Steven Hale
1 min readNov 21, 2022

--

I hate to agree with you here, since this the hit songs here were so powerful for me when they came out. But time changes things.

In the 60's, I thought that "Mother's Little Helper" was a striking indictment of adult hypocrisy (criticizing teens for taking drugs when adults were doing the same), but given the Stones' career with drugs, it seems more like hypocritical projection. But the underlying misogyny is even more deleterious: the housewife in the song is flawed because she doesn't prepare "fresh foods" for her husband (and she burns the frozen steak!!!). Of course the blatant misogyny of the lyrics of "Stupid Girl" and the the sadism of "Under My Thumb" are obvious, and "Lady Jane" exemplifies the virgin-whore tendency of much 60's rock. Even a dark masterpiece like "Paint It Black" is more about the persona's grief than about any pain or suffering the beloved may have experienced. In hindsight, "Aftermath" is the incubator of a series of hostile responses to the nurturing feminine, nowhere to be found in other groups of the era (Beatles, Kinks, Dave Clark Five, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Byrds, Yardbirds, etc. etc. Check out the rather snide drag for the cover of "Have You Seen Your Mother": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_You_Seen_Your_Mother,_Baby,_Standing_in_the_Shadow%3F#/media/File:HaveYouSeenYourMotherBabyUK45PicSleeve.jpg

The Stones are not just out of time, they're out of step.

--

--

Steven Hale
Steven Hale

Written by Steven Hale

Music: Discovering the lost and forgotten. Politics: Exposing injustice. Screenwriting: Emotional storytelling.

Responses (1)