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The greatest Rolling Stones track is………

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We have discussed the Rolling Stones many times, but usually in the context of their live performances or albums – the run from Beggars through Goat is often cited as one of the best run of albums ever – but what is the greatest individual Rolling Stones track ?

I have just watched the recently released GRRR! Live Blu Ray release showcasing their 2012 50th anniversary tour (which I’m not going to review, but sufficed to say its a great performance and some excellent guests – i.e its good). Containing all the main “hits” a good opportunity to think about which is their greatest…..

So (drum roll Charlie please)…… Gimme Shelter.

Appearing both in the main concert film (with Lady Gaga) and the bonus tracks (with backing singer Lisa Fischer – which I think is slightly better) are both superb versions. Of course the original with the sublime backing of Merry Clayton takes a lot of beating.

And yours ?

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Comments

  2. Left off Forty Licks, which proudly stated “including seven UK no. 1s” on a sticker on its front cover, yet bizarrely didn’t include the eighth (“all” from the 60s, of course) …
    Little Red Rooster.

  3. It’s obviously Gimme Shelter.
    I very much like Beast of Burden, Miss You and Emotional Rescue. But the greatest run of songs on any Stones album is side two of Tattoo You. 5 really good songs in a row! Nowhere else did they manage that. (And Sonny Rollins’ sax on WOAF is magnificent).

    • They managed 5 or more great songs in a row on at least 4 or 5 other albums. In the run from Beggars Banquet to Exile close to all the songs are great

      • I’m going to try and put that assertion to the test later this afternoon. (I say “try” – my hearing’s too shot to really tell, but I’ll give it a go). I’m not really a fan of theirs, but I’ll admit I’ve never really gone much beyond the hits.

        Edit. Just found I did make my comment about Tattoo You here a while back, in agreement with vulture.com:

        Ranking all 373 Rolling Stones songs

  4. It’s Moonlight Mile… maybe.

    Jumpin Jack Flash, pound for pound is their greatest riff. Yes better than the overrated Satisfaction.

    This wasn’t the thread question but from the latter end of the band there’s been a couple of ersatz also ran Stones pastichey tunes I’d champion. Hey, they created the sound so might as well keep on mining it. Clearly not in contention for greatest but Mixed Emotions, Love is Strong, I Go Wild, et al. I wouldn’t kick ’em out of bed.

    • Moonlight Mile is a very good shout. Definitely the Stones track I listen to the most, as I just love the mood of it.

      I don’t know if , objectively speaking, I could truthfully call it their best track. Maybe more of a (slightly) deep cut.

      • The reason why I wouldn’t is also because it is so untypicaL and is clearly not a whole-band effort. It starts kind of iffy but builds fantastically, lyrics and music together. Truly remarkable.

        • Wasn’t Moonlight Mile really a Mick Jagger and Mick Taylor co-write, hence it not being typically ‘Stonesy’? It’s a great song that’s benefitted from not being overplayed – I’ve never heard it on the radio.

            • I seem to recall reading around the beginning of the ’70s (must have been in Melody Maker, back then) that Jagger was starting to play a bit of guitar.

                • Keith has never really been a lead guitar player. He does a few solos e.g. Sympathy for the Devil, but his magic sauce provides genius riffs and expert rhythm, along with great songwriting of course.

              • Completely agree, Twang – Woody does what he does, but Mick Taylor was in a different league. I think he suffered some bad publicity from the Stones Machine when he left, made it sound like Keith couldn’t play with him – utter tosh, of course, they were a formidable team.

  5. I’m not much of a Stones fan, but I do like some of the mid/late 60s stuff, so I’d choose either Paint It, Black, or one of the maddest singles released by a name act, Have You Seen Your Mother Baby.

  7. By the by, you ention Lisa Fisher in the OP. She steals the show here in a performance recorded for Stripped, but left off the album. It was a CD single bonus track and can been found at the usual less than official sources

    • What a thread!

      Lady Gaga and the Stones was extremely enjoyable. (In that outfit she looked like a character who had escaped from a Tim Burton film).And it was very noticeable that everyone on stage was having a ball

      But nice work, Gatz! Your Lisa Fisher was SCORCHIO!! (She looked like something out of Hammer Studios Film. If they were still in business they’d have signed her up on the spot for a starring role.)

      Yes. The Mick and Lisa Gimme Shelter was a treat!

      Congratulations, @chrisf and all the rest of you. To my delight and surprise, I am really enjoying a thread about the Rolling Stones. In 2023!

      It’s all getting a bit too exciting, Has someone got some Barclay James Harvest I could borrow?

