Review: 'The Rolling Stones Singles 1966 - 1971'

*It's been twenty months since the release of The Rolling Stones Singles 1963 - 1966, and though that set's press release promised the inevitable sequel would arrive in 2023, vinyl reissues of the Stones' U.S. LPs were apparently ABKCO's main concern that year. In 2024, the label has wasted little time in finally making good on that 2022 promise. 

So, now The Rolling Stones Singles 1966 - 1971 has finally arrived to compile eighteen singles representing the time period that I, for one, insist was the Stones' most creatively fertile. While they are usually lauded for sticking to their rudimentary rock and blues guns, I will forever insist that they were at their most exciting and vibrant when grooving with sitars, Mellotrons, dulcimers, synthesizers, John Paul Jones, and John and Paul. 

Review: The Rolling Stones' 'Metamorphosis' Vinyl Reissue

Looking to take advantage of its vast library of vintage Stones tapes, ABKCO started planning an outtakes compilation in the mid-seventies. When Bill Wyman got wind of the project, he assembled his own list of songs he wanted released as Black Box, but Allen Klein supposedly balked at the lack of lucrative Jagger/Richards originals. He probably also wasn't crazy about Bill's reliance on live recordings and unfinished backing tracks. 

Review: Vinyl Reissues of 4 Rolling Stones LPs

When the Rolling Stones' sixties albums made their first appearance on digitally remastered CDs in the mid-eighties, ABKCO made the fairly controversial decision to issue them in their American iterations rather than the UK originals. At the same time, the label also issued these American versions on vinyl.

That was 37 years ago. Since then, the UK albums have become the standard in the US during the current vinyl resurgence, although most of the American albums were included on ABKCO's Rolling Stones in Mono box set from 2016. Long story short, ABKCO recently began reissuing each of the American albums in the U.S. as standalone vinyl releases for the first time since 1986. Some of these LPs, such as Aftermath, Between the Buttons, and Flowers, have not been issued in the states on stereo vinyl in any way since 1986. The campaign also includes a few UK records that have never been given standard (i.e.: non-RSD or non-box set) releases in the States before.

Review: 'Charlie's Good Tonight: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts'

The Rolling Stones' reputation for being "bad boys" or whatever is not unearned considering all the abuse of women, drugs, and each other for which Mick, Keith, Brian, and Bill were known to indulge in to varying degrees (as far as I know, Keith was always pretty gentlemanly when it came to women and Bill never messed with drugs or his bandmates. Underage girls, however...). 

Review: 'The Rolling Stones in the Beginning: With Unseen Images'

Between mid-1965 and mid-1966, Danish photographer Bent Rej was one of The Rolling Stones’ most trusted chroniclers. He began working with the band just as Mick and Keith penned their first smash, “The Last Time”, entering them into the upper echelon of pop artists. Rej exited the fold when Brian, his closest friend in the group, spiked him, and the group’s descent into druggy darkness began. Consequently, his shots tend to show an atypically innocent Rolling Stones.

Review: 'The Rolling Stones in Comics'

With Mick’s exaggerated lips, Bill and Charlie’s square heads, and Keef’s bird’s nest scruff, The Rolling Stones always did look a bit like cartoon characters. And between their easily caricatured mugs and equally outrageous behavior, the Stones have always been ripe targets for cartoonists. Bill Wyman even anthologized newspaper comic parodies of his band in The Stones: A History in Cartoons back in 2006.

Now a writer named Ceka is using the comic medium to tell a somewhat more complete version of Stones history in a book called The Rolling Stones in Comics. Between large chunks of text-only exposition, 21 different artists bring portions of the story to life employing a variety of styles from Domas’s Sunday comic section doodles (illustrating Lennon and McCartney composing “I Wanna Be Your Man”) to Kyung-Eun Parks’s more detailed, slightly grotesque style (illustrating the Stones’ fall out with the Marquee club) to Dominique Hennebaut’s Underground Comix-indebted approach (Mick and Keith’s first songwriting attempt) to the stylized yet more realistic approach of Amandine Puntous (the Redlands bust) to Anthony Audibert’s sketchy abstractions (Mick’s alleged dalliance with Anita Pallenberg while making Performance). It’s an invigorating mixture that makes the 1000^th retelling of The Rolling Stones’ story seem fresh again. So do Ceka’s realistically coarse dialogue and decision to include such valuable trivia as the real… and horrifying… explanation for the term “Rolling Stone”.

