The Rolling Stones have always been linked with the Beatles, so let's have a quick look at that subject. It's simply not a fair fight, certainly not in the beginning. Way 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 an enormous head start and it would take the Stones years and years to catch up. The Beatles had far more experience than the Stones as a live band, and they had far more experience playing with each other. They were also much, much hungrier than the Stones, and far more ambitious. The Beatles were extremely conscious of being Northerners, aware that for that reason alone it would be a battle for them to be taken seriously by the rest of England, London in particular, in 1962. And so they were on a mission. They had "come out of the fuckin' sticks to take over the world." They wanted to be "bigger than Elvis."
The Stones had no such dreams. Their mission, such as it was, was fairly modest. They just wanted to play some Chicago blues properly, and gain some kind of foothold in their own home town. The Stones liked to think of themselves in the beginning as blues purists, Keith's love for Chuck Berry and Mick's taste for contemporary pop notwithstanding. It was very much Brian's band in the beginning, and Brian took his blues very seriously indeed. The Beatles were musical omnivores by comparison, much more receptive to all kinds of popular music, if only because they always needed more and more material to fill out their marathon live performances.
Then, when they started recording, the Beatles had the great 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. He was also a man with a musical background himself, someone with an open mind, and a truly remarkable willingness to trust the judgement of his artists. The Stones, by contrast, had a wannabe 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 think sounded neat. 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.)
Like Lennon-McCartney, the Jagger-Richards writing credit includes songs written in a variety of combinations: songs that they wrote together, sitting side-by-side ("Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Midnight Rambler") songs written mainly by Keith ("Ruby Tuesday," "Gimme Shelter") and songs written mainly by Mick ("You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Brown Sugar.") There's also the songs written by Mick in collaboration with one of the other guitarists only for it to be credited to Jagger-Richards anyway. Keith suddenly blossomed as a songwriter some time in 1967-68 and had about a three year run as one of the greatest songwriters rock has ever seen. And then he slid into a decade mostly lost to drug addiction and misplaced a fundamental part of his talent along the way. And Jagger could never carry that part of the band's burden by himself, although he comes reasonably close on Some Girls.
At any rate, you can't hold it against the Stones that they didn't arrive fully formed, that it took them years to become a great band. Which it did. Because they did become as great a band as one could ever imagine. Furthermore, Mick and Keith were even able to do something John and Paul never could manage. They kept their band together. They made some of their best music after the Beatles had imploded in bitterness and recriminations, never to work together again.
The Stones have not been all that prolific. In almost 60 years of recording, they have produced just 23 studio albums, and eight of those were made for Decca Records in the 1960s, while the Beatles were cranking out a dozen albums in the same period. The Stones have made just 15 albums in the half-century since. There are also some ten "official" live recordings by now. Most of these were relevant only in their particular moment, and are now primarily of historical interest. One of them ("Got Live If You Want It") isn't really a live album at all, being studio recordings dressed up with phony crowd noises. Two of them ("Love You Live" and "Still Life") are actually somewhat dire, documenting the band's steady deterioration as a live act through the 1970s and early 1980s. The rest are generally companion sets to latter day tours and they - along with many of the numerous additional live recordings that have been issued as "official bootlegs" - demonstrate that the Stones have become a far more professional and satisfying concert act since Mick and Keith patched up their differences at the end of the 1980s than they ever were in their heyday, when their performances could be anywhere from awesome to awful.
Finally, like all British acts of their day, the Stones made a clear distinction between albums and singles - and even more than the Beatles, much of the Stones legend is built on their 1960s singles. Fundamental Stones classics like "Satisfaction," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Paint It Black," "Ruby Tuesday," "Honky Tonk Women" were all singles, not included on any album (in the UK, anyway.) They generally ended this practice when they left Decca at the end of the 1960s, and drew their subsequent singles from their albums. There are many, many compilations of their work, of course. While there is no single package that gathers their complete singles output, all the essential ones can be found on the two Decca compilations Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) and Through the Past Darkly. Both compilations would probably crack the top five on this list. It is, of course, some of the most essential music in their catalogue.
