Photo Credit: ABKCO Records
Photo Credit: ABKCO Records
Photo Credit: Gered Mankowitz/ABKCO Records
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The Rolling Stones Reissues
- The Rolling Stones Remastered [ABKCO Promotional
Sampler 9215-2]
- Aftermath [ABKCO 94762]
- Between the Buttons [ABKCO 94992]
- Beggars Banquet [ABKCO 95392]
- Let It Bleed [ABKCO 90042]
Chomp chomp chomp. Tasty!
That's the sound of me eating my words. Back when Sony and
ABKCO announced an ambitious 22-disc collaborative reissue program to be made available on
dual-layer SACDs, I all but predicted it was vaporware (even worse, I identified the
Stones' first manager as songwriter Spooner Oldham, not Andrew Loog Oldham).
Well, it sure wasn't a simple project and it was a painful
birth, but the discs are finally out and the short form review is that they're
mind-bogglingly good -- whether you're listening to them as SACDs or as CDs.
Even so, I whine in self-defense, my reservations weren't
completely unfounded -- I speculated that the master tapes no longer existed or ABKCO
would have reissued the Stones' catalog several times over. It turns out that wasn't too
far off the mark, but Jody Klein, Steve Rosenthal, Teri Landi, Bob Ludwig, and a whole
bunch of other folks really went the distance to produce a fantastic reissue series.
Unlike the Beatles, who recorded in one studio and almost
exclusively with an actively participating producer/partner, the Stones were literally all
over the map. They recorded in a variety of studios around the world with a list of
producers almost as long as their list of records, and, frequently, there were different
takes released as "official" in different countries -- and, all too regularly, a
stereo album track would be released alongside a different take in mono on the single. To
make the task even harder, record keeping, nominally the responsibility of the record
label, seemed to be whimsical, if not downright cavalier. As a result, where the Stones
are involved, referring to something as seemingly straightforward as a canonical set of
original master tapes is almost impossible, hence the producers' assurance that "the
restoration process for ABKCO's Rolling Stones Remastered Series started with hundreds of
hours of painstaking research on both sides of the Atlantic to determine the analog
sources most true to the original Rolling Stones studio recording."
What I took as obfuscation was just precise language.
The first hint that the project would be an artistic
success was the late summer arrival of The Rolling Stones Remastered sampler, a
21-song retrospective ranging from "It's All Over Now" to the live
"Midnight Rambler." Accompanying the sampler was a press release that
essentially said, "Don't even think of asking for a full set of promos -- this
is all you get." Well, you could hear us freeloading reviewers scream in frustration
from coast to coast, and what made it worse was how revelatory the sound of the disc was.
Until now, the Stones have not been well served on CD,
especially -- but far from exclusively -- on the ABKCO releases. In fact, as much as I
like most of the early, vital catalog and even later discs such as Beggars Banquet
and Let It Bleed, it had been years since I had listened to them on CD. (LP is a
different matter, but raving about how much you enjoy your vinyl collection to people who
can't go out and buy the discs strikes me as a trifle tasteless.)
The promo sampler restored the life to the early discs.
Suddenly the energy and sly wit the band always had in spades was restored -- even better,
some sonic details, such as Bill Wyman's lovely bass sound, were audible for the first
time ever. I couldn't wait to see if the official release lived up to the sampler.
Ironically, there was one harbinger of things to come on
the sampler that completely escaped my notice. There was no mention anywhere on the
outside of the packaging that these were dual-layer SACDs. There was an explanation
on the inside of the gatefold sleeve: "Each disc has been encoded with two layers --
one containing a normal CD program, the other a Super Audio CD (SACD) program of the same
repertoire. The idea is to provide complete backward and forward compatibility for the
consumer, as the discs are playable on both SACD-compatible machines as well as standard
CD players." And, of course, the sampler came with a multipage press release that
discussed the dual-layer status, so I thought nothing of the omission.
When the reissues finally came out in September, sure
enough, not a mention of SACD on the outside of the packages -- which really made things
confusing because the CDs released back in 1986 also had the word
"remastered" on the covers. (To clarify: If the CD is in a plastic jewel box,
it's the old CD; if it's in a cardboard digipack, it's the new dual-layer reissue.)
Was this some kind of mistake? Wouldn't you want to tell
people they were getting an SACD/CD release?
Apparently not. Record label executives seemed more afraid
of frightening away consumers who'd never even heard of SACD than in attracting the folks
who were actively seeking them out. "We wanted people to be pleasantly surprised when
they later discovered they already owned some SACD discs," one Sony suit told another
journalist. Riiight.
