In the recent welcome post for @pawsforthought there lurked a suggestion that few bands are as disliked on this site as The Rolling Stones. Even mentioned in the same breath as Simply Red and U2 they were (Yoda – where did that come from?). That can’t be right, I thought. I mean I know they’ve done basically **** all for the last 35/40 years worth listening to. They seem to be motivated in recent decades by the desire to wring every last cent out of their own catalogue with the least effort possible, but come on. It’s still The Stones. @tiggerlion even recently ran a very active thread on their post-1980 output.
So how much/how little love for the Stones is there on the site? I’ll kick off with five things I love about them
A proper imperial period album run from Aftermath through to Exile – taking a positive view of Satanic Majesties.. along the way.
Peerless sixties single run all the way up to Honky Tonk Woman.
Great musicians – Keith and Charlie absolutely, the sober Bryan, Bill?
A great live act from at least the mid-sixties for a decade
Those things that the Beatles didn’t set the template for the Stones did – for example the ‘band of outlaws’ image ‘would you let your daughter marry a Stone’ ‘who breaks a butterfly on a wheel’ – proper cultural significance there your honour
Over to you all. I think it’s a given that post-1980 there’s only the odd diamond in the rough. Exile to Tattoo You is perhaps the most interesting period to debate, but are there really legions of people out there ready to offer up their intense dislike of Beggars Banquet or Let It Bleed? Of Paint It, Black or Honky Tonk Woman?
https://theafterword.co.uk/have-the-rolling-stones-released-anything-any-good-in-the-last-35-years/
Rolled Gold is alright, Gimme Shelter a stone cold classic. Other than that I can take them or leave them.
Turn it up. Tell me this isn’t the best rock song ever recorded. You’re a liar or a fool.
https://youtu.be/o9Y2gontVXs
That’d be the one. Also used as part of the soundtrack to a moving Vietnam war documentary based on letters sent home by GIs – ‘Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam’.
Adore them in the 60s, when girls liked them and they had no. 1 singles, especially the pre-Aftermath, ’63-’65 45s, EPs and LPs.
I don’t understand the adoration of the herion chic/glam early 1970s and, frankly, they looked shite compared to their mid-60s heyday, but then so did the 1970s.
I can think of no time or place or people I’d least want to be in, at or with (OK…..apart from the 1980s) than that mansion where they recorded “Exile On Main Street.” Talk about depressing.
That said, I don’t have the outright dislike of their post-60s output that I hold for The Who, The Pretty Things or The Kinks.
One person here really hates them, I would say they are pretty popular, certainly no less than many other longstanding bands.
I love them, seen them live 28 times, very quick summary:
1964-67 Great great singles band, almost peerless, each album better than the last (maybe not no. 2)
1969-72 4 of the greatest albums ever made and one of the best live ones
1973-82 Patchy, all of the albums have some great stuff on
Post 1982 – Occasional brilliance, I particularly like 1994’s Voodoo Lounge
Wow thought it was only me that likes Voodoo Lounge. Great album.
Would be even better if the 60+ minutes were reduced to a 40 min album. Same applies to a lesser degree to Steel Wheels, Bridges to Babylon and A Bigger Bang.
Regarding OP opening statement: no, they’re not…..
I like them fine, but I’m too young (relatively speaking) and they’ve recorded too many albums, so I barely have any of them in my collection. I did however order a cheap compilation a few days ago, to get most of my favourite tracks without having to become a completist.
I don’t think I’ll need anything else, TBH.
As an aside, the new copy of The History of Rock 1979 appeared in Readly this morning with Keef on the cover which I thought odd. Was 79 a pivotal year in the history of the Stones?
Even odder when the paper version dropped on the mat today it had the Jam on the cover who are definitely more ’79’ than Keef and The Stones.
Not a big year for The Stones but a big one for The New Barbarians.
oh, sounds good, The Jam on the cover? did someone say on here that 1979 is going to be the last issue, does it say that in the magazine?
It’s not the last issue, 1980 is flagged up at the back of this one. Hurray!!!
Amazing singer
Classic run of early singles
Rebellious frontman whom any parent in their right mind wouldn’t want their daughter to date
All went downhill from the ‘Life’ album onwards
That whole jewel in the teeth thing was never a good look
Seriously lost it when Ronnie Wood came on the scene.
Which Mick are you referring to about the jewel in the tooth- Hucknall or Jagger?
