Hot Rocks 1964-1971

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Let’s Spend the Night Together” also represented the apotheosis of noise evolved into an arrangement of perfect clarity and unorthodox form, and effortlessly pushing, pulsating, almost mechanical sound that could go on forever. Hot Rocks (London 2PS 606-7) is even crasser than Flowers and Children, because it’s the first Stones album on which every track has been represented on albums previously released in this country. As historical document of Greatest Hits culling, Hot Rocks takes almost no chances, and if the Stones or London sometimes display an unexpected sense of what may be the band’s most important statements (as in the inclusion of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”), there is also much left out. The album includes a mixture of hit singles, such as " Jumping Jack Flash", B-sides such as " Play with Fire", and album tracks such as " Under My Thumb" and " Gimme Shelter", the last of which has become one of the Rolling Stones' most popular and highly regarded songs.

The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks 1964-1971 | Releases | Discogs

Anyway, it’s good to have this record back in my collection 30 years later as I’m getting back into vinyl. Always theatrical, the Stones had found a way of molding their basic profile into and out of various synonymous figures. Some tracks like the Aftermath/Bleed/Sticky tracks, sound great, while others, like the Beggars Banquet tracks, sound awful. Get Off Of My Cloud” brought the former razzberry to a pinnacle of derisive noise that many, including Jagger himself, found excessive, while “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” was, of course, the primal and perhaps still definitive statement of the latter condition.

Listening to “Midnight Rambler” still gives me chills today, but I hardly think Mick Jagger thinks of himself as “a proud Black Panther. But the Berry-Diddley-Jimmy Reed phase of the Stones’ genesis is overlooked in favor of two songs deriving much more from the traditions of uptown soul and pop. It’s on the second record of Hot Rocks, however, that the big thematic shift in the Stones’ music becomes unmistakable.

The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks: 1964-1971 Album Reviews

So when we look past the magnificent cover depicting the Stones in their numerous roles as ragtag rougues of Merrie Olde, Tangierian travellers, fashion plates, etc.Maybe it’s sensible to cut “The Last Time” in favor of its flip side “Play With Fire,” but the absence of “It’s All Over Now” fairly glares at you.