The one downside is Ceka’s tendency to sometimes veer to close to hagiography, as when he refers to all five of the Stones as “geniuses” (I doubt any one of them deserves that much-overused designation) or deifies the horribly abusive Brian Jones as an angel. Fortunately, the author balances moments such as these with sly criticisms of the Stones myth, such as a sardonic depiction of Mick’s half-hearted and hypocritical participation in socio-political activism in 1968. I also really dig the sections that fly away from the main story, such as the clever explanation of Keith’s open tuning from guest cartoon character and real musician Vincent Blanchard and Ceka’s personal story of finding the love of his life as “Angie” spins at a party. The Rolling Stones in Comics works nicely as a pocket history of Rock & Roll’s key band, but its narrative quirks and far-out art are what make it special.

Review: 'Geddy Lee’s Big, Beautiful Book of Bass'

Is there truth in the title of Geddy Lee’s Big, Beautiful Book of Bass? Is it big? At 400 pages and weighing ten pounds, I’d say, yes, yes it is big. Is it beautiful? With its gorgeous color photos of foam-green Fender Precisions, a psychedelic Telecaster bass covered in pink Paisley wallpaper, an elegant Gibson EB violin bass, an awe-inspiring double neck Rickenbacker fireglo doubleneck, and too many others, yes, Geddy’s book is beautiful too.

What the title does not reveal is that the Rush bassist’s book is also a gas to read. People worship the guy like he’s a god, but he’s as down to earth as a mud puddle, as nerdy as an astrophysicist, and as good-naturedly self-effacing as a nerdy, down-to-earth guy. All this makes Geddy a delightful tour guide through his collection. He’s no snob either, as the pristine items in his massive bass collection are displayed alongside ones that are totally beat to shit. It’s called “character,” darling.

The author annotates Richard Sibbald’s pretty pictures with text explaining strange little details about bass history or the technical aspects of bass construction, or a little of both (we learn what Fender used to make the little fret dots on their early basses! We learn that Leo Fender just strung his first basses with piano strings!). He also explains which basses he used to play particular songs during Rush’s final tour. But you don’t need to be a fan of songs about tide pools and sci-fi Don Quixotes to dig this book, since Geddy also interviews a throng of influential fellow four-stringers such as John Paul Jones, Jeff Tweedy, Adam Clayton, Bill Wyman, and the hilarious Les Claypool with his usual disarming charm.

Review: 'The Rolling Stones in Concert, 1962-1982: A Show-by-Show History'

The Rolling Stones made some of the greatest records of the Rock & Roll era, but for a lot of fans, the band was at their greatest on stage. Sitting in your living room listening to Aftermath you couldn’t see Jagger shimmying his skinny hips and flapping his pillow lips. You couldn’t watch Keef swaying over his guitar like a marionette operated by a drunken puppeteer. You couldn’t see Wyman…errr…standing.

While the Stones’ recordings have been well documented in books such as Martin Elliott’s Complete Recording Sessions, their live performances have not been as thoroughly covered. In his introduction to The Rolling Stones in Concert, 1962-1982: A Show-by-Show History, author Ian M. Rusten is up front about attempting to create a stage equivalent to Elliott’s studio-centric one. Like Elliott, Rusten has created a very well organized chronicle of The Rolling Stones at work with separate entries for each item. Of course, recordings are more available to review than ephemeral performances are, so Rusten relies less on his personal opinion in evaluating his topic than Elliott did. This means a hell of a lot more research was involved as Rusten had to seek out period reviews for nearly every concert he discusses in The Rolling Stones in Concert. No wonder he only had it in him to cover the Stones’ first two decades.

Even without considering the workload, 1982 is still a smart year to cease the discussion because it both marks an end to the Stones’ road work before they took an extended (and very acrimonious) break and also marks the end of the Stones as a fairly uncalculating live act. To see them from 1989’s Steel Wheels tour and beyond is not to see the real Rolling Stones. They became more like a Vegas act. Rusten covers the Stones before they started putting on slick shows. In their earliest days, it was more like they were putting on hurricanes. It’s stunning to see how many of their mid-sixties shows ended in riots. In the context of the Stones’ whole sixties stage career, Altamont looks more like a business-as-usual show than a grotesque aberration.