One other bit of oddness to get out of the way: Whether
they admit it or not, Sony sure made these discs difficult to copy -- or, for some folks,
to use at all. I bought the four commercial releases under review a few days before
leaving on a transatlantic flight, so I thought it would be nice to rip some
high-resolution 320kbps files for my portable player.
I inserted a disc in my computer. It failed to acknowledge
the disc's existence. Oh, of course, I thought. It's a dual-layer disc and the
SACD layer is confusing my CD drive -- I'll have to use the DVD drive to rip it. You
guessed it, no satisfaction there, either. So I tried my laptop. Ditto. I took it by a
friend's house and he tried, too. He's about the most bloody-minded person I know, so he
kept trying trick after trick to convince a computer to read the reissue discs, and after
several hours he came up with a work-around that allowed me to assert my fair-use rights.
An unscientific sampling of my friends and colleagues who
had purchased the discs revealed that not everyone experienced problems reading the
dual-layer discs on their computers -- and I'd simply like to observe without prejudice
that all my friends with G4 PowerBooks seemed unforgivably smug about how easily their
computers read the data. Some consumers have also reported incompatibility problems with
their regular CD players, but these reports are not numerous.
On to the discs:
The only possible complaint I have about Aftermath
(and it's a big'un) is that Sony/ABKCO released both the US and the UK versions of the
disc. Not knowing that, I wound up with the American version, which omits "Mother's
Little Helper," "Out of Time," "What to Do," and "Take It or
Leave It" -- all included in the UK release. What is here, however,
sounds amazingly crisp and clear, from the sitar on "Paint It, Black" to the
remarkably present-sounding handclaps and Charlie Watts' precise snare/tom tom interplay
on "Under My Thumb." Added bonus: the incredible guitar tones Richards and Jones
consistently achieve throughout the album.
Between the Buttons, again, was released in UK and US
versions and I, of course, bought the American, not the superior UK release. As a result,
I don't have "Please Go Home" and "Back Street Girl," although I did
get "Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday" as some form
of compensation. My preferred LPs have always been the British Deccas, so the
American sequencing seems strange to me, but this is another sonic marvel. Even rejiggered
a bit, Buttons is a remarkably consistent album -- possibly the band's pre-Beggars
Banquet pinnacle. In breadth and production values, Buttons is possibly the
closest the band came to a direct analog to a Beatles album.
Not only was Beggars Banquet a remarkable artistic
achievement, but, as this reissue reveals for the first time, it's also a phenomenal sonic
accomplishment. I thought the LP sounded good, but apparently there was a problem with the
tape playback of the masters, which Ludwig et al. have now corrected for the first time.
The stereo separation, tonal realism, and overall clarity are astonishing. Plus, song for
song, the disc is a complete winner: "Sympathy for the Devil," "Street
Fighting Man," "No Expectations," and "Salt of the Earth" are as
good as pop music gets -- and the other tracks offer sly humor ("Dear Doctor"),
stray cat strut ("Factory Girl"), and even an insight into the band's complete
mastery of the blues, even the country kind ("Prodigal Son"). A stone killer.
And then there's Let It Bleed, which just might be
the best album the band ever released -- and offered again in revelatory sound. Bleed
makes a strong contrast to the complacency that set in later. Of course, it was created in
pain and struggle -- Brian Jones died before it was completed, which was a huge blow on
many levels. Ry Cooder was drafted to play the slide parts on the album (in the end, only
his mandolin on "Love in Vain" made it onto the disc, although "Sister
Morphine," which includes his incisive slide solo, was held for inclusion on Sticky
Fingers), but, apparently, Keith Richards was not happy about it. Richards expressed
his displeasure by absenting himself from rehearsals and recording sessions. (An entire
album of outtakes -- Jamming with Edward -- was recorded while the band waited for
Richards to arrive in the studio.) The story may be apocryphal -- I have no way of
knowing, obviously -- but the record does have a sharpness and scrappy attitude that even
the Stones never again achieved. The songs are great ("Love in Vain,"
"Midnight Rambler," "Gimme Shelter," "You Can't Always Get What
You Want," and "Country Honk [Honky Tonk Woman]" are all outstanding) and
the sound, once again, is precise and warm.
On all the discs, the sound of the CD layer is rich, warm,
detailed, and relaxed. And -- just like Sony and ABKCO would like to spin it -- the sound
of the SACD layer is icing on the cake. Everything that SACD lovers like about the format
is present in these remastered recordings. As much as I hate resorting to the overused
aphorism, there's simply more there there.
Aw heck, it's simple: If you've ever had any affection for
the band, you owe it to yourself to hear these new versions of their scrappiest,
most-vital recordings.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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