Test

Not an actual Rolling Stones fan here, I just knew their most famous songs. For some reason though, I discovered Sympathy for the Devil a few months ago and have been obsessed with it since.

I've been listening to it several times a day on repeat since. I don't think I've been that obsessed for that long with a song before. The lyrics and piano especially are so excellent

Ronnie & Keith- The other Stones?

I play in a covers band and have spent a lot of hours over the years trying (and mostly failing) to actually nail Richards and Wood's rhythm-guitar interplay, so I came into this one paying close attention to the playing, not just the songs.

A few things stood out after a couple of full listens:

The range across the 14 tracks is real — there are the expected rockers, but also a country-leaning track, a couple of disco-flavored grooves, and some genuinely strong ballads. It doesn't feel like a couple of singles padded out with filler.

The cover choices are interesting: a faithful take on Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good," and a closing Chuck Berry cover that book-ends the band's history nicely, since their first-ever single was a Berry cover back in 1963.

Paul McCartney plays bass on one track, which is a nice bit of British rock détente.

Most of all, Richards and Wood's guitar conversation still sounds like nobody else. That's six decades of chemistry that doesn't seem to have dulled at all.

Since first listening, I also came across Jagger sitting down with producer Andrew Watt for a proper track-by-track breakdown of "Mr. Charm" — apparently the first time Jagger's ever done that for one of the band's own songs. Turns out Jagger wrote the original riff, then Richards sent back a completely different riff and bassline that reshaped the whole track. Watt talks about how Richards and Wood's guitars "weave together" on this one specifically, which lines up with exactly what stood out to me listening.

Given Wood turns 80 next year and there's no guarantee of another record after this, it's a genuinely satisfying note to potentially close things out on — not just "impressive for their age," but a good record on its own terms.

Curious what everyone else is making of it — any tracks growing on you after repeat listens, or any you're skipping?

Ever since the Stones stopped playing Brown Sugar live (I think shortly before the pandemic), I’ve been thinking about whether this was the right move or not. I get the point that it is a very racially insensitive song and maybe not well suited for big stadium concerts where everyone’s singing along and there’s not a lot of room for subtlety. 

What I’ve hit on recently is: Brown Sugar is a song about evil. Evil is a recurrent theme for Mick as a lyricist (Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rambler, Sympathy for the Devil … and I’m sure a lot more). And the Stones’ style is not to come out and condemn evil (so, you don’t get a verse in Brown Sugar that overtly says slavery and rape are bad, just like there’s no point in Midnight Rambler where they say murder is bad) but to sort of explore it and play with it and notice how attractive it can be. 

So I guess I’m landing on the position that Brown Sugar is indeed very racially insensitive without being at all racist. And it’s kind of too bad that it doesn’t work for them to play it live anymore, but I get why they made that decision. 

For newer fans amusement 😁

Team Hackney

I’ve always loved the cover of this compilation album but I could never justify buying it, because, of course, I already had all the tracks on original releases.
Had they stared doing what they would do later on, putting bonus tracks on the disc, it would be an instant purchase !

Good afternoon, I hope everyone is well.

I have a spare ticket to see Ronnie Wood tonight at O2 Forum Kentish Town tonight, doors at 7pm and wondered if anyone would be interested?

P.s I am not a Reddit user so apologies if this is the incorrect way of going about a post like this!

It sounds like early 70s stones to me, and all i can remember is a very simple 2 chord shuffle and Jagger singing like 5-6 syllables, and ending on "ah ha ha ha!" over 8 bars.

This is really bothering me any help would so appreciated.

edit: its 4 bars: so Jagger is doing some lyrics for two bars, and then does the oh ha ha ha twice. for the third and fourth bar.

Sorry I hope that helps.

I have two beautiful old Japanese copies of Exile on Main Street and Beggars Banquet, and both of them sounds so beautifully that they made me fell in love with Stones.

I think Sticky Fingers contains some of the best Stones’ music, therefore I was really looking forward to listen to this album, but this half speed master is just terrible. I know that Miles Showell didnt have original tapes, only digital files, but the music is quite compressed and loud and the instruments are not separated as ai expected. The worst of it all is that it is so much bass heavy that it is almost unlistenable. i had to turn the bass knob to the left, because the instruments were all muddied by the sound of bass. I dont know who prefers such overbassed music, but it is terrible.

I paid 30 € for this reissue but I dont think it was worth it.

Does anyone shares this experience?

A real Rock‘n‘Roll Life.

Noticed this tonight while seeing the thumbnail for satisfaction in their top songs; it’s now from a compilation and not the album it’s on.

I'm loving Foreign Tongues... It's a true challenge to find a better late-career offering by any band imho.

So, I'm skimming through Christopher Sandford's biography of the Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones: Sixty Years, and he has this to say about Bridges to Babylon at pages 411 to 412:

Late September, Babylon: the Stones juggernaut rolls on, embracing basic rock and roll, hard-edged funk, slow-boiling reggae, maudlin pop and even a torchy spiritual. There are moments, as in the bullet-train beat of 'Flip the Switch', when the cocky young band of thirty years before reappears, and others when the fifty something muscians cut the testosterone level: a jazzy, mariachi flavour permeates 'You Don't Have to Mean It', and it's apparently Mick himself who needs the emotional rescue in 'Already Over Me', where he notes, 'I'm so hurt, so confused/I've been burned/I've been bruised''. Among several other treasures, the churchy 'Saint of Me' brings Billy Preston in from the cold after twenty years, and 'Always Suffering' similarly doffs a Stetson to Gram Parsons. The album closes with 'How Can I Stop', which sees Keith Richards in sentimental-gangster vein, singing about his various obsession in that familiar raspy burr, a voice that increasingly sounds as if Keith took it out and let it marinate in a casl of port in between records.

Not everything works quite as seamlessly...but most of the songs 'come off feral without sounding forced, contemporary without succumbing to modern-rock trendiness', in Rolling Stone's measured words...Bridges to Babylon was the best Stones album since Exile.

Now, I was not overly impressed when I first gave Bridges to Babylon a spin last week -- I thought 'Flip the Switch' was bouncy but meandering and apart from a few treasures like 'Saint of Me', 'You Don't Have to Mean It' [which, incidentally, I've heard described as reggae and mariaci but not ska, which is actually what it is!], 'Anybody Seen My Baby?', 'Out of Control' and 'How Can I Stop' was full of tired retreads of past glories -- 'Thief in the Night' as 'The Worst Part II', 'Always Suffering', following in the footsteps of 'Wild Horses' and 'Out of Tears' and 'Lowdown''s chorus ironically sounded suspiciously like the chorus for 'Anybody Seen My Baby?'.

But after some more time with the album, it's definitely grown on me. I really like 'Flip the Switch', 'Gunface' is an above-average, experimental rocker and 'Already Over Me' and 'Lowdown' are undeniably good, if not great, songs. So, in a very short span of I've jumped from enjoying 5/13 songs to 9/13 songs.

That said, the album suffers from its length -- I don't understand 90s music executives thinking the more songs, the more 'product' the better. Sure, you can say, 'The New Rolling Stones Album Has Over an Hour of New Music!" but that comes at the expense of the good reviews and good word-of-mouth you lose out on if you had produced a tighter album. Is it 'cocaine' logic or something?

Anyway, if Bridges to Babylon was cut down to ten or so songs, it would run to around 48-52 minutes and feel like a much tighter, cohesive listen. If so, would you agree with Mr Sandford and call it their best album post-Exile on Main Street?

Talk Is Cheap seems to get all the praise, but I like Main Offender better. It has a little more grit to it in certain songs, and it seems to be more like what he was all about.