The Rolling Stones Tattoo You (1981)

From pitchfork.com

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the Rolling Stones’ 1981 album, a blueprint for how to exist as an aging, internationally famous rock band.

The Cockroaches arrived in Toronto at the end of February 1977, in need of a quick break from being the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the World. They’d been together for a decade and a half, their masterpiece album was five years behind them, and the three LPs they’d released since were not quite as spectacular. But they were richer and more famous than ever. Their most recent tour of North America, in 1975, had helped set the era’s standard for silliness and excess. There were six straight nights at Madison Square Garden, and five at the Forum; a flying trapeze for the singer, a confetti-breathing dragon, and an inflatable penis that stood as tall as two men when it wasn’t suffering from chronic mechanical dysfunction.

The band was planning on releasing a live album culled from these concerts, but there wasn’t enough worthy material. This is where Toronto came in: two secret shows booked at a tiny venue, under a fake band name, for a crowd of 300 unsuspecting fans, with a recording truck parked outside to capture the sort of energy that only arises when those fans are smashed into close contact with their idols. These would be the band’s first club gigs since they rocketed to worldwide stardom shortly after forming in the early ’60s. After all that glitz and decadence, perhaps becoming the Cockroaches was a way to get back to being the Rolling Stones.

It didn’t quite work. Typically for the era, the spectacle of the March 4th and 5th shows at Toronto’s El Mocambo tended to overshadow the music. Keith Richards, whose ever-deepening heroin addiction probably had something to do with the declining quality of the recent records, was arrested with about an ounce of it almost as soon as he arrived in Canada. Margaret Trudeau, the young and newly estranged wife of the Canadian prime minister, was seen cavorting backstage with the band, leading to slobbering speculative coverage from international tabloids. Love You Live, the resulting live album, wasn’t very good. But onstage, the Stones were finding their spark again, providing at least one glimpse at the unlikely musical resurgence they’d make over the next several years.

The Mocambo shows included the live debut of a neon-lit R&B vigil called “Worried About You,” marking the first public performance of any song from 1981’s Tattoo You, the last great Rolling Stones album. Each of its two sides presents an aesthetically distinct vision of the Stones. The first, led by “Start Me Up,” finds them settling into their role as a legacy-oriented stadium rock band, grabbing the essence of the sleazy blues-based music they’d perfected a decade before and blowing it up to Jumbotron proportions.

The second side, opening with “Worried About You,” briefly drops the world-conquering posture and allows them to appear as weary and middle-aged as they actually were at the time, with a stretch of bedraggled late-night soul music that’s both distinctly Stonesy and also not quite like anything else in their catalog—or anyone else’s. The production, in some liminal zone between ’70s analog warmth and ‘80s digital chill, only heightens the elegance of the performances. Tattoo You’s first side guaranteed the Rolling Stones’ sinecure as a hugely profitable enterprise for decades to come; the second side is their final gasp of brilliance before those profits became more important than anything else.

By the early ’80s, some of the fissures of the previous years had closed for the Rolling Stones, but new ones were beginning to open. Richards was (mostly) off heroin, prompted in part by his narrow avoidance of a long potential jail sentence after the Toronto bust. His (relative) sobriety allowed him to take a renewed presence in the Stones’ music and business affairs around the time of their hit 1978 album Some Girls, and according to Richards, Jagger wasn’t happy about that. The camaraderie at the center of the band they’d started as teenagers in 1962 would sour considerably in the coming years, eventually prompting a handful of ill-advised solo projects and a seven-year hiatus from performing live. But for now, they had a massive tour booked for the end of 1981, with no new album to promote and hardly any new material to record.

That Tattoo You exists at all is largely thanks to Chris Kimsey, an audio engineer who’d begun working with the band on 1971’s Sticky Fingers. “Tattoo You really came about because Mick and Keith were going through a period of not getting on,” Kimsey told an interviewer years later. “There was a need to have an album out, and I told everyone I could make an album from what I knew was still there.”

