The Rolling Stones Essentials

STONES ESSENTIALS

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  On the very Sunday morning I sit down to write this review, there is on the cover of Parade, the inoffensive family supplement ("yummy no-guilt desserts") that comes with the local paper, a familiar face grinning out at me from the cover: How Mick Jagger Still Gets What He Wants. Nearly 40 years after the Stones told us that we get what we need, it seems we still want and need them, or vice versa, and Let It Bleed is the reason why.
  
  The album is one of a quartet of late '60s and early '70s Stones albums that have since passed into discographic legend, Beggar's Banquet through Exile On Main Street, ushering in that moment when the Stones were not only a band, but a cultural touchstone, a call-to-arms and a repository for our collective sense of sin and retribution: "We all need someone we can bleed on," Mick sings in the title cut, and the echoing need from "You Can't Always Get...", so coupled with want and desire and the toll exacted — in addiction, in death by misadventure, in riot and ruin and perhaps absolution — was the Stones' bargain with the Devil.
  
  Let It Bleed, released as 1969 shuddered the '60s to a close, is the one that made it all possible, bridging the gap between the Brian Jones years (Jones himself would be found at the bottom of his swimming pool in July of 1969, only two months after leaving the Stones) and all that would come after. It was a critical juncture for many '60s bands — even a primal force like the Beatles would not survive the decade; but the Stones, renewing their vows with the addition of guitarist Mick Taylor, who could be counted on to remain self-effacing, seemed to find a new resolve, and produced some of their best-remembered standards. They would always celebrate the blues — "Love in Vain" is one of the most affecting performances of those who would follow in the passway of Robert Johnson — but "Gimme Shelter" with its sense of impending maelstrom, and "Midnight Rambler" with its Hyde to Jagger's Jekyll (and Richards' Hekyll) and Bryon Berline's sawing fiddle on "Country Honk" and Keith's croaking lead vocal debut with "You Got the Silver" and Mick's self-bemused "Monkey Man" and the holler-along "Live With Me..." Every cut a classic.

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  After Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones’ fuzzy psychedelic experiment (and answer to Sgt. Pepper's), the band got back to their core on Beggars Banquet — to their darker instincts, and even to their bluesy roots, on songs like “Jigsaw Puzzle,” “Parachute Woman,” “Prodigal Son” and the equally countrified “Dear Doctor” — more of a jaunty answer to the Band than to the Beatles. “Factory Girl” and “Salt of the Earth” are affecting and spare. Brian Jones, on the outs, contributes a sepulchral slide guitar to the fatalistic “No Expectations.”
  
  In an album that responds more to the chaos of ’68 and to themselves than to any fellow artists, the music is masterful; the mood is one of dissolution and resignation, in the guise of a voice of an ambivalent authority. That, of course, would be the Mick. “Street Fighting Man” is a charged-up call to activism, to bloody up the Establishment. Except that he may be somewhere else, because, like, what can a poor boy do — even if he’s a rock star being pampered by stray cats?
  
  No less riveting is “Sympathy for the Devil,” sung by the Satan the Stones saw in all of us. This was another classic the instant it was heard. In the church of the Stones, one may pray — or prey. Woo-woo, indeed.

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  Birthed smack between the two great lows of the band’s lifespan — the death of guitarist Brian Jones in July 1969, and the Altamont Speedway gig tragedy that December — Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! is an overlooked Stones gem celebrated by devoted fans but ignored by others. Now, nearly 40 years on from its November 1969 recording, it's time to celebrate GYYYO! for what it is: one of the greatest live albums ever made.
  
  It’s lean. It’s raw. It’s taut and it’s gritty. New guitar recruit Mick Taylor makes a wonderfully simpatico foil for Keef, adding bare bones slide to "Love in Vain," and locking right into "Honky Tonk Women," a song which, at that time, was still glowing from the forge.
  
  Jagger, too, is in excellent, typically cocksure form, taking MC Sam Cutler’s “greatest rock & roll band in the world…” introduction as read, and setting about opener “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” greedily, hungrily. “Charlie’s good tonight in’t ee?” the singer remarks of the Stones’ inscrutable drummer at one point. They all were. Never better, in fact.

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  Paint it black, you devils. Aftermath was the first album where the Rolling Stones finally felt confident enough in their shadow-hued palette to not have to venture beyond the Jagger/Richards partnership for songcraft. Previous Stones albums — in England, this was their fourth long-player, while their American company, London, condensed the UK releases and made this the sixth assemblage — had consisted largely of cover versions of R&B tunes. Now, with such hits as "The Last Time," "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown" and the milestone of "Satisfaction (I Can't Get No)" under their rhinestone-studded belts, there was no question Mick and Keith were prepared to finally give the Stones more of an identity than rock and blues aficionados. The spring 1966 release of Aftermath affirmed the group's flair and penchant for experimentation.
  