He’s talking about Simply Mick. The Ronnie reference is related to Mick’s latter-day Faces stint, I reckons.
Get yer ya-yas out is quite possibly the best live album ever (and quite possibly the best album cover what with them jewels and binoculars hanging from the head of the mule) but most of the classic Stones output from their golden years (and let’s forget everything from around 1980 onward shall we?) passes me by. Don’t know why but it does…
Apart from the superlative version of “Midnight Rambler”, my opinion is that “Get Yer Ya Yas Out” is not actually that good an album.
But you don’t have to pay that any attention if you’re convinced otherwise.
I agree with you. I always lived the live Midnught Rambler when it was on Hot Rocks. But I bought Ya Yas and only ever listened to it once – baggy and unfocused.
I like it, but it’s not as good as Ike and Tina’s supporting set on the 40th anniversary edition, which is utterly thrilling.
I don’t like it, either, but then i don’t really like any of the Stones live albums that I’ve heard (and I love the Stones). Still Life is not bad and probably the best of them.
The 70s live albums are really sloppy, it’s like they were on drugs or something.
The club half of Love You Live is very good with a nice intimate feel.
Yeah that’s pretty good. But it’s just one side out of four isn’t it? And the rest is a bit weak: you can hear Jagger tire himself out during the first few songs from running around the stage (which Keith used to complain about).
Still, at least it shows they weren’t using overdubs.
*glances knowingly at Thin Lizzy*
Yes, all those ramps and high rise platforms were a bit silly. Often Mick was a hundred yards from the rest of the band
Ya Yas was one of the first proper live albums I ever listened to. At that point I had only seen the Stones twice in Aberdeen and Edinburgh and on both occasions you couldn’t hear a single note cos of all the girls’ screaming and it was hard to see the stage cos of all them girls’ knickers being lobbed at Mick &Co (them Edinburgh girls have always been of the very friendly variety). Therefore to my relatively young ears Ya Yas was indeed the dog’s bollox. Haven’t played it for many a year so quite possibly my “best live album” claim might be Wrong.
UStill Life the best? Outrageous! Some of the downloads and deluxe edition released recently are essential. The Sticky Fingers live stuff, also Some Girls 78 and especially Brussels 73. As I am an uber fan I also love live stuff released in video from the 2003 Licks tour.
Of course I meant Still Life. Oh for an edit function, oh hang on…
I wish I understood any of that. Love and all that stuff.
Have you seen the TAMI show?
The American 1960s show where the Stones made the school boy error of following James Brown. Ike and Tina were nearly as brilliant as James Brown. If not you really should.
Whenever I hear the hits on the radio, I can kind of see why people like them so much. They’re OK songs.
Own nothing by them, have no wish to.
I have a whole list of bands I’m indifferent to (eg the Clash, Springsteen) and a few I can’t abide (mainly the Doors actually). The Stones are firmly in the former category.
If rock n roll is about picking up some instruments in order to
1. Get birds
2. Avoid doing a “proper” job, and
3. Express yourself
(almost certainly in that order), then what could be more rock n roll than coasting for 40 years while living it up off the back of your early glories?
It’s like those people who say “if I won the lottery I’d be back in work on Monday”..
My only quibble is whether they actually need to tour/record quite so often to top up the party fund – The Stone Roses, now they have the balance right…
They worked hard in those early years – 15 stand-alone a-sides up to “Honky Tonk Women,” 3 stand-alone E.P.s, and the first 8 studio albums came out in less than 6 years!
That was me that made the (tongue in cheek) comment based on some pretty vigorous criticism of the Stones I’ve read on this site from time to time. But of course many of us love the old buggers. Things I love about them include
A series of singles that makes their Greatest Hits better than anyone’s apart from HJH
Their (or at least Jaggers) continuing commitment after all these years to still putting on a show. I loved their performance captured in Scorsese’s Shine A Light, and I loved the Stripped performance too
The mid 70s Stones. I think Goats Head Soup is a terrific album, I have a lot of affection for Black and Blue, and I think Some Girls is a masterpiece (flawed, for sure, but a masterpiece nonetheless)
I used to love ’em, but its all over now. They are disliked by people who used to love them. If you are a fan of rock music you have to like the Stones best 60s and 70s don’t you?
I very much doubt that today’s U2 and Simply Red haters ever liked either.