Kimsey and Jagger spent three months searching the band’s archives for recordings of rejected and forgotten songs, jams, and sketches from previous sessions, going as far back as 1973’s Goats Head Soup and as recent as 1980’s Emotional Rescue. They took the compiled instrumental tracks to a warehouse on the edge of Paris and recorded vocals and a few additional overdubs there—a process that could have been finished in a few days, according to Kimsey, but instead took six weeks due to Jagger’s extensive social commitments in the city. Assembled for commercial reasons, from a backlog of unused material, at a time when the players involved were beginning to hate each other and the singer often couldn’t be bothered to come to work, Tattoo You didn’t have any reason to be particularly special.

“Start Me Up” is the first track, and the last of the Rolling Stones’ signature songs. The thwack of its backbeat and strut of its opening riff are so familiar today that it’s difficult to fathom its earliest iteration as a reggae song, a product of the Stones’ extended flirtation with Jamaican music in the mid-’70s. They labored over “Start Me Up” unsuccessfully for years, trying something like 70 cumulative takes at multiple different studios before landing almost accidentally on the final version, playing it as a charged-up rocker on a lark for the first time ever. Richards hated it. According to Kimsey, the guitarist went as far as ordering him to wipe the recording from the tape. “So of course,” Kimsey remembers, “I didn’t wipe it.”

The final version was recorded on the same day the Stones also nailed Some Girls opener “Miss You,” and there are echoes of that discofied hit in “Start Me Up”’s piston-pumping rhythmic drive. But “Start Me Up” belongs to the stadium, not the dancefloor. It’s the first Stones song that seems specifically designed to reach the highest bleachers and get tens of thousands of people clapping along in time. Fittingly, it became a sports arena staple. It frequently opens setlists on the band’s ultra-professional latter-day tours, where even the cheap seats are pretty expensive. It soundtracked the launch of Microsoft Windows 95, netting the Stones several millions of dollars in fees and providing the groove for a few of the world’s richest people to execute a few of the worst dance moves ever captured on video.

If “Start Me Up” is a real-time document of a feral band of outsiders mutating into a bloodless big business, it’s also one of the most undeniable rock’n’roll songs ever recorded. Scrape away decades of overexposure and it’s still possible to hear the improvisatory rawness of those early demos in the finished version, especially in Bill Wyman’s bass playing, which still carries the faintest whiff of subterranean dub, and in the frenzy of yelps, grunts, and wheezes that constitutes Jagger’s vocal take. The tension between the off-the-cuff source recordings and their glossy final presentation is part of Tattoo You’s distinct charm. For an album with such muddled origins, it has a consistent sonic quality, with crisp echoes that are distinctly of its early-’80s era. Even that effect is stranger and more human than it seems, achieved not with any fancy technology, but by playing the tracks back in a studio bathroom and capturing the echoes from the tiles.

“Slave,” rides a slow-motion blues-funk groove that sounds like it could go on forever, and nearly does: a bootleg of the raw take runs to 11 minutes, cut down to five for the album. Its chanted and spoken vocals surely had something to do with Jagger’s newfound love of disco as a frequent patron of Studio 54, and its swaggering rhythm is a reminder that Richards spent his time off from the Stones in this era jamming with reggae and funk heavy-hitters like Sly & Robbie and Zigaboo Modeliste. Though their paths were diverging, 20 years after they initially bonded over a mutual love of Chuck Berry and John Lee Hooker, both Mick and Keith were still devoted students of black music.

Recorded at a time after guitarist Mick Taylor had left the Stones, but before Ronnie Wood formally replaced him, the initial “Slave” session featured marquee guests like Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, and frequent Stones collaborator Billy Preston on keys. Beck’s contributions were likely scrubbed from the final version, and no one seems to agree whether Townshend was playing guitar or just adding backing vocals. The unlikeliest contributor is Sonny Rollins, the master tenor saxophonist, whom Jagger invited to overdub solos on “Slave” and several other songs after seeing him play at a New York City jazz club in 1981.

