"Tumblin' Dice" Rolling Stones

Things are different when there is a new Rolling Stones single on the radio. There’s a sense of anticipation with good odds. The Stones really are the only band left that makes history, and makes you feel like you’re in the midst of it. Somehow, they leave their mark on the events around them. Usually, they do it without even trying.

“Tumblin’ Dice” is their first throw-away hit single. If you analyze it critically, it’s terrible. If you listen to it, it’s great. It makes noise, that’s about all it does. Something like “Good Golly Miss Molly.” There are no lyrics, none you can really hear anyway, which is obviously the point. “Mmmmmmmmmaybe ur cn gt rt, ho bun ta b st rt, All the crammin dcs g wd, as s (as s) BAYBAY! BAYBAY!” The Stones do not include their lyrics with their albums.

It sounds real loud. It came on that way and I turned it up. When I pulled the car over I had it jammed high, distorting. People turned their heads. What is that? That is the new Rolling Stones single. Me and the deejay really like it. He says. “Ya got ta roll me!" “Roll me, Stones. Roll dem bones,” a deejay overlay. Nice pun. Double pun. A set up. They don’t miss a trick.

The record gets in the way, that’s what’s so good about it. It’s the best thing on the radio, which is the point of any Stones single: interruption of routine. It has no subject matter but itself and your response to it. It has a one-second intro that is dead perfect and an ending that features Kathy MacDonald pleading someone’s got to roll her, while Mick sort of grovels on the floor, totally blasted, grrrrg, unnnnnng, unnnnergrrrrng, looking for his contact lenses under the bed amidst the false teeth, slapping his ass, urgle grnnn nngerg, ow.

Where my contact lenses?

The answer, my friend, is bio win’ in the wind.

You’re kidding.

The Stones have nothing to say, then they’ll say it. Takes a lot of nerve to put out a record without any lyrics these days. Face it, if they appeared at a McGovern benefit they would embarass him. Even now. Rock and roll was not meant to elect presidents, but to confuse them.

I bought the single because I always buy Stones singles. It came in the cover you see before you unless the Creem art dep’t copped out. They really were pulling out all the stops again. “My,” I said to the salesman, “they never miss, do they?” “Well,” he said, “they do, but they didn’t.” At this point the cover began to drool at me.

The flip side is “Sweet Black Angel,” with a strong seductive rhythm, starting out blues, ending up calypso. Mick and Keith sing it brilliantly. It has lyrics.

Got a sweet black angel Got a pin-up girl Got a sweet black angel Up upon my wall

Well she ain't no singer She ain’t no star But she sure looks good And she moves so fast

But they got her in chains yeah Yeah they got her in chains

(“Chay-ay-ayns,” to be exact)

She’s a sweet black angel Not a sweet black slave.*

Jesus, this song was about Angela Davis! Well, a year ago I was blasting Sticky Fingers, and I quoted “Brown Sugar” and said, “Try that on Angela Davis next time you ran into her.” And they did. “Look,” they said, “We get to Angela through ‘Brown Sugar,’ it’s all more complicated than you think, and the one thing Mick learned at the London School of Economics was that revisionist history sucks. You made it, we just write it.”

They get to her politically because she gets to them sexually. Or maybe vice versa. More likely, all at once. They take a poster and put it on the wall. They suffer her anguish and feel sexy. The courtroom turns into a bedroom, the jury box into a bed.

What makes the Stones so fine is that they cop to it all and invite us to do the same. No purity. No embarrassment at the sources of their politics and no embarrassment at the outcome. Not lies. Lots of jive, but no lies.

Basically, they would like to get it on with Angela. Martha Reeves will be part of their show this time around but this time around Angela is the real thing, not Martha. They might like Angela to sit on the stage with them and maybe stand up and sing a chorus when they do “Tumblin’ Dice.” Chances are they would not play “Sweet Black Angel.”

It would be a little obvious, that’s all.

In the end, they’re only in it for the irony.

Greil Marcus