It’s hard to convey the excitement of live music in prose, especially when you weren’t present for the performance in question, so Rusten mostly serves as relayer rather than reviewer. Along with period reviews and less reliable fan relocations culled from contemporary message boards, Rusten provides set lists when possible, and most interesting of all, chunks of quotes from the Stones themselves. Mick and Keith’s hilariously nasty responses to some daft reporters from Phoenix are worth the admission price alone.

Review: 'The Rolling Stones On Air'

Until very recently, ABKCO/Universal has kept a pretty tight lid on the Stones’ 1960s vault. This began to change in 2016 with the release of the long anticipated Rolling Stones in Mono box set, and more recently with the unanticipated-by-everyone-but-me deluxe edition of Their Satanic Majesties Request. This new access continues with Rolling Stones On Air, a double disc collection of BBC recordings the guys made from 1963 to 1965.

This is the first taste of real rarities yet as we get to hear renditions of eight songs that never made it onto the Stones’ proper LPs or singles and versions of popular faves with more pronounced differences than a mere shift from the familiar to stereo to the slightly less familiar mono. The chance to hear the Stones’ takes on gems such as Buster Brown’s “Fannie Mae” (which they’d later rip for “their own” “Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man”), Tommy Tucker’s “High Heel Sneakers”, Bo Diddley’s “Cops and Robbers” and “Crackin’ Up”, Jimmy Reed’s “Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby”, and a whole mess of Chuck Berry tunes will probably provoke the most purchases. The other stuff may not be quite as valuable, but it’s still very cool to hear things like “Cry to Me” and “I’m Moving On” with greater clarity than the more familiar versions.

Sometimes the greater clarity is not really an asset as it demystifies the murky alchemy of “Satisfaction”, “Mercy Mercy” (complete with way out-front falsetto by, I believe, Bill Wyman, who was no John Entwistle in the falsetto-singing bassist department), and “The Last Time”, but it’s always fun and interesting to hear such well-worn material in any different light. In at least one instance, hearing a lack of difference is actually fascinating. I’ve always marveled at the fluid, effortlessness of Keith Richards’ playing on “Down the Road Apiece” and surmised it was something our sloppy hero could never recreate. The fiery rendition of that number recorded he recorded for the Top Gear program proves me wrong in the most wonderful way.

Review: 'The Rolling Stones in Mono'

Keith Richards is a pretty vocal mono purist, so it must have galled him that The Rolling Stones had been inconsistently represented in his preferred format since the end of its dominance in the late sixties. During the CD age, their pre-Aftermath albums tended to be hodgepodges of stereo and mono tracks and everything afterward was exclusively stereo. This was a dire situation, because their cro-mag gang rock relied so much on its sonic solidarity. The Stones bled an alluringly swampy murk in which Keith’s guitar was rarely discernible from Brian’s, and Bill’s bass throbbed through their wall of sound as if his band mates had hid his amp under the floorboards. Stereo dilutes that murk, violates its magic. 

Review: The End's 'From Beginning to End...'

Like most of the Stones (and their fans and their critics), Bill Wyman never had much nice to say about his band’s psychedelic period, yet the archetypal rhythm and blues bassist enjoyed his most distinguished role during the acid era. That was when he wrote and sang his only composition to be included on a Rolling Stones album and released as a single in the U.S. and masterminded the delightfully trippy LP Introspection by UK combo The End.

Unlike Their Satanic Majesties Request, a bizarre record that tends to get lambasted because it strayed so far from the Stones’ usual rock and blues formula (though not by your adoring writer, which should already be known by regular Psychobabble readers), Introspection is a highly approachable album with tight pop structures, big hooks, and sweet harmonies. Like Satanic, it is a splendid showcase for the magical Mellotron.  Unfortunately, noncommittal management kept this record so perfectly tuned into psychedelia’s too brief reign from being released until 1969. During that year, when getting “back to the roots” was rock’s chief cry (aided and abetted by the Stones’ own Beggars Banquet), Introspection surely sounded out-of-touch and flopped, but to my psychedelia-leaning ears, it knocks out a lot of the classics of that era. Personally, I prefer to spin enchanting tracks like “Cardboard Watch”, “What Does It Feel Like?”, “Shades of Orange”, and “Under the Rainbow” to admittedly great LPs like Led Zeppelin, The Velvet Underground, and Five Leaves Left, and that’s saying a hell of a lot.