Rollins’ phrasing is carefree and conversational throughout Tattoo You, sounding perfectly pleased to be playing circles around these guys. His participation is a poignant image of human connection from the otherwise fractured process of adding isolated new takes to previously existing recordings. Jagger remembers: “I said, ‘Would you like me to stay out there in the studio?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you tell me where you want me to play and dance the part out. So I did that. And that’s very important: communication in hand, dance, whatever. ” But the pairing was too brilliant to last. Rollins never collaborated with the Stones again, leaving drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts lamenting that he was on a record backing up one of his heroes without ever having actually played with him.

On Tattoo You’s flickeringly transcendent second side, the Stones sometimes sound like they’re shooting for Al Green or Prince (who opened a couple of gigs on the subsequent tour and got booed offstage at least once), and always like they’re a little too sad, loaded, and British to pull it off. Blues and country are here too, but only as shadows and reflections. The guitars are airy and transparent; the rhythm section softly works the pocket; Jagger whispers and convulses, using plenty of falsetto. It’s like the disarrayed intimacy of the classic Some Girls ballad “Beast of Burden” has been expanded into a five-song suite; only now, the burden has become much too heavy to bear.

In bootlegs from the Cockroaches’ Toronto ’77 shows, “Worried About You” is loose and jammy, nearly formless, stretching out to about eight minutes, with Mick Jagger audibly cueing the band through a sparse set of changes. In the studio version the public heard four years later, the changes were essentially the same, but the compositional arc had become clearer, and the bleary 5 a.m. atmosphere more vivid: Jagger channeling the spirit of past hedonism while reckoning with its effects in the present; tension building through ticking hi-hats and glowing electric piano toward a chorus that’s over almost as soon as it begins. “I’m worried, and I just can’t seem to find my way,” Jagger admits as the band sighs back into the verse behind him. That very moment captures the feeling of a halcyon period reaching its close.

The languor reaches a peak with “Heaven,” one of two entirely new compositions on Tattoo You, recorded by a skeleton crew version of the band—just Jagger, Watts, possibly Wyman, and Kimsey helping out—on a late night in Paris during the particularly cold winter of 1980. Kimsey recalls being able to see Jagger’s breath as they worked. The music is likewise swirling and vaporous, barely even there, far more psychedelic in its way than anything recorded during the band’s brief acid rock period of the late ’60s, and at least as erotic as any of their more openly hip-thrusting material. Jagger mumbles half-intelligibly, as if entranced, in the throes of sexual or religious ecstasy or both. Kimsey has been quoted as saying he “played alleged piano” on “Heaven,” which may be the result of a journalist’s bad transcription—there is some electric piano audible at the edges—but the odd phrasing is nonetheless appropriate for the rare Stones song that works by suggestion rather than demonstration, a half-formed memory or fantasy of events that may never have transpired at all.

Tattoo You closes with “Waiting on a Friend,” an ode to platonic companionship that’s among the most purely sweet songs the Rolling Stones ever wrote. From today’s vantage, it looks like one final expression of boyhood love between Jagger and Richards before the years of business-driven bitterness that would follow. As it fades into the mist with some Jagger falsetto and a beautiful sax solo from Rollins, it’s possible to close your eyes and imagine the Rolling Stones chose to wrap it up here, allowing the entire ’60s rock era to draw gracefully and finally to a close.

But they didn’t. After Tattoo You, there were bigger and more remunerative tours and public spats between Mick and Keith about music and money and penis size. Many albums took the backward-looking approach of Tattoo You as a figurative starting point, but without any of the sweat or ingenuity. “It’s almost as if Mick was aspiring to be Mick Jagger, chasing his own phantom,” Richards wrote scathingly in his 2010 memoir Life about his old friend during the post-Tattoo You ’80s. If you were feeling equally uncharitable, you could say the same about the band as a whole.

Shortly after the album’s release, a Rolling Stone interviewer expressed to Keith that he hoped the band would continue to exist and create music for another 20 years. “So do I, because nobody else has done it, you know?” Richards answered. “It’s kind of interesting to find out how rock & roll can grow up.” According to Billboard, the Stones’ 2019 “No Filter” tour grossed $415.6 million, placing it high on the list of the most profitable tours of all time. Their latest album, 2016’s Blue and Lonesome, is a collection of classic blues songs of the sort the Stones began their career by covering, another trip into the past.

