Rolling Stones - Blue and Lonesome

As everyone knows, this an album of blues covers, bashed out in three days with minimal overdubs. It's a deeply weird achievement, and quite interesting for that reason alone. This is where the Stones throw in the towel, and revert to their original ambition.

I hope we're not too messanic
Or a trifle too Satanic
We just love to play the blues

The Stones have always been linked with the Beatles, but we need to remember that back in the day the Stones couldn't compete with the Beatles, neither on stage nor on record. It was never even a contest. The Beatles had far more experience as a live band, and they had far more experience playing with each other. The Beatles blew the Stones right out of the water. The Beatles also had the geat good fortune to have George Martin working with them on their recordings. Martin was an experienced pro, a man who knew his way around a studio, but also a man with a musical background himself, an open mind, and a truly remarkable willingness to trust the judgement of his artists. The Stones had a wannabee hustler named Andrew Loog Oldham, who had never been in a recording studio in his life and whose approach to recording the Stones basically amounted to cranking up the volume on anything he happened to like. And of course Lennon and McCartney had written literally hundreds of songs together over five years before it even occurred to the Stones to try writing one themselves. And the only reason it occurred to Mick and Keith at all was because they had actually watched John and Paul write a song right in front of them. That song ("I Wanna Be Your Man") turned into the Stones' very first hit. (It still took Oldham locking Mick and Keith in a room and telling them not to come out until they had written a song to make it finally happen.)

The Beatles were always a far more ambitious band. They were Northerners - which made them country bumpkins in the England of 1962 - but in their own minds they came out of the Liverpool sticks to take over the world. They wanted to be "bigger than Elvis." The Stones had no such dreams. They just wanted to play some Chicago blues properly. But in 1964, though they did their best, a bunch of callow kids from London simply weren't up to that job. So the Stones went off in some other directions and it worked out very well for them - they had a five year run (1968-72) when they made some of the greatest rock records ever made. Since that high-water mark, they have fought desperately for more than 40 years to maintain their hold on contemporary relevance. That battle was lost a long time ago (although they sure kept trying!) - along the way they did develop into a far greater live act than they ever were in their glory years.

Bur now, in their old age, they've returned to the mission they set out on in the first place. What's different is that now they're actually up to the job. Jagger in particular sounds liberated. No longer trying to find a way to be modern, he delivers his least affected vocal performances in at least 40 years (he's practically channeling Howlin' Wolf on "Commit a Crime.") He also plays more wild blues harp on this album than you'll hear from him on any ten records. The guitars are noisy, a little sloppy, and straight to the point. Charlie is still Charlie. The whole production is drenched in 1950s Chess studios reverb.

It may have taken them half a century, but the Stones have actually become what they always set out to be. You do have to wonder if anyone outside the band cares at this point, but there's something strangely admirable about the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEuV82GqQnE