The Stones infuse rhythm and blues with their own evocative, fertile energy jump. Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley stopped by Chicago's Chess Studios to watch while the ...
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The evolution from blues to rock accelerated with the Rolling Stones' second American LP. They turned soul into guitar rock for the hits "It's All Over Now" and "Time Is on...
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The Rolling Stones finally delivered a set of all-original material with this LP, which also did much to define the group as the bad boys of rock & roll with their sneering...
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A raw, woody model of down-home sophistication, Beggars Banquet matches country-blues ("Prodigal Son") with outlaw politics (Sympathy For The Devil") and a...
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The Stones forsook psychedelic experimentation to return to their blues roots on this celebrated album, which was immediately acclaimed as one of their landmark...
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One of the few times the Stones wandered far from their roots with much success, Between The Buttons features decadently friendly pop-rock experiments from fuzzed-out...
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The Rolling Stones' 1967 recordings are a matter of some controversy; many critics felt that they were compromising their raw, rootsy power with trendy emulations of the...
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High Tide's 12 cuts feature the Stones' early roll on singles ("Satisfaction," "It's All Over Now," "Get Off My Cloud") up through December's...
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The first hits compilation of the Rolling Stones is still one of the most potent collections of singles that one can find. Listening to it in 1966 or today, one can...
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The Stones once again reach to black rhythms for the chunky death-disco and funk-reggae grooves that dominate the disk. It makes for a cool-tone dance party, with gorgeous...
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The most interesting archival release of the Rolling Stones since More Hot Rocks, 20 years ago, and the first issue of truly unreleased material by the Stones from this...
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The last Stones album in which cover material accounted for 50 percent of the content was thrown together from a variety of singles, British LP tracks, outtakes, and a cut...
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The '80s Stones continue to define roots-leaning hard rock, with help from producer Steve Lillywhite (U2), without expanding the scope--a tack the younger Stones would never...
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At its best, Dirty Work captures the friction between Mick and Keith during the album's recording; at its worst, it's simply a competent collection of hard rock, spiked with...
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Summarily panned by critics when it was released, Exile is now universally hailed as the best double-set rock has produced, a soulful epic of murky obsessions that took a...
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Though the sound is glossy and confined, this 17-track memento from the 1989-90 Steel Wheels/ Urban Jungle world tour features a reasonable 25-year cross-section of greatest...
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Recorded during their American tour in late 1969, and centered around live versions of material from the Beggars Banquet-Let It Bleed era. Often acclaimed as one of the top...
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Goats Head may be a "B" Stones album-- good songs gone a bit gooey thick and excessively '70s--but it's still a comparative treat. Mick Taylor lacks the rhythmic...
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The playing is raw, energetic and gloriously sloppy. But the sound is crummy, and teen screams often drown out the music. Got Live is worth acquiring for "Fortune...
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A live document of the Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones sounds enticing, but the actual product is a letdown, owing to a mixture of factors, some beyond the producers' control...
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This two-disc (but hardly all-inclusive) anthology of the Stones' most fertile era features a good mix of 21 hits released on London Records, including "Time Is On My...
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This two-LP/two-CD set is both a lot more and a bit less than what it seems. It is seven years' worth of mostly very high-charting -- and all influential and important --...
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It's Only Rock 'N' Roll retains the '70s excesses of Goats Head Soup, but here the dense, reckless looseness turns more upbeat and, despite soft spots, the material is more...
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As a coda to Brian Jones's life and the 1960s, Let It Bleed is perhaps the ultimate Stones album. A rock epiphany, it includes "Gimme Shelter," "Midnight...
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Mostly recorded without Brian Jones -- who died several months before its release (although he does play on two tracks) and was replaced by Mick Taylor (who also plays on...
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Love You Live is a feelin'-loose two-disc set from the 1976-77 world tour, recorded in Paris and Toronto with Ron Wood, Ian Stewart and Billy Preston. Though it marks the...
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Recorded on the supporting tour for 1976's Black and Blue, the double-album set Love You Live is an adequate live album, capturing the Stones' transition from a lean, lethal...
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A reasonable but disjointed hits package covering four albums at the start of the "tongue" era, from Sticky Fingers through It's Only Rock &Roll, Shade comes off...
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Released in the summer of 1975, in the down period between Mick Taylor's departure and as the Stones were auditioning guitarists during the recording of 1976's Black and...
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This double-LP hits set was just more recycling-- except for the fourth side. There, a few rare gems and unreleased tracks resided, including "Come On" (the...
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Hot Rocks covers most of the monster hits from the Stones' first decade that remained in radio rotation for decades to come. More Hot Rocks goes for the somewhat smaller...
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Highlighted by Richards' breakthrough riffs on "The Last Time" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," Heads cemented the Stones' bad-boy image....
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In 1965, the Stones finally proved themselves capable of writing classic rock singles that mined their R&B/blues roots, but updated them into a more guitar-based, thoroughly...
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Once simply viewed as a ramshackle overview of the Rolling Stones' decidedly uneven career throughout the '70s and into the early '80s, Rewind (1971-1984), ironically...
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The three-disc box set Singles Collection: The London Years contains every single the Rolling Stones released during the '60s, including both the A- and B-sides. It is the...
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"Mixed Emotions" and "Rock And A Hard Place" were the hits from Steel Wheels, which, despite its glossiness, was a broad-reaching effort full of...