And despite everything, on a good night, it’s still possible to catch the spark and recognize the Rolling Stones are still the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the World. It’s no wonder they once chose to rename themselves after a famously persistent prehistoric household pest for a few shows, intent on getting back to basics and recapturing the old glory. Cockroaches can live through anything.

The Rolling Stones Tattoo You (1981)

From donignacio.com

It’s not such a shocking thing to learn that a rock ‘n’ roll band had a vault full of unreleased material that didn’t make it on their previous albums. Most rock ‘n’ roll bands do that, I’d imagine. But it really says something about The Rolling Stones that they had material this good just sitting around! I mean, much of this stuff would have sounded great on their respective albums. Some might have even been substantial hits! Geez, can you think of any other rock band that would let such a piping-hot riff like “Start Me Up” lay around collecting dust for more than two weeks? I can’t! All things considered, though, it’s just as well that these songs wouldn’t see the light of day until 1981. The good people of 1981 definitely needed an album like this. It restored everyone’s faith in rock ‘n’ roll! Briefly.

It starts off with that powerhouse classic “Start Me Up,” which is such a widely known song that even I recognize it from my childhood, which I spent living under a rock. It has all the makings of a great pop-rock classic: the verses are just as catchy as the chorus, the guitars are crunchy and terrific, and Jagger’s vocals are thrilling. …Jagger claims that song was originally conceived as a reggae, but you wouldn’t know that by listening to it. Thank goodness it wasn’t! That song is considered a massive classic and for very good reason.

This is also the album with “Waiting For a Friend” on it, which isn’t one of the Stones’ most celebrated ballads, but it definitely should be. I never remember The Stones sounding so dang warm before! The instruments are very soft and sweet, Jagger’s vocal performance is beautiful, and the melody is really easy to take to heart. Usually their ballads are bittersweet or cynical, but … geez, that song just makes you want to grab the person nearest you and give them a big ol’ hug. It takes a lot for me to say that, because touching people gives me the willies! According to Wikipedia, The Stones were performing that song as early as 1970, and only God knows why they didn’t actually release this since it would have sold millions. Maybe its sheer good-heartedness wasn’t consistent with their image? I don’t know. But this is a great treat for anyone who hasn’t given it a listen yet!

“Hang Fire” is an incredibly catchy pop-rocker that was left off of Some Girls, and it would have absolutely thrived on that album. The riff is tight and infectious, and Jagger adopts that utterly enjoyable growl to his lead vocals. “Slave” is jammy blues-rock that dates from Black and Blue and features Jeff Beck on lead guitar. (Apparently Jeff Beck had auditioned to be in The Stones! … I was not aware of that!) It’s a very captivating song, and it’s catchier than a cactus. “Black Limousine” is more straightforward blues, and it proves exactly why The Rolling Stones were always considered masters at the stuff. It’s performed well, the melody is memorable without resorting to cliches, and it’s a whole lot of fun to listen to. Do I need to say anything else?

“Tops” is a song that dates from Goats Head Soup and it even features some extensive guitar work from Mick Taylor. (I guess Jagger and Richards were still a little peeved that Taylor left them since they didn’t give Taylor credit for it!) Anyway, that’s another one of the album’s main highlights; it’s a loud, gritty and catchy ballad that has more attitude than 98 percent of bands could generate over the course of their entire careers. Man!!! “Heaven” is the album’s odd-duck, a trippy and atmospheric ballad that surprisingly puts my brain right to the title-location. I would have thought that was something that dated from Goats Head Soup, but nope! That, along with the fun pop-rock ditty “Neighbors,” is the only song that was newly written.

