Rolled Gold + Released: November 12, 2007

Rolled Gold + in depth

On May 10 1963 The Rolling Stones went into London’s Olympic Sound Studios and recorded their first single, Chuck Berry’s Come On. The session didn’t take long; they were well rehearsed from their regular dates at places like Guildford’s Wooden Bridge hotel, the Red Lion in Sutton and the Manor House pub in Harringay. It was 47 years ago, but the band you hear caught in magnetic aspic on Berry’s song already has a lot of the band today about it, although they’ve now progressed some considerable distance from those early 25 minute sets at Middlesborough’s no doubt excellent Outlook Club.

Come On has a brilliantly needling harmonica hook – vastly more sophisticated than, say, Love Me Do’s fog-horn blast – a furious explosion of drums at 1:22 and a keen-eyed thrust to the lyric. The Rolling Stones were onto something different from the off. There was more going on here than a gear change in the way voices and instruments could be used to communicate - more in the way of emotion, lifestyle, a way of living even; even though it was being expressed at the most basic level through something as simple as music.

What Rolled Gold – then Rolled Gold + - does so well is to map out the contours of that lifestyle by placing the singles in chronological order so you can see how they pushed and pulled at the fabric of modern life, reflecting and affecting change as it did so. And that’s important because hype apart, the sixties did change everything, and the musical, social and personal landscapes that helped create 1971’s Wild Horses - the last song here, one originally demoed in 1969 – were almost unrecognisable from that of just eight years previously. And a fair few reasons for that are right here.

There’s Heart Of Stone, recorded in the July heat of 1964. This Jagger / Richards song was one of their first to truly nail the insouciant swagger that would come to define who they were as a band. Five months later there was The Last Time, which had pre-echoes of psychedelia in the circling guitar line and fluid harmonic structure. Four months after that, from a two-day session at RCA Studios in LA, came Satisfaction, as perfect, furious, petulant and aggressively, rudely combative as pop music has ever been recorded. A sound and an attitude like this would have been unthinkable just a year or so earlier. Get Off Of My Cloud pushed it even further, but then they pulled back and surveyed the changing landscape. Their lives had shifted immeasurably and so did the songs. I’m Free, recorded in LA in September 1965 was like the start of a new, more supinely luxurious band. The jumbo-jet of their incredible success had cleared the runway and now some very strong drinks indeed were being served.

In the three days between March 6 and 9 1966 the band recorded some 20 new songs, again in LA. Lady Jane, Paint It Black, Out Of Time, Stupid Girl and the astonishingly funky Under My Thumb. By the end of that year Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Ruby Tuesday and Dandelion (originally known as Fairground) had all arrived and 1967 would prove to be even more creative. The Rolling Stones were producing a torrent of richly realised ideas. We Love You, 2000 Light Years From Home and Like A Rainbow were ambitious, free-spirited and bug-eyed, but they grabbed at a future that never really arrived.

In February 1968 the band gathered at R.G. Jones Studios in Surrey and began working on material with Jimmy Miller for the Beggars Banquet LP. One of the tracks not on that LP, Jumping Jack Flash retains such untouchable power the band were still playing it nearly 40 years later on the second leg of the Bigger Bang tour. And while we’re on the subject of power, You Can’t Always Get What You Want had 50 members of the London Bach Choir singing the intro, while Brown Sugar and Honky Tonk Women had juddering, slippery Keith riffs so unforgettable they would be the benchmark for juddering, slippery Keith riffs for the next quarter of a century.

Eight year’s work, but a lifetime’s inspiration. Rolled Gold+ is a stunning collection that points the way to the real depth of great material in the original records.