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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWhat is the best Rolling Stones album???
I like parts of all of them.....
Moondog
(4,833 posts)olddots
(10,237 posts)cliffordu
(30,994 posts)Loryn
(943 posts)I like parts of all of them too.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)Wrangling with the history of any five-decade long institution is an inherently thorny business, but the Rolling Stones story is particularly challenging. Of the roughly five distinct periods that comprise the epic history of what is perhaps the greatest ever rock and roll band, the current one in which the Stones as moneyed rock royalty occasionally reunite to milk a seemingly endless cash cow through intermittent reissues and greatest hits albums, just okay new releases, and extortionately priced stadium tours, is by far the longest. It has been 32 years since the bands last great (or great-ish) release Tattoo You, 35 since its last inarguable bonafide masterpiece, 1978?s Some Girls. How strange this must understandably seem to a certain demographic. For rock music fans under the age of 30, this is the only version of the band they have ever known.
By comparison, the groups high water mark lasted only four years, between 1968 and 1972, and comprised four studio records that represent perhaps the greatest distillation of rock, blues, country, and soul ever achieved. Untroubled and even enhanced by the passage of time, those four albums the militant and populist moral quagmire of Beggars Banquet, the epochal, frightening, funny, and depraved Let It Bleed, the druggy, harrowing, staring-death-in-the-eyes stupor of Sticky Fingers, and the simply perfect Exile On Main Street are by themselves a veritable Mt. Rushmore of the rock and roll genre. Anyone who wants to know anything about what came before and after would be well-advised to start here where Robert Johnson casts a lurid eye at Liz Phair while shaking hands with Pussy Galore.
Most music fans are by now acquainted with the high and lowlights of the Stones insane journey the early rise to prominence as hard-core interpreters of the American blues and the anti-Beatles, the full flowering of the Jagger-Richards song machine, which was ultimately to yield countless classics, the flirtation with psychedelia, the early death of the unanimously unliked band founder and original guitarist Brian Jones, the hiring of Mick Taylor as replacement resulting in vaulting heights nearly unimaginable, the stunning apocalypse of Altamont, Taylors eventual, regrettable departure, replaced by Ronnie Wood of the Faces. And on and on. Certain turns of phrase evoke whole, mythic tales that made the Stones early leaders in the clubhouse of rock debauchery: cocksucker blues, junkie nurses, poor Marianne Faithfull, and the apocryphal chocolate bar. To give any sort of comprehensive overview here would be nigh well impossible fifty years to tell in a few short lines, to bastardize a lyric from Merle Haggard. (For interested parties the bands history has been assiduously and expertly covered in a series of publications ranging from Stanley Booths brilliant memoir The True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones to Bill Janovitz terrific 33 1/3 consideration of Exile On Main Street.)
Over the years, many once-seemingly unimpeachable classic rock warhorses have experienced at least some amount of downward critical revision. Most people still probably wouldnt argue that Whos Next or Dark Side Of The Moon are not seminal records in the history of rock and roll, but elements of those albums which once seemingly marked them as groundbreaking or thoroughly novel can feel a little dated or silly. The point is not to denigrate these albums or artists, but rather to recognize that with the best Stones records, this kind of reevaluation has never been needed. No one really argues that Beggars Banquet isnt as great now as the day it was released, or even more impactful. Besides being brilliant songwriters, the vintage Stones largely insulated themselves from the rigors of time by studiously avoiding the trends or at least niftily navigating the line between commercially viable and traditionally minded (Their one early misstep in this regard being the too eager to follow-the-leader ersatz-Beatlisms of Their Satanic Majesties Request).
more at link:
http://stereogum.com/1251612/the-rolling-stones-albums-from-worst-to-best/top-stories/lead-story/
calimary
(81,139 posts)Well, I thought he was the coolest, hunkiest, most ridiculously-talented (musically) member of the band. I was enthralled. Sad to see him described as "unanimously unliked." After all, he founded the Rolling Stones. But he made some really bad choices. Died way too soon. So sad.
http://www.brianjonesfanclub.com/
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)If Jones had stayed in the band, they NEVER would have stopped being 'The Rolling Stones' and become 'The Stones'.....
