can anyone one get me an address for joe moretti….I think my father is his long lost uncle…

Above all this, Farlowe exults, sneers and perhaps sometimes pleas - those triptychs of “baby baby baby” eerily prefigure Springsteen - but there’s no questioning his triumph in her defeat. A male “I Will Survive” - and sung by a survivor, too; Farlowe was by ‘66 already a battle-scarred veteran of the London R&B circuit who had been around since the days of skiffle (frontman of the John Henry Skiffle Group, no less) and the exultation in his performance is carefully shadowed by a certain weariness.

But then I remember “Under My Thumb” from the same year and remind myself that this is yet another example of the curiously androgynous misogyny in which Jagger and Richards were only too happy to indulge during this period. And furthermore, towards the end of the record, Farlowe seems to lose himself in the wrong way, finally finding satisfaction in a bizarre series of stock R&B vocal memes (”Oh yeah,” “A-HA!,” “All right now,” and strangest of all, “Is everybody ready?”) which suggests that somewhere in the course of the record, he stopped listening to what he was singing.

Right said, Tom! When I first heard this in 1966, I already had an appreciation for the sardonic–I wanted to break up with someone (even though I’d never been involved with anyone) just so I could express the song’s sentiments to someone. (Yes, yes, I know–I’ve spent years in psychotherapy sorting out such drama-queen impulses.)

While I had no vocabulary to articulate it back then, I instinctively knew those campy baroque strings at the beginning were only faux-romantic–the persistent drumbeat that accompanied them suggests something over-the-top is about to happen. And it does.

The bitter and the sweet are ironically juxtaposed–but so ironically that, as you say, the result is exuberant rather than heartbroken. It is easily the best “kiss-off” song ever. (The second best is Timi Yuro’s “What’s a Matter Baby”–which also has a snarky baroque strings intro.) And it’s not just the song itself–Jagger and Richards did their own version, more or less an I-couldn’t-give-a-flaming-rat’s-ass-in-the-noontime dismissal. Farlowe’s laughingly growly baritone, though, suggests a true pleasure in revenge that suggests she’s getting paid back with interest.

The review made me pull this out from the shelves and listen again. I really must get a cleaner recording than the muddy-sounding Immediate Story anthology CD I now have. But, of course, the murky sound is how I heard it on a transistor radio in the monophonic days of 1966. I suspect that there’s some fine instrumental gestures that don’t come through without digital remastering–but what you hear is certainly enough to merit a 9–or more. A Rolling Stone’s song that improved on the original.

And, oh yes–did I ever get to live out the scenario this song inspired? Yes–it only took thirty-nine years to happen.

Number one on my twelfth birthday, and number one when England won the World Cup. I do like putting these things in context.

A fair assessment and a well-deserved 9. I love this song. I love its exhuberance and its triumph in the face of adversity, and it never fails to raise my spirits when I’m down. It sounds to me as fresh now as it did forty years ago and if I were doing this exercise, which I ain’t, it would be on my shortlist for a 10.