  This adventurism can be credited to Brian Jones, and the album represents his efforts within the group to break them free from their blues roots. He had once been the purist; but on Aftermath he seemed determined the spin the band into unexplored textural territory. His sonic explorations found him on xylophone ("Under My Thumb"), sitar ("Paint It, Black") and dulcimer ("I Am Waiting") as well as harmonica on "Goin' Home," ironically coming at a time when his personal problems (and awareness that the axis of power in what was once his group was shifting to Mick and Keith) threatened to overwhelm him.
  
  Recorded in Hollywood with Dave Hassinger engineering (he would put the frequency response of "Paint It, Black" to good use when he later recorded the Electric Prunes), the American release took "Mother's Little Helper" from the lead-off spot and replaced it with the pounding tom-toms (Charlie-Charlies?) of "Paint It, Black," which had just gone to the top spot in the US charts and heralded the Stones' impending US tour, marked by fan pandemonium, rioting and general hysteria.
  
  It was on this album that Jagger perfected his lascivious leer; there is an abundance of heavy breathing and imperious sexual tension: contrast the courtly "Lady Jane" with its powdered-wig harpsichord ripplings (played by Jack Nietzsche) against the blunt chauvinism of "Stupid Girl" and the dominance fantasy of "Under My Thumb." The album also gives a glimpse into the country-rock pastiches that the Stones would later explore ("High and Dry"), and the stretched eleven-minute plus epic of "Going Home" shows a sinuous interplay between the band as they keep on going and going and going....
  
  They still are, and Aftermath, in breaking them free of the English Invasion, began them on that path to tomorrow.

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AND THESE ARE PRETTY DAMN ESSENTIAL, TOO

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  Think rock festivals of the ‘60s had star power? Pshaw! In December 1968, the Rolling Stones, dressed as ringmasters and in other costumes, assembled a unique collection of British rock royalty, most at propitious stages of their careers, to tape a one-ring musical circus as a BBC TV special. Although instantly legendary, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was abandoned at the band’s behest, only to appear 27 years later (with their blessing) on DVD and CD, proving that this white whale, fueled by bootlegs and myth, was worth catching. While the visual element is priceless, the music on its own is still extraordinary.
  
  The lineup, introduced by various Stones, includes the Who, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull, Taj Mahal and a one-time supergroup of John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards (on bass) and Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell. Billed as the Dirty Mac (as in Brit-slang for raincoat), the quartet slithers through Lennon’s “Yer Blues” in a tantalizing promise of what would never again be. Unfortunately, their other role here is to back Yoko Ono and a violinist on five awful minutes of random caterwauling and scraping, possibly the most egregious waste of talent and achievement on record. (Stranger, but infinitely more entertaining, is the prefatory put-on yak between Jagger and Lennon.)
  
  The Who deliver a full and enthusiastic performance of their proto-opera song cycle “A Quick One While He’s Away.” In its initial incarnation as a mutant blues band with flute, Jethro Tull, with — of all people — Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi subbing on guitar, powers through “A Song for Jeffrey.” Taj Mahal ably represents the colonies with a pulsing “Gimme Some Lovin’” groove on “Ain’t That a Lot of Love,” but Jagger inamorata Marianne Faithfull phones in an off-key rendition of “Something Better,” a lifeless Barry Mann/Gerry Goffin tune that she hadn’t even released at the time.
  
  Disappointment in their exhausted performance, exacerbated by the incapacity of Brian Jones, in the last year of his life, making his final appearance with the group he founded, reportedly led to the Stones’ suppression of this document. And, truthfully, they do trudge flat-footed through the first half of “Jumping Jack Flash” before finding their way. But the rest of the six-song set is nothing to cry about. Delving into Beggars Banquet for most of the material, they pull out a blazing “Sympathy for the Devil,” but “Parachute Woman,” “No Expectations” and “Salt of the Earth” become especially potent and detailed in the intimacy of the setting. Far from sounding like a circus, this is as fine a live document as the Stones have ever made.