23. Undercover (November 1983)
22. Dirty Work (March 1986)
By now, Mick and Keith were at daggers drawn, and the only reason this is better than Undercover is the novelty of Steve Lillywhite's production, and the presence of a couple of songs Jagger had left over, that didn't make his solo album. By this point, Mick was utterly fed up with his bandmates and refused to tour with them. He tried to build a solo career. It didn't work out, and three years later he and Keith would patch up their differences and put the band back together.
21. Blue and Lonesome (December 2016)
An album of blues covers, bashed out in three days with minimal overdubs. It's a deeply weird achievement. This is where the Stones finally give up trying to be a modern band and revert to their original ambition - to become a competent Chicago blues band. It works, too. It only took them half a century, but they have finally become what they always set out to be. There's something strangely admirable about the whole thing, and it sounds just fine while it's playing. You do have to wonder if there's any point.
20. Emotional Rescue (June 1980)
They went into the studio in a good frame of mind (Keith was free! He wasn't going to jail!), they wrote lots and lots of songs, they worked hard and well... and came up with this? Baffling. A couple of the songs might have made it as deep cuts on a better album. It's all filler but at least some of it would be quality filler somewhere else.
19. Their Satanic Majesties Request (December 1967)
A notorious misfire, one that is often mocked to this day. John Lennon once sneered, with considerable justice, that the Stones generally did whatever the Beatles did but "three months later." This is the most obvious instance, one that Keith is apologetic for to this day (to the extent that Keith is apologetic for anything that's ever happened.) That said, it does have its moments. The glorious psychedelic single "She's a Rainbow" and its gloomy and spooky b-side "2000 Light Years From Home" is utterly fabulous. The single they left off the album ("We Love You" and "Dandelion"), recorded during the same time frame, was also outstanding and a couple of the album tracks - "Citadel" and, especially, "2000 Man" are well worth your acquaintance. But the rest is pretty silly and unfocused.
18. Steel Wheels (August 1989)
The great comeback, as Mick and Keith patch up their differences (largely because Mick's solo career simply hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped) and the Stones machine has rolled on ever since. The band sounds fine, the songs just aren't very memorable.
17. Bridges to Babylon (September 1997)
Mick is always looking for a way for the Stones to be a modern, contemporary band and he brought in outside producers Don Was, Danny Saber, Rob Fraboni and the Dust Brothers to help with this one. But Stones records always rise or fall on the quality of the songs. This one did have a few winners, including the one Mick seems to have accidentally pinched from k.d. lang and best of all was "Saint of Me." ("You'll never make a saint of me" might be the most honest lyric Jagger has ever written.) And having already brought in the mighty Sonny Rollins to play on Tattoo You, here they get the great Wayne Shorter to blow over the end of Keith's remarkable "How Can I Stop." Like most modern albums, it runs about three cuts too long - after a strong beginning, this one sags quite a bit in the middle. And it may actually have a bit too much Keith.
16. Out of Our Heads (July 1965)
Mostly an album of covers, with just three Jagger-Richards originals, one of which ("Heart of Stone") is easily the best thing on the record. That's the thing about the Stones during this period - when they had a great track, and they came up with several, it went out as a single. They took the albums seriously, they didn't want to pad them with filler. But before Aftermath, their albums are made almost entirely of covers of old, generally well-known R&B classics. And while the Stones play them with purpose and passion, they can't quite match the originals (whereas the Beatles for the most part cunningly chose to cover songs they could actually improve on, selecting mostly contemporary songs that had been hits in America but weren't well known to English audiences.) Between their second album and this one, the Stones issued several great singles - and most important, singles of original material: "The Last Time," "Satisfaction," "Get Off My Cloud." But British bands didn't put their singles on their albums those days. Oh well.
