It was 1974. The glitter of the Sixties had long since curdled into a murky, drug-fueled haze, and The Rolling Stones were, quite frankly, a mess. They were tax exiles. They were exhausted. Mick Taylor, the virtuoso guitarist who had helped define their "Golden Era" sound on albums like Exile on Main St., was literally packing his bags. People thought they were finished. Then came It's Only Rock 'n Roll The Rolling Stones, a record that felt like a defensive crouch and a defiant middle finger all at once.
It isn't their best album. Most critics will tell you that. But it might be their most honest one.
The Chaos Behind the Scenes
You can't talk about this era without talking about the internal rot. By the time they hit Musicland Studios in Munich, the "Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World" tag was starting to feel like a heavy, rusted chain. Keith Richards was deeply entrenched in his well-documented struggles with heroin. Mick Jagger was increasingly becoming the jet-setting socialite, leaning into the glitz of the mid-70s. The friction wasn't the creative kind that fueled Sticky Fingers; it was the kind that breaks gearboxes.
Mick Taylor’s departure is the ghost haunting these tracks. He wasn't even credited for a lot of the songwriting he contributed to, particularly on "Till the Next Goodbye" and "Time Waits for No One." That second track is actually a masterpiece. It features a fluid, Latin-influenced guitar solo that sounds nothing like "classic" Stones, yet it’s arguably the most beautiful thing on the record. Taylor was a technician in a band of pirates. He didn't fit anymore.
Then there’s the title track.
It's Only Rock 'n Roll The Rolling Stones: A Song Born at a Party
The lead single and title track didn't even start as a full band effort. It began at Ron Wood’s house, "The Wick." Ronnie wasn't even a Stone yet! He was still in the Faces. One night, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, David Bowie, and Kenney Jones started messing around. They stayed up all night. The resulting rhythm track was so infectious that Jagger decided to keep it for the Stones' album.
Poor Mick Taylor was pushed further into the shadows.
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When you listen to the song today, it sounds like a manifesto. Jagger was tired of the press dissecting his every move. He was tired of the fans demanding he be a prophet or a martyr. "If I could stick a knife in my heart / Suicide right on stage / Would it be enough for your teenage lust?" Those aren't just lyrics. That's a genuine scream of frustration from a man who felt like a circus animal.
The irony? The world took it as a fun party anthem. It's a dark song disguised as a stomp.
Production and the "Glimmer Twins"
This was the first album where Jagger and Richards took over production duties entirely, billing themselves as "The Glimmer Twins." You can hear the lack of an outside ear. Jimmy Miller, who had produced their run of masterpieces from Beggars Banquet through Goats Head Soup, was gone. He’d succumbed to his own demons.
The result is a muddy, dense, and sometimes cluttered mix. It’s thick. Some people hate it. Others think it captures the grime of mid-70s London and Munich perfectly.
Take "Luxury." It’s a weird reggae-inflected track where Jagger tries on a bizarre accent. It’s silly. It’s over-the-top. But it also shows a band that was willing to fail. They weren't trying to be the "serious" artists of the Exile days anymore. They were just trying to survive.
The Arrival of Ronnie Wood
While he didn't officially join until after the album was finished, Ronnie Wood's DNA is all over It's Only Rock 'n Roll The Rolling Stones. His chemistry with Keith Richards—what they called the "ancient art of weaving"—saved the band's live energy.
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- Taylor played to the band.
- Wood played with the band.
There is a massive difference. Wood’s sloppy, slide-heavy, grin-and-bear-it style matched Keith’s intuition far better than Taylor’s precision ever could. When the music video for the title track came out—the one where they are wearing sailor suits and getting drowned in bubbles—it was the first time we saw Ronnie with them. Even though he was just miming, it felt right.
Why the Critics Were (Mostly) Wrong
At the time, the NME and Rolling Stone magazine were lukewarm. They called it stagnant. They thought the band was repeating themselves.
Looking back fifty years later, that’s an unfair read. The album contains "If You Can't Rock Me," one of the best opening salvos in their catalog. It’s got Charlie Watts playing like a god. People forget that Charlie was the anchor when everything else was drifting. His drumming on "Fingerprint File" is a masterclass in tension.
"Fingerprint File" is actually a wild outlier. It’s a paranoid, funky, proto-disco track about government surveillance. It sounds more like Talking Heads than the Chuck Berry riffs they were known for. It showed that despite the drugs and the ego, the Stones were still listening to the streets. They knew the world was getting darker and more electronic.
The Legacy of the Bubble Video
We have to talk about the bubbles. The music video for "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" is legendary for nearly killing the band. They were dressed in sailor suits in a tent filled with detergent foam.
According to Bill Wyman, the foam was actually toxic. It was getting into their eyes and lungs. By the end of the shoot, they were genuinely struggling to breathe. It’s the perfect metaphor for their career in 1974: trapped in a ridiculous spectacle of their own making, slowly suffocating, but still playing the damn song.
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Essential Tracks for the Modern Listener
If you’re revisiting this record, don’t just play the hits. Dig into the deep cuts.
- "Time Waits for No One": As mentioned, this is Mick Taylor's swan song. It’s long, it’s melancholic, and it features a percussion break that is surprisingly sophisticated.
- "If You Can't Rock Me": This is pure adrenaline. It’s the sound of a band trying to prove they haven't aged a day, even though they felt like they’d aged a century.
- "Till the Next Goodbye": A beautiful, acoustic-driven ballad that often gets overshadowed by "Angie" or "Wild Horses," but it has a vulnerable quality that Jagger rarely allowed himself.
- "Short and Curly": Okay, this one is polarizing. It’s a goofy, bluesy throwaway about being under a woman's thumb. It’s essential because it shows the band’s humor, which is often lost in the "Rock Gods" narrative.
How to Experience the Era Properly
To really understand It's Only Rock 'n Roll The Rolling Stones, you have to stop comparing it to Let It Bleed. It’s a different beast. It’s the sound of a band transitioning from the dangerous outlaws of the Sixties to the stadium-filling institution of the Eighties.
Check out the 1975 "Tour of the Americas" bootlegs. That's where these songs really lived. On stage, with Ronnie Wood finally in the fold, the title track became a roar. It became the anthem that gave them permission to keep going for another fifty years.
Honestly, the album's title was a genius move of self-preservation. By telling the world "It's only rock 'n roll," they lowered the stakes. They gave themselves room to breathe. They didn't have to be the voice of a generation anymore; they just had to be a rock band.
Moving Forward with the Stones
If you're looking to deepen your appreciation for this specific slice of Stones history, start by listening to the album on a high-quality vinyl press or a lossless digital stream. The Glimmer Twins' production is notoriously "thick," and cheap speakers will make it sound like mud.
Next, compare the studio version of "It's Only Rock 'n Roll" with the live versions from the Love You Live album. You’ll hear the evolution of the song once Ronnie Wood fully integrated his "weaving" style with Keith.
Finally, track down a copy of the 1974 Rolling Stone interview with Mick Jagger regarding the album's release. It provides a raw look into his headspace at the time—defensive, witty, and clearly ready to move on to the next phase of the band's life.
Stop treating this album as a "lesser" work. It’s a pivotal bridge. Without the experimentation and the "back to basics" attitude found here, we likely wouldn't have gotten the disco-infused brilliance of Some Girls a few years later. It was the necessary reset.