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The Greek
do you think i will be able to spot mick taylor's wonderfull tone on these tracks ?

I mean, if you've never noticed it was him before, I don't know why you would now...

the album really is a feat of production. Also, maybe having time to think the songs over gave mick a chance to write some of his best lyrics. Though I guess there were always delays and overdubs for prevous albums.

How involved does keith seem to have been in the remixing, etc. of the songs?

I posted a review of Tattoo here some time ago.

I truly love this LP. Agree with Doxa: side two is dominated by one of the best jagger vocals ever.

But there is much more than that.

Start me Up, we take it for granted. But that is only after it was overplayed on the radio, live, everywhere for almost 30 years!!! I mean, just imagine someone today coming up with something huge like start me up.

The band on the new stuff Limo, Neighbours and No Use is nothing less than perfect. All of them are modern with a retro feel.

Neighbours is, in its simplicity, true r'n'r state of art. The drums, Keith, the opening on a minor key that cuts you in two. Ronnie's solo is his best to date. One of the best recorded on a Stones disc. And when the sax comes in you just want to get up and dance.

Limo sounds like the good old blues song, but it is full of the tricks that make the good stones songs great. The variation in structure, the lyrics, Keith's open g, again a wonderful solo by ronnie. Blues 'a la Stones. The meat is all in their original stuff.

No Use is a beauty. The way the guitars interpret the beat creates such an incredible tension that makes you want to cry your heart out with jagger's wonderful interpretation. By the way, how well were his vocals recorded on this one?

C

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liddas
Limo sounds like the good old blues song, but it is full of the tricks that make the good stones songs great. The variation in structure, the lyrics, Keith's open g, again a wonderful solo by ronnie. Blues 'a la Stones. The meat is all in their original stuff.

yes, the lyrics to this one, and to "No Use in Crying" are strikingly harsh... in the best blues tradition. With the massive reverb on the vocals, mick's dismissals sound the voice of doom. "No Use in Crying" paints a surprisingly intimate scene of depression, with no mercy.

I agree it's the guitar sound that makes "Start Me Up" and again the vocals. Any heavier on the guitars and it's just a riffy rocker. With all that EQ and reverb, it's a unique, modern sound.

the best track on tattoo you is SLAVE.the deepest jam since cyhmk off sticky fingers with the sax solo and the guitar solo brilliant masterpiece .the stones should get down and jam like that more often !!!

The last master piece from the Stones, the end of an area.
77/79 was a extremely productive period for the Stones. Look at all what was recorded / all the outtakes included.
Some Girls from the same period a master piece too. Emotional Rescue, the third/last from the period, by far the weakest.

Come on Mick, now give us all those outtakes / rehearsals in the best quality you have PLEASE ! (and don't forget to add the 78 DVD.....)

What gets me is you know there's more.

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The Greek
the best track on tattoo you is SLAVE.the deepest jam since cyhmk off sticky fingers with the sax solo and the guitar solo brilliant masterpiece .the stones should get down and jam like that more often !!!

The Greek kid speaketh the truth.

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kees
The last master piece from the Stones, the end of an area.
77/79 was a extremely productive period for the Stones. Look at all what was recorded / all the outtakes included.
Some Girls from the same period a master piece too. Emotional Rescue, the third/last from the period, by far the weakest.

Come on Mick, now give us all those outtakes / rehearsals in the best quality you have PLEASE ! (and don't forget to add the 78 DVD.....)

Couldn't agree with you more about that period being highly productive. It yielded two and a half albums. Half of Emotional Rescue is actually pretty good, if you take it out of the context of its successor and predecessor.

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liddas
I posted a review of Tattoo here some time ago.

Limo sounds like the good old blues song, but it is full of the tricks that make the good stones songs great. The variation in structure, the lyrics, Keith's open g, again a wonderful solo by ronnie. Blues 'a la Stones. The meat is all in their original stuff.