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  At the time of its release in 1965, Now! seemed to mark a turning point, a summation of everything the Stones’d been — Chicago blues in “Little Red Rooster,” New Orleans R&B in “Down Home Girl,” Chuck in “You Can’t Catch Me” and Bo in “Mona (I Need You Baby)” — and a step into their future via deep soul like “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” and “Pain in My Heart.” So what if it turned out it was slapped together from various sources? This is a grooves album, Brian’s album, even, as affirmed by his scintillating slide on “Little Red Rooster” — one of the last blues songs a white band should’ve attempted, and yet one of this band’s finest moments thus far.
  
  Aside from four by Jagger-Richards, the only song here that doesn’t originate with African-American sources is “Down the Road Apiece,” and even then, their rip-roaring stomp is sho-nuff based on (and easily surpasses) Chuck Berry’s version. (By now they’ve absorbed Berry so fully that their own “Off the Hook” could have been written by him.) If the other highs here don’t quite match those of previous efforts, this one definitely has fewer lows; despite the patch-job, it’s their most consistent album until Mick and Keith began hitting their stride as writers.

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  This is perhaps the most fun of all the Stones’ early, R&B-oriented albums; between Keith’s and Brian’s raunchy, ringing guitar interplay and Mick’s swaggering vocals, their wild cover of the (Bobby Womack-led) Valentinos’ “It’s All Over Now” could pretty much flatten anything that got in its way. Even today, it stands as one of their least self-conscious interpretations of hard-core R&B, sans blackface moves. (And speaking of the guitar tag team, why isn’t their walk (on gilded splinters) through “Suzy Q” as prized as Creedence’s extended choogle?)
  
  “Around and Around” is one of their liveliest Chuck Berry remakes, with Mick injecting a touch of danger into the good-natured original, and the bluesy instrumental “2120 South Michigan Boulevard” is cool as can be (the title’s the address of hallowed Chess Records, where this jam was recorded before a studio gathering that included Muddy Waters, so you know they wanted to get it right). If most of the tunes by Jagger-Richards and Nanker Phelge (the pseudonym used for group co-writes) are forgettable, at least “Empty Heart” reworks blues imagery into something meaningful and rocks along quite nicely to boot. Finally, “If You Need Me” tips off their imminent move into Southern soul.

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  Covering the Stones' early years, Metamorphosis is a heavily curated collection of Stones outtakes and rarities paced by a handful of absolutely essential Jagger/Richards tunes. The best song is undoubtedly "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind," one of the band's primo country songs poorly covered at the time by Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham's passion project, Vashti Bunyan. In the Stones' hands, "Some Things" is a fascinating pastiche of '60s Nashville country, with very open-ended, elegiac lyrics (a later Stones staple). (For more on this track, and other little-known Stones standouts, check out this feature [LINK].)
  
  Elsewhere there's an ornate version of "Heart of Stone" that easily bests the original; "I'd Much Rather Be With the Boys," a fantastic Motown girl-group number; "Try a Little Harder," an extremely out of character Stones take on early '60s white-boy pop; and the "Shine a Light"-reminiscent "I Don't Know Why," which would feel completely at home on Exile, Sticky Fingers or Goat's Head Soup.
  
  But wait, there's more! "If You Let Me" is just waiting for a new Wes Anderson flick; "Downtown Suzie" swings weird and stoned; "Family" improves upon the band’s Satanic Majesties-era psych while mimicking Bob Dylan to boot; and "I’m Going Down" serves as "Gimme Shelter" part two. And that's not even mentioning "Out Of Time," the sweet and sassy opener that swoons in marvelous, life-affirming beauty. Your Stones obsession starts here.

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THE EARLY YEARS (WERE AWESOME, LET'S NOT FORGET)

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  When a band has existed as long as the Stones, a good chronology can be your foothold on Everest. Though it only focuses on Stones' singles recorded, but not necessarily first released in the '60s (witness 1971 chart-topper "Brown Sugar"), this three-disc box set is arguably the most useful Stones compilation in existence.
  
  Its inclusion of the attendant 1963-69 B-sides adds width and colour, but the broader story is of a band initially reliant on cover-versions (Lennon & McCartney's "I Wanna Be Your Man," Chuck Berry's "Come On") quickly cutting the umbilical cord to rely on the formidable Jagger/Richards writing partnership. By the time they'd hatched "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" — a song possessed of a guitar riff so insistent, so monolithic that only the likes of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" comes close — they were beholden to no-one.
  
  Keith reportedly dreamt the "Satisfaction" riff in Clearwater, Florida in May 1965, and from then on in, he and his fellow Stones only dreamed harder, still. The heartbreakingly beautiful "Wild Horses," the gloriously lascivious "Let's Spend the Night Together," the rampant and bruising "Jumpin' Jack Flash" — these weren't so much songs as chunks of the '60s staked-out for the world to enjoy.
  
