Rock A Little: Rolling Stone Review
 

With all the talk about Rock A Little that past couple days, I thought I'd post this for those who maybe had not read it.

Nicks Slips Out Of Touch, Rolling Stone, January 30, 1986, by Mark Coleman

"You can talk to me," Stevie Nicks coos on the chorus of her latest hit single. "You can set your secrets free, baby." She’s got a sympathetic ear, all right. On the rest of Rock a Little, she comes on like an AM-radio psychologist, dispensing stern but friendly advice, spinning little parables and probing deep feelings with incredibly vague language. It’s all quite earnest and usually fairly tuneful; Stevie’s distinctive growl can attach a hook to some pretty slippery sentiments. But for a pop album, Rock a Little sounds strangely distant, out of touch. Plopped down next to purring synthesizers and the patter of drum machines, Stevie’s sugary moans sound harsh and jarring. The attempts to "contemporize" some of these 4/4 strum-along ditties ruin what would otherwise be an untouched curio, a relic from the forgotten age of the singer/songwriter.

Not that it was all that long ago. But it’s odd how so many of the rock and pop bands of the Seventies have lost their way in this decade. Even such sturdy pines as Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne bend and sway on their recent releases, battered by shifting tastes not only in music but in subject matter and style as well. Only the newly shorn former Eagles Don Henley and Glenn Frey, recasting themselves as sleek, rough-voiced crooners in the Miami Vice mold, have managed to age gracefully. And compared with Henley’s taut command of modern dance music on Building the Perfect Beast, Stevie seems a bit shaky. The guitar-based music on Rock a Little sounds unfocused, at times almost nostalgic. It’s disquieting hearing a song with the line "Our voices stray from the common ground where they could meet" on the same station with, oh, "Stop using sex as a weapon."

Stevie Nicks may have prefigured Madonna’s and Prince’s lace fetishes, but the tart frankness of today’s Top Ten makes her seem a bit of a prude. "Talk to Me" plows along with the easy momentum of a Cyndi Lauper hit, the chugging guitars broken by synth wallops for emphasis. But Stevie’s bluesy murmur sounds a little tired, as if all she wants to do is talk, thanks. On the opening cut, "I Can’t Wait," she waxes urgent but ultimately gets shellacked by layers of buzz-saw guitars and a nervous beat box. As for a statement of purpose, "I Sing for the Things" ("that money can’t buy," natch) is definitely postfeminist: "I’ll take off my cape for you...Anything you want me to do...I’ll sit at home and wait for you." Maybe its just my taste, but the combined synths and steel guitars on that track achieve the consistency of curdled milk. On the aforementioned tunes, at least, Stevie is being direct. When she starts setting her secrets free, weaving apocryphal situations and creating moony, enigmatic characters, the going gets a bit thick.

Well, there’s "Sister Honey," who discovers that "a soul that’s true is your ride to glory." Or take Lily, the "rock and roll ballerina" in the title tune, who seems to have a paralyzing case of the willies; the subdued gasp of the guitar line on that one sounds as hesitant as Lily does. Then there’s the hopeless dreamer who confuses reality with "The Nightmare" and gets "blinded by the light of the day." It’s a silly line that Stevie intones with all the strained majesty she used with something like "Thunder only happens when it’s raining." As unrealistic (and unfair) as it is to hold artists’ pasts against them, it’s telling that Stevie Nicks sounds most comfortable, and most convincing, on songs that recall Fleetwood Mac.

Though her attempts at profundity may fall short, Stevie Nicks can still take an unassuming little rock song and polish it into a gem. Her melismatic slurs turn the treacly melody of "Some Become Strangers" into a lush, extended sigh gilded with a rich and gooey guitar texture. Wistful but not maudlin, it’s the sort of pop confection Fleetwood Mac and Rumours were strewn with. And at the other extreme, the ringing guitar chords and electric organ washes of "Imperial Hotel" force Stevie to drop the therapist’s mask and wail for a while, reaching a delectable screech reminiscent of her saddle-sore crooning with Tom Petty on "Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around." Since the newer song was cowritten with Heartbreaker Mike Campbell, that’s only appropriate. It’s the album’s high point, despite meandering lyrics depicting the usual moody figures in a shady rendezvous. (This is something we’ll be hearing more and more often, I’m afraid ¾ songs that conjure up images from yet unmade videos.) Given decent material like "Some Become Strangers" or her collaboration with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Stevie Nicks wields an authoritative, even stunning instrument ¾ it’d be great for her to wrap her tentacles around one of Holly Knight’s modern-day pop psychodramas like "Obsession." But left to her won devices, Stevie Nicks veers dangerously close to self-parody. The sensitive rock artiste, making self-indulgent solo statements in a vacuum, supposedly died out with the dinosaurs in the late Seventies. But these days, it often seems like punk never happened anyway. The real shame is that Stevie Nicks could make good records again, if she’d only follow her own advice and rock a little.

