Review: The Rolling Stones' 'Black and Blue' Super Deluxe Edition

After the Stones machine had ground down Mick Taylor enough for him to finally quit the band, they once again had to find a second guitarist. The process amounted to a series of jammy auditions with such axemen as Wayne Perkins, Harvey Mandel of Canned Heat, Robert Johnson (no, not the Robert Johnson...don't be daft), and one Ronald David Wood. We all know who got the job.

Not ones to miss a trick, The Rolling Stones decided to build a whole record around these auditions. Consequently, Black and Blue is the jammiest of Rolling Stones records, although it yielded a couple of their songiest songs: the lightly jazzy "Melody", featuring Billy Preston, and the wistful and cleverly structured "Memory Motel", which is long without ever getting indulgent. The record also boasts a couple of pleasingly concise rockers in the standard Stones mode: "Crazy Mama" and"Hand of Fate". 

Review: The Rolling Stones' 'Live at the Wiltern'

2003 was a big year for The Rolling Stones. That was when the group turned forty, released their very first career-spanning greatest hits album, and went on an international tour that became the second most profitable one in history at the time (The most profitable? Their own Voodoo Lounge tour of eight years earlier). 

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: Vinyl Debut of The Rolling Stones' 'Forty Licks'

The Rolling Stones' career can be divided very neatly into two distinct eras: the sixties, when they were restlessly searching for the sound that defines them, and everything after they'd found that sound with Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. They rarely strayed from it for the next three decades. 

The Stones' movement between labels--Decca (UK)/London (US) in the sixties, then their own Rolling Stones Records in the seventies--further separates the eras and apparently made it impossible for them to mix and mingle too much. Aside from "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses," songs recorded during the Decca/London era that were not released until the RS Records one, none of their songs crossed the labels' Iron Curtain whenever it came time to assemble yet another Stones compilation throughout the twentieth century.

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: 'King's Road' Expanded Edition

Carnaby Street may have been synonymous with Swinging London, but the King's Road was swinging centuries before dedicated followers of fashion swarmed Carnaby and a good decade after that street warped into a Disnified version of itself. Henry VIII spent time in the King's Road area. So did Thomas More, Henry James, Noel Coward, Germaine Greer, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Aleister Crowley, Bram Stoker, Francis Bacon, and Karl Marx. But it was scene makers like Mary Quant, the Stones, Pete Townshend, and later, the Sex Pistols and The Damned, who really gave the road its character. The Rocky Horror Show debuted there. A Clockwork Orange was filmed at its Chelsea Drug Store, which Jagger immortalized in "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Judy Garland died there. It was where a box for keeping plants alive on long sea voyages was invented, where you could see a monkey ride a pony around a mansion's grounds (if you were around in 1843, that is), where a "mad idiot" was known to visit the night spots with a dyed-green rabbit he loaded up with LSD until the poor pet committed suicide, where a wombat suffocated in a box of cigars, and where the British Spaghetti Queen slipped into a dress comprised of thirty helpings of macaroni. Thirty!

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: 'Parachute Women'

The Rolling Stones have long been celebrated for their glamorous, titillating rock and roll decadence, but before hooking up with two remarkable women, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were basically a couple of low-key, awkward, middle-class English boys. It was Marianne Faithfull and, especially, Anita Pallenberg who helped elevate their art and personas by exposing them to culture outside of Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. It was these women who imbued them with black magic mystique by pushing Jagger and Richards out of their comfort zones and into the more liberated/dangerous realms of sexual exploration and hard drug use. And while Jagger and Richards were lauded as "bad boy" templates for the male rock star, Faithfull and Pallenberg were held up as examples for how women should never behave and practically destroyed by both the men they loved and Britain's misogynistic tabloid press.

Review: RSD Edition of the Rolling Stones' 'Beggars Banquet' on Colored Vinyl

When last ABKCO reissued The Rolling Stones'  Beggars Banquet on stereo vinyl, the record arrived as the usual black plastic disc but with a sly slipcover depicting the bowdlerized white-invitation cover and a bonus twelve-inch single featuring "Sympathy for the Devil" in its rare mono mix. That was for the LP's fiftieth anniversary. For its fifty-fifth, ABKCO is rolling the Stones' best out again but without the slipcover, the single, or the blackness.