C

They got the skills to make us believe it is taken on live, all instruments at the same time. Never heard it onstage, though

Tattoo you was my 1st stones album
my fav stones song is worried about you

Feel The Fear
And Do It Anyway

Gazza thank you for your kind words .i listened to tops off Tatto you last night and i heard mick taylor's wonderful guitar solo,then i listened to waiting on a friend and i once again heard taylor's guitar ,and lastly i listened to worried about you and heard wayne perkins channeling mick taylor's guitar solo so i thought about it and said to myself this was recorded in 1975 on the heels of mick taylor's departure and i thought to myself thats what mick and keith wanted a solo to sound like (mick taylor)also how about mick jagger's falsetto ? i always liked that.so there is a part of me thats outraged at the deception and another part of me say way to go glimmer twins and how it all works together so nicely.thats the beauty of the stones they hit you from all directions and styles .pure geniues and total masterpiece.also when this album came out back in 1981 i will be honest and say i played side one all the time because thats where all the rockers were ,i knew side two but i liked side one way more .so now it's like i have fallen in love again with an old friend and its a good thing !!!!!!also Gazza i do faintly remember the litigation involving mick taylor and i remember thinking back then what was that all about but now i know better thanks to you Gazza !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Gazza
They needed a new album to promote a tour and Emotional rescue was already a year old, so they went through the vaults, got some old songs and (with a few overdubs here and there) cobbled together enough for an album. Most of the songs were cut during Some Girls or Emotional rescue sessions, but a few predated that (Slave and Worried About You come from Rotterdam 1975, although some overdubs were done between 1979-81). The album was finished in spring 1981 in New York (thats also when Sonny Rollins overdubbed his sax parts on Neighbours, WOAF and Slave).

I believe it was actually Chris Kimsey's idea to plow through the backlog of work. He had to convince Jagger, but in the end he o.k.-ed the idea. From the listening sessions most bootlegs that are available from the '77 to '79 period are derived. And, there's lots more that hasn't surfaced on bootlegs yet.

Mathijs

Tattoo You is probably the Stones album I play the most especially side 2. I love it way better than anything they made post Exile.

NickB

You can't always get what you want.....

www.myspace.com/thesonkings

They could do the trick again with a set containing songs like Criss Cross Man, Drift Away, Through the lonely nights, Crushed Pearl, You're too much, Highway Child, I ain't lying, Seperately, Claudine, and so forth, and so forth....

But the idea of the solo in Worried About You being perceived as Mick Taylor is lost with the amount of time it sat in the can. Had they released Worried About You and Slave (and what I always thought, Start Me Up) on Black And Blue - I bet people would not only talk about BAB different but...they may have thought it was Mick Taylor on the tune until they read the liner notes.

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dunhill

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wesley
No Use Crying, the only filler, or is it in a wrong company

Actually I think it's a great song.

I call the Tops, Heaven, No Use Crying sequence "The Trilogy of Pain", one of the Stones' best b-sides ever.

It IS the best B-side ever in my opinion. But also one of few "sides" where the songs fits each other so well...

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The Greek
the best track on tattoo you is SLAVE.the deepest jam since cyhmk off sticky fingers with the sax solo and the guitar solo brilliant masterpiece .the stones should get down and jam like that more often !!!

Agree completely. An unbelievable track from an absolutely glorious record, start to finish.

Drew

Have any first or original mixes ever surfaced of what was finished at the time (of the songs, not what was done for the album - unless, of course, some of the mixes ARE the first/original mixes - which would not be unheard of - masters from said album used for whatever) compared to what was used/mixed for the actual album?

Meaning, if there were actual remixes, where are the first mixes?

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Doxa
Interesting reviews - there was a very hostile atmophere towards the band those days, at least in UK. The big issue seem to be if the band was relevant or matter at all. I think they were reaching the point the critics couldn't cope with any longer. The ability to laugh at themselves - one of the biggest unique ablities of the Stones, but not of rock media at the time - seemed to go beyond, for example, the capacity of Murray. But the world responded in a different way. A new big generation of Stones fans were born (I was hooked with that self-irony charm - been there, done that wisdom of "Start Me Up" video), and during that year of 1981/82 The Stones, no doubt, were the biggest band in the world.