The fourth paragraph is my favorite. And I love all of those songs. :D

Here's the caricature of Stevie from the review. (Is this too big?)

http://www.geocities.com/virgolibrap...icature001.jpg

Wow, I had read that review before, but never seen the drawing. Very interesting.

That's one of my favorite reviews of her albums. I've always thought that it was spot-on.

AAACK! Where did the picture go? I really liked it. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________aah, there it is

It kind of is, yet somehow I still love that album, and so, kind of disagree with him. Even though it's spot on. How can that be? I thought it was really strange that he praised Imperial Hotel, though. I mean, I love it, but....you know.... :rolleyes:
Thanks for posting the article, Karma. The pic rocks, too, I'd never seen it. :woohoo:

Funny thing is, I don't really disagree with the review... and, yet, his complaints about the album are some of the things I love most about 'Rock A Little.'

I've always loved the unnerving juxtaposition of Stevie's voice and all of those synths and drum machines.
And I also like the fact that none of the lyrics are blatant in the way lyrics started becoming in the '80s (a trend that continues to this day).

My favorite sentence is this:
"As unrealistic (and unfair) as it is to hold artists’ pasts against them...."

"delectable screech"

Brilliant. And probably the only time in history those two words have been used together.

I remember being offended and scandalized by this review at the time. However, about a year or so later I listened to the record and felt the reviewer was right. The record has history for me - so it holds a place. I still remember the snowy night I bought it at Tower Records. But it has some songs, in the big picture, that were not smart moves. I hated HAEWAFY for years. I still don't like "I Sing For The Things". I prefer the remix of RAL, and TTM never worked for me. Nonetheless, it has indeed turned into a "curio" for me. I sure like it more than a few of her other solo records !

I just thank GAWD Reconsider Me got axed.

I thought I was the only one who thought that. What a crap song. As it is, RAL should have been cut down and released as an EP.

This review makes me very sad, and mostly because he makes a lot of good points but you know what? It's totally from a music critic's standpoint and this album means so much more to me than what critics have to say. I guess what I'm trying to say is I never look at this album from a critical standpoint because if I did I may agree with some of what he said. I look at it from a more emotional stand point and what these songs mean to me and where Stevie was coming from at the time and a lot of the songs have a very special place in my heart. I love RAL and nothing will ever change that.

Not. "The Nightmare" blows chunks.


Perspective can be a funny thing. I like how the reviewer is trying to cram Stevie into 1985 sensibilities. In hindsight, claiming that Glenn Frey's Miami Vice schtick was "aging gracefully" is pathetic. I thought he was horrible back in 1985.

Rock A Little is Stevie's worst album because she was trying to fit in to 1985 with the synthesizers and all that crap. It's her only album that's dated.

You are my new best friend!! :xoxo:

And to The Tower: She may have been trying to "fit in" with the synthesizers and all but they were still HER songs. There is nothing wrong with curtailing your songs to what's going on at the moment and it wasn't all of them. I'm sure she had a lot of pressure from the label people as well to go with the popular sound at the time. Artists don't always have 100% creative control.

Bah. What do you know?!

@#$*@#&!!!

Rock A Little is my Favorite record by her.

With the exception of "Talk to Me" and "Has Anyone...." there's nothing on here that's anything to crow about.

Most of the songs weren't HER songs- only three were purely written by Stevie:

"Rock A Little", "I Sing For the Things" and "No Spoken Word".

Her voice is abysmal from the drinking, the coke and the smoking. In comparison, at least her voice wasn't shot on Street Angel. Stevie didn't need creative control to realize that the album was not that good. Her songwriting, or rather her lack of songwriting from that period in time is telling enough- the material wasn't there, so the album wasn't there. Considering the two big singles from the album were 1) not written by her ("Talk to Me") and 2) fully formed with her slapping on some coked out screaming ("I Can't Wait), it's obvious she was very creatively wiped out at the time. No wonder she went into rehab after this album.

Some people really groove on that shredded, burnt-out, drugged-out Stevie, but I think Rock A Little was waaaay too much of that side of her.

