crowd" maxim was interesting. This record was probably my introduction to the idea of a song having swagger.

I don't think I was much aware of the Stones again until "Happy," a tune that hypnotized me on WOLF-AM in 1972. In retrospect, I must have heard some Rolling Stones material in the interim--how could I have possibly missed "Paint It, Black," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and "Honky Tonk Women," at the very least?--but "Happy" was nonetheless the first Stones track since "Get Off Of My Cloud" in '65 to make an impression on me. And I liked it. I liked it a lot.


As my knowledge and appreciation of rock 'n' roll began to expand in the mid-'70s, my specific jones for the British Invasion compelled me to go back and learn about the Stones. I had little use for the group's then-contemporary hits, so I needed to look back in time for 
golden Stones. I needed to re-visit the Rolling Stones' 1960s work.

"Get Off Of My Cloud." "Paint It, Black." "The Last Time." "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." "19th Nervous Breakdown." That stuff? That stuff rocked.

My first Rolling Stones purchase was a 45, either "Satisfaction" or the double-A side "Let's Spend The Night Together"/"Ruby Tuesday." My first Stones LP was a used copy of Through The Past Darkly, followed by a used copy of Got LIVE If You Want It!, and then by a reproduction of the 1964 four-song UK EP The Rolling Stones. I read up on the group, heard more, bought more, and I was a Rolling Stones fan before I left high school. While I was in college, the group even released a new song that I liked: "Shattered," which came to be known as "Carl's song" in my dorm, as everyone on my floor yelled out whenever it played on the radio: "Carl! Your song's on! CARL...!"

(In the same college time frame, my girlfriend "borrowed" my copy of the Rolling Stones' Big Hits [High Tide And Green Grass], as well as my copies of the Who's Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy and Buddy Holly and the Crickets20 Golden Greats, all for her own listening pleasure. I had to marry her to get my damn records back. [Which was a pretty good deal, actually--I got her, of course, AND I got her copies of Cheap Trick At Budokan and the Kinks' Greatest Hits. See? You can always get what you want!]) 

With my devotion to punk growing steadfast and true in the late '70s and early '80s, "Get Off Of My Cloud" reasserted its hold on my safety-pinned heart. The song's defiant, bad-boy cred remains assured and unassailable, and it was probably the first Stones song I ever heard played live, first by a Syracuse group called the Most and then by a Stooges-obsessed Brockport group called the Party Dogs. I bought more and more Rolling Stones LPs, from 12 x 5 to Their Satanic Majesties Request to Exile On Main Street, and more, all down the line. I idolized Keith Richards. I came to regard the 1965-66 Stones as the coolest-looking group of all time at any time. I lived in dorm rooms and then a cheap apartment, but in my head I lived in an apartment on the 99th floor of my block. This cloud's reserved for me and me alone, man.


As an avowed pop fan, I've found that some rock fans think that maybe I don't like the Stones. But I do. For a very brief period in the early '80s, I even preferred the Rolling Stones to the Beatles (though I got over that phase pretty fast!). Granted, there are a number of Stones perennials--"Brown Sugar," "Miss You," "Start Me Up"--that I would be just fine with NEVER EVER HEARING AGAIN. Ahem. I'm pretty well over "Shattered" by now, too. But the Rolling Stones were a pop band, especially in the '60s. They were, in fact, a terrific pop band. I like to invoke Bob Segarini's joke about the Rolling Stones being "The World's Luckiest Bar Band," but even a really, really lucky bar band doesn't come up with the riffs, doesn't quite pull off the attitude, and--most importantly--doesn't craft those hooks that made the Rolling Stones essential radio fare. And if you think that ain't good enough for pop music...well, don't hang around, boy--two's a crowd.

"Satisfaction" is definitive and iconic. "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is iconic and definitive. Or maybe it's the other way around. Reason would dictate that maybe one of those should occupy this space in place of "Get Off Of My Cloud." "Paint It, Black" should be in the conversation, early covers of Lennon and McCartney's "I Wanna Be Your Man" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" should also be discussed, as should the elegant dissipation of Keith Richards on "Happy." Each of these is not merely among the best of the Rolling Stones, but among the greatest ever. 

But right now, we cede the floor to a kid who was five years old in 1965. That kid heard a song on the radio that conjured an image of eviction from a crowded cloud, a song that imagined that the world had stopped. On my cloud, baby. Greatest cloud ever made.


TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:


Volume 1: download

Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.

No comments:

Post a Comment