I think that of all these old & legendary Rock bands who are still in bussines, The Rolling Stones look the best in that image of  "wheelchair rockers".

This is a footage from their concert in my hometown, 2007.

I really enjoy some of the tracks that happened in collaboration between Jagger and Mick Taylor. 'Sway' from Sticky Fingers is just so beautiful. I always return to that one.

Then there's three off of Goats Head Soup, imo their best album. '100 Years ago', 'Can you hear the Music?' and the dizzying mantraing blues ride of 'Hide your Love'.

'Play with Fire' is another one I love to death. UHHH 'Citadel' and '2000 Light years from Home'

Lots of others, but that's just for starters.

Favorites:

Paint It Black

She's A Rainbow

Satisfaction

Get Off My Cloud

19th Nervous Breakdown

Mothers Little helper

Gimme Shelter

Sympathy For The Devil

2000 Light Years..

Street Fighting Man

Stray Cat Blues

You Cant Always get....

Tumbling Dice

 

 

 

The song, no...the album, yes I actually like that song; not as a Stones song per se, but as a good disco-rock number.

 

 

Keith Richards used inverted chord voicings in many of the Rock songs he wrote. He used that formula in a different way..as we all must assume that these types of chord voicings had been previously applied in Motown, Soul, Blues, and even Jazz. George Harrison was producing lead guitar solos stylistically based off Country & Western music and Rockabilly...while Keith Richards discovered a way to place inverted chords in Rock music and opening up the sound of those chord voicings more than others had done in the past. A good example would be the intro to "19TH Nervous Breakdown. There was a dosage of Chuck Berry in everything he wrote on electric guitar, but yet..Richards created a sound that opened up the music a bit more. This is more evident than ever on "Brown Sugar"

 

 

Brian Jones colored their music and he was multi-talented. He wasn't a writer..but an idea person. "Ruby Tuesday", "Lady Jane", "2000 Light Years From Home" included on a long list of other songs he was responsible for their uniqueness in texture. Mick Jagger , I felt had some nerve attempting to sing a Sgt. Pepper style ballad when clearly his voice was not up to par in most cases. He had this distinctive sound that replaced his lack of dimension in being a vocalist and many people in 65' simply didn't notice he lacked in diversity of things like range, pitch, vibrato sustain control and so on...As a band..they were adequate on their instruments and so to create a full and more impressive sound they hired fine "Boogie Woogie' style piano players, horns, and female back up vocalists. In reality , it didn't matter much to a mass of people how diverse they were on instruments because of how their image prevailed in the Rock music industry. That's why a great amount of  people in the world cannot conceive what is actually good about them. Try explaining  the times we were living in, how the Stones were actually unique then, ask them to dismiss their media hype and just listen to their music ..but it's too condescending for them.  

 

 

The Beatles were always my #1 but I loved the Stones too.  Something else people forget about the late 60's, when the Beatles were singing about "Revolution" and the Stones were glorifying the "Street Fighting Man", there was a palpable feeling that revolution and anarchy could be right around the corner and that the Stones could just be the ones able to incite the worlds youth to rise up.  These were times where a campus protest against the Viet Nam war lead to a student being murdered by the National Guard at Kent State.  1967 may have been the "summer of love", but 1968 dawned dark and the Stones were at the forefront.  The Watts riots, assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy, Manson family, Zodiak killer, everything was falling apart at the seems.  Riots at Stones concerts were commonplace and this of course culminated in Altamont where the demons were hired as security guards and all hell literally broke loose.  Jagger particularly seemed to revel in his power to incite riots and chaos.  John Lennon may have claimed the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus" but "Sympathy for the Devil" seemed to be Mick's statement of where his allegiance truly lay.  At the conclusion of the Stones performance at the "Rock and Roll Circus TV special", Jagger tears his shirt off to reveal a Satan artwork on his chest.  People really wondered if he was the second coming of the fallen angel.  Then as the 70's wore on, the Stones became a bloated parody of their 60's selves as Keith drowned in a sea of drug addiction and Mick became the darling of the jet set class.  

But there was a time when the Stones really seemed to be the living embodiment of all that was dark and evil in the chaotic swirl of the late 60's world. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My favourite The Stones' ballads.

 

 

I've worn out copies of albums like Exile, Bleed, Banquet, etc.  Now I like to settle in with albums that dig deeper.....and I don't overlook Emotional Rescue.  Some saw it as a revisiting of the smash Some Girls, but I think it's their last relevant album in that they really succeeded in putting down two sides full of music that was popular at the time.  No retro, sitting on their laurels stuff.

I got the 50 yr anniversary box "GRRR" last year and I love that most of the collection is geared to the '64 to '75 songs.  Definitely their best work before Keith's serious drug problems and Mick's emergence as the darling of the jet set watered down their musical punch.  There's still some great songs in the post '75 era but they're few and far between.

I get where you're coming from dr. wu, but I still love the Stones....but I wouldn't give a fag end to see them today.  I went thru an early singles kick a few years back....great ride.  Hungry, tight band with a ton of attitude...and taste.  Now I'm on a Goat's Head and Black and Blue kick....can't wait until I get into a Mick Taylor era phase again, but I don't think it'll be for a while.

I may have to get it on vinyl one of these days. Just feels like a record that needs to be played on the turntable

Fave Stones song today would be Stray Cat Blues.

Stray Cat Blues  has always been one of my favorite lesser known Stones songs.

"It's no hangin' matter, it's no capital criiiiime."