Me, too. Sorry, Towie, but I love the debauched excess of her waning voice, and the clash of synth with stevie's growl. It's so cheesy, and so discordant, I love it. Except, I Sing For the Things, which I just think is a damn pretty and heartfelt song. :)

It's rock & roll, Towie!! It's Jimi Hendrix! It's Janis Joplin! It's Jim Morrison! It's Sly Stone! It's Keith Richards! Rock & roll is ABOUT excess!! It ain't about being grandmotherly & wearing pretty button-down sweaters & being smooth & stable & crisp & clean, man. It's about pulling out the stops! It's about groveling in the mud! It's about mutilating your enemies! It's about mind-altering & mood-altering Dionysian excess, dude! Gotta go with the flow, Joe! Let it happen to ya!

Rock & roll is an EXTREME rollercoaster, pal! It ain't no carousel!!

http://history.amusement-parks.com/Laser/lazerloop.jpg

I like "I Sing For the Things", it's just not WOW. Everyone has their own tastes. I think The Other Side of the Mirror is her best album, and I know that there are a lot of people out there who don't like it.

For cripes sake, there are even people out there who like Street Angel!!! :eek: ( :wavey: Curtis!) :laugh: :laugh:

yeah, me. I like OSOTM a way lot, too. My least fave, so far has been Wild Heart. I just haven't gotten into it, yet. It's okay. I don't love TISL too much, either, but I still like it.

I don't think this is entirely fair... You have to consider the time frame. The late 80s were hard for Stevie I think because of the prevailing style of music. She had PLENTY of songs written for RAL, and it is likely that many of them would have been rejected by her label. I think that Stevie had to collaborate to capture the sound that her label wanted. It's like Sometimes it's a Bitch - her label told her she had to do it - she had to work with other popular artists, or her career would cease to exist. If she didn't want to sound dated, she really had no other choice. An album of 100% Stevie-penned tunes was possible, but would not have charted as well.

I'm doing a hundred things around the house right now, and I didn't state my case as clearly or eloquently as I would have liked to - but I'm sure someone will get my point.

Jimi, Janis, Jim, Sly, Keith AND Stevie all had their moments and then lost control when the drugs, booze and cigarettes took over (great examples by the way!). I love all the people that you mentioned, but they too made burnt out product that I don't particularly like- with perhaps the exception of Janis, she made her zenith and then o.d.'d before she had a chance to do her own Rock A Little.

The Wild Heart is rock-n-roll on the extreme rollercoaster. Rock A Little is puking in the bushes after getting off the ride.

Have you heard the outtake of I Sing For The Things? It rocks, and is SO much better than the sappy version she used on the record.

Hehe. You and I are amongst the brave souls who admit to liking that album. :laugh:

Rock A Little is abysmal, in my opinion, there's no pussyfooting around it. By the time she recorded it, she had begun her descent into self-parody and the album itself just made her more laughable than she already was. Unintelligible lyrics mixed with bad music made it the pits. Her voice wasn't all bad because, as David said, it's rock and roll, so it's expected and a bit refreshing to hear some ragged vocals. But there is a difference between good, ragged rock and roll and screeching, cloying, overproduced pop sludge.

I think it's with Rock A Little that she essentially started writing songs in an effort to uphold her image as rock's great mystic; it was made in the tradition of keeping up the whole gypsy/witch act. Back then, she used to claim that who was onstage, with the flowing costumes and witchy mystique, was who she was in real life, day in and day out. Fast forward almost twenty years and she's saying that "people love the whole Bella Donna thing so much, and I'm not that at all." Rock A Little is a collection of the ridiculous ramblings of a woman pushing forty, abusing hard drugs, and scribbling down inane references to sisters of the moon and nightmares and the wind and the rain and the water. With that album she had ceased to become a songwriter who wrote deeply personal songs accented by her love of the mystique, at least for quite awhile. Instead, she was writing cocaine-influenced crap.

We can all be thankful that she never totally forgot how to write a good song and can still do it.

100% agreed. Now when someone asks me why I dislike RAL, I'm going to direct him or her to this post. :woohoo: :wavey:

The label was created FOR her. I doubt they forced her to do anything. If she didn't like what the label was doing with her, she could have bought out her contract. Any other label would have gone ape**** to sign her.

No, it was her manager that told her she had to record that **** song, not her label. And she had total choice. Either record a song you dislike or don't. To hear Stevie tell it, she recorded it and then fired her manager. That sounds kind of stupid to me.

