1990 is just off the halfway point in the life of the Rolling Stones and it seems safe to say that the music made in the 30 years between 1990 and 2020 is not the music most fans will cherish and treasure. The Stones remained a commercially viable brand, especially with their mega tours, and possibly became a “national treasure,” despite their rebellious roots and Keith Richards continued semi-outlaw stance. No Stones album released in this 30 year period is of huge value and worth and, at best, one might make a half decent playlist of the best tracks, but it won’t be the mandatory Stones playlist that the public will listen to, not like the classic tracks from roughly the first 20 years. The two Hot Rocks compilations or the Rolled Gold double album, though each stops short of the best stuff from the late Seventies, are probably just about the only Rolling Stones albums you ever need own. Even the early studio records had their fair share of filler and also rans. The point is, when people think of the top Rolling Stones songs, and pick their favourites, it’s not likely to be anything released after 1980 (except maybe for “Start Me Up.”)
FLASHPOINT (1991)
These tracks were recorded on the Steel Wheels / Urban Jungle tour, the first Stones tour since the outing in support of Tattoo You in the early Eighties. It’s the final tour featuring bassist Bill Wyman who left the band afterwards.
The opening track is “Start Me Up,” which seems to have become the standard show opener for the Stones, and the rest are a mixture of some tracks from Steel Wheels (presumably deemed to be the most worthwhile performing live), some hoary old classics, “Miss You” from Some Girls and two brand new tracks, a clever, popular marketing ploy in the Nineties to persuade fans to buy live albums and greatest hits sets.
The first impression is of crystal-clear sound and lively, energetic playing, giving life to well-known studio tracks, which must’ve made this tour a pleasure to attend. On some later live recordings the Stones, especially Jagger, sound as if they’re playing to the gallery and going through the perfunctory stadium motions with crowd pleasing tunes and antics, but here the band seems fresh, eager and sharp, as if to exorcise the demons of the animosity between Jagger and Richards in the late Eighties and of not touring for such a long time.
The only disappointment is the over blown, almost showbiz blues version of “Little Red Rooster,” originally a stark, angular, spooky take on the Howlin’ Wolf classic, but with guest star Eric Clapton, I guess they felt it needed that additional bluster.
I’d never heard this album until I wrote this and I must confess that I have a slight regret that I didn’t buy it at the time of release, but, having said that, and taking into account that this is a great live set, I don’t know whether I’ll ever want to listen to it again. There’s a lot of Stones live material out there and I prefer the looser, starker, more gnarly Seventies shows than the perfectly recorded, stadium version from the Nineties onward, when the band became less of a gritty, working rock and roll band, to my mind, and more just a smoothly operating, mega touring, nostalgia stage show.
The new studio tracks, “Highwire” and “Sex Drive,” are muscular grooves, the one in gleaming, power rock vein, the other in Stones funk style familiar from the mid-Seventies onward, but neither are essential listening.
VOODOO LOUNGE (1994)
There was a 5 year gap between Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge.
I bought the album because I was a member of a CD club at the time and it was one of the monthly hot picks they sent you by default, but I guess I wouldn’t otherwise have owned it. By 1994 it was far less vital than ever before to buy any new Rolling Stones studio album.
At 62 minutes it’s effectively a double album LP-wise and though I thought it was an okay record it did drag towards the end, being just too long when the songs are much of a muchness, technically well produced and played yet without significant spark.
The rockers pound hard, the slow songs meander along smoothly, and they groove, but that’s about all you can say for the album. It’s not bad but it’s not great either.
It’s a pro job produced by pros. Proper visceral excitement is completely absent.
STRIPPED (1995)
This conceptually stripped-to-the-bone version of the Stones, with “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Street Fighting Man,” mostly songs from the Sixties and some from the early Seventies, plus a blues to end off, is my favourite Stones album of the Nineties and, with Voodoo Lounge, one of the only two albums from this decade that I was willing to pay good money for at the time of release.
Most of the tracks seemed to be acoustic based and/or are played with what sounds like minimal amplification and effects, as if the band were playing in their lounge, almost like rehearsals, and it’s some of the most unaffected vocals by Mick Jagger one could hope to hear.
The songs show that the Stones do not have to rely on bluster and bombast and that the songs can stand the low key, acoustic treatment and still shine.
For my money, this is not only the best and most entertaining Stones’ live album since Love You Live, but just a damn fine record.
BRIDGES TO BABYLON (1997)
Never bought this record and never listened to it until I wrote this.