  The decade would end badly for them, of course, but it was telling that even Stones-related events beyond their control — the passing of Brian Jones, the bloodbath that was Altamont — would resonate widely beyond the confines of the group and its fan-base. This fabulous compilation underlines that, together with the Beatles, the Stones were the 1960's. And when the Beatles split in 1970, it was winner takes all…

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  On their fifth album inside of their first two years, the Stones were still leaning heavily on other composers, ranging from blues (Muddy Waters) and R&B (Chuck Berry) to country (Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On”) and jazz (Bobby Troup’s standard, “Route 66”) for six of the 12 cuts.
  
  Not that the Stones simply motored west. Just as they gave “Route 66” a rollicking reading that’d never been heard before, they did fine by Keith Richards’ personal guitar god, Berry, on “I’m Talking About You” (the Stones, or whoever did their typing, left off the “I’m”).
  
  But, along with Out of Our Heads, this album signals the Stones’ headstrong move into rock, and to their own compositions. The standout is their killer follow-up to “Satisfaction,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” with the Stones at their snarling best. “I’m Free” is another exuberant sign of young blokes feeling their oats. “Blue Turns to Grey” and “The Singer Not the Song” are nothing special; ditto “Gotta Get Away,” which served as the flip side to “As Tears Go By.” That tune, inspired by and written for Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, is a pretty surprise coming from Jagger and Richards, who enjoyed setting detachment and cruelty to music. But there were plenty more surprises ahead.

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  When they first came to America, the Stones claimed to be bringing the blues back home. But even on their debut album, they’re not as purist as, say, the 1964 Animals. There’s only three blues tunes here, and two of them — Jimmy Reed’s “Honest I Do” and Slim Harpo’s exotic “King Bee,” with its buzzing and stinging guitars and Mick’s molasses-soaked vocals — were by bluesmen known to hit the pop charts. Muddy Waters’ deep blues “I Just Want to Make Love to You” gets a hopped-up treatment highlighted by Brian’s wailing harp, which tends to brighten the darkest sounds.
  
  No, this is trashy, unrefined rocked-up R&B from the git: their Bo Diddley-fied take on Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” which turned out to be their manifesto, has great shredding guitars and more echoing harp. Then there’s a careening, relentlessly rocking take on Chuck Berry’s “Carol,” while the two tensile guitars carry their version of “Route 66” (based on Berry’s). On their incongruously earnest strut through Rufus Thomas’ R&B novelty “Walking the Dog,” Brian’s and Keith’s guitars alternately duke it out and mesh, a forerunner to what would become the band’s trademark sound. Oh, and this rhythm section’s pretty good, too.

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  The Out of Our Heads headline reads: "From Whence 'Satisfaction' Came," but truth is, there's so much more to recommend this 1965 album, their third in the UK in just one year, and their fourth in the US. And it gets even more complicated from there, as "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is only available on the US version, one of numerous variations between the two packages due to timing and marketing. For instance: while the UK version got "Heart of Stone," a prominent early ballad, the US got "Play with Fire," a fine equivalent. Fairer trades rarely get made. (On the other hand, the US got "The Last Time" while the UK was stuck with "I'm Free," which is currently a banking anthem.)
  
  Still, the bulk of Out of Our Heads is comprised of R&B covers, a familiar sight to any early Stones connoisseur. And while none are exceptional, they exhibit an exquisite taste for choice American R&B and blues, including Otis Redding's incredible plea "That's How Strong My Love Is," the Atlantic Records classic "Mercy Mercy" and the herky-jerked "Hitch Hike," enjoyable listens no matter who is playing them, with "Hitch Hike" being particularly Stones-appropriate.
  
  Out of Our Heads also brings the oddball "Satisfaction" B-side "The Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man," one of the band's few meta songs (it was written about a particularly despised record label suit, an act that Spoon would mimic with their "Lafitte" couplet, available as the last two songs here). And then of course there is "Satisfaction" itself, as great a rock & roll song as ever was wrote, and the soundtrack to who knows how many early '60s lovers' lanes. Don't miss this chance to hear the Stones at a key moment of their — and maybe even your! — conception.

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THE STONES GET STONED

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  Between the Buttons is often overlooked in discussions of the relative merits of the Stones' oeuvre, falling as it does between the psychic breakthroughs of Aftermath and the 'delica mirror-ball that is Their Satanic Majesties Request. Its timing, released early in the watershed year of 1967, when all of pop music was undergoing seismic convolutions, seemed to call for a bolder statement. Indeed, their greatest rivals were morphing into Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and the Velvet Underground were all waiting in the wings; and the San Francisco acid-ballroom scene was heralding the Summer of Love.
  