However, The End’s career did not begin and end with Introspection, nor did their work with Wyman. Despite my adoration of that album, I’ve never dived into anything else the band did, though I don’t feel like I deserve too much blame for that since that material was only released on three out-of-print LPs by Tenth Planet Records in the nineties. Edsel Record’s new From Beginning to End… collects those three albums on CD for the first time along with Introspection and its bonus single mixes of “Loving Sacred Loving” and “Shades of Orange”. There’s In the Beginning…, a collection of early singles and outtakes, Retrospection, a comp of Introspection outtakes, and The Last Word, which was intended to be The End’s final album before they morphed into the heavier Tucky Buzzard in the seventies.

While none of these discs are as successful as Introspection, they each reveal something interesting about the band. In the Beginning… finds The End trying out various approaches in search of a sound: Unit 4 + 2-style mainstream pop, bubblegum soul, and more driving rock-soul in the Who/Small Faces mode. Not surprisingly, the latter approach is the best, though Wyman even produces the cheesier tracks with the wall-of-noise overdrive of a Shel Talmy record. The use of saxophone and the surprising number of original compositions shows that The End were determined to stand out.

A more consistent listen is Retrospection, though it’s clear why a lot of these songs didn’t make the cut. Too many sound too much like other tracks already on Introspection, while poor vocals torpedo a nice Procol Harum-esque tune called “Tears Will Be the Only Answer”. An attempt to turn Los Bravos’ “Black Is Black” into an acid rock dirge is a failure, but “Mister Man” is really good, and would have been a preferable replacement for the cornball version of Larry Williams’s “She Said Yeah” that is the only total misfire on Introspection. This disc also includes four bonus tracks that weren’t on the Tenth Planet record. They are mostly slight, though the lyrically stunted but spectacularly titled “Stones in My Banana” prevails with ass-shaking rhythm and mind-melting feedback.

The Last Word finds The End transitioning from the cuddly pop-psych of Introspection toward the grander seventies rock of Tucky Buzzard with much more purpose than they displayed on that sub-Vanilla Fudge version of “Black Is Black”. The material is very good, if not quite on the Introspection level. Though the generic instrumental “Smarty Pants” is disposable, there are no “She Said Yeah” style embarrassments. It’s a shame this stuff had to sit in the vaults for 25 years plus another 20 before reaching a audience beyond Ugly Things-reading vinyl cultists, but I guess the fact that it’s all available now on From Beginning to End… takes care of that.

Review: 'The Rolling Stones from the Vault: L.A. Forum (Live in 1975)'

Ronnie Wood got thrown right in the deep end when he joined The Rolling Stones in 1975. He had a lot to prove as the successor of Mick Taylor, the most classically accomplished musician ever to earn official-Stone status. That Keith Richards was in deep with addiction meant Ronnie had extra weight to pull on his first outing with the band, the Stones’ first tour of the U.S. in three years. With Jagger at center stage it wouldn’t be accurate to say all eyes were on him, but let’s face it, Ronnie had something to prove. Based on his work in the new “From the Vault” DVD, L.A. Forum (Live in 1975), he did a damn good job. Don’t get me wrong, Keith can still play, but he keeps an unusually low profile at this gig. When it’s his turn to step to the mic for “Happy”, he often doesn’t even bother to sing. The majority of the solos fall to Ronnie. When the band leans into “Fingerprint File”, it’s down to the new boy to play the funky bassline Mick Taylor handled on record. Bill Wyman sure couldn’t be expected to play it.

Ronnie stands out on Live in 1975, but he’s still upstaged by spotlight-snatching Jagger and even Billy Preston, who almost seems to be vying for bandleader at times. Kudos to control freak Mick for allowing the keyboardist so much leeway. Perhaps he realized he could use all the help he could get considering Keith’s condition. When the energy starts flagging during the center of this two-hour-and-forty-minute show (there’s an interminable version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” that utterly fails to capture the recording’s propulsion), it’s Preston who gets it back on groove with performances of his “That’s Life” and “Outa-Space”. From there the Stones ride out the show with a Greatest Hits onslaught that never loses steam again, right up to the transcendent, show-closing version of “Sympathy for the Devil” that finds Mick leading a conga line of dancers and percussionists across the stage.

