On this day · 48 years ago · 1978
48 Years Ago Today: The Rolling Stones' Some Girls Hits Number One
Some Girls arrived after a rough decade of the Rolling Stones chasing their old form. On July 15, 1978, it hit number one on the Billboard 200, the sound of Keith Richards and new full member Ronnie Wood finding what Richards called the right kind of chemistry.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
The Rolling Stones' Some Girls hit number one on the Billboard 200 on July 15, 1978, holding the top spot two weeks and the top 10 for 23 weeks, the band's longest-charting US studio album. It was the first Stones album with Ronnie Wood as a full member, and produced the hit single Miss You. Some Girls later went six-times platinum and earned the band's only Grammy Album of the Year nomination.
A comeback after a rough decade
By the mid-1970s, the Rolling Stones had spent years chasing the creative peak of 1972's Exile on Main St., and 1976's Black and Blue had landed to mixed reviews. Some Girls, recorded at Paris's Pathe Marconi Studio between October 1977 and March 1978, changed that. Per Society of Rock's account of the album's chart run, Mick Jagger brought fresh energy from New York's Studio 54 scene, and the band absorbed the disco and punk sounds dominating 1978 without losing its own identity. On July 15, 1978, Some Girls hit number one on the Billboard 200, holding the top spot for two weeks and staying in the top 10 for 23 weeks, the longest chart run of any Rolling Stones studio album in the US.
Richards and Wood find 'the right kind of chemistry'
Some Girls marked the first Rolling Stones album with Keith Richards's guitar partner Ronnie Wood locked in as a full band member, after Wood had joined in 1976 and played on a handful of tracks across the two prior records. Richards told Creem magazine at the time that "the right kind of chemistry is there with Woody," per uDiscover Music's retrospective on the album. That layered two-guitar interplay drives standout tracks like "Respectable" and "Shattered," and the same lineup, Jagger, Richards, Wood, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts, would remain the band's stable core for years afterward.
Miss You, Beast of Burden, and a genre-blending set
Per Billboard's retrospective, the album's lead single, "Miss You," set off on a funky, disco-inflected groove built around Bill Wyman's bass line. It went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 on August 5, 1978, the Rolling Stones' eighth and final US number-one single, per Wikipedia's chart history for the song, while the follow-up ballad "Beast of Burden" hit number 8 on the Hot 100. Elsewhere, Billboard describes Some Girls swinging from the countryish "Far Away Eyes" to raw, ragged rockers like "When the Whip Comes Down" and "Lies." Per Society of Rock's account, the RIAA certified the album six-times platinum by 2000, and Billboard notes it remains the only Rolling Stones record ever nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
The gear behind the riffs
Per Richards's own CYS-reviewed profile, his signature move on Some Girls and everywhere else in the Stones catalog is a five-string open-G Telecaster setup: the low E string removed entirely, the remaining five tuned G-D-G-B-D, low to high, played on his 1953 Telecaster nicknamed Micawber. He's a documented Ernie Ball user, and standard-tuning material across the catalog leans on a more conventional Slinky configuration.
Regular Slinky RPS-2241 Nickel Wound (.010–.046)
Why this one: A conventional Ernie Ball Slinky configuration for standard-tuning Stones-style rhythm work, distinct from Richards's custom five-string open-G rig.
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