Another tour, another live album. With Still Life—culled from the wildly successful tour in support of Tattoo You—the rejuvenated Stones established themselves as businessmen for the ‘80s, putting style over substance. Running a mere forty minutes, the album captures neither the excitement of Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! nor the breadth of even Love You Live.For the most part the album sticks to upbeat rockers, starting with “Under My Thumb”, and only slowing down for a half-decent revival of “Time Is On My Side”. Four of the songs are covers, including two not otherwise released by the Stones: “Going To A Go-Go”, originally made famous by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and which was a single, and Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock”, taken at top speed.
The overall sound is good, and it should be, considering that Bob Clearmountain mixed it and Mick spent two months with him in the studio performing edits and overdubs. The bass leaps out of the mix, as do the occasional keyboards (sometimes Ian Stewart, but usually Ian McLagan). The opening snatch of “Take The ‘A’ Train” and closing fade on Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” are an attempt to emulate the actual concert experience, along with having the sequence mirror the songs’ places in the setlist. But in the end, Still Life is simply product in an increasingly predictable pattern.
The tour’s stature was preserved eventually, when Hampton Coliseum (Live 1981) became the band’s second official bootleg. This initially download-only release serves up a complete show from the end of the American leg, a performance original broadcast as a pay-per-view TV event, with a couple of the songs included on Still Life. It’s a more authentic representation of the tour, and a pretty good show to boot (sorry), with no edits or overdubs. The wheels don’t start to come off until “Satisfaction”, and that’s only the last song. After two hours non-stop, it can be forgiven. (It was soon followed by a show recorded seven months later, at their last gig of the European leg, their last concert for seven years, and the final appearance of Ian Stewart. Despite having a nearly identical setlist to Hampton Coliseum, this one approaches blasphemy by daring to call itself Live At Leeds. Both were eventually released in stores, coupled with the video content on DVD; the latter's title was wisely adjusted to Live In Leeds.)
The Rolling Stones Still Life (American Concert 1981) (1982)—2½
Rolling Stones Hampton Coliseum (Live 1981) (2012)—3½
Rolling Stones Live At Leeds—Roundhay Park 1982 (2012)—3
Just wanted to let you know that there is a very good BBC Radio program on the Rolling Stones available for free listening at the BBC website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tnckk
As usual, I am greatly enjoying your blog.
Geoff
Thanks Geoff - for the link and the kind words!
ReplyDeleteYou’re making me wonder if my hearing is starting to go. I’ve always thought this album sounds lousy. When I heard “Going to a Go-Go” on this album after seeing and hearing the video, I wondered what they did to ruin it. Bill Wyman said that he got angry when they were working on this. That’s because there were so many overdubs, he thought that calling a live album was fraud. It sounds like Mick and Keith were trying to make it sound like “Some Girls”. But the instruments are all mushed together, and there’s this weird effect on Keith’s guitar (“Beast of Burden”, “Shattered”).
ReplyDeleteI usually find one LP live albums to be mostly useless, since you don’t get a sense of a concert set. Despite all of this, some of the excitement of the tour is captured. (A friend of mine caught one of the New Jersey shows and said they were great). The setlist had far more breadth than that of 1978, with several “Hot Rocks” included. The new arrangements of “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, ‘Under My Thumb” and “Time is On My Side” sound cool. Some of the covers are odd choices. I had never heard the original “Going to a Go-Go”. Mick really camps it up, but it’s fun. Everyone except Paul McCartney had forgotten “Twenty Flight Rock”. This version suggests where “Rip This Joint” might have come from.
The album would be more enjoyable if the whole thing could be remixed. As it is, I would bet that the Hampton show would be a better bet. By the way, there’s another concert film from the tour, called “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, that was released theatrically. I never saw it, partially because Siskel and Ebert panned it.