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The Stones, or more accurately the relationship between Mick and Keith, imploded shortly after Dirty Work, resulting in Mick delivering a nearly unbearably mannered,...
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A great, brassy, ballsy album that culled much of its material from leftovers of the previous two years, Sticky Fingers features "Brown Sugar" "Wild...
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The Stones' live energy is at a low as they substitute glitz for grit. It doesn't seem quite as pathetic today as it must have then, shoulder-to-shoulder with punk rock,...
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There's a certain smarmy charm in the Rolling Stones titling a compilation of their work from the second half of the '70s Sucking in the Seventies -- it seems a tacit...
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The Stones' convincingly re-hyped swagger powers Tattoo You, which includes the classic "Waiting On A Friend" and "Start Me Up," later known as the...
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The British version of the Stones' first album has a nearly identical cover to its American equivalent, issued six weeks later, but a slightly different song lineup. Among...
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Although their third American album was patched together (in the usual British Invasion tradition) from a variety of sources, it's their best early R&B-oriented effort. Most...
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The meandering Satanic Majesties, on which the Stones acted as their own producers and messed around with the recording process, was a blatant knock-off of the Beatles' Sgt....
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Without a doubt, no Rolling Stones album -- and, indeed, very few rock albums from any era -- split critical opinion as much as the Rolling Stones' psychedelic outing. Many...
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This is an exquisite collection of 11 singles dating from Aftermath through Beggar's Banquet ("Paint It Black" to "Street Fighting Man"). Collectors...
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This album was spawned by three coinciding events -- the need to acknowledge the death of band co-founder Brian Jones (whose epitaph graces the inside cover) in July of...
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The 40-plus Stones no longer jibe with rock rebel themes (sex, political protest, decadence, womanizing) in this flimsy stab at being rock spokesmen for the '80s. And the...
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As the Rolling Stones' most ambitious album since Some Girls, Undercover is a weird, wild mix of hard rock, new wave pop, reggae, dub, and soul. Even with all the careening...
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Many of the 15 tracks on Voodoo Lounge exude a prickly energy, especially for fiftysomething rockers. While the album may sound like the Stones' memorable work of the '70s,...
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Funny that the much-touted "reunion/comeback" album Steel Wheels followed Dirty Work by just three years, while it took the Stones five years to turn out its sequel, Voodoo...
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The two unreleased rockers on this four-track single are surprisingly strong. "I'm Gonna Drive" is a mid-tempo burner that owes a debt to the Elvis Presley classic "Little...
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Darryl Jones always seemed an overqualified replacement for Bill Wyman's simple, solid anchors. But here Jones's mobile basswork and Chuck Leavell's organ gurgles add new...
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This is just embarrassing. It seems that anyone who's followed the Stones' once-brilliant career (and the brilliance lasted far longer than anyone had a right to expect) up...
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Pass over the hipster remixes and instead revel in Babylon's traditional gutsiness on the best Stones' effort since Tattoo You. The leadoff track, "Flip The...
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Voodoo Lounge confirmed that the Stones could age gracefully, but it never sounded modern; it sounded classicist. With its successor, Bridges to Babylon, Mick Jagger was...
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It happens like clockwork: Every few years, the Rolling Stones put out an album, then tour, then follow the tour with another album documenting the tour. And there'll always...
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Another record, another tour, another live album chronicling the whole shebang. The Rolling Stones have followed this basic pattern since the early '80s -- if Keith had been...
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Sort of a Between the Buttons, Part II, Flowers collected non-album singles and b-sides ("Have You Seen Your Mother Baby," "Mother's Little Helper,"...
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Dismissed as a rip-off of sorts by some critics as it took the patchwork bastardization of British releases for the American audience to extremes, gathering stray tracks...
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Since 1977, when the double-live Love You Live offered a live souvenir of the 1976 Black and Blue tour, the Rolling Stones made a habit of documenting their recent tour with...
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Sliding out of perhaps the greatest winning streak in rock history, the Stones slipped into decadence and rock star excess with Goats Head Soup, their sequel to Exile on...
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During the mid-'70s, the Rolling Stones remained massively popular, but their records suffered from Jagger's fascination with celebrity and Richards' worsening drug habit....
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Forty Licks, like Elvis' 30 #1 Hits, is a career-spanning compilation that wouldn't have happened without the unprecedented, blockbuster success of Beatles 1. Where Elvis'...
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Like Emotional Rescue before it, Tattoo You was comprised primarily of leftovers, but unlike its predecessor, it never sounds that way. Instead, Tattoo You captures the...
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Pieced together from outtakes and much-labored-over songs, Sticky Fingers manages to have a loose, ramshackle ambience that belies both its origins and the dark...
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Released in 1994 to coincide with the Stones' catalog moving to Virgin Records, as well as the accompanying remastering of their Rolling Stone Records catalog (1971's Sticky...
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Since 1977, when the double-live Love You Live offered a live souvenir of the 1976 Black and Blue tour, the Rolling Stones made a habit of documenting their recent tour with...
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December's Children (And Everybody's) was the last Rolling Stones album in which cover material accounted for 50-percent of the content, which was thrown together from a...
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The Rolling Stones 1967 recordings are a matter of some controversy; many critics felt that they were compromising their raw, rootsy power with trendy emulations of the...
more >
