Back to 1967 again, and a song that hit number 1 in March of
that year. See how it is? “Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane” in February;
“Ruby Tuesday / Let’s Spend the Night Together” in March. And in between The
Velvet Underground with Nico. 1967, kids, 1967.
We had this 45 as kids and the sound of this song is part of
childhood, to me. When I began listening to it stoned somewhere in the late
Seventies, there was one time at least where I could perceive the
actual rooms as they were when I first heard “Ruby Tuesday.” I remember, as a
kid, thinking this song was way older than it was. Something about that
double-bass and flute combo made it seem ancient. Later, it would
seem to be calliope music. In any case, it was just a reaction to incipient
psychedelia while innocent of what that was all about. Later, later….
This has always been for me one of Mick’s most affecting
vocals—up there with “As Tears Go By” and “Wild Horses.” I don’t know if there
are any tricks in the recording process but the voice sounds vaguely processed
or perhaps slightly off-speed. Or it could just be that Mick himself is not in
the same dimension as the rest of us at the time. The Stones were happily out
there at this point, having come into their own with 1966’s Aftermath and then
jumping further along with Between the Buttons. “Ruby Tuesday” graces that LP
in the U.S., though not in the UK. I just don’t really want to think of the
album without it. But it’s true that it’s a scrappier LP without the lyricism
of “Ruby Tuesday.”
The song has no input from Jagger, but is a Keith composition
primarily, with aid from Brian Jones, though it is published as Jagger/Richards;
that’s Brian on the flute and it’s that flute, with those little jumping notes
and the long sustained ones in the background, that gives the song its
haunting quality. And it’s got the catchy chorus introduced each time by the
pumpa-pumpa-pumpa-pumpa-pump of Charlie’s drums. It’s also a really good lyric,
no thanks to Mick.
“She would never say where she came from.” That line, once ingrained in your brain, stands
for everything that was happening in the class-bending upward mobility of the
times. People were inventing themselves right and left. Even better: “Yesterday
don’t matter if it’s gone.” So much for a certain rival pop group’s mooning on
about “Yesterday.” “She comes and goes—Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on
you?” I used to wonder about that “hanging
a name” bit. Around our house, giving nicknames was a common enough occurrence,
so the idea of someone “hanging a name” on someone made sense, but
the fact that it was impossible gave me pause. What did that mean, exactly? The
hint was surely in “when you change with every new day.” Later, it would occur to me that marrying a
girl, in those days, was to “hang a name on her.” This chick wasn’t having none
of that.
And yet it’s clear that “Ruby Tuesday” is the name the singer
hangs on her. And it sounds like a whore’s
name, or maybe the name of a figure in a fable. Maybe even the name of a food
chain? But it also sounds, as so much did in those trippy days, like it’s code
for something. I’ll have a “Ruby Tuesday,” wink wink. Who knows? Anyway, she
has become synonymous with a woman who “just can’t be chained / To a life where
nothing’s gained / And nothing’s lost / At such a cost.” Wow. Far from being a
ball and chain, she has no use for one either. No gain, no loss, if toujours
status quo—at the cost of, as The Beatles might say, “fun.”
The verse that always got me, even as a kid was: “’There’s
no time to lose,’ I heard her say, / ‘Catch your dreams before they slip away /
Dying all the time / Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.’ / Ain’t
life unkind?’” There’s some doubt as to
whether or not that last line is spoken by Ruby or by the singer. But it
always seemed to me to make the most sense with Ruby exhorting him to catch his
dreams before they’re gone and stressing that losing your dreams is a kind of
death and madness. To which the singer comments “Ain’t life unkind?” As though
to say, yeah, well, that’s how it goes anyway.
The amusing thing in all this is that someone is representing,
for the Stones, a caution against conventional lifestyles. Wow, talk about
coals to Newcastle. Anyway, the idea of changing with every new day sounded
kinda crazy itself—assuming it was even possible. But, who knows, maybe that
assertion helped create my weakness for a certain mercurial quality in my
objects of desire. So that the missing is not only the sadness at absence but
the missing of an aim gone wide of the mark. And, like Amanda Jones, Ruby will
remain a “miss,” thank you very much.
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