Exercises in Absence
The latter days of Keith Richards’s career are defined by things not there. Note the almost entirely decayed structure of his face and body: cheeks almost gone, eyes sunk back in his head, teeth seemingly receding. He’s our most beloved public wraith. His solo concert tour (and album) four years ago was an exercise in absence: onstage at the Aragon he was interacting with something that wasn’t there, dancing around a point in the center of the stage that was unquestionably empty, yet also somehow occupied. And on the records as well (1988’s Talk Is Cheap and the new one, Main Offender), you notice, over and over again, what’s present in his other band yet absent from this one. Most notably absent is a voice: Richards’s own is a wistful shadowy hint of a rock ‘n’ roll voice, drifted in from another room, another apartment, another universe. Since Richards’s sensibility is entirely, exclusively musical, his records have a purity that transcends genre and time: you hear not a blues rocker (“999”), but THE BLUES itself. Not a slice of Four Topsy soul (“Hate It When You Leave”), but MOTOWNSOUL incarnate. And lyrically, the most adventurous trope on the album (“Eileen”–“I lean,” get it?) is just a coat hanger for two, three, ten guitar riffs–precisely what the less adventurous ones are used for too.
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In a new three-CD compilation, Jefferson Airplane Loves You, Slick describes the song nicely as “sort of a bolero ripoff on the music and Alice in Wonderland for the lyrics.” There are two remastered versions of “White Rabbit” on the set, the original album track and a previously unreleased live version. One hearing of either immediately narrows the choice down to either “sloppy” or “so I’ll be,” but you can’t really tell if the sound Slick enunciates at the beginning of the key phrase is “sl” or “sw.” Frustrated, Hitsville finally availed himself of the journalist’s last resort: he called and asked. Slick relayed the word through a helpful publicist: sloppy it is.