Not all of Preston’s contributions are stellar. He could have laid off his annoyingly squealing synth on several occasions. Yet he mostly shines in this show, and it’s cool to see a concert movie that isn’t solely owned by Mick for a change. We don’t see much of him, but Charlie Watts really makes his presence felt during this mostly powerful set too.

Eagle Vision’s new DVD release of the L.A. Forum gig sounds damn powerful too. The video is less spectacular, looking a lot like an old VHS bootleg complete with washed out bars running through the screen. The poor video quality actually didn’t do much to affect my enjoyment of this disc though. I guess a good concert is a good concert.

Review: 'The Mammoth Book of The Rolling Stones'

The cover of The Mammoth Book of The Rolling Stones announces the book as “An anthology of the best writing about the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world” and Sean Egan as editor. This isn’t really accurate. In fact, half of this book’s mammoth 500-plus pages are filled with Egan’s newly written record-by-record critique/history of The Rolling Stones, making him far more than a mere editor and his book far more than an anthology of previously published pieces. There is an entire book authored by Sean Egan alone shuffled in with the magazine articles he culled from 50 years of Stones history. It’s a cool format telling a very linear tale lacking any obvious holes. We get Egan as our tour guide through every phase of the band’s career, and the various articles as authentic period perspectives of those phases. As will always be the case with this sort of thing, I did not agree with a lot of the author/editor’s assessments (he’s particularly hard on Rolling Stones No. 2, Between the Buttons, “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?” and Let It Bleed), but I appreciated his appreciation of the Stones’ pop and psych periods, which most critics tend to dismiss outright. He even caused me to reevaluate Out of Our Heads, which I usually think of as a lesser effort.

Egan is as thorough with his article selections as he is with his own look at the Stones’ long career. There are management-sanctioned hype pieces from the band’s early days, interviews both enlightening and rambling, concert reviews, portraits of each Stone whose name is neither Jagger nor Richards, career retrospectives, and a fluffy blog piece that brings the band into the twenty-first century. There’s even an uncomfortably insightful hoax from a journalist who happens to be named Bill Wyman but presumably never touched a bass guitar.

The one problem is that much like the Stones’ deathless career, The Mammoth Book is a bit too mammoth. There are a few too many reminders of the band’s decline after the seventies, both in Egan’s sneering criticisms of every album after Some Girls (he has a point with most of them, though we do disagree on the best and worst tracks from this later period) and the abundance of articles that backload his book. But there’s a lot to dig before the long, slow depressing downfall starts setting in around page 350, and if nothing else, The Mammoth Book of The Rolling Stones would be worth the cover price for an 80-page—80-page!— interview with Keith that appeared in abridged form in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971. Now that’s mammoth.

Review: 'Mick Jagger' by Philip Norman

Philip Norman’s biography The Stones first appeared way, way back in 1984. Nearly thirty years later, it’s still one of the better examinations of the definitive Rock & Roll band, but it’s one that requires a good deal of support from other sources. Victor Bockris’s Keith Richards—and to a degree, the guitarist’s own factually questionable Life—are essential in gaining insight into Keef’s unique modus operandi. Bill Wyman’s Stone Alone is an important glimpse into the lot of an eternal sideman in Rock & Roll’s biggest circus, as well as a handy document of facts, figures, and errr, sexual conquests. Elliott’s Complete Recording Sessions and Karnbach and Bernson’s It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll are important references about the band’s work, even though the two books’ details often clash. Meanwhile, you’ll find no better history of Mick and Keith’s 1967 bust than Simon Wells’s Butterfly on a Wheel.

Maybe someday we’ll really get a complete, accurate, all-inclusive book about The Rolling Stones (assuming such a tome wouldn’t be so massive that perusing it would guarantee hernia). Until then, we’ll just have to keep piecing their story together from multiple sources. Decades after he published The Stones, Philip Norman has now provided another important piece in the band’s biographical jigsaw puzzle. Mick Jagger is a 600-page study of that most high-profile yet oddly private Stone.

