The
Rolling Stones SACDs (1963 - 1971): An Overview
Music/PCM
CD Stereo/DSD Stereo
The
London Years/Singles Collection
A/B-/A-
Beggars
Banquet
A-/B+/A-
Let
It Bleed
A-/B+/A-
Sympathy
For The Devil Remix Maxi-Single
DSD 5.1 Stereo B-/B/A
The
ABKCO Company helped break in the Super Audio CD format commercially
when it issued 22 SACDs with regular CD layers of the early years of
The Rolling Stones in 2002. A year later, they have added the
first-ever 5.1 Stones SACD, a remix compilation all of the song
''Sympathy for the Devil''. That is the most extensive catalog
availability of any artist on SACD (or even DVD-Audio) to date, with
ABKCO spending much time, money and effort to restore all their
archive of the Stone's master tapes. It is fair to say it paid-off,
and the fact that a remix SACD even exists testifies to the fact of
just how far they made it in cleaning up and preserving some of the
most important recordings ever made.
Those
reissues include the expected overlap, plus cases where there are
both U.S. and U.K. editions of a given release. As a way to get to
the point about these releases, we got our hands on what we thought
would be the best way to do an overview of this series without
covering every single SACD. That logically brings us to the big hits
set.
The
London
Years/Singles Collection
is a three SACD set, covering all the hits and oddities that have
previously surfaced as the Hot
Rocks
collections. It has been a contention of mine for years that these
early recordings never did sound right. Finally, that has been
corrected for the most part, but some of the oddities or edits of
songs for singles release have not held up as well as their
full-length counterparts. Sound quality differences are noticed
between tracks on this album and the last two studios albums in the
series covered here (Beggars
Banquet,
Let It
Bleed)
that make no sense. The songs simply sound better on their original
studio album counterparts, especially when comparing the regular CD
tracks. DSD (Direct Stream Digital), the High Definition SACD
digital signal, offers less of a difference when comparing the two
sets.
However,
London
Years
offers material not found elsewhere and is a solid overview of their
rise as ''The Greatest Rock Band of All Time''. They were rivaled by
The Who, and never could totally get ahead of The Beatles when they
were still together, but The Stones ultimately endured in the long
run, so it is a title they earned and deserve. The evolution from
Blues-loving rockers to the distinctive, groundbreakers they became
backs that up in the music presented here. SACD 1 offers ''Time Is
On My Side'', a song that first showed the band as we know it coming
together, an artistic breakthrough for them. Thematically, it is
more to the point of how they would be seeing life throughout their
history, which is to the point for starters. ''(I Can't Get No)
Satisfaction'' is the full-blown Stones about to go on their Rock
winning streak, proving that they were already the rough alternative
to The Beatles without any compromises. ''Get Off Of My Cloud''
reinforced this, offering attitude like nothing ever heard on radio
to that time. There are 25 tracks in all on this first SACD,
including other hits like ''Tell Me (You're Not Coming Back)'',
''It's All Over Now'', ''Heart of Stone'', ''The Last Time'' and ''As
Tears Go By''.
SACD
2 offers masterworks like ''Paint It Black'', ''Let's Spend The Night
Together'', ''Ruby Tuesday'' and ''Jumpin' Jack Flash'', as well as
hits like ''19th Nervous Breakdown'', ''Mother's Little Helper'',
''Lady Jane'', ''Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standin' In The
Shadows'', ''Dandelion'' and ''She's A Rainbow'' among its 20 tracks.
SACD three offers the great ''Street Fightin' Man'', ''Honky Tonk
Woman'', the great ''You Can't Always Get What You Want'', the
immortal ''Brown Sugar'', and the ever-infamous ''Sympathy For The
Devil'', appropriately the thirteenth and final track. That's 58
songs in all. ''Brown Sugar'' and ''Wild Horses'' are from their
Sticky
Fingers
album from 1971, which is NOT a part of this slate of SACDs. That is
the first of the albums from the Rolling Stones Records label, though
Virgin (the then-current proprietors of that label, following
Atlantic and Columbia Records; now its Universal Music as of 2018)
did reissue them a few years ago in updated CDs.
Beggars
Banquet
(1968) began the fully-fledged Stones, began their second era of
recording, and is one of several studio albums in a row where they
were in strongly exceptional form. ''Sympathy For The Devil''
announces this straight off the top, and ''Street Fightin' Man'' adds
to that, but the album has a surprising number of Country Blues tunes
on it, still very gritty and thought provoking. Surprisingly, this
set yielded no major hit singles! However, its classic status in
inarguable and the album went Top 5 at a time when the vinyl record
album Rock trend thankfully kicked in. Thanks in part to The Beatles
and Sgt.
