One of the Rolling Stones most amazing songs is TE Echo de menosthe theme that opens the album Some girls, since 1978; in full frenzy of disco music. The best rock and roll band in the world throw this theme so little stone.
More than forty years after its release, the song still has visible motifs, but also a hidden side. Indeed, the influence of clubs on Mick Jagger, especially the legendary Studio 54, in New York, spawned this successful composition that the band initially took as a whim of the singer.
But there was always a parallel rumor that Jagger had proposed to enter Studio 54 with the music of the Stones and that his former partner, the Nicaraguan actress Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías, Bianca Jagger to the whole world, I had to dance it. The title speaks for itself: “I miss you”.
Although in 1977 Mick Jagger He was already having another romance with model Jerry Hallwith whom he will end up marrying years later, the Rolling Stones singer would, it seems, a stuck thorn with Bianca from whom he had recently separated.
Studio 54, the celebrity nightclub
Andy Warhol, Michael Jackson, Calvin Klein, Truman Capote, Elizabeth Taylor, Farrah Fawcett and Liza Minnelli, among others, were regulars at the nightclub, although Bianca was undoubtedly a major entertainer. An unknown aspect for many after that background that she has kept in her marriage to Jagger. Bianca, among other things, was the godmother of the disco between 1977 and 1980.
Far from treating the split with the leader of the Stones as a failure, Bianca became the center of the party every night at Studio 54. While Jagger got intimate with Hall, if not openly, at least noticeably, Bianca made club nights memorable and commented on by the jet set who religiously frequented the venue on West 54th Street, Manhattan.
Furthermore, everything seemed to indicate that Bianca, after the separation from Mick, would have had an affair with Jack Ford, son of Gerald Ford, president of the United States between 1974 and 1977. There was not a night in which they had not met. on the dance floor. Either way, Bianca had it straight and said: “My marriage ended on my wedding day”.
Jagger and Bianca were married in Saint Tropez on May 12, 1971 and divorced in 1978, prior to the album’s release. Some girls. Jade was born from the marriage.
TE Echo de menos it is in a sense Studio 54, inaugurated on Tuesday 26 April 1977 with a small group of guests.
In addition to Jagger and Bianca, there were Diana Ross, Salvador Dalí, Debbie Harris, Brooke Shields, Liza Minnelli and Donald Trump and his wife Ivanna, among others.
The curious thing is that so much Frank Sinatra, like Woody Allen, Cher and Warren Beatty failed to enter be rejected by the despotic control of the goalkeepers. This confirmed the New York legend that the most important people in nightclubs are always the doormen.
a special birthday
The bond between Bianca and Steve Rubell, who ran Studio 54, was immediate, as was with Andy Warhol. The venue, open from Tuesday to Sunday, made an exception with the Nicaraguan one and, one week after its inauguration, it opened its doors on Monday 2 May to celebrate Bianca’s 32nd birthday, which he celebrated on a white horse dressed in red.
“Steve Rubell had apparently seen a picture of me in a magazine riding a white horse in Nicaragua and thought it would be a good idea to take a horse clubbing as a birthday surprise. He was a beautiful horse that reminded me of my own and I made the decision to ride him for a few minutes,” Bianca told the Financial Timesin 2015.
And he continued: “The image went around the world and the fairy tale was born that she had entered the club on horseback. I would like to clarify, Mick Jagger and I entered Studio 54 together”, looking for clarifying versions that the they left it in an unnecessarily awkward place.
Come Miss You was born in the studio
Neither guitarist Keith Richards nor drummer Charlie Watts, two very strong opinions within the stone universe, seemed convinced of making disco music; both of them initially I thought it was a whim influenced by so much dance floor and that particular environment. But time has proved it TE Echo de menos It is one of the band’s excellent songs.
“Ah, Mick went to a bowling alley and came out humming a song; it’s the result of all those nights Mick spends in Studio 54 and comes up with a beat, those classics four on the floor (a description of the song’s tempo, “kick drum in quarter notes”) that he sang it to me and told me to put a tune on it,” Richards said.
“We thought we’d treat him and do some disco and make him happy, but as we got into the song it became a pretty cool groove and we found something like quintessential disco. The rest of the album doesn’t sound like TE Echo de menos”, concluded the legendary guitarist.
“We didn’t get together and say let’s do a disco song; It was very popular music and I think that influenced us to make a song like this. It is a theme with the classic rhythmic pattern of disco music, which marks the four beats of the bar. Though I remember Keith moaning a lot, but the song sounded great.”, added the legendary Charlie Watts, who died in August 2021.
Mick Jagger for his part took some distance and said so TE Echo de menos it didn’t feel like a disco song in the strict sense. “The song has a strong guitar presence, which the disco music of that time didn’t have; nor does it have strings or female choirs. The theme is affected by all of that, but it wasn’t that.”
The song begins with a guitar riff that continues into the melody that Jagger sings, dominated by Watts’ uniform bass drum that creates a kind of breath, to which is added the excellent bassline of Bill Wyman that in some sections gently doubles the low. beat the clock.
It was a difficult song to prepare and ended up being recorded in the fall of 1977 in Paris. According to Richards, the theme was inspired by Bianca, but Mick was in charge of repeatedly denying it saying that the text reflected an emotion, a feeling of nostalgia and that it was not dedicated to any particular woman.
In addition to the Stones, American harmonica player James Whiting played, street musician who played in the Paris Metro and who appears on the album under the pseudonym Sugar Blue and Ian McLagan (ex-Faces) on keyboards.
The argument was less than four minutes long, but an almost 8-minute version was made for the Studio 54 nightclub; It was also released as a single with the country-tinged ballad Far Eyes on the B-side and was the last Stones single to reach number one in Billboard and number three in Great Britain.
However, TE Echo de menos It played every night at Studio 54, and eyewitnesses claimed that Bianca danced to it with a smile on her lips.
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Source: Clarin