He would have been a better match with the Beatles, actually.
calimary
(81,139 posts)He was incredibly versatile as a musician. I read comments from his contemporaries that said he was the kind of musician who could pick up an instrument he'd never seen or played before, and in minutes, could figure out how to play it and make real music with it. He just had a gift.
Remarkably, my son seems to have a similar gift.
Signed,
Mrs. calimary Jones McCartney ("married" Paul after Brian left me a "widow"...)
edbermac
(15,933 posts)All their classic early hits.
calimary
(81,139 posts)Just the greatest they ever did!
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)olddots
(10,237 posts)MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)But between Sticky, Beggar's Banquet and Let It Bleed you cannot go wrong. All three kill.
R B Garr
(16,950 posts)2000 Light Years from Home
I heard this great song in the Men in Black 3 movie and just had to find out who it was since I didn't recognize it right away. After Googling, it looks like it was this song. I forgot all about it. What an absolutely great song. Love the Stones.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)which is my personal favorite Stones album.
Generic Brad
(14,272 posts)I know that will be the least popular choice of them all. But I like what I like. And I have every Stones album in my collection.
In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)cliffordu
(30,994 posts)I'd FORGOTTEN this album.
Not the individual songs - the actual album....
!!!!!
calimary
(81,139 posts)"...I'm going home (dooooo doo-doo doo-doo-doo), I'm goin' home (dooooo doo-doo doo-doo-doo)...Goin' home bome bome bome-buh-bome..." Loved it! Played it on my radio show! One of the very early LONG album cuts! They really were pioneers.
I just kinda fell away after "Let It Bleed". I like "Miss You," and "Emotional Rescue" and "Start Me Up." But I never bought another Stones album after "Let it Bleed". The light just sorta went out for me. I still thought they were good. But no longer great.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)This was their peak period, Beggar's Banquet, Sticky Fingers, and then the opus Exile on Main Street. There was filler on Exile, but the good songs were some of their greatest.
pscot
(21,024 posts)That was a great album
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)Obscure enough for the Charlatans to blatantly rip off ("Just When You're Thinkin' Things Over" and get away with it.
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)Miss You
When The Whip Comes Down
Just My Imagination
Some Girls
Lies
Far Away Eyes
Respectable
Before They Make Me Run
Beast Of Burden
Shattered
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)immortal classics (e.g. "Winter," "Beast of Burden" yet neither makes my Stones top five. Which shows you just how much amazing music they made in their first decade and a half ('64-'78).
kwassa
(23,340 posts)An unannounced performance at Detroit Masonic Hall, I heard about by chance. A small venue in the midst of stadium tours. Only 5000 seats in this place. They delivered.
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)It was at a monster stadium in Anaheim. ELO played there a couple weeks later and the venue actually suited them better. You are very lucky indeed to have seen the Stones in what would be considered an intimate venue.
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)I would give any of those four albums a perfect 10/10 score, without hesitation. And while 'Exile' may not be the best per se, by virtue of being a double album it's arguably their most complete statement, and corrects one of the few small flaws of the previous three - that being a relative dearth of crunchy guitar-rockers. I also consider 'Exile' the birth of junkie-gospel-rock, a genre often imitated (see Spiritualized for a more contemporary equivalent) but never duplicated, at least not the way the Stones did it.
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)Fucking PERFECT!
( yeah, I know the smilie is a metal smilie, but what the hell.....)
CrazyOrangeCat
(6,112 posts)But the live "Get yer ya-yas out" is the bomb. Blues-rock at its most potent.
I heard it for the first time at age 16 (1975) and it blew my mind. So much raw energy. I was a budding guitarist, and I literally wore the grooves out of the Sympathy and Love in Vain tracks.
I still listen to it a lot. Keith Richards is a genius songwriter and the most fabulous rhythm guitarist.
Then there's Mick Taylor . . .
Between Hendrix and Taylor, those two pretty much said it all. At least for this lad.