As Norman delights in reminding us, Mick’s autobiography is among the most sought-after items in the publishing world. However, the singer’s own declared abhorrence of “rummag[ing] through [his] past” means that slot in the puzzle will forever remain empty. Norman’s book suggests that Mick’s reluctance does not merely hinge on the fact that such rummaging would have to touch on the least savory chapters in an infamous life: his ongoing, generation-spanning womanizing; his need to question the paternity of some of the kids he sired, no matter how big their lips may be; his stinginess. Granddaddy Lucifer would probably be just as embarrassed by the details that contradict the nasty image he’s been cultivating for fifty years: his stealth philanthropy and his insecurity and his tendency to take nearly as much abuse from the women in his life as he is known to dole out.

Mick Jagger naturally covers a lot of the same territory as The Stones, so it is not an ideal supplement for the less obsessed fan who has already read the earlier book. Norman makes some errors (Paul McCartney starred in The Rutles? Bill Wyman didn’t receive credit for “In Another Land” on the first edition of Satanic Majesties? My copy of the record says otherwise) that may call into question the credibility of his grander assertions. Some of his writing quirks get tiresome real fast, such as his insistence on spelling Jagger’s lyrics phonetically (“Ah was bawn in a crawss-fire hurr’cayne…”), his overly labored analogy between manager Andrew Oldham/Jagger and Svengali/Trilby, and his incessant, tasteless references to the “Mars Bar” myth. The little space Norman devotes to Mick’s music is often tainted by baffling misinterpretation (“Satisfaction” is about masturbation and menstruation? The phrase “get off of my cloud” means “look but don’t touch”? Funny, I always thought it meant “fuck off”) or harping criticism (I could have done without the constant declarations of how awful he thinks Satanic Majesties is).

Mick Jagger has its issues, but there’s enough information on its pages to fascinate fans, and perhaps, even force the Jagger-adverse to rethink him a bit: his kindness to Keith’s son Marlon, his charitable work alongside Bianca in Nicaragua, his tendency to get slapped around more often than Pete Campbell from “Mad Men”. Jagger isn’t all good, but he ain’t all bad either: in his own words, he’s “very complicated.” While the Stones-devoted keep chasing the definitive story of their favorite band, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

50 Years/50 Reasons The Rolling Stones are the Most!

According to Karnbach and Bernson’s It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards first went to see Brian Jones and Ian Stewart rehearse with their new blues band on May 25, 1962. Kismet. For the next fifty years, The Rolling Stones would remain the definitive Rock & Roll band, leaving a trail of milestones in their wake. Here are 50 that prove The Stones are and have always been the most.

1. Start Me Up
“Hot Stuff” notwithstanding, Stones albums could always be counted on to get off to a rousing start. Track one always packed a little extra kick: “Route 66” on their debut, “She Said Yeah” on Out of Our Heads, “Sympathy for the Devil” on Beggars Banquet, “Gimme Shelter” on Let It Bleed, “Rocks Off” on Exile on Main Street, “Start Me Up” on Tattoo You. Sometimes The Stones lured you in with beguiling mood music, as they did with “Mother’s Little Helper” on Aftermath, “Yesterday’s Papers” on Between the Buttons, and “Sing This All Together” on Their Satanic Majesties Request. No matter what, as soon as the needle drops on side one, there’s no mistake you're listening to the world’s greatest Rock & Roll band.

2. Imagination
Sometimes The Stones’ exploits overshadow their music. Mick and Keith are rarely spoken of in the same breath as fellow lyricists Dylan or Lennon and McCartney, but could they be Rock’s greatest wordsmiths? They were not as poetic as Dylan. They were not as empathetic as The Beatles. Yet Mick and Keith were far more personal, varied, and imaginative than many listeners realize. Songs such as “Before They Make Me Run” and “Wild Horses” are vulnerable contemplations of real situations. “Citadel”, “Torn and Frayed”, and “When the Whip Comes Down” establish incredibly detailed scenarios of fantasy and reality. “Sympathy for the Devil” may be Rock & Roll’s finest—and most frightening— character study, while “Monkey Man” might be its most hilarious self-parody.

3. Copy Me
One of the things that made Mick Jagger such a stellar frontman was his ability to mimic the greatest frontmen before and of his time. He spent the first few Stones records working hard to capture Chuck Berry’s audible smirk, Jimmy Reed’s slur, Marvin Gaye’s sweet roll, and Otis Redding’s transcendent shout. By the mid-‘60s he was an expert impersonator who had Ray Davies’s wryness (“Cool, Calm, & Collected”), The Beatles’ Liverpudlian harmonies (“Yesterday’s Papers”), and Dylan’s whine (“She Smiled Sweetly”) down pat.