Pepper's
(new Blu-ray/CD box set reviewed elsewhere on this site) albums could
sell in huge numbers without the need of a big hit single, something
Led Zeppelin took to the extreme.
A
new 50th
Anniversary Edition on SA-CD of this album has been issued with great
extras, but is the same new soundmaster, now pictured above with its
extras.
While
that album featured graffiti plastered on a public bathroom wall, Let
It Bleed
(1969) has one of the most haunting of all Stones covers. It
features a bizarre turntable in white space, with a record with a
specialized label of the band (prior to their vanity label being
formed), and above it about to drop when the record finishes is the
wackiest layer cake in music history. The cake has the decorated
paper at the bottom, then is topped with a metal film canister (or is
that master tape reel), the front of a clock with roman numerals, a
pizza, a bike tire, and a wedding cake layer with the band as human
candles. The record player needle is from a Victrola. The back has
a slice missing and the result of destruction before any collapse of
the 'cake'. The color is also of the older Eastmancolor variety and
is a classic.
The
content is just as stark, beginning with the haunting and now haunted
''Gimme Shelter'', which turned into the name of their documentary
about the murder of a fan by Hell's Angels (U.S.A.) security guards
at Altamont. Even that film is suspicious (see the restored
Criterion Blu-ray and DVD for yourself), their cover of ''Love In
Vain'' still shows their grasp of the Blues. The title song is
Bluesy as well. Other classics include ''Midnight Rambler''' and
''You Can't Always Get what You Want''. Despite all this, you have
yet another Stones classic that had NO hit singles, but sold
extremely well. Even better.
Mainstream
radio was simply too sensitive with Vietnam and all the other
controversies, but ''Honky Tonk Woman'' and ''Brown Sugar'' would
soon change that and their singles would be mainstream henceforth.
The 22 initial SACDs cover the entire Brian Jones era, before his
untimely death, as well as some of the most politically and
artistically relevant music ever made. They fortunately continued
down that path.
That
brings us to the maxi-single with several remixes of Sympathy
For The Devil,
cut in 1968, has been honored on its 35th Anniversary with three
DJ/Turntablists offering their takes. You get a full-length and
Radio edit version of each, leaving the seventh and final track the
first 5.1 remix of a Stones songs in SACD. The Neptunes remix has
its moments, but adds more new instruments than purists might like to
hear. Fatboy Slim fares best here, going deepest into the idea of
remixing the song with the most challenging results. Full Phatt
offers the most disappointing take, trying to make this classic sound
like ''State of Shock''', the notoriously awful Jacksons song (yes,
it qualifies as a song technically) that Mick Jagger dueted on with
no credit for The Jacksons' Victory
album, a dark victory for those who made money on it. The album
shamelessly recycled everything it could from the now played out
Thriller,
tour tickets were criminally high in price, Michael Jackson barely
appears on the album, and then there was this goofy duet.
Referencing
it for a classics' anniversary is awful. I doubt any DJ worth being
a DJ will be goofy enough to match the two in a songset. That is why
it is a relief that the original is here, in a nice 5.1 mix that is
the best track on the set. Of course, the sound quality is going to
be better than the initial reissues, as many of the sounds and
instruments are brand-new. Also, the initial SACDs were only
two-track, so there is another reason to get excited. Outside of
Criterion's Blu-ray and/or DVD of Gimme
Shelter
and the Rolling
Stones at the MAX
DVD, nothing has been available by the Stones in 5.1 as stand-alone
music (with a nod to Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick using their
classics with the greatest impact in film). This Maxi-Single makes
for a fun novelty at best, and a sonic curio to boot.
That
leaves little not covered, outside of the other albums in their
entirety. Their
Satanic Majesties Request
(1967) is our oddest omission, as the band tries to go Psychedelic.
Some of those tracks are on the London
Years
set, so you might try them out there before jumping in, as it remains
one of their most controversial works artistically. Some love it,
others feel it was a huge mistake. Otherwise, ABKCO succeeded in
saving this catalog, which was sounding warped and brittle in many
cases, including the initial CD releases back in 1986.
The
two-channel DSD tracks are now the high watermark with which to judge
playback of material from that period in 2.0 SACD (or DVD-Audio)
playback. Vinyl has been inarguably challenged for good. The later
recordings are only equaled so far in the SACD format by Mobile
Fidelity's remarkable reissue of Isaac Hayes' Hot
Buttered Soul
(also reviewed on this site), but we expect more equally impressive
offerings from that time soon.
These
Rolling Stones' SACDs are as incredible as you have heard, and when
the 1970s albums get issued in SACD and/or DVD-Audio, this is going
to be a tough act to sonically follow. Since we are talking The
Rolling Stones, however, nothing would surprise me.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