  The modesty of Buttons, then, with its twelve pop-tart cuts, finds the Stones slightly behind their onrushing times, reflecting in hindsight the album's title, not quite ready to push their own butt-on and move into that period when they represented their times like no other, when they literally became the voice of the Altamont generation (see the classic Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed). If anything, they were too busy: in this Rock 'n Roll Circus era, establishment outrage and sex 'n' drugs scandals would put them in the tabloid headlines far more than their music.
  
  On a song-by-song basis, Between the Buttons holds up quite listeningly. Just the inclusion of "Let's Spend the Night Together," probing the barriers of seduction on AM radio and the Ed Sullivan Show (in retrospect, how innocent does Jagger's "I know you will satisfy me" resonate given the shaken booty on display at 2008's Grammy Awards?) and the courtly "Ruby Tuesday" couple the Stones at their most bi-sensual (paired on a single to make a number one hit). But "Complicated" and "Connection" and "Cool, Calm and Collected" are worthy of their cutting C's, and another mnemonic like "She Smiled Sweetly" with its eerie organ and sense of comfort amidst haunting is, well, sublime.
  
  Jagger was aware of the temporal nature of pop — "Who wants Yesterday's Papers?" he sings, aware that the Stones are going to have to make their move soon if they intend to stay ahead of those who would dethrone them as the World's Greatest. They still have to outlast the Beatles. But the Stones begin moving toward their predestination with Between the Buttons. They had been making records in Los Angeles; in the midst of Buttons they returned to Olympic Studios in London, and this would be the last album Andrew Loog Oldham produced for them. As a savvy businessman, Mick knew well the other side of the coin, and you have to keep flipping. Despite the black paint the Stones gleefully splashed over their generation, "When you're on your bike at night," he advises in "Something Happened to Me Yesterday," with its past tense title and oom-pah horns, "wear white."

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  A quickly flipped attempt to answer Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s synergy of lysergic vision, paintbox fashion sense and shameless psychedelia, the Stones needn’t have tried so hard on Their Satanic Majesties Request. Soon enough Brian Jones would become a truly mad hatter, Keith a scurvied pirate and Mick would conjure dark forces, not merely drape himself in a wizard’s cap and cape.
  
  Much like those heinous outfits, so often Satanic Majesties Request feels like a put-on, reacting to the Beatles’ studio stakes-raising rather than doing what the Stones did best (and would soon after perfect for a four-album stretch). George Harrison cops Ravi Shankar? Then Brian and Keith will co-opt Africa’s and Jakarta’s tribal trance. George Martin deploys orchestras? Then Andrew Loog Oldham drags in mellotrons.
  
  Still, it’s fun to hear the Stones get medieval on your ass. “Sing This All Together (See What Happens)” and “Gomper” overstay their welcome, but “Citadel,” “2000 Man” and “She’s A Rainbow” remain sunbursts of kaleidoscopic pop. Not only are these songs anomalous in the Stones’ catalog, but soon enough such winsome tendencies would forever after be buried under country blues, black magic and real sympathy for their satanic majesty.

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  Released in the summer of 1967 to elevate the Stones’ Stateside profile while they were stuck in England finishing Their Satanic Majesties Request and sorting out various drug-related legal problems, Flowers has typically been derided as a shoddy grab bag of loose tracks and outtakes. But four decades on, this album remains (along with the same year’s Between the Buttons) an intriguing and definitive snapshot of the band in their London Dandy phase.
  
  No longer the earnest blues students of yore, not yet the debauched rock n’ roll super-icons they would become, the Stones circa 1966 — when most of these songs were recorded — were high on their burgeoning songwriting abilities, the myriad possibilities presented by a rapidly expanding pop lexicon and (let’s be honest here) a whole lotta hash. The fey vocal performances and quasi-medieval instrumentation of “Lady Jane,” “Ruby Tuesday” and “Backstreet Girl” sound fairly ridiculous now, but there’s also something incredibly charming about them; it’s almost as if you can actually hear the ruffled shirts and green velvet trousers.
  
  Also not to be missed are the perverse pop of “Out Of Time” and “Ride On, Baby,” the psychedelicized Bo Diddley-isms of “Please Go Home” and the jaw-dropping single, “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?”, the most insanely chaotic thing they ever recorded. Only the lame cover of “My Girl” is anything less than essential.

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COMPILATIONS & GREATEST HITS