 

 

@ 39:50 Jagger says...'" Charlie's good tonight ...ain't he..?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3e8UOQbH3E" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3e8UOQbH3E

 

Brilliant!  I love the slowed down version of Stray Cat Blues on Ya Ya's...

"You say you got a friend and she's wilder than you, why don't you bring her upstairs?

 If she's so wild then she can join in too!"  (insert smiley face with massive Jagger lips here)

And I always wondered why they put Country Honk and not the other version on LIB...perhaps it wasn't reworked at that time.

To me Exiles is basically a reworking of the blues rock on those 2 lp's. It has those 'twangy blues/soul'  songs

 with some classic rockers. Almost the same format as the 2 earlier lp's.

 

Since this thread popped up, I've been revisiting some of the old Stones records, particularly the interesting era of Between The Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request., with the weird single "We Love You" inbetween.

 

The former album is really odd for the band, very brit-pop stuff...a real mixed bag but "She Smiled Sweetly" is quite the pretty number. Prefer the US version of the album. "Let's Spend The Night Together" is euphoric and "Ruby Tuesday" is great too, although a little sloppier than I remembered, but the UK version has "Back Street Girl" which is nice as well if not at the same level. "Communication" was another decent number.

 

Their Satanic Majesties Request is even odder. Some of these tunes like "The Lantern" could have been pretty good slow-burn bluesy folk-rock tunes if the terrible production and deliberate 'weirdness' thrown in were omitted. "She's A Rainbow" is awesome though...a perfect mix of the brit-pop they were aiming for on the last album with the psychodelic stuff of this album. "2000 Light Years From Home" is the most pure 'Stonesy' sounding song they had done IMO since Aftermath, even with all the trippiness. There's a mean and creepy groove underneath all that. "Citadel" is also killer acid rock. Everything else on it is either just passable to terrible experimentation.

 

Then they sort of found themselves after that, with "Child Of The Moon" being their last psychedelic-like number.

I really love both these albums...I've read that Satanic was Mick's idea to jump on the Sgt Pepper bandwagon 'cause he thought they'd miss the boat.  Keith and Brian both absolutely hated it and were incredibly happy when the band got back to their nasty blues-rock roots with Beggars Banquet.  Another great song released at that time is the B-side to "We Love You"..."Dandelion" 

 

I always liked Between The Buttons....and to me Satanic Majesties was the Stones 'darker' version/answer to Sgt Pepper.

I've read that We Love You was the Stones commenting on their early drug bust/and the attending hoopla  and I think Lennon is even on that track somewhere.

 

They were no slouches when it came to B-sides. Was "Let's Spend The Night Together" or "Ruby Tuesday" the initial B-side...or was it a planned double A-side maybe? And as I mentioned earlier, I think "Child Of The Moon" was a great B-side to "Jumpin' Jack Flash".

 

btw...I actually have an original vinyl with the holographic cover image....vinyl's not in great shape though.

 

I used to have a zipper cover but it got trashed in the old days so I bought another plain one a while later.

I wish they had written a title track ....would love to hear Jagger's lyrics to that.

Yes, California and Jay ferguson et al......these guys were friggin awesome imho.. one of the best West Coast rockers with some really interesting style combinations.

12 Dreams is considered their masterpiece but I love all of their lp's.

Have one of your favorite drinks..sit back and play the whole thing. It's kind of a thematic or concept lp but the songs still stand alone well enough.

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=13052" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=13052

ps..the original lp ends at Soldier......

 

 

 

 

Most, but not all, of their cover songs were pretty good. Speaking of cover versions, there have been some interesting and original ones of Stones songs over the years...

 

 

 

 

That is actually my favorite Stones track.

 

This was totally cool & I had only seen a couple of those photos before...thanks for posting 

In the 70's biography "Up and Down with the Rolling Stones", author Tony Sanchez (aka Spanish Tony) devotes a few pages to all the craziness that surrounded the filming of that movie.  A lot had to do with Keith's uncomfortable feelings about his new girlfriend (Anita Pallenburg) doing the sex/bath scenes with Mick and the fact that they appeared a little too real for Keith's taste   

You bring up a great point 

It's generally accepted Brian was the leader and in control in the early days...he chose the band name, booked the shows, turned the other guys on to obscure R&B and clearly had more influence on the material.  When Keith & Mick were still snotty nosed kids living with Mum, Brian was living on his own and already had at least one illegitimate child (not saying that's cool, but it gave him street cred with the other guys). 

I agree that it's a wonderful album, but ironic, as Brian Jones reportedly hated it:

"The Satanic Majesties record wasn't going well; what with the drug busts and Brian's disintegration, it had already taken a year and it was costing $100,000.  At heart, Mick and Keith knew that Brian was right:  This wasn't Stones music, this was pretentious crap.  But they tried to hide the weakness of the music by exotic packaging; a three dimensional camera was even imported from Japan so that Michael Cooper could take an unusual cover photograph.

The album, called eventually 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' because Decca had no intention of putting out any record with a provocatively antiroyal title, was received as badly as Brian had predicted it would be; almost all the critics realized that it was a feeble attempt to imitate the success of Sgt Pepper, and it was generally put down as a potpourri of half cocked electronic noodlings.

'Thank Christ for that', said Brian.  'Now perhaps we can get back to playing music again.'" 

Excerpt from "Up and Down with the Rolling Stones" by Tony Sanchez.

The Beatles already did the tron thing on the Strawberry Fields single released a few months before Peppers so they were bored with it and moved on