4. The Bass Player He Looks Nervous…and the Drummer, He’s So Shattered…
Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman were never a flash rhythm section like Moon and Entwistle, or rhythmic melodists like Starr and McCartney. They just locked into grooves like no other white rhythm section, smearing slicks of drums and bass Keith could slide all over with his greasy licks. So what if Charlie played a little behind the beat? So what if Bill didn’t have the interest in distinguishing his lines from the mix, making it necessary for Keith to tear the bass from Bill’s hands and do the job himself from time to time? There’s still an undeniable magic to their boogie: Charlie wacking away like a slightly slack metronome; Bill tossing off walking runs with ease, occasionally dive-bombing down neck like Bo Diddley. On stage, the guys looked like they could not have been less interested in what they were doing. The exquisite rumble they made proved otherwise.

5. …and the Guitar Players Look Damaged
While Bill and Charlie were perfecting their rhythms at the back of the stage, Keith Richards and Brian Jones were out front revolutionizing guitar dynamics. The lead and rhythm player had always been distinct entities in Rock & Roll. Keith and Brian started changing that through a technique Keith christened “weaving,” instinctively trading rhythm and lead roles within a song. While Mick Taylor’s virtuosity meant that the roles became less integrated during his tenure, The Stones’ acquisition of Ronnie Wood in 1976 resulted in the most perfect weaving Keith would ever achieve with a guitar partner.

6. Slipped My Tongue
It’s been slapped on T-shirts, jackets, and air fresheners (though it’s hard to believe anything associated with The Stones would actually make the air smell better). Over-commercialized for sure, The Rolling Stones’ tongue is still a perfectly lascivious, unbelievably iconic logo for the world’s dirtiest band of pirates. It has certainly gotten more mileage than if it had “slowly (turned) into a cock,” as Keith Richards once suggested it might.

7. I Got the Blues

Review: "The Rolling Stones' Ed Sullivan Shows" DVDs

After The Rolling Stones made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on October 25, 1964, the host famously grumbled, “I promise you they'll never be back on our show. It took me 17 years to build this show and I'm not going to have it destroyed in a matter of weeks… I was shocked when I saw them.” The Stones, of course, would go on to shock funky, old Ed five more times throughout the ‘60s. SOFA Entertainment is now following up on last year’s terrific collection of The Beatles’ appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and doing the same for The Stones. While the complete collection of six episodes on two discs is not due for release until November 1st, an abridged single disc edition missing the band’s first and final “Sullivan” appearances comes out next Tuesday.

Whether or not fans should drop their dollars on one of these DVDs is no moot point. You love The Stones, you need to check them out on “Sullivan” not just to scream and shout to their performances but to dig the context. These days “The Ed Sullivan Show” may be most famous for its Rock acts, but that was never the show’s central purpose. It was an extremely old-fashioned variety program catering to corny circus acts, awful comedians, and bland crooners. Seeing the filthy, furious Rolling Stones storm the stage at 1697 Broadway is like watching a hurricane wipe out Little Town USA. Not that everything on these discs but The Rolling Stones is unwatchable. Some of the shows deliver serious nostalgia value. A lot of the vintage advertisements are more entertaining than the actual acts. Some of those acts are genuinely impressive. However, a lot of this material requires a quick thumb on your remote’s “next” button.

Review: 'The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones: Sound Opinions on the Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Rivalry' by Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot

In his introduction to The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones: Sound Opinions on the Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Rivalry, Jim DeRogatis acknowledges that his and co-writer Greg Kot’s opinions may “make you curse one or the other of us as you consider hurling this book across the room...” Indeed I considered hurling their point-counterpoint on various aspects of Rock & Roll’s two biggest acts across my room more than once. But I refrained from doing so because this book is just too damn beautiful to treat that way. In an era when more and more people are reading books on creepy little handheld devices, Voyageur Press has made the real thing that much more attractive by creating a lavish package. In homage to the Satanic Majesties Request album jacket, the book cover features a neat hologram that reveals the faces of either the ’63 Beatles or the ’68 Stones depending on the angle at which you view it. Within that cover you’ll find loads of wonderful full-color and lovely B&W photos of the Fab Eleven (that’s Misters Lennon, Jagger, McCartney, Richards, Harrison, Watts, Starr, Wyman, Jones, Taylor, and Wood) and their related memorabilia. A great deal of these pictures was new to me, and I’ve read my share of books on The Beatles and The Stones.

