I first bought Some Girls on cassette in 1978. I got this copy for a fiver from Fopp in December 2004, mainly (80%) as a memento of that long-lost copy and partly (20%) because received wisdom has it that it's the last decent Rolling Stones album.
The music of that summer of 1978, when I became a teenager, has followed me down the years. John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John at No.1, Father Abraham at No.2 with the Smurf Song, and the Rolling Stones' Miss You at No.3. But not just the top of the charts. I can still remember almost all the lyrics to Joe Walsh's Life's Been Good, not to mention Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward. There was Walk on By by the Stranglers (I had no idea until years later that it was a cover version), and a song that sounded particularly exciting to me called Sign of the Times by a bloke called Bryan Ferry. I thought that might be a big hit, but it only got to No.30 or so.
We had two family holidays that summer: our last visit to Seaview on the Isle of Wight, followed by our first visit to the flat in Milford-on-Sea. My school-friend Jonathan David came with us on that one. He was expecting to spend all his time at amusement arcades, but there were none in Milford-on-Sea in 1978 and he had to take his big bagful of two-pence pieces home again to Woking. Instead I inflicted on him and Hilary my own Juke-Box-Jury-style listening sessions when we'd all have to listen to Some Girls, Bob Dylan's Street Legal and Tonic for the Troops by The Boomtown Rats — the three favourite albums in my collection of about five — and give each track marks to see which album came out top.
I've no idea what happened to that cassette; swapped, destroyed or lost within the year, I expect. So when I bought the album on CD, it would have been 25 years since I last heard it. Though I didn't recognise all the track titles, the hooks in the songs all came back to me instantly. Of course I remembered the rude word in the title track. And Girl with Faraway Eyes was a favourite in 1978 that I still like today, though I hear it very differently.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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