The first impression is that the production is quite excellent. The sound is beefy, sharp and clear and the music positively booms from the speakers. Where the positive is that the album sound great, one is still left with the feeling that the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts and that the parts, though each may be individually worthy, don’t quite register in the mind as well as they could or should. It’s the quintessential issue with Rolling Stones albums since the Eighties that they sound good, even exciting, when one listens but fade pretty quickly from one’s memory once the music stops. They’re no longer truly “Stones records” in the way we came to know and love them but simply, and regrettably, generic rock albums.
NO SECURITY (1998)
By now the Stones had firmly established the routine of record releases with each studio album followed by a tour and live album, and this set is taken from performances on the Bridges to Babylon tour.
The mix is a nice compromise between new music, lesser known songs, over familiar songs, one stone classic in “Gimme Shelter,” and the omission of “Start Me Up.”
LIVE LICKS (2004)
The tracks form this live set were recorded on the tour supporting the Forty Licks compilation album and this album seems quite redundant seeing as it’s just another live set of songs we know well, though, I suppose, the avid fan can point to the inclusion of tracks like “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” “Rock Me, Baby” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” that do deviate from the norm. Otherwise, though, one might as well just stick with Forty Licks, or any of the other good compilations of the best of the Stones.
The band plays well, the sound is good, and the material is generally exemplary. By this time, though, nobody went to a Stones concert for any reason other than just the event. The music is not transcendent or even viscerally exciting, or only so because of the huge sound the sound guys achieve.
A BIGGER BANG (2005)
This is the first Stones studio album I bought since Voodoo Lounge, because the reviews were so highly positive.
This album clocks in at 64 minutes and is also a tad overlong. Having said that, the guitars are rougher and tougher, almost fiercely ragged, than they’ve been in a while and the drum and bass grooves are feet tappingly energised. The problem always is, though, as proficient as the musicians are, are as excellent as the production is and as well-crafted as the songs may be, there’s little here to retain in the memory as classic Stones stuff.
A straight blues like “Back of My Hand” is by far the hardest hitting track on the album mostly because it does seem less tooled and geared than the rest.
A Bigger Bang is an admirable project and enjoyable to listen to, much like Voodoo Lounge or Bridges to Babylon, and as quicky and easily forgettable as those albums too. Instead of putting a lengthy album every five or six (or more) years, the Stones would perhaps have better off releasing short albums more frequently.
SHINE A LIGHT (2008)
Taken from performances at a charity concert for Bill Clinton and also preserved for posterity by a Martin Scorsese concert movie. There are umpteen official DVDs of various Stones tours from 1978 onward and it therefore seems as if most of our visual record of the band reflects the old guys, preponderantly more so than the far younger Stones of the Sixties or Seventies, but perhaps that’s just my perception but the period between 1969 (Altamont) and the mid-Seventies seems to be covered by only Gimme Shelter and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones, the 30 years between 1990 and 2020 is oversupplied with concert videos.
This one is almost as much a Martin Scorsese event as it is a Stones show. The stage is perfectly lit, and the sound is awesome, both far easier to accomplish in a theatre rather than a stadium, and the band plays tough, loud and with apparent enthusiasm. The Stones on stage is clearly the proverbial well-oiled machine.
Only three of the songs were released after 1980 and the rest are the usual, over familiar crowd pleasers. Buddy Guy is the guest artist on “Champagne & Reefer” and Christina Aguilera sings along on “Live With Me.”
Going to the theatre to experience the movie is like being at the show and it’s good fun, but no more.
BLUE & LONESOME (2016)
The Stones started out as bluesmen wannabes, with Jagger declining to be in the pop music lark after the age of 30, then reconsidering when he did turn 30 and realised that the bluesmen the Stones had been emulating were still forces to be reckoned with well into middle age and after. Here, when the core band members are in their Seventies, they give us a set of, presumably, favourite blues numbers, and do quite well at it.
I wonder why it took them so long to release a pure blues set, given that their music, especially up to Exile on Main Street, was so heavily informed by blues and they often threw in a nice little blues number to nestle brightly amongst the rock tracks of their various albums. Whatever the reason, whether as a stopgap because they didn’t have original material and needed to issue a studio album or simply wanted to show off their blues chops while they still could, it’s a very enjoyable set and the band sounds like they’re having unadulterated, unpressurised fun.
From the get-go, apart from perhaps “Little Red Rooster,” the Stones weren’t a purist blues band, fusing too many different genres into their musical stew but their R & B roots were always on show in their rock ‘n roll, and they rocked the R & B with brio and swagger. Here, they sound like a dynamite club band, good for accompanying drinking and dancing in a smoky room.
I reckon only Stripped and this album need be in any record collection to represent the Rolling Stones in the 30 year period from 1990 to 2020.
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