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 Singles 1963 - 1966'

Back in the days before the LP took over as rock's main medium, groups usually put most of their weight behind their singles. While several of The Rolling Stones' early albums were recorded in piecemeal fashion in various studios while on tour, and largely consisted of blues and soul covers that didn't always stack up against the originals, their singles were consistently powerful. Well, at least they were after getting a weedy attempt to pop-up Chuck Berry with their first UK 45 out of the way, but you can't really blame the band for botching "Come On". They also gave matching suits a shot at management's insistence, but they binned their houndstooth jackets with all due haste, and Mick, Keith, and the gang got down to doing what they did best. If "Come On" seemed like a half-hearted attempt to hop on The Beatles' Mersey-beat bandwagon, the Stones could be judged directly against their main rivals when they next released Lennon and McCartney's very own "I Wanna Be Your Man" in a brutal rendition that slays the Ringo vehicle on With The Beatles.

Review: 'Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust'

David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust is as notable for the look of the glammed-out alien as it is for the spectacular music Bowie made during the Ziggy years. That would be irritating if Bowie hadn't brought such high artistry to the bizarre makeup, outfits, and hair dyes he donned while in character. Bowie believed that no photographer was nearly as qualified to capture his Zigginess as Mick Rock was. Bowie paid Rock the highest compliment an artist of such visual audacity could pay a photographer when he said of Rock "[he] sees [me] the way [I] see [myself]... [he sees me] through [my] own eyes."

Bowie freaks with cash to burn could see Rock seeing Bowie through his own eyes to their hearts' content when the duo published Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust in 2002. A luxurious volume with text by Bowie and images by Rock, Moonage Daydream was a remarkable insiders' view of the alien, although its limited edition release made it extremely hard to come by. It sold out in just months.

For Moonage's twentieth anniversary, and Ziggy's fiftieth, Genesis Publications is reprinting the book in a larger format and in larger quantities. It's a beautiful package full of great pictures from studio shoots, candid ones, live shots, and even music videos stills. Bowie appears with Lou Reed and Jagger and Lulu and Marianne Faithfull (in her nun's habit, of course), and Rock includes some stray shots of compatriots such as Iggy Pop and Roxy Music to illustrate the narrative. Bowie discusses how Daniella Parmar, Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Kabuki, Lindsay Kemp, and Bewitched (yes, Bewitched) influenced the look the book celebrates. There is also a comically high number of shots showing Bowie fellating Mick Ronson's guitar. But my favorite bit is a short anecdote about a potentially disastrous, underpopulated gig in St. Louis that turned out to be what sounds like a magically intimate affair shared between artist and audience. In some ways, that's what Moonage Daydream is too.

Review: The Rolling Stones' 'El Mocambo 1977'

The Rolling Stones' most creative and vital period was well behind them by 1977. While young punk bands picked up the torch, the Stones settled into their role as a hardworking, reliable, arena rock band, and quite comfortably at that. Fans could expect a few manufactured thrills in Jagger's carefully composed off-color remarks into the mic and the fact that Keith Richards was still somehow standing, but they mostly received rote, overly mannered performances of safe warhorses like "Honky Tonky Women" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and limp recent numbers like "Fool to Cry" and "Hot Stuff". What could you expect from a band that had spent the past eight years playing to vast audiences that probably looked more like pink pinpricks awash in darkness than human beings from the distance of the stage? 

Review: RSD Edition of The Rolling Stones' 'More Hot Rocks (Big Hits and Fazed Cookies)'

Sure Hot Rocks: 1964 - 1971 had "Satisfaction", "Jumpin' Jack Flash", "Honky Tonk Women", and plenty of other examples of what made The Rolling Stones such a superior blues and R&B-based rock band, but it was missing a really key component of the Stones' story: they could be pretty fucking weird. Aside from a bit of sitar on "Paint It Black", some dissonant guitar effects on "Mother's Little Helper", Brian Jones's pastoral recorder on "Ruby Tuesday", and that choir on "You Can't Always Get What You Want", Hot Rocks generally presented the Stones as a more conventional band than they'd been from 1964 to 1971 (more consistently conventional days were ahead of them after '71, but that's another, less interesting story). Where was the psychedelia? Where were the fey Elizabethan ballads? Where was whatever the hell "I'm Free" is? 