…Oh man, Tattoo You is one of those rare albums where everything is a great song, and I have a hard time figuring out what I want to talk about! I haven’t yet mentioned Keith Richards’ infectious “Little T&A” and the noble ballad “Worried About You” yet, and it seems like I should have! (I also haven’t mentioned the ballad “No Use in Cryin’,” but that’s my least favorite song on here, so I don’t have to mention it. …OK, I just mentioned it, but I didn’t have to mention it, you see!) You definitely wouldn’t expect an album full of leftovers to be this great, but it seriously eclipses most of their ’70s albums. And that’s saying something. This is also considered the last great Rolling Stones album, and I definitely agree with that assessment.

The Rolling Stones Tattoo You (1981)

From helium.com

“Tattoo You” is one of the most unique albums ever recorded by the Rolling Stones. It features a great collection of straight rock songs which appeared on the vinyl album’s first side, followed by an introspective “suite” of songs about unfaithfulness and betrayal. The songs are arranged in the perfect order, and the introspective songs seem to tell the story of a relationship’s progress. But amazingly, most of “Tattoo You” was assembled from unrelated studio outtakes that were left over from the previous decade!

The jumble of songs meant the album ended up with a tremendous variety of styles. “Black Limousine” is a straight blues number, complete with a sassy harmonica solo by Mick Jagger. The song “Slave” features a funky jam session with a wailing chorus of “Do it, do it, do it, do it…” (as Mick riffs about not wanting to run errands). While that song runs on for over six minutes, “Hang Fire” is over in just 2:20 – a scorching taunt that contains one of my all-time favorite lyrics. (“You know that having money is a full-time job. I don’t need the aggravation, I’m a lazy slob.”) Keith Richards even does the vocals on a rambly song called “Little T&A” (though the chorus of the song is actually “She’s my little rock and roll.”)

But what makes this album stand out is the remarkable suite of thoughtful songs on the album’s second side. The five-song set culminates with the easy ballad “Waiting on a Friend,” which became a popular single. It’s the album’s final track, in which Mick sings wisely that “making love and breaking hearts is a game for youth.” But the four songs that precede it give an example of Mick doing just that. “Tops” wanders through all the pick-up lines that involve promises of success, and “Heaven” offers a dazzled, echoey montage about “kissing and running away.” The chilly aftermath appears in the album’s second to last track, in which Mick warns that “I ain’t never coming back,” and then re-creates the voice of a crying female as the chorus sings out the song’s title: “Ain’t No Use in Crying.”

Some saw the album as the Stones’ first acknowledgment of middle age. The album’s most famous track is probably “Start Me Up,” in which Mick croons that “You made a dead man come alive.” And at least one critic noted the more “mature” tone of the songs showing some regret over the one night stand. It’s preceded by a song of genuine self doubt, as Mick agonizes to his lover that he’s “Worried About You” and “I just can’t seem to find my way.” Ultimately the theme seeps into all the tracks, uniting both its bluesy numbers and its wild rock anthems into one great album.

The Rolling Stones Tattoo You (1981)

From classicrockreview.com

Part of the fun of reviewing all these great albums is discovering that some of your own long held preconceptions are, in fact, false. Approaching this album, Tattoo You by The Rolling Stones, I was “sure” on a couple of things that I had always “known”. I was “sure” it was a bit of a comeback album for the band, a return to Sticky Fingers-like rock n’ roll after the various glam, disco, and funk tangents that the band undertook in the 1970s. I was also “sure” that it was a fun and cohesive album for the band to make (I mean, just listen to the first two songs and tell me they’re not having fun).

But with some initial research for this article, I found that I was wrong on both counts. The album is not directed or cohesive. It is a mishmash of unreleased material recorded over that same time period when the Stones were exploring different tangents. It was also recorded at a time of great stress within the band, so it was hardly “fun” to make, despite the resulting vibe.

In fact, album’s creation is the direct result of a practical business decision. The band was about to embark on a huge worldwide tour in late 1981/early 1982, and it was decided that having a new album to promote would boost the band’s ticket sales. With no time to write, rehearse, and record new material, long time associate and producer Chris Kimsey stepped in. He told the band that he could make an album from what he knew already existed as outtakes over the past decade or so and began sifting through old recordings to find suitable material.