Can you hear me, Mother?
http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w479/niallbrannigan/17dd7b7656cd77c1468c02def3952e99_zpsmqn1t45h.jpg
What is that round bit on the end of Keith’s nose?
Spare stash, probably.
I thought for a second you were doing that old joke. What’s that ugly thing stuck to your nose? YOUR FACE.
Historically very important, one of the greatest singles bands ever, but essentially their own Tribute Band for the last couple of decades, at least. Extremely interesting in the past tense, but utterly irrelevant in the present tense. The best thing any of them’s done in ages was “The Origin Of The Species”, the film he made with Julien Temple a short while ago. That was terrific.
I’m in absolutely no danger whatsoever of going myself (not even if coaxed with a wad of Mike Ashley proportions placed in my back pocket), but the millions of people flocking to see them throughout the world each year doesn’t suggest utter irrelevance to me.
Whoever is currently no. 1, there’s your utter irrelevance.
This is an interesting thread. I always thought I was the only one here who really didn’t much care for the Stones. I own most of the late sixties early seventies albums in one format or another but even the classics are patchy. I don’t love any of them and rarely play them. Gimmie Shelter is fantastic though, natch.
I love the Stones. I visited the exhibition at the Saatchi gallery over the Summer and whilst learning nothing new it was still a couple of hours well spent.
One thing sprang to mind as I pottered about the galleries. The Stones were all about sex. And I know that “popular” music since the fifties and before has largely been about that, but to my mind no-one has better distilled its very essence and packaged it into 3 minute songs.
Tommy rot. The Stones are The Stones (but they were never as good as The Who – that’s yer top Rock band. At the height/very best, no one could touch them).
Live maybe. On record The Stones piss all over them.
Yeah but they piss anywhere, man
And then they drive off giving “a well-known gesture”
In the mid 60s, The Stones were ahead on record while The Who were still developing, although Substitute, I Can See For Miles etc are right up there, and as for live, Rock & Roll Circus is where The Who clearly blew The Stones off stage, allegedly the reason for it being mothballed for so long. By the time you get to Tommy onwards, The Who had really arrived and were the best live Rock group of them all. Without equal, and quite distinct unlike the blues rockers. As for on record, Who’s Next is equal too/superior (in my opinion) to the best of The Stones output of that era. They didn’t/couldn’t maintain that standard, but there were still many tremendous songs to come, and as for live, still peerless at their 70s peak.
Love the idea of the Stones enormously. In my mind they are fabulous, and I have seen ’em enough times between the 70s and 90s to witness the massive improvements in live show sound, and their gradual realisation that practising helps performance. Mid 90’s they were stupendous, another Voodoo Lounge lizard here, but I haven’t dared see ’em since, mainly cos I won’t afford the price for an arena experience and I am frightened they might now be shite. Sort of a parallel with Fairport Convention, in that what was once reliable is now, probably understandably, prone to engine failure. Amirable in the way of a vintage car, but not what you would wish to make your daily commute in. I strangely endorse their right to keep ploughing on, the more ridiculous they look the better. I definitely love the fact they still pretend to play the rebel part, “laughter lines” and all, and would sooner be entertained by Keef in all his dandyism than some of the just old and fat practitioners who hope their playing does the talking. Keith’s playing doesn’t but his look, his scarves, his chortle and his billows of smoke do. In fact, I think I will go and crank up some Steel Wheels now, another fine recent (ha!) recording.
The Stones basically made a comeback in the late 80s after Dirty Work and Mick going solo in the mid 80s. I’d argue that the studio albums they’ve made since then have all been pretty good, especially Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge.
And there are many extra-ordinary covers of Stones songs – perhaps, controversially, they inspire better cover versions than the HJH’s. This will always be amongst the very best.
Susan Boyle did Wild Horses.
I suggest that is an extraordinary choice.
However, it is testament to the strength of the song that SuBo couldn’t knacker it
You see the thing is, I own nothing by The Rolling Stones but “Picture Book” to “Stars” (4 albums) was a run of pop / soul magic that I love to this day. It’s why I don’t really belong here, just tag along and very occasionally my venn diagram lightly brushes someone elses……..
Along with millions of other people I like Simply Red, Dave, but there are a whole lot of folk about too, who will call them a Guilty Pleasure, because they don’t feel they can allow themselves to forego some notion of “cool” picked up at an impressionable age. Perhaps i just don’t like electric blues enough….