Review: The Rolling Stones' 'Tattoo You' 40th Anniversary Box Set

While Mick Jagger and Keith Richards enjoyed a break from each other, they brought in producer Chris Kimsey to see what he could dig out of the vaults so the Stones could welcome the year of MTV with a new release. The result of his vault raid was the last unequivocally fine work by the Rolling Stones. This is especially strange considering that Tattoo You is a compilation of rejects from some of the weakest albums the Stones’ had yet to release. Three tracks from Some Girls notwithstanding, the rest of the cuts were culled from Goats Head Soup, Black and Blue, and Emotional Rescue. Two of the numbers, “Neighbors” and “Heaven”, were brand new and not as good as the oldies. Fortunately, the only other so-so selections are the bluesy Some Girls-leftover “Black Limousine”, and oddly enough, the riff-without-a-song “Start Me Up”, a remnant of the Some Girls sessions that went on to become the group’s flimsiest classic.

 

Review: 'The Rolling Stones Unzipped'

There's no question that the audio side of The Rolling Stones was always their most crucial facet, but they probably would not be quite so legendary if not for their visual one. Much imagery is inextricably twined up with the band: Charlie's natty suits, Keith's pirate costumes and arsenal of flash yet functional guitars, Mick's lips and the ubiquitous logo they seemingly inspired. The Rolling Stones Unzipped is a lavish tribute to that iconography. The big hardcover showcases not only the band's garb and gear but also their handwritten lyrics, pages from Keith's 1963 diary that reveal he was always really self-congratulatory, and perhaps most charmingly, Ronnie's needlessly artful but utterly delightful handwritten/hand-designed set lists of the band's rehearsals.

However, the garb and gear shots are what really carry Unzipped. Mick's wardrobe of the sixties is truly spectacular. The grenadier jacket (by M&N Horne) and gorgeous waistcoat/ruffled silk shirt combo (by Mr. Fish) he wore in 1965 were outrageously individual choices from a time when The Beatles still wore matching uniforms. His outfits start sucking in the seventies with an overabundance of gross unitards and sub-Elvis jump suits, but they tighten up again in the late eighties and nineties with sharp frock coats. Charlie, of course, always looked fab, but his wardrobe is unfortunately underrepresented, and there's nothing at all from the closet of the always well-attired Brian Jones. However, there are some nicely crumpled pieces from Keith Richards' bedroom floor. There are also some choice pieces of equipment, such as the tabla set Charlie banged on Their Satanic Majesties Request and the bizarre toy drum set that packs such a wallop on "Street Fighting Man".

Unzipped is also notable for complimenting the pics with all-new commentaries from Jagger, Richards, Wood, and the recently departed Watts. The most substantial chunk of text is Anthony DeCurtis's nutshell history of the band, which does include a few head scratchers. He claims the Stones found psychedelia "silly" and "confusing," completely ignoring the head-long plunge they took into it with Satanic Majesties, their own prodigious LSD consumption, and the spaced out interviews Mick and Brian gave to the underground press during the acid era. He mostly ignores the band's pre-Beggars Banquet work, but calls the embarrassingly dated and antiseptic Dirty Work "possibly the most underrated album of the Stones' career" that "finds the band at its rawest and most rhythmically charged." Take another listen to "Back to Zero" and get back to me, Tony.

There are also essays from various guest stars, such as Martin Scorsese who assesses the Stones on film, Anna Sui and John Varvatos on their fashion sense, lips-logo designer John Pasche (who drops the A-bomb that he was only paid 50 quid to design that logo that has been pasted on a multi-million dollars worth of merch) on their graphic design, and Buddy Guy (who offers an ever-so-slightly and utterly justifiably begrudging nod to the Stones for introducing white America to blues artists mainstream DJs were too racist to play) on their relationship with the blues. All in all, Unzipped is a very plush, surprisingly eye-opening package, not unlike the Stones' musical body of work.