Kimsey spent a few months going through the material from several previous Stones albums, discovering many incomplete or under-developed songs that had been either forgotten or rejected in the past. The earliest of these would become the songs “Tops” and “Waiting For a Friend”, the latter being Tattoo You‘s critically acclaimed signature number that closes the album’s laid back second-side.

These songs were originally written and recorded in late 1972 during the sessions for the album Goat’s Head Soup and feature ex-guitarist Mick Taylor. “Waiting For a Friend” also features a solo by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins.

In 1975, during the sessions for the album Black and Blue, the band recording the backing tracks for a reggae-influenced song, but after twenty or so takes they got frustrated and shelved it. This same song would be re-born three more times during sessions for subsequent albums, as “Never Stop” during the sessions for Some Girls in 1977, then as “Start It Up” during the Emotional Rescue sessions in 1979. At that time, most of the band were convinced they had a hit, but guitarist Keith Richards was sure that he heard something very similar on the radio somewhere and insisted it be scrapped. Finally, with the production of Tattoo You, the song would be released as “Start Me Up” to tremendous success, reaching #2 on the Billboard pop charts, a position that the band would not reach or eclipse again in their lengthy career.

The remainder of the album comes from the sessions of those two most recent albums, Some Girls and Emotional Rescue. Most of these “songs” already had the instrument tracks recorded and just lacked vocals from Mick Jaggar. In fact, the bulk of the actual recording sessions for Tattoo You Jaggar was the only band member in attendance. The exceptions were “Neighbours” and “Heaven” which were the only brand new songs on the album.

However, even though the album was not constructed in a traditional fashion nor did it contain much up-to-date material, it certainly used cutting promotion. On August 1, 1981, MTV went on the air, a mere three weeks before the album’s release. The band would produce four videos to appear on the new network, including a rather creative one for “Neighbours” that plays off of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window and a memorable one for “Waiting For a Friend” that takes place in front of the same New York building featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.

The use of this new cable medium, would bring this (then) twenty-year-old band front and center to a new generation of music fans, including myself. At thirteen, I believed this was all new material by the Rolling Stones, and I continued to believe so right up until earlier this week.

The Rolling Stones Tattoo You (1981)

From blogcritics.org

The Rolling Stones were about to head out on a world tour that would last for a year. They wanted a release they could tour behind and so Tattoo You was born. Rather than creating a totally brand new album the Stones searched their archives for out takes, abandoned songs and unreleased material. The tracks selected would cover the years 1972-1981 and feature such former contributors as Mick Taylor, Bobby Keys, Billy Preston, Wayne Perkins, and a host of others. Mick Jagger would oversee the re-working and updating of these tracks plus the Stones would cut two new ones for this release.

This would not seem to be the best way to create an album but in the case of Tattoo You the results were excellent.

Tattoo You, released August 24, 1981, would become the Stones eighth consecutive, and last, number one album in the United States. It would also sell more copies than any other Stones studio album with the exception of Some Girls.

The opening guitar chords of “Start Me Up,” which lead off the album, immediately show that the rock ‘n’ roll Stones are back and all is well with the universe. This all time modern Rolling Stones classic song had been re-worked from its reggae roots in the Miss You sessions. If ever a song deserved to be a number one hit this was it. Unfortunately, it stalled at number two for three weeks behind “Private Eyes” by Hall & Oates.

“Start Me Up” has probably been the opening song for more live Rolling Stones concerts over the last twenty-five years than any other. If you want to hear this song in all its glory just check out the live Flashpoint album.

There were a number of other good to very good songs on the album. “Hang Fire” featured some nice piano from Stu and falsetto vocals from Mick Jagger. “Slave” is a mid-paced song from the Black and Blue sessions and features nice guitar work by Keith Richards and brilliant sax lines from Sonny Rollins. I happen to like “Little T&A.” This is a Keith Richards sung ode to his girlfriend Patti Hanson and basically the title says it all. “Waiting For A Friend” would bring the album to a soulful and peaceful conclusion. This easy flowing track from 1972 would be released as a single and reach number 13.

