Almost forty years to the day since its release, the Rolling Stones' eighth album, Let It Bleed, is still a work that routinely surfaces when music obsessives (mostly of a journalistic persuasion) gather to compile their arbitrary and utterly meaningless lists of 'best evers' (number 30 in the 'Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time' list, in case you're interested). The question is whether this forty-year-old album deserves its 'classic' tag or should instead be left as a brief footnote in the annals of popular music. Who are we kidding here? Let It Bleed is undoubtedly a classic album, much deserving of the accolades that have been heaped upon it over ...  Read the complete review

Although the rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones was largely a media construct (they were in fact friends, and played on each other's records from time to time), the Beatles did generally have stronger albums overall. This is probably not really any fault of the Stones', as record labels were notorious for hacking up albums into different running orders for release in US and UK markets, meaning an album of the same name could be a very different affair (see 'Out of Our Heads' as a prime example of this). Strong singles were left off in favour of filler, and a lot of their 60s albums are a frustrating affair. However, with the release of 'Beggars' Banquet',  Read the complete review

There are good albums which sell well in their time and their bad albums which the singles from always seem to get played on Top of the Pops.Then there are the timeless classics,the ones that stand the test of time,the ones you can be sure will still be listened to decades from now.True,a lot of them seem to come from the sixties and seventies but regardless of release date they're the sort of work that must be classed as pieces of true art in a world where a used condom seems to be art if you paint it green. The follow-up album to Beggars Banquet was a masterpiece first released at,aptly enough for the Stones,the midnight hour of the 1960's - ...  Read the complete review

The last month of the 60s was a significant time for the Rolling Stones. They released this, their last album for Decca Records before forming their own label, and they played that notorious gig at Altamont, the most frightening experience of their career. Ironically, they had recorded it mainly as a quartet, plus an army of session musicians and singers. The increasingly erratic and incapable Brian Jones had left (or been fired) and died five months before the album hit the shops, to be replaced by Mick Taylor, and both only appeared on it fleetingly, leaving Keith Richards to handle most of the guitar duties. Nevertheless it deservedly restored their chart ...  Read the complete review

Remind me to thank my parents for having decent taste in music. If it wasn’t for them I might be stuck listening to endless clones of popular bands or the new ‘cutting edge, marketed to the masses, extreme nu-metal/’punk’. Lucky for me, eh? And without going in to all the stories about the band, and all that stuff – let me get straight to the nitty gritty – the music. When the first track – ‘Gimmie Shelter’ - gets going it sends a real shiver up your spine: ‘Oh a storm is threat'ning my very life today If I don't get some shelter Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away War, ...  Read the complete review