I think I would muuuch rather go and see Simply Red than the Stones – today at any rate. That man Hucknall can sing.
Hucknall CAN sing. Stars in the 90s had a kind of ubiquity similar to Sade in the 80s and Adele now. Perfectly acceptable radio fodder but no more.
I begrudgingly agree with you – yes he can sing. He does a fine cover of Positively 4th Street
And despite initial fears his stint as Rod’s replacement in reformed Faces wasn’t actually that bad.
Saw ver Red in concert last year, and he/they were really impressive. I’m amazed at how much the laydeez absolutely adore him, even now.
Has his boomerang come back yet?
His opening words to the audience: “Hello, my darlings”
Love The Rolling Stones. Love them more than The Beatles. Play them more than The Beatles. More than any other equivalent band.
Loved the sixties strut and cockiness. Love the Seventies spit and slide. GYYYO, my intro to them, and Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers Goat’s Head Soup. And Exile. Even Anna, my ex-wife liked Exile. Even the current love interest.
And the sound they make? Rolling and stoned and chunky and monkey and strummy and drummy is what I imagine when I imagine Rock music. They are Rock. Outsider insiders. Oh so pretty and ugly. Poised and predatory.
No one thought that they would be around this long. Hell, no-one thought rock would be around this long. Always right. Always wrong. The definitive rock band. The most influential.
Everybody but everybody has wanted to be The Rolling Stones. Everyone has wanted to say “think I bust a button on me trousers, hope they don’t fall down. You wouldn’t want my trousers to fall down now would you?”
They’ve been taking their trousers off in public for the longest time. They are complete bell ends of course. What halfway decent rock star isn’t?
More bellendish than most. Better than everyone else who ever tried. I think they’re finally ready. Ladies and gentlemen. The Greatest Rock And Roll Band In The World. The Rolling Stones.
@fin59 I think I have to agree with you vs the Beatles *ducks from hail of missiles* . If they had the good fortune to split up after after Exile on Main Street they would have left a career and catalogue as shiny as the HJH’s. Their long tail I think has cast what is a peerless first decade catalogue into the shade. As The House of Love put it ‘The Beatles and the Stones. sucked the marrow out of bones. Put the V in Vietnam. The Beatles and the Stones.”
Spot. And indeed – on.
No one could ever be as good as The Beatles. Not as good as the memory or the myth allows.
If rocking and rolling are synonyms for sex, nobody ever had sex to The Beatles.
You can have sex to The Rolling Stones
Completely agree with these posts, chaps….if the Stones had been set in aspic after Exile, like the Beatles, the tone of this thread would be very different. For me, the diminishing returns in recent years can’t ever take the shine off the run of albums from Aftermath to Exile….
Dear Admins, can you tell us the percentage of Beatles vs Stones vs “other” that Afterworders record in their profiles?
In so much as it matters, I have never wanted to be the Rolling Stones. Perhaps it’s a generational thing.
Fascinating to find so much indifference and so many off the wall opinions. So here are mine:
68-73 (not a typo) close to untouchable, album wise (with The ‘Oo and Zeppelin jostling). The Brian era singles are great in patches (I don’t need to hear Have You Seen Your Mother, 19th Nervous Breakdown, Come On or Little Red Rooster again thanks). I’ll never understand how Goat’s Head Soup always gets left out of the supposed classic run – but then i got to know it on the B side of a cassette before I’d read any music magazines – my ears just didn’t register a quality difference between the side that had Bitch, I Got the Blues etc and the one with the likes of Winter, Silver Train and 100 Years Ago, especially since both sides seemed to have one duffer each (Angie, You Got to Move).
Post 73, I enjoy patches up to Tattoo You. Some of the ‘old’ on Still Life is excellent (Under My Thumb is better than the original to these ears – but then I did hear this version first). After that I’m not so bothered or interested. Undercover and Dirty Work plus the subsequent singles they then put on the various live albums (Saint of Me, Sad Sad Sad, Mixed Emotions) cured me of any curiosity. Stripped was the last tight live album for me – Keith’s playing and singing on Shine a Light were just embarrassing.
