Rolling Stones 48: GRRR!

With their usual impeccable timing, the Stones took the easy bait of celebrating fifty years as a commercial commodity by commencing a variety of anniversary celebrations. Only ten years after their previous career retrospective—with just one studio album in between to add to the pantheon, unless you count the completed songs added to Exile and Some Girls, which we don’t—the band’s catalog was anthologized again in the form of GRRR! We still can’t decide what’s worse, the title or the cover, though we’re tempted to call it ZZZZ… instead.

Of course, it was made available in several configurations—a double-disc with 40 tracks, a triple-disc with 50, and a super deluxe version with 80 tracks on four discs, plus a bonus disc with the five songs from their first demo session, sounding identical to the bootleg that’s been out there, complete with pops and speed fluctuations. (And because it was considered the cool thing to do, a vinyl EP offered four songs from a BBC session. Here’s a stupid idea—why not offer the two new tracks, the demo tracks and the BBC tracks on their own as a single disc? Anyone?)

Because Forty Licks did a pretty decent job of summarizing the band already, it’s our duty to inform that the two-disc version lacks eight songs, the three-disc five, and the five-disc three from that collection, the common three being the three of the four 2002 songs. Of course, GRRR! in all its permutations offers two, count ‘em, two new songs. “Doom And Gloom” makes some clumsy rhymes and references to foreign wars, but it’s tough to worry over Mick “eating dirt [and] living on the side of the road” when you’ve shelled out $125 for the super deluxe edition of his band’s eleventh hits collection. “One More Shot” is a little better, since it sounds more like a stock Keith riff and you can actually hear Charlie’s drums.

GRRR! rates as high as it does because of the quality of the music, some of the best rock ‘n roll, really, of the last fifty years. Any of the three versions should satisfy anyone looking to add a pile of Stones to their CD racks if they don’t have any yet. But the mind reels as to what might happen come 2022…

…And as it turned out, they did release a few more archival live albums that year, one of which was excellent. Maybe that’s why they chose to wait a year to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the 50th anniversary tour with GRRR Live!, which presented the audio (and DVD or Blu-ray if you bought one of the CD versions but not the vinyl) of a show originally broadcast on pay-per-view. It’s no better or worse than any of the seemingly endless live souvenirs from this century, except that the focus seems to be on various celebrity guests. Lady Gaga mewls all over “Gimme Shelter”, John Mayer and Gary Clark Jr. muddy up an already sludgy version of Freddie King’s “Going Down” (the only song here not on any other live Stones album, unless you count “Doom And Gloom” and “One More Shot”), the Black Keys join on “Who Do You Love”, and Bruce Springsteen happily growls his way through “Tumbling Dice”. Unless you’re a big fan of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, which augments “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, the highlight would be Mick Taylor coming back for a 12-minute “Midnight Rambler”, except that he’s competing with two other guitarists in the mix and Jagger enjoys baiting the crowd on the slow break too much.

The Rolling Stones GRRR! (2012)—4
The Rolling Stones GRRR Live! (2023)—3