The Rolling Stones: Big Hits (High Tide & Green Grass)
This review covers the UK release of The Rolling Stones' first compilation. It is two tracks longer than its US counterpart and the song selection is superior too.
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.
Much more impressive than much of the UK Aftermath album's material was the song that preceded Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing In The Shadow? as a single - a Stones classic in Paint It, Black. Why the comma in the title though? A processing typo apparently, I'm told. Utilising Brian Jones's Eastern instrumentation obsession to the max, featuring him playing the sitar on the song's now iconic coda and getting right in on the hippy thing, the song is at the same time a hippy freakout and a solid upbeat rocker. It is packed full of energy, hooks, instrumental bits you can sing along with as well as a killer vocal.
A huge 1964 number one here. It's All Over Now was a Bobby Womack song that The Stones made their own, so much so that most people these days just think it was a Stones original. It was the first of five consecutive UK number ones. You can hear why - it has boundless youthful energy and helped in establishing just what The Stones were all about. Kudos to the stereo version too - there's a surprise!
The Last Time - a Jagger-Richards number that very much followed in the soundsteps of It's All Over Now in its upbeat verve and vigour, the song had an absolute corker of a jangly guitar riff. Perfect mid-songs pop. Jagger's end of the chorus "oh no" vocal bit was incredibly catchy, as was the "no no no no" shrieking bit at the end.
On Heart Of Stone, Jagger tells his little girl she needs to forget him and she will never break his heart of stone, exploiting the whole "bad boy" thing. Don't let your daughter go near a Rolling Stone, for he has a heart of stone. The song leans heavily on traditional blues in its slow melody. It has a fine, deep bassline too. It showed that The Stones could do moody slowies as well as breakneck rockers. It is one of those tracks from the period that I prefer listening to in its stereo format. The song was released as a single in the US but not in the UK.
Buddy Holly's fast-paced romp Not Fade Away would seem to have been tailor-made for The Stones. Once more, they put their own unique stamp on it, from Jones's harmonica to Richard's guitar to Jagger's effortlessly drawly vocal. It is 1:48 of early Stones perfection. It is best heard via The Rolling Stones In Mono box set.
Come On - The Rolling Stones' first single, this energetic blues rock Chuck Berry cover never fails to do it for me. Many Stones commentators that I have read seem to under-rate it, viewing it as shallow and throwaway. Not me. I love it. It overflows with youthful enthusiasm, and, of course, it introduced the world to the glory that would be the Rolling Stones.
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was the one that gave us the Stones riff for the first time. The song spawned numerous myths about its creation - Jagger and Richards locked in a room by Andrew Oldham until the had written a number one hit etc etc. Whatever, it has become possibly their most famous song. From its iconic "dah-dah-da-da-daaaah" singalong riff to Jagger's precociously cynical vocals taking swipes at the shallowness of the advertising industry and contemporary consumer culture. This was one of the early occasions where a pop song had such sneering, questioning lyrics. If you feel you have heard Satisfaction just too many times, just close your eyes and put yourself in the place of someone hearing it for the first time in August 1965. Now how good does it sound? Its effect must have been seismic for so many people.
Were two better singles ever released within two months of each other than Get Off Of My Cloud and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction? Even better, for me, than Satisfaction was this one, a number which showcased Charlie Watts' rat-a-tat machine gun drumming and also gave us more world-weary lyrics. Such observational cynicism from ones so young. Jagger sings from the point of view of someone living in a typically sixties new-build high rise block, looking out of his windows, musing on the word outside and getting annoyed at his neighbours' loud music and his own ringing telephones. It is a rant at modern life delivered perfectly, propelled furiously along by Watts' insistent drums, like a migraine hammering into your stressed-out head. It was the new, frenetic, pressurised sixties life in three minutes. From Jagger's first "urrgh" at the beginning, the song takes no prisoners.
In direct comparison with the incendiary Get Off Of My Cloud comes the disarmingly beautiful and sensitive As Tears Go By. Jagger sings as if he is a tired, weary old man totally fed up with the world and longing for some gentle beauty in his world. The song gives him that, in its wistful lyrics and its stunning baroque-influenced melody and string-dominated instrumentation. This song did as much as any to convince many that these weren't simply a bunch of gobby, unwashed oiks.
19th Nervous Breakdown - along with Mother's Little Helper, poor old stressed-out housewives didn't get much sympathy from the insensitive Stones, did they? However, this song may not have been addressed at them, more at a paranoid man unable to cope with modern life. I always felt it was a partner to Helper, though, aimed at a woman. Either way, the character is a figure of sneering contempt for The Stones. The song is notable for Bill Wyman's rumbling, rubbery "dive-bombing" bassline at the denouement.
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.
Time Is On My Side - this is the now more popular "guitar intro" version of the song that appeared on the UK album The Rolling Stones #2 as opposed to the starker, more downhome, bluesier one that appeared on the US-released 12 x 5 album. It is probably the superior one and has Jagger giving an impressive vocal as he draws out "ti-i-i-ime" enthusiastically. It is one of The Stones' first notable musical achievements - the song is full of bluesy passion married to considerable musical proficiency for ones so young.
Little Red Rooster - a surprise number one UK single for The Stones in that it was a classic, slow-grinding Willie Dixon blues, with nothing remotely pop about it at all. It was a gamble to release it as a single but boy, it worked. It only seems to be available in its original mono recording, but what a sound it gives us - full, warm, bassy and possessing a wonderfully clear percussion sound throughout. I just love the sound on this with a vengeance. Paul McCartney once said that The Stones were "just a blues covers band" - well, if they kept covering the blues as well as this, no-one was complaining, were they? They covered the blues far more convincingly than The Beatles covered rock 'n' roll or Motown.
Included on the US version of the album at the expense of Satisfaction, Have You Seen Your Mother, Paint It Black, Come On, Lady Jane and Little Red Rooster were these three songs -
Tell Me You're Coming Back is Jagger and Richards' first song and you can tell. It has that typical mid-sixties Stones sound that the other songs don't have. That mid-paced, electric and acoustic guitar backed sound. It has an excellent guitar solo near the end too. It is a bit of an underrated early Stones number.
Good Times Bad Times is an early Jagger-Richards number that sounds very much as if it were an authentic piece of Delta blues. It is pretty credible in its slow bluesy grind, and also its impressive harmonica solo. It reminds me a bit of a blues song that Queen recorded as a 'b' side in 1974 called See What A Fool I've Been.
Play With Fire was another of those atmospheric slow, cynical ballads that warned society girls not to dally with those mad, bad and dangerous to know Rolling Stones. It is notable for some more Elizabethan/baroque-influenced grandiose-sounding keyboard backing. It also has some "swinging London" location references in St. John's Wood, Knightsbridge and Stepney, neither of which were near Carnaby Street or the King's Road, but never mind, for many they will have fitted the bill.