Historically they were hugely important, for cultural as well as musical reasons. As a songwriter, I will always be in awe of tons of their material – and baffled by how lazy and crap they can be when off form. This thread reminds me, I haven’t heard the Still Life Under My Thumb, the Love You Live If You Can’t Rock Me/Get Off My Cloud, Beast of Burden, Silver Train, Time Waits for No One, 100 Years Ago, Heaven, Hand of Fate – well loads really. On their day, one of the handful of best groups ever.
You would be me regarding GHS (and I understand Tiggerlion is in our little group too), except for your description of Angie & You Got To Move as “duffers”. Boo. and also hiss, I think they stand with their surroundings, and GHS and SF are my favourite two Stones LP’s.
Ha! Maybe it was my proto teenage rock snob. Angie just stuck out as a bit twee and polished and You Got to Move always a worthy dirge. But I wouldn’t move them and YGTM in particular is the perfect prelude to what comes next. Glad to hear I have company. In fact, I saw a rather good vinyl original of GHS yesterday and will most likely pick it up this week.
I’ve asked this question before but…..
Has anyone from the 60s of any standing ever really nailed their colours to “Exile On Main Street.”
In my experience it’s only 60s dodgers like Oasis, Bobby Gillespie, Richard Ashcroft etc. who herald it as a peak and, frankly, who listens to them?
Read an old Mojo yesterday and there’s Mick Fleetwood, born 1947, stating his like for the group. His favourite L.P.?….. “Between The Buttons.”
I’d have been genuinely surprised if he’d said “Exile.”
Please, if someone has information to the contrary……
I’m not sure what point, if any, is being made here.
That the opinion of contemporaries of the Stones on what constitutes their best work is somehow more valid?
So, I’d have to be a contemporary of Hitchcock’s to identify his best film? Or of Tchaikovsky his best symphonies? Or Wren his best architecture?
Often, contemporaneous reviews prove limited as many reviews for The Great Gatsby or Guernica or indeed, Exile, show.
The views of an artist and their work, of their significance and its resonance, alter and iterate over time. As it should. As it will.
The point is I’ve never read or heard anyone from the era really go over-board about it. And, yes, I do feel the opinions of Brian Wilson or Paul McCartney are infinitely more important than Liam Gallagher’s.
Wouldn’t anyone?
…..so no one has any information to the contrary?
Please – one example.
Pete Townshend absolutely hammered ‘Pet Sounds’ in the press when it was released – a right old shoe-ing – “the Beach Boys new material is too remote and way out. It’s written for a feminine audience.”.
On the documentary that went with the 40th anniversary edition of the album he’s on there waxing lyrical about it. People often change their minds, get things wrong or break out from regimented thinking based on prejudice.
I went off them on the Black and Blue tour when I saw them play Bingley Hall, Stafford.
The Meters played their support slot. Then we waited and waited and waited. We were standing in a cowshed and facilities were almost non-existent.
Finally they realised that paying customers were out there and that they had to interrupt their backstage drug consumption to actually play a show. Which they totally went through the motions on. At the time this was the most expensive show I’d been to. I think it was £6, treble the price of The Who. They’d played the same venue some months earlier and blew the roof off.
The Stones weren’t about to blow anything. Lazy, half-arsed performance the low-light of which was Billy Preston coming to the front and asking if we wanted to see Mick swing out, as a stirrup attached to a cable was lowered from he roof. “I can’t hear you. Do you want to see Mick swing out?” Some shouted in the affirmative. “I still can’t hear you. Do you want to see Mick swing out?”. More people shouted. As it went on I bellowed “No!” But to no avail. And so Mick swang out on a rope. This was Rock and effing Roll in the mid 70s. Mick Jagger swinging on a rope. For our entertainment! It sounds incredible now, but it really happened. This was the level of their hubris – they thought we’d be entertained by a man swinging on a rope. Not doing any acrobatics, just swinging on a rope.
When I was a kid my mates and I used to go to the woods and swing on a rope from a tree. Who’d have thought we could have charged people to watch us?
I didn’t play The Rolling Stones for at least 10 years after that. I still haven’t really forgiven the useless, bunch of dozy f*****s.
They did another show at Bingley Hall the next night. After the gig Keith overturned his Bentley on the motorway. This led to his cocaine chain trial at Aylesbury Crown Court. I was so disappointed when he got off.
Great story.
After Mick swang out like that, it’s lucky he didn’t get stang off a bee
Now that would have been entertainment.
I’m not sure they took any more effort on the album cover of “Black and Blue.”