The Rolling Stones – 19th Nervous Breakdown

does Discogs separate the value of the record VS. the value of the picture sleeve? if so, how and where?

By no stretch of the imagination would I suggest that all songs by the Rolling Stones or The Beatles are good, matter of fact, when it comes to The Rolling Stones, they have far fewer good songs that bad ones … but that’s just my thinking, and I’ve been around since the first Stones’ single hit the shelves. Consider The Beatles “Strawberry Fields,” “I Am The Walrus” “Flying” or “Magical Mystery Tour,” those are nothing short of brilliant singles, bits of wax I’m proud to have in my collection. The same thing goes for The Stones, and in my top ten singles falls “19th Nervous Breakdown,” a splendid number that shows the world that the boys had chops and were able to write original material that was equal to any of the songs they’d been covering for far too long.

What made this masterpiece so special, and even though it’s considered a Jagger / Richards number, Brian Jones pulled more than his fair share of the weight, extending the Bo Diddley influences into a long chords of blues progressions, along with Bill Wyman’s dive-bombing bass descension that stands like the cherry on top of an ice-cream float, infusing the song with a sonic completeness, a tour de force of garage psych perfection … and it was all released in mono only, meaning the music was right there, there was no escaping it, where no matter how many times the song was played you held your breath as the story unfolded, knowing each note and lyric that was coming, and still, there was no way you could turn it down, yet alone change the station; it was all a matter of divine anticipation. The song is hypnotic, filled with emancipating driving rhythms that are tightly coiled, yet suggest space for breathing in the spacious extended instrumental section, and off the wall guitar riffs.

With the song being penned during The Stones first tour in 1965, the number essentially describes how Jagger was feeling during those heady days saying, “We’d just done five weeks of hectic work in the States and I said ‘Dunno about you blokes, but feel about ready for my nineteenth nervous breakdown.’” The backstory of the song regards those who have everything, yet forever seem to remain unhappy by choice.

With that in mind, mixed low in the background is the verse On our first trip (LSD) I tried so hard to rearrange your mind, But after awhile I realized you were disarranging mine. This was a great understated drug reference that certainly flew over the heads of most listeners, and was certainly enough to have gotten the song banned from the radio in those years, and was even performed on the ‘family friendly’ Ed Sullivan Show. According to the biography by Philip Norman, “On our fist trip” references the first time he and Chrissie Shrimpton dropped acid together, in a rather tumultuous pill popping relationship for the two that spanned an on-again off-again affair that lasted almost six years.

Yes, of course you can listen to this song as part of any album, but there’s nothing like the 7” piece of wax to delight your soul and ebb you back in time.

*** The Fun Facts: Though as a mono only release, a stereo mix of the song has turned up in private and bootleg collections, where one version of the stereo mix features a radically different vocal from Jagger, who alternates between mellow on the verses and more raw on the chorus.

Review by Jenell Kesler