I may seem to be spending undue space here going on about the design of The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones, but it really is a major attribute of a book that can basically be read in a couple of hours. DeRogatis and Kot are the co-hosts of the music chat show “Sound Opinions”, and their book is apparently a lot like a transcript of one of their programs (admittedly, I’ve never listened to “Sound Opinions” because talk radio puts me to sleep). I really liked the format: a couple of Rock & Roll geek pals argue about whether The Beatles or The Stones were better conjurers of psychedelic rock or if McCartney or Wyman was the superior bassist (no contest, of course), etc. 

Theirs is certainly a fresh approach to two bands that have been written about and written about and written about and written about. The problem is their tendency to be dismissive without really supporting their opinions. If McCartney’s “Blackbird” is one of his definitive performances while “Oh! Darling”, in DeRogatis’s words, “just sucks,” I’m going to need a little more explanation. And good luck finding a Beatles fan who won’t be completely turned off by DeRogatis’s opinion that the Yellow Submarine film is “a turd” or a Stones freak who isn’t confounded when he writes off the amazing Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus as nothing more than a “cheesy Big Top conceit.” 

DeRogatis’s opinions are particularly difficult to take seriously when he regularly makes sloppy errors that even the most novice fan of these bands will spot. He mistakenly credits a line in “Getting Better” Lennon wrote to McCartney, states that “Day Tripper” and “Paperback Writer” appeared on either side of the same single, and most embarrassing of all, rates “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” among Charlie Watts’s five greatest performances. Anyone who has ever perused the inner sleeve of Let It Bleed knows that Jimmy Miller played drums on that track. Kot pulls a couple of boners, too, when he applauds Brian Jones for playing the oboe on “Ruby Tuesday” and the recorder on “Back Street Girl”. DeRogatis’s suggestion that “She’s a Rainbow” is “about oral sex with a woman who’s having her period” is simply bizarre. Equally bizarre is when he holds up “You Gotta Move”—Jagger’s most outrageously mannered blues performance— as a rare example of the singer’s sincerity. Huh?

Regardless of the quality of their criticism, I like the fact that DeRogatis and Kot seriously discussed topics that generally get overlooked in a lot of books about these bands, such as Wyman’s bass playing, Harrison’s guitar skills, and The Stones’ psychedelic phase (and I must doff my pointy Merlin cap to DeRogatis for having the guts to admit that Satanic Majesties is better than Sgt. Pepper's). Though the book does suffer from its errors, offhand criticisms, and weird assertions, it’s a quick, breezy, and generally fun read. Fans who already think “The White Album” is a better record than Exile On Main Street will not change their minds after reading the guys’ contrary argument, but those fans may next find themselves sprinting to the turntable to hear those records with fresh ears. And that’s exactly what DeRogatis and Kot intended when they wrote this book.

September 6, 2009: Psychobabble Recommends: ‘The Stones: A History in Cartoons’

Perhaps no other band of their magnitude has received more bad press than the Rolling Stones. In the '60s, it was their long hair and their "filthiness" that drew the media's ire. By the '70s, the wags were already accusing them of being over the hill-- a gripe that would get increasingly more strident throughout the years. Then there was the drug charges, the marital woes, the multiple tax evasion incidents, the sex scandals, and everything else that made the Stones legends in the blood-shot eyes of their fans and fruitful whipping boys on the pages of the press. Among those who most delighted in the Stones' dirtiest exploits have been cartoonists, who've exploited the group well in caricatures depicting a humongoid-lipped Jagger, a wrinkle-carved Richards, and a huge-honkered Wood. Bassist Bill Wyman, ever a good sport and faithful chronicler of his former band's sizable history, has compiled many of these cartoons into a neat tome called The Stones: A History in Cartoons (2009). Fanatics may find the cartoonists' hostility and lack of imagination (How many of these reference the hoary adage "A rolling stones gathers no moss"? Too many) a little wearing, but the diversity of the illustration styles is thrilling and Wyman's simple commentaries provide a breezy, nutshell history of the band. A must for rabid Stones collectors.