There were some misses on the album as well. “Neighbors” was more noise than melody. “Tops” was an average Mick Taylor era song about the pitfalls of show business. “Heaven” contained one to many Mick Jagger falsettos.

There were several other interesting developments connected to Tattoo You. Mick Taylor sued the Stones for royalties as he played on some of the songs. Ron Wood received an unprecedented writing credit on not one but two songs; “No Use In Crying” and “Black Limousine.” Mick Jagger was alone in the studio for the final mix of the album and as such played the guitar on a number of the tracks. Jagger was ultimately an average guitarist at best and the quality of this album would have been better if Richards and Wood had attended these final sessions.

Tattoo You was a good effort for the Rolling Stones and provided a nice send off for their tour. It was a reminder to millions of fans that The Rolling Stones were after all a rock ‘n’ roll band.

The Rolling Stones Tattoo You (1981)

From sputnikmusic.com

Tattoo You was the second Rolling Stones album released in the 1980’s, following Emotional Rescue. Out of the two, Tattoo You is the superior album. When released the album recieved rave reviews from the music press and some people even saw it as a return to form for the Stones (which was truly bull***, they were in form and didn’t need any return.

Recently, the album was voted #211 on Rolling Stones Magazine’s Top 500 Albums.

1. Start Me Up – Featuring one of the best riffs in rock history, this is probably the most recognizable Stones song besides “Satisfaction”. It embodies everything great about the Rolling Stones, and proved that they were not ready to give up any time soon. 5/5

2. Hang Fire – To me, the best part of this song is the vocal performance. Mick really captures the lyrics in this song through his singing. The words to this sometimes make me laugh, because they are so well written and truthful. 5/5

3. Slave – Starting off with a nice drum beat, this song takes the album is a little bit of a slower direction after two fairly fast songs. Mick sings this in a very rock n roll falsetto voice, and believe me, that is hard to pull off. Actually, parts of this song are rapped, too. Also, towards the 2 and a hlaf minute mark of the song, a quick sataphone comes in. It carries on for a while, but overall, this song is a 5/5.

4. Little T & A – Keith sings this song in his usual snarling voice. Charlie’s drum beat is very infectious. For reference, T&A = tits and ass. Keith throws down his usual pottymouth cusses during the course of this song, and overall it’s really enjoyable. 5/5

5. Black Limousine – Here, the Rolling Stones slow it down to mid-tempo for a nice blues-rock song. The guitar improvisation and harmonica are the key parts, featuring about a minute-long guitar solo.

6. Neighbours – “Neighbours” has gone on to become a Stones concert staple. The snare hits on this track are specifically accentuated, which adds to the aura of the song. I’ve always found it sort of jokey, but it’s still a 5/5.

7. Wooried About You – Again, the Stones put the album into mid-tempo, and, again, Mick takes on a falsetto (though during the chorus, he uses his usual voice). “Worried…” sees the Stones taking on balladry rock style, like they do very often. It incorporates elemnts of funk and dance music, yet is still a slow rock ballad, which I commend them for pulling off. 5/5

8. Tops – Being a mid-tempo funky ballad, I see this as one of the key tracks of the album. It has a certain mystique that’s primarily caused by song structure and the use of several different tempos within the song, which the Stones have always done well. 5/5

9. Heaven – Feauturing echoing vocals, a repetitive yet infectious drum beat, chimes, and a simple riff, “Heaven” is the strangest song off this album. It shows the band pushing into new territory. Also, the song is an extreme change is tempo, being also the slowest song featured on the album. 5/5

10. No Use In Crying – This song has well mixed harmonies throughout, and in a general sense does what most Stones ballads do, which is triggers the listener’s emotions. 5/5

11. Waiting On A Friend – “Waiting…” is the most memorable slower song off this album. After hearing the song once, I could actually remember most of the lyrics. There is a very effective saxophone part about midway through the song which the song would not be the same without. 5/5