Guest Blog: Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones

Last Saturday the Northwestern Wildcats faced the Indiana Hoosiers winning by three points in Big Ten football action. One of my favorite blogs, Two Penny Opera is written by a Indiana fan. The author Ian and I decided we would guest post on each other's blog to honor of our teams.

We both wrote about "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones, bellow are Ian's thoughts on this classic.

As the probable prologue to this post indicates, this article is the spoils of the first ever Purple Reaction/Two Penny Opera Trophy game. As you know, Kingsley is a Northwestern alumnus and I attended Indiana University. On Saturday, the Northwestern Wildcats beat my Indiana Hoosiers, 20-17 in my adopted hometown, Bloomington. It’s not as if this will be an annual game anymore, as the new Big “10” alignment will have this game happen about once every three or four years.
About a month ago, we agreed that the alum of the losing school would write about “Honky Tonk Woman” by the Rolling Stones.



In a way, it’s almost fitting that this song was chosen, as it has a lot in common with my Indiana Hoosiers. The team that IU has is a middle of the pack team in a talented conference. If this team were in the MAC or any other mid major, they would be conference champions. But they have to play Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Northwestern.

If another band had written and produced “Honky Tonk Woman”, it would be the best song that band would have done. With a portfolio containing “Paint it Black”, “Satisfaction”, “Gimme Shelter” and “Sympathy for the Devil”. In fact, “Honky Tonk Woman” wasn’t even the best song from the single (the B-Side was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). Plus the song will always have the distinction of being Brian Jones’s swan song. He died the day before it was released in the UK.
The song spins a tale about the sexual adventures of a guy who likes to find drunk and vulnerable women. Ranging from a gin-soaked barfly in Memphis to a divorcee in New York, the storyteller is trying to get over a woman who had wronged him. He tries to imply that he is unwilling to lay down with these women in both stories, but he seems to be all about the honky tonk women.

The song certainly lacks the depth of meaning that most of the early Stones songs had, but it’s one of the more fun and upbeat songs that they created. They went from social commentators that talked about manipulative advertising (“Satisfaction”), drug usage (“Mother’s Little Helpers”) and mourning the loss of a loved one (“Paint it Black”) to party band that’s really into inconsequential sex. “Honky Tonk Woman” is all flash, but has very little substance and isn’t to be taken seriously.
Just like the Hoosiers.

I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues by Elton John

In 1975, Elton John released Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy which became the first album ever to enter the charts at #1. Riding a huge wave a critical and commercial success, John seemed to do no wrong.

Two years later, John announced he was retiring from performing and his next album Single Man, had no top ten singles and was a critical and commercial disappointment. By the time he released Too Low For Zero, Elton John was a shadow of his pass self. Drug and alcohol abuse as well as personal challenges including negative reactions to a 1976 Rolling Stone Interview in which he admitted to be bisexual were taking its toll on not only Elton but also his music.

Instead of having five or six singles off of an album that were hits there were one or two and instead of toping the charts they merely broke the top 10. Amidst this, there were a few songs from this era endure quite like, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.”

Featured on the album Two Low For Zero, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” only reached #4 on the charts competing with monster hits like “Billy Jean” by Michael Jackson and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. Once Elton John’s music was at the edge of popular music experiment with form and creating unique sonic landscapes like in the opening of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with the epic “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.”



Now Elton sat squarely in the safe and adult contemporary sound of the early 1980s synthesized rock, but this couldn’t overshadow the warm nostalgia and emotional honesty of the “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.”

Elton divided the beat into the three small parts giving “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” a lilting, almost childlike quality. Elton’s voice contrasts from lines sung as manner of fact statements “don’t wish it away, don’t look at it like it’s forever,” to earnest expressions of support “before you and me run. . . ” at the end of the first verse.

At these moments and also during the chorus, “laughing like children . . ” John uses a rhythmic musical device called a hemiola. Instead of having note last over three small beats like 1-2-3 1-2-3, the notes hold over two small beats 1-2-3 1-2-3. This make the notes seem like they are lagging behind slightly creating drama by accenting the offbeats.

“I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” is about being away from the ones that you love. Reflecting on a relationship, John figures that this feeling of being away from each other must be “the blues.” However, the overwhelming feeling of this song is not “the blues” or sadness from being apart but instead is love, glowing out of soul like a warm memory.

While the most famous lines of this song “Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder under the covers” are fun to sing along with juxtaposing child like joy with sensuality, it’s the end of the second verse that says it all: “I simply love you more than I love life itself.”

The 1980s didn’t last forever. In the early 1990s, Elton John wrote the music The Lion King and the release of Songs from the West Coast in 2001 a return to John's piano roots which many considered one of his best albums featuring songs like “America Triangle” (which I discussed in this earlier post). Whether it be shows in Las Vegas or his success on Broadway with Billy Elliot, it seems that Elton is back.

It seems that many things left Elton during the 1980s, his health, his commercial success and his creative drive, but "I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” reminds us that he never lost his heart

Rehab by Amy Winehouse

I’ve never done drugs.

I’ve never smoked marijuana, I’ve never snorted anything or injected anything into my body. I’ve never smoked or cigarette or a hookah. Unbelievably, I was never offered any drugs even though the drug prevention education of my youth convinced me that I would. All that “just say no” practice was kind of a waste of time.

I feel blessed that none of my friends and family has had drugs significantly damage their lives, except for one. I wasn’t in contact in her when she went to rehab; I knew her before things that got that bad. We became friends in high school and I’ll never forget one night sitting outside on her back porch as she smoked a cigarette. She told me about her world, her dreams, her boyfriends and the drugs that were part of her life. I realized then that what I had been taught in elementary school that people who do drugs are “bad” people was a lie.

When I first heard “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse what floored me was the Motown sound that producer Mark Ronson had perfectly replicated. The energetic drum beat, the 1960s style back-up singers, the baritone saxophone used to punctuated the bass line and the overall arrangement of the instruments that allowed every instrument to be heard in the texture while they worked together as a singular groove made me musically “geek-out.”

What is amazing about this song is also what is difficult about this song. In front a musical sound brings us back to the great feelings of 1960s idealized love we have Amy Winehouse singing about how she doesn’t want to go to rehab. Juxtaposing such a serious subject against a lighthearted background reminds us that people in the 1960s had drug problems while expressing such a personal and emotional plea in a way we don't expect.

My wife and I recently watched an episode of Intervention on A&E and let me tell, there is no wink in the eye or playful expression when someone saying that will not go to rehab.



Amy Winehouse almost has us fooled. When she sings “I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby” it’s beautifully bluesy, we feel the pain of losing one’s love but then we are reminded on how unbalanced she is when she says “I always keep a bottle near” immediately after.

This song is surreal, it’s like a dark comedic musical version of Intervention. What is difficult is that this song speaks directly to the desperation of an addict going from “I don’t ever want to drink again” to refusing to go to rehab. The fact that Winehouse who is only 25 years old has had drug and alcohol issues herself and early-stage emphysema which her father claims is a result of her drug use only makes this song more disturbing.

“Rehab” is sometimes how we see drug use as something we can make a light of. Some celebrity checks into rehab, it makes tabloid news, people joke about it and many of us judge. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, maybe it’s the only way we can deal with this kind of news. Maybe the only way we can really deal with the true darkness of going to rehab is not by watching the reality of it on Intervention but by turning it into a farce.

I don’t know a lot about drugs, rehab or addiction. What I do is that it’s not a problem that relegated "stupid" or "weak" people. Every time I hear someone make that conclusion, I think of my friend, how beautiful her heart is and how much I love her.