Rock A Little was assembled in 1985- hardly the late 80's. TOSOTM was in 1989 and that IMO was a spectacular effort with good material. I think Stevie has always had a maverick streak in her that disregards current trends- that's one of the reasons she is so timeless. She succumbed to mid-80's synth-pop-dreck because of the drugs and the lack of material.


Probably because the songs were crap ("Night Gallery" ????).

I think Stevie had to collaborate because she was creatively bankrupt. Belladonna, Mirage and Wild Heart (along with several excellent tracks attached to movie scores) within three years really drained a lot of material from Stevie's coffers. Why else do you think she started working with Sandy Stewart? She needed someone to write the music. Prior to The Wild Heart, she never collaborated on songwriting (yeah, Roy Bittan wrote the bridges for "Kind of Woman" and "Think About It")- Rock A Little was the beginning of Stevie relying on outsourced music tapes and then using her cut and paste journal lyrics to create songs.

Stevie herself stated that during the time of RAL no one was telling her what to do. No one was telling her what to do- including the people at Modern. She ditched Jimmy Iovine and hodge-podged together some producers and gave herself co-production credit and released the mess that it was.

"Sometimes It's A Bitch" doesn't relate well because it was made at a time when her career was almost over (as far as the recording industry was concerned). The simple fact is- if Stevie had good material written, she would have released it. She was coming off of her hottest period 1981 - 1983 and she was on a label that only existed to promote her music. She didn't do Rock A Little because record executives told her her music sucked. She did Rock A Little because she was burnt out on coke and wanted to release an album. And her judgement at the time really shows- releasing a song co-written by her brother???

I think "Talk to Me" is way up there on the list of her greatest performances. But other than that? Meh.

Does anyone even know exactly what part of it he wrote?

Yes, Night Gallery was crap, but Love Is Like A River, She Calls Him Missing, She Loves Him Still, Mirror Mirror, Thousand Days, Jimmy Come Back & Running Through The Garden are not crap (in my opinion) and for one reason or another didn't make the LP. I'm sure there are many other songs that she wrote that we've never heard of as well...not to mention the dozens of songs written prior to that time period that she could have used. I just don't buy the argument that she was creatively exhausted. I also don't think Stevie had as much control over her albums as has been insinuated in the above few posts. The label always has the final say regarding what will be released. It has always been that way. Look at Say You Will....the only person who REALLY wanted Bleed To Love Her on there was the Warner execs. Another example - Fiona Apple's third album was shelved by her label for lack of "an obvious single".

Also, I don't believe Stevie could afford to buy out her contract in 1985.

Anyhow, I can respect why someone thinks RAL is crap. After all, I think The Other Side of the Mirror is crap. :shrug:

I must say I wholeheartedly disagree with just about everything you said but your response was nonetheless very well written and thought out so I'm giving you major props! I enjoyed reading it very much.

I love 'Rock A Little.'
But then I don't have a rod up my tuchas. ;) :laugh:

Do you guys even listen to what's on the CD? There is an equal amount of synth-pop-dreck on "Mirror" -- except it's even more watered down with Kenny G. saxophone muzak, & then FURTHER defiled by a guy who didn't have a clue how to engineer an album.

LONG LIVE ROCK A LITTLE!!!!!

Oh the possible responses....

1) YET.

2) Right NOW.

3) Wouldn't tell us if you did

4) If you did, your hearing might be better....

This could lengthen the life of this thread considerably.

Like:

No, but someone else's rod is.

Yeah, you might want to keep trying until there's one that's genuinely clever or witty. :laugh:

What Sparky said.... :laugh:

Feh.

Rock a Little is cold "Space Invaders" style, Casio-tone synth. TOSOTM is warm, orchestral, Oberheim synth. I agree with you about the Kenny G ****- "Two Kinds of Love" is pretty stanky. But, overall TOSOTM's songwriting is much more cohesive than the coked out scatterings that make up RAL.

Wasn't shooting for either, frankly. :blob2:

Oooooooooooooo...... SNAP-OLA!!!

Ahh, just trying to be snide and bitchy then.

Well, whatever works for you!

I agree to a point, but Rock a Little is vastly different, in terms of sound, than Bella Donna and even The Wild Heart. I could see how people were a bit baffled by RAL and felt she was alienating some of her fan base. With that said, RAL remains my favorite solo album by Stevie. I know most people don't share this opinion but it's more on a personal level for me. I wasn't even that familiar with Stevie except from what I heard on the radio at the time RAL came out. I bought it on a whim, because I liked "Talk to Me". I played that record (they were RECORDS back then!!) over and over and over. I've been hooked ever since :woohoo: :woohoo:

Or.."at least not far ENOUGH"