  9. Another vote for Gimme Shelter.
    I note above that Alias also chose GS, but has a different favourite track.
    Much of the time, my favourite track would be Sweet Virginia – clearly not their greatest…

  12. Hard to argue with Gimme Shelter – I think it has grown in stature because it was an album track.

    Personally, I always really loved Street Fighting Man – the BB version of course.

    Sympathy for the Devil, Fingerprint File, Time Waits for No One, Paint It Black, Moonlight Mile, Sister Morphine all get me to stop what I’m doing and listen again!

    Another mention for some late career highlights as they are easily overlooked in the mess of later albums and releases….Love Is Strong, Doom and Gloom, You Got Me Rocking, Highwire are all worth a listen.

    • Precisely. Insouciant, sleazy, rocks like billy-o, anthemic, (used to) fill a dance floor, and, dare I say it, “provocative’. Spiritually, archetypically, pure Stones. Disgraceful they don’t play it now. They should have replaced it with the deep cut, “Some Girls’. Once, they would have.

  16. At the risk of this becoming a one note thread, I honestly can’t argue with Gimme Shelter. And it was the first one to pop into my head when the question was asked. It really has everything, doesn’t it? The intro is electrifying, the instrumentation is groovy and swampy, the lyrics sinister but obscure, and that bit where Merry Clayton’s voice cracks gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

    But… if I wanted to be slightly obtuse I would say Sympathy For The Devil would get my vote. Maybe dulled through over-familiarity, and it reeks a bit of pantomime satanism. But from the first moment I heard that groove I was hooked, and it sounds like nothing on earth (well, apart from all the songs which have since copied it….). The guitar solo… the “wooo wooo!”s… all magical ingredients. I even like that experimential studio film where they are writing/recording it, and Brian Jones is just stuck in a corner looking half asleep with an acoustic guitar and a dead microphone.

  17. Interesting responses to the thread so far and I can’t say I’m too surprised with the general agreement on Gimme Shelter.

    I think Junior and Arthur nailed it in their comments that it’s the first song that pops in your head when asked the question (interesting aside question – would “Joe Public” say Satisfaction or Start Me Up). I know that when I was watching the GRRR concert, the moment the intro started my immediate thought was that this is the Stones best track……

    • I normally use my wife as “Jane Public” in these things, and I remember talking to her about Gimme Shelter and she’d never heard of it! I’m not sure what she’d say to her favourite Stones track… I’ll ask.

    • Pure goth goodness.

      I spent the afternoon listening to a few Stones songs, and while they are not really my kind of thing, I found the following to be really good:
      Beast of Burden
      Honky Tonk Women – love the opening cowbell, it’s really a song dominated by Charlie’s drumming, and the singing and guitar fit in with the rhythm, rather than dominating. I don’t like Jagger’s voice, and am no fan of raawwwk songs – spare me the riffs.

      Although Paint It Black is a classic, I think I might change my mind. Like Gimme Shelter, it’s a bit of a dirge, lyrically. A great song should be celebratory, which Honky Tonk Women is, to my mind. And for a song to be great, it has to appeal to more than those who are devoted fans, doesn’t it?

  20. It’s Get Off My Cloud. I remember Tarrant playing the video on OTT. Looking back it should have fired me up to become a Stones fan I loved it so much… To be honest I don’t know enough about them to judge but this remains my favourite of what I do know

  21. Can’t argue with Gimme as their greatest really.
    But an honourable mention to Heartbreaker, not as their greatest certainly, but I do love it.

  24. Like others Gimme Shelter is my go-to Stones track, closely followed by Tumbling Dice and with Saint of Me as my outlier. Thought to call though; it turns out I have 25 albums and 342 tracks to chose from.

  25. Paint It Black and GS clearly outstanding. I personally love Play With Fire as a Brian-era one and Can’t You Hear Me Knocking as a Mick Taylor-era choice, the latter as that band playing at their very best.

  26. It’s all subjective obvs, but gun to my head I’d go for ‘Tumblin’ Dice’ as their finest moment.
    Followed in no particular order by ‘Let It Bleed’, Sympathy For The Devil’, the repulsive ‘Brown Sugar’ & the divine ‘Faraway Eyes’ (yes it really *is* that great!)

      • I adore their ‘Cod Country that’s actually good’ material.
        The sheer gall of 2 blokes from Dartford doing ‘Sweet Virginia’ or ‘Country Honk’ has always cracked me up.