Farewell, Charlie Watts

The Rolling Stones became one of the top rock and roll acts on the strength of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' songs, Jagger's way with a crowd, and Richards' way with a chord, but none of it would have meant a lick if Charlie Watts didn't hold it all together. Watts is best known for his simple, ever-so-slightly behind-the-beat beat that complimented so many Stones classics. However, he was also stealthily versatile, which will become rather obvious to anyone who ventures into the Stones' mid-sixties albums. More so than Richards' riffs, Charlie Watts's lyrical drum figures provide the main hooks in tracks such as "Get Off Of My Cloud", "My Obsession", and "Complicated" (he really shines throughout Between the Buttons).

In the decadent, often petty world that Jagger and Richards constructed, Watts was also a true gentleman.  There are plenty of gross stories involving The Rolling Stones (don't get me started on Wyman), but Charlie Watts always seemed like a decent guy. And on the odd occasion he lost his composure, he apparently tended to unleash his wrath on deserving parties. Many a Stones fan's fave Stones story (which will surely get repeated a lot in the coming days) is the one that finds Jagger in a rare state of drunken sloppiness, phoning Charlie in the middle of the night to shout, "Where's my drummer?" at an Amsterdam hotel. Watts slipped out of bed, donned one of his natty suits, headed over to Mick's room, and punched him in the face, responding, "Don't ever call me your drummer again. You're my singer."

Sadly, we have lost that beat and that wit. Charlie Watts recently bowed out of an upcoming Stones tour for health reasons. He died today at the age of 80. Specific details are not available as of this writing.

Review: 'The Rolling Stones'

For a band regularly derided as ugly and dirty throughout their nearly sixty-year career, The Rolling Stones' mugs have sure sold a lot of books. Originally published in 2014, editor Reuel Golden's The Rolling Stones was just the latest in a long history of Stones-centric photo books. Most of its images had been previously published, but since it's a Taschen book, it is atypically comprehensive. Its more than 450 pages are packed with pictures of them from their most photogenic days in the sixties to sessions for their most recent album at that time, 2005's A Bigger Bang. Half of those 450 pages focus on the sixties with a variety of publicity photos, album cover sessions, and recording studio documents. Surprisingly few catch them on stage in their most vital days, though concert pics become the dominant type when The Rolling Stones starts sucking in the seventies. Hilariously, and thankfully, the book sprints through the Stones' most execrable decade, the eighties, in just ten pages, while about twenty each are allotted for the inessential nineties and twenty-first century. 

Because so many of these images will be familiar to Stones fans, The Rolling Stones will be most valuable to fans purchasing their first Stones photo book or others looking to consolidate. I've seen my share, but some of these were new to me, such as a shot of Brian Jones holding a (presumably) psychedelic mushroom aloft in 1967 and a shot of Keith Richards's pre-Redlands living room, which is as Spartan as a hotel room. My favorite shots are the LP-cover outtakes, but that's just because I can never get enough of seeing Charlie Watts pal around with a donkey.

Taschen is now publishing an updated edition of The Rolling Stones, though the only post-2014 photos can be found in the memorabilia and discography sections. Perhaps more pics were added to the sixties and seventies. I doubt anyone would complain about that. 

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: Rolling Stones' 'Let It Bleed' 50th Anniversary Box Set

Once they realized they couldn’t get by with covering great old Chuck Berry and blues numbers forever, The Rolling Stones got busy with trying to hack out a distinctive sound of their very own. This led to their most eclectic period as they continually tossed fashionable sounds against the wall to suss which one was the stickiest. While it’s tantalizing to imagine how the rest of the Stones’ career might have played out if they’d settled on the cool marimbas and Elizabethan harpsicords of Aftermath or the spooky Mellotrons and Moroccan jams of Their Satanic Majesties Request, they probably made the wisest choice to stick with what they knew best. Thus, the rugged blues and sinister Rock & Roll of 1968’s Beggars Banquet became the template for much of the rest of their career.

Their 1969 follow up, Let It Bleed, never strays too far from the previous year’s outing, though there is too much good stuff in the grooves to dismiss it as an also ran. If “Country Honk” is a more disposable C&W parody than “Dear Doctor” and “Midnight Ramber” is a less elegant first-person portrait of evil than “Sympathy for the Devil”, the Stones kept things fresh with the incomparable apocalyptic atmospherics of “Gimmie Shelter”, the wicked grooves and guffaws of “Monkey Man”, Keith Richards’s deliciously gnarly solo-vocal debut “You Got the Silver”, and the hard-learned insights and choir—choir!—of the pop symphony “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.