And the opposite happened since then: overrated reviews for all their albums.
- Murray called Dirty Work their best album since Exile
- Steel Wheels was one of the best albums of the 80's according to Rolling Stone, Music Week, etc...
- VL was praised and won a Grammy for best album
- B2B was their best album since Exile according to Rolling Stone, NME, Stephen Davis...
- ABB was greatest thing since sliced bread according to Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau, Blender, etc

But the world responded in a different way.

I adore this album. It was one of the first current album I'd ever absorbed at seven years old. I taught myself how to use my parent's stereo sytem so I could crank it (and get in trouble constantly from my babysitter).

I remember being excited, 9 years old in the Star Wars generation to see new 'videos' to the Stones' Undercover. I liked it, but I knew then that it wasn't "The Stones", but another oldie act trying to look modern, and by the time Dirty Work came around, they were made fun of by us in middle-school.

Touring brought them into Generation X.
The album Steel Wheels was not liked by the kids of the day. It sounded like white, safe pop-rock (ie, throwing in awful synths over that Rock and a Hard Place tune).
Voodoo Lounge, on the other hand, found a niche fan base with it's self-retroness being like ear candy to the college stoners of Gen X. Love is Strong was the track we all loved, not You Got Me Rockin'.

'Anybody Seen My Baby', to be honest here, shattered that fan-base with one fell k.d. swoop. We just stopped caring about any more new stuff they bothered doing. The 40 Licks cuts? Nope. A Bigger Bang - a hollow swing at the Voodoo Lounge fans which just didn't really cut it.

That's it, really. Tattoo You was the last great Stones Album.

[thepowergoats.com]

I need to give "Tatoo You" a closer listen again. I've got to be honest "Neighbors" and "Hang Fire" have always grated on my nerves, so it's probably clouding my judgement. I've been really into "Black and Blue" lately.

Hang Fire, I read somewhere, was started during the B&B sessions - riff only.

I dunno about that generation x garbage. That's always been a mystery to me.

I've found, over the years, the more people like Tattoo You than Some Girls or even Exile or Sticky Fingers. It's easy to hear why.

Well, how old are you, skipstone?
I know a LOT of people (myself included) who prefer Tattoo You to Some Girls.
I don't think I've met any that like it more than Sticky or Exile.

I will say this though, Goats Head Soup is held in high regard by many casual Gen-xers - myself included.
It's in my top 3 for sure. Goats, Exile, Tattoo You.

[thepowergoats.com]

37.

I don't know if that qualifies for gen X but if I do I've never acknowledged it nor will I ever because I think it's lame!!!!!

Holy shit.

That looks funny to be that old. Wow. I'll be 38 next week.

Shit.

TY is still near and dear to T&A's heart. bought it while on vacation in NYC the day it came out. wifey (to be) and i skulked around the halls of RS records to see if we could spot a celeb. no luck.

played it over and over (and over) on the ensuing long haul back west. their last (ever? prolly) truly great album....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-07 22:33 by T&A.

What is this Gen X talk... What generation are we speaking of? I've never heard anyone refer to themselves to that term...

Anyway, Tattoo you is the Stones-record I've been most obsessed with since I first heard it not too long ago (6 years ago maybe). It's often very cheap on LP so I often buy copies of it to friends to give away...

I've probably stated this somewhere but I can even remember WHERE I bought the album! In a GROCERY STORE! It was called Felpausch (I believe it's gone now) in Grand Ledge, MI. i was floored when I saw it - that red cover is so - you just KNOW what that is.

The next record I bought was For Those About To Rock - I loved the cannon. Had a tiny idea of who they were but really didn't know anything. Loved that record. Those were my first two records I bought. My dad had Let It Bleed, Hot Rocks, More Hot Rocks, Ya-Ya's and...maybe that was it. I can't recall right now. Not many. But I used to play them all the time. So much so he got mad at me.

I never read reviews. I think TY is a strong album. And the tour that followed was just perfect to promote it.

Ha ha! I didn't even know music was reviewed back then! I had just turned 11 I think, or was about to. Whenever the hell it came out. Don't need reviews to tell me to buy a record. Or to love it. Or hate it.