The Rolling Stones: Flowers (US compilation)
This US compilation release included three previously unreleased tracks as well as songs from Aftermath, Between The Buttons and non-album singles. It plays out as a pretty good album in its own right.
A wonderfully tuneful, hooky and totally infectious Stones ballad is found here in Ruby Tuesday, one of my favourites of the "slow Stones" songs. It has lovely, evocative verses and imagery along with an irresistible chorus. As with quite a few Stones songs, it has been covered by others, perhaps in an arguably superior style. Two of these are Rod Stewart on his 1993 Lead Vocalist album and Melanie Safka, whose early seventies throaty "goodbye Roo-bay Toos-day" rendition has always done it for me, big time. I love it. The Stones' version still retains a simple innocence though.
Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow? - Motown was huge in 1996 and big brass breaks were everywhere - The Beatles used one notably on Revolver's Got To Get You Into My Life and Keith Richards freely admits that he wanted to get a sort of Otis Redding Stax-ish sound to this odd choice for a single. While that was most laudable in that his influences were impeccable, the song wasn't actually that good. Beginning with some jangly guitar, the brass then arrives in punchy style but the overall sound is really muffled and indistinct. Jagger's vocal is hurried and the whole thing seems just too damn frantic to me. There is a bit of punky energy to it but it is the impression of sonic murk that has always remained with me. No amounts of remastering seem to have improved things. The best bit is the very sixties-ish bit where it slows down for a short while.
Let's Spend The Night Together was a very controversial song at the time, prudish US radio and TV shows asking the lyric be changed to "let's spend some time together". How things soon changed. That very summer everyone was sharing the same bed, man. The song is a frantic, attitude-bearing rock number that was covered superbly, in my opinion, by David Bowie on his 1973 Aladdin Sane album. He gives it a wired-up, electric sexuality that outdoes even Jagger, amazingly.
The Stones loved a bit of Elizabethan courtly grandeur and Lady Jane is one of the finest examples of it. A beautiful slow number with a haunting, reflective vocal from Jagger and evocative Jones instrumentation. It is another image-defying number that showed The Stones to be clever lyricists and musicians. It is packed full of mock-grandiose atmosphere. The stereo version of it found of the remastered version of the Aftermath album is simply superb.
Included here in its shorter, single version, Out Of Time showed that The Stones could do a soulful pop song. Chris Farlowe had a huge number one hit with it, of course, and in the mid-seventies Nazareth singer Dan McCafferty did a really good version of it. I love all three versions. The Stones were the ones who gave it a marimba backing, though. It's just such a damn good song.
The Stones actually do a reasonable job on The Temptations' classic Motown love song My Girl, not losing any of the song's intrinsic soul. Jagger's vocal is acceptable too. Somehow, though, the song just doesn't really suit them, does it?
The Stones seem almost polite and shy-ish on much of the 1967 Between The Buttons album's material from which Back Street Girl came - the total opposite of their recent bad-boy image - and this song certainly expresses no Get Off My Cloud defiance, Stupid Girl misogyny or Let's Spend The Night Together lust. Jagger's beautiful vocal here, sung over Brian Jones piano-accordion is typical of this. Like Lady Jane, it is almost Elizabethan in its instrumentation, cadence and ambience. It would be a while before The Stones would be so nice again. There's always something lurking between the surface with The Stones, though and the singer's motives concerning his "common" girl are questionable, however, warning her not to try and get too much into his life, or indeed come near his wife.As for Please Go Home, some more bluesy guitar is to be found on another impressive track with a Not Fade Away-Mona Bo Diddley rhythm. Apparently a "theramin" instrument was used on this to make weird noises. The Beach Boys had memorably used one on Good Vibrations not long before. The Stones did not really need to use gimmicky instruments like this, just use Keith's guitar, for God's sake.
Mother's Little Helper, sung in Jagger’s extremely affected “mockney” voice - was patronising, lyrically, to say the least. "What a drag it is getting old" - Jagger sings, taking an unnecessary swipe at stressed-out housewives. No matter, really, though, I guess. They were still comparatively young. That said, the song is unnecessarily sneering and, at times cruel and insensitive. Listening to this, I just don't feel Jagger had the right to tear these poor women apart. Leave 'em alone eh, Mick? They ain't hardly botherin' you none.
Take It Or Leave It was a melodic, emotive and catchy ballad with a sad, mournful chorus. A nice song. It has a very sixties r 'n' b/pop feel to it, more the sound of 1964 than 1966, maybe. It is one of the most typical Stones slowies from the period, with a sad-sounding vocal from Jagger.
Ride On Baby is a wonderful Stones deep cut - packed full of regretful soul. It was actually done much better - arguably as Out Of Time also was - by Chris Farlowe, who made it his own. I have long been a fan of this song, by either artist. Lyrically, it is one of those "cynical about shallow girls" Stones songs, very typical of the group's - or more accurately, Jagger's - prevailing attitude.
A jolly little acoustic, folky song is found here in Sittin' On A Fence, whose selection for this compilation is questionable. It dated from the sessions for 1965's Aftermath. Lyrically, it was a somewhat cynical song, criticising couples who get married. It was hardly a subject for a big us and them rebellion, though, was it? There were better things to rail about, surely?