    • I quite like Tumblin Dice, and it sounds great in the context of the rest of Exile, but I’ve never really got the love for it. It sounds very much like Stones-by-Numbers to me. (I mean, GREAT numbers and they were at the top of the game, but just lacking the extra sparkle to make it a stand out track. In fact, just about all the tracks on Exile I find to be like that – the whole is greater than the sum etc etc)

      • I tend towards the ‘Exile is a muddy mess’ camp rather than ‘The Stones in their sordid, sleazy pomp’ camp if pushed. Always a great album to have on when there’s a proper full on binge underway with a house full of people out to wrecked (I can just about recall those days), but not one that is that strong for actual songs.
        This is heresy of course to most Stones heads, but I’ve always preferred ‘Let It Bleed’ & ‘Beggars Banquet’.

        • I concur absolutely.
          Sticky Fingers good but not AS good overall, Ya-Yas is patchy but the live Midnight Rambler is killer, Exile more than a bit self-indulgent with some great bits, Goat’s Head Soup still well worth having, It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll has it’s moments too.

        • Don’t know what is sleazy and sordid about Exile. Brown Sugar fits that description but not Exile. Some say it’s short on tunes. I would say it’s less obvious than usual Stones hits but that gives it longevity and subtlety. None of those simple chant-like elements you get elsewhere. There’s a lot going on in the music, it retains some mystery despite multiple plays. No weak track I can think of.

          • I’d say the whole mythology about the recording in the decadent gaff on the coast- the place the venue for a seemingly non stop binge fuelled by Coke & smack & populated by an endless stream of skeevy hangers on.
            Can’t really imagine anything less conducive to the efficient production of songs & recordings but fans claim it worked for them. It’s muddiness is the appeal, it seems but for me, it’s mostly just muddiness. But they *are* the Stones, so it’s understandable that normal MO’s don’t apply.
            I much prefer the sound of Brown Sugar (Muscle Shoals?) – just a better sonic experience for the listener, irrespective of the sickening subject matter.

            • You’re right. It wasn’t efficient. They ended up with hours of stuff which Mick and Keith turned into an album in proper studios in the US which is where most of the vocals and lead instruments were added. The ensemble playing was generally in the basement hence the particular sound of it for better or worse.

              I agree “Sticky Fingers” is a fantastic sounding album, so much space and so few instruments compared to moderno productions where there’s so much going on.

  31. Tumbling Dice for me, not sure why really. Possibly because the other candidates are just too familiar. If I hear the opening riff of Brown Sugar it’s always “Hey! It’s Brown Sugar!” swiftly followed by “Oh yeah, it’s Brown Sugar.” The expectation that it would stay just as thrilling as it was 40 years ago is simply asking too much of it. So, today it’s Tumbling Dice.

  32. The question is a bit “Banksy in goal”. Apart from Gimme Shelter, off the top of my head it’s Brown Sugar, accepting the lyrics are, um, problematic.

  33. My wife’s favourite is a little something from Dirty Work… heh, heh… no, its “Paint It, Black.”

    Well done for all involved so far for not calling “Honky Tonk Women,” “Honky Tonk Woman.”
    In the mainstream media, that’s a 50/50 call on a good day.

  34. Was Mixed Emotions their last half-decent song … from 1989?
    Don’t Stop from Forty Licks wasn’t bad, and lockdown released Living In A Ghost Town sounded good too.
    But great songs … not in recent times
    (unless I’ve missed something – which I probably have)

    Blue & Lonesome is their best album of the 21st Century, but no authorship involved there

  35. One of

    Honky Tonk Women
    Get Off Of My Cloud
    Jumping Jack Flash
    You Can’t Always Get What You Want
    Beast of Burden
    Wild Horses
    And, yes, Gimme Shelter

    Push me to pick one and I’ll go for Get Off of My Cloud – it’s just irresistible.

    • Beggars Banquet is the first truly great Stones album and it contains all the ingredients for their imperial phase and beyond.

      Street Fighting Man still sounds fantastic, though the sentiment in the lyric might not have aged so well.

  38. One hates to be Captain Obvious but sometimes you need to be.

    It’s Satisfaction. Obviously.

    Greatest riff they ever did, greatest lyric they ever wrote, greatest vocal performance Mick ever did; you can dance to it, like Hard Day’s Night you only need to hear a nanosecond of it and you know exactly what’s coming, their second greatest song “Jumping Jack Flash” is just that same riff but played backwards. THAT’S HOW BLOODY GOOD SATISFACTION IS.

  39. Anything from Sticky Fingers (clearly their best LP) but if pushed Can’t You Hear Me Knocking has a fantastic band performance, brilliant dynamics and a perfect ending.

    Bohemian Like Me is right up there too. So is Rocks for that matter.

  46. It might be because I’d started listening to Radio Luxembourg around the time they released it, most of their output is before my time, I’ve always liked Miss You myself.

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