In an amazing turn of events, the Stones broke pattern somewhat by issuing a live album as a follow-up to a hits collection, which itself had followed a live album! They’re nothing if not innovative.
Live Licks gets its title from the tour supporting the Forty Licks collection, and it’s to their credit that it’s not simply all the songs from that album played live. That would be silly, of course. They only pulled that trick for the first disc, which serves up eleven of their Classic Rock radio staples, the newest of which was over twenty years old, with the key addition of Sheryl Crow on “Honky Tonk Women”. (We’ll pause while you try to contain your excitement.) And the man who said he wouldn’t be singing “Satisfaction” in his forties is doing it at 60.
The second disc is slightly more interesting, with three—three!—solo vocals by Keith, some deeper catalog selections, a few choice covers and a guest appearance by gargantuan legend Solomon Burke on “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love”, to which most people will respond, “Hey, they’re doing a Blues Brothers song.” It’s still the more surprising, if anything, of the two discs.
Live Licks sounds good, of course, with technology helping Chuck Leavell and Bobby Keys replicate the sounds of the records. The boys sound great and the band is tight. But by now we’ve been used to seeing the “post-production” credit in the liner notes of a live Stones album, so who knows how much tweaking happened between the performances and the CD pressing? It remains just another souvenir, and one that certainly wasn’t purchased by everyone who’d bought a ticket on this crazy 14-month tour. If you were there, you probably had a great time. If not, the excitement doesn’t likely surface.
And what’s a Stones album without a little controversy? To ensure their stature as the world’s favorite dirty old men next to Hugh Hefner, Live Licks was released in some of the more liberated countries worldwide with an uncensored cover, showing the lovely lady riding the tongue topless. In the US we were left to wonder what was under the bikini. Hot-cha!
This wasn’t the only souvenir of this particular jaunt, as a year before a DVD box set called Four Flicks sold exclusively through the Best Buy chain contained three different concerts in three separate venues—an arena, a stadium, and a theatre, which was the other gimmick of the tour. Two decades on, after they’d begun regularly repackaging concert video from the post-Wyman years as live albums, Licked Live In NYC offered the audio from the set’s Madison Square Garden portion, as originally broadcast on HBO, which also happens to include the aforementioned Sheryl Crow cameo. Coming soon after the very welcome release of the El Mocambo set from 1977, this was not only overkill, but a big step back in the creativity department. Even more maddening is that it’s pretty good, set-wise and performance-wise.
Two years after that, Live At The Wiltern presented a theater-sized show from a couple months before that had also been sourced for Live Licks. The thrust of this selection from the vaults was that it sported deeper dives into the catalog, which was one of the more unique aspects of the tour. Some of these so-called rarities included “Live With Me”, “Hand Of Fate”, “Dance Part 1”, “Stray Cat Blues”, “No Expectations”, “Going To A Go-Go” by a thin margin, and others that were already represented on the other two albums above. (Solomon Burke’s guest appearance is here as well.) Being a more intimate venue, with excellent separation of Woody’s guitar on the left and Keith on the right—albeit with backup singers and a full horn section—it might be the keeper of the three.
Rolling Stones Live Licks (2004)—3
Rolling Stones Licked Live In NYC (2022)—3
The Rolling Stones Live At The Wiltern (2024)—3
Have you seen the video of the performance with Solomon Burke, with commentary by Keith? It's a jaw-dropper!
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