Jump Back - The Best Of, '71-'93 Released: November 22, 1993

Jump Back - The Best Of, '71-'93 in depth

If you were looking for a reason behind the continued popularity of The Rolling Stones it might be worth remembering this brief couplet from Undercover Of The Night, recorded in the Bahamas in 1983. “Down in the bars the girls are painted blue,” Jagger sings, “done up in lace, done up in rubber…”

Those 17 words encapsulate an awful lot of what we have come to love about the band. For nearly 50 years now, The Rolling Stones have given the impression that visiting bars where girls are not only painted blue but done up in lace and rubber too, was pretty much par for the course. All in a day’s work. The Rolling Stones are useful to us because they have always appeared to inhabit a world more vivid, more brilliantly, luxuriously chaotic than any of the rest of us could imagine. Or, at least, we hope they do, we imagine they do. Ultimately, we want them to.

“My eyes dilate,” Jagger sings on Start Me Up, “my lips go green, my hands are greasy, she's a mean, mean machine…” What would it feel like to be so absolutely obsessed with someone your lips went green when you saw them? How many of us know that? Later in the same song Jagger promises, “I'll take you places that you've never, never seen,” and, frankly, you believe him.

So there is something entirely eternal about the Rolling Stones. They are snake-hipped satyrs who live at a higher pitch than we could handle. We know that some people who have floated – or been invited – into their world have left broken by the experience, but still we want in. Perhaps, for us, it would be different? But until that time and that phone-call comes, all we have is the music, the myths and the magic and all three are covered in some style by Jump Back.

When you’ve reached your sixth compilation album it’s fair to say people know what to expect. But Jump Back was important for a couple of reasons. For one, it was the first CD-era release of a Stones’ Best Of. Secondly, it sidestepped the 60’s work and concentrated on the albums from Sticky Fingers in 1971 to Steel Wheels in 1989.

The band had just signed to Virgin Records and were recording Voodoo Lounge with Don Was. There was a big buzz going on, and Jump Back tapped that skilfully. There’s not a track here that you won’t know and not one that isn’t worthy of a fresh listen. The glam-touched groove of It’s Only Rock and Roll still sounds fantastic – David Bowie’s backing vocals adding a tangible and authentic mid-Seventies richness. Tumbling Dice (“It's about gambling and love, an old blues trick…” Keith) slips easily from Exile sounding fresh and bruisingly hung-over all at the same time. Interestingly, Marc Bolan thought it sounded a bit too much like Get It On at the time. No one says that anymore.

Bitch is the stand-up and fight braggadocio it always was – Jagger’s retort to Marianne Faithful’s rejection is taut and loose, sloppy and precise, stoned and needle-sharp. Mixed Emotions has an unstoppable propulsion, it is forever about to drop into that wickedly inclusive chorus, and a real sense of Mick and Keith’s personalities and battles shine through. When Angie (Bowie) asked for permission to reprint the lyrics to the song named after her the Stones refused. Wisely, it turns out, as the book went on to claim that her ex-husband was a member of an alien race called the Light People. Literally, oh dear.

And so it goes on and on. Wild Horses, Emotional Rescue, Fool To Cry, Brown Sugar, Hot Stuff, Waiting On A Friend – a great collection for those who maybe aren’t quite ready for the full, uncut Stones story. Well, not ready yet…