15. The Rolling Stones (April 1964)
The debut album is almost entirely a collection of covers, and their best covers - in particular, their ferocious take on Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" - had been used as singles. So the same caveats apply. The one original tune - "Tell Me" - is an absolute killer, though, and a sign of what would come. About four albums later.
14. No. 2 (January 1965)
They're still mostly a cover band on their second album, and the originals on this one are rather undistinguished. Even so, there's so much energy in the best tracks that it makes for a fine listen, especially "Down the Road Apiece" and the Solomon Burke and Chuck Berry covers. In the meantime, they had issued a string of fabulous singles, most of which were also covers, especially "It's All Over Now," and "Little Red Rooster." Which are not on the album, of course.
13. A Bigger Bang (September 2005)
This is still the band's last collection of original material. It was released some fifteen years ago, and in its turn it arrived fully eight years after its predecessor. As has been true for most of their recent history, they don't really write great rock tunes anymore but they can still come up with very strong ballads - in this case "Laugh I Nearly Died" and "Streets of Love."
12. Tattoo You (August 1981)
Barely an album in any sense of the word - this is a hodge-podge of leftover studio recordings that they had lying around. But they thought it would be a good idea to have some new product in the stores while they hit the road in America. So Mick and Chris Kimsey finished off some tracks and assembled this collection. Much of the material was salvaged from the Emotional Rescue sessions, but two of the tracks actually date as far back as Goats Head Soup in 1972, and feature Mick Taylor on guitar. A couple more were recorded during the auditions to find Taylor's replacement. And the opening track was originally a reggae tune they worked on for Some Girls called "Don't Stop." They had tried one rock take of it, and Jagger took that one take, gave it a new vocal and a new title and with "Start Me Up" the Stones actually had a 1980s hit and a song that would be part of their live shows to this day.
11. Black and Blue (April 1976)
Recorded while they were auditioning various guitar players to fill Mick Taylor's spot, it's an odd collection of material. It has maybe just three actually finished, written songs. One of them, the hit ballad, is Mick indulging his weird falsetto. "Hand of Fate" is a formulaic rocker, but it's a pretty good formula, and "Memory Motel" is an epic, and strangely affecting, ballad about a lost love and life on the road. The rest consists mainly of settings for the band to jam a little. Which isn't bad - it's always fun just to hear these guys play together. There's also a reggae cover, which is a serious misfire. Keith loves his reggae, and the band is all right, I suppose. But Mick can't sing it. Mick can be a very great rock vocalist indeed, but his limitations are fascinating. He's one of the smartest, most self-aware men in the business, and he's very well aware that he's a middle class white boy from Kent. He'll sing the blues for you - it's why he started singing in the first place. But he's far too self-conscious to sing reggae or country music. He can't take possession of it, he can't take ownership, and so he always sings it as if he's doing a parody.
10. Goats Head Soup (August 1973)
Exile on Main Street was a tough act to follow and Keith was sinking further into heroin addiction. He did come up with a couple of strong ballads ("Coming Down Again" and "Angie.") The rest is mostly Jagger trying on a variety of musical styles. Along the way, he makes some half-hearted gestures towards what was becoming a kind of Rolling Stones mythology ("Star Star" and "Dancing with Mr D.") Mick Taylor, so vital a part of the previous two albums, seems to have slept through the whole thing.
9. It's Only Rock'n'Roll (October 1974)
It's as if the Stones were positioning themselves to make some kind of grand statement - only to find themselves with nothing to say. The title track is pretty great but it isn't even a Stones recording - Jagger cut it with the Faces and David Bowie at Ronnie Wood's house. Mick Taylor rouses himself to contribute the gorgeous "Time Waits For No One" but the rest is mostly Stones-by-numbers. Which is never all that bad, I must admit.
8. Between the Buttons (January 1967)
This is just their second album made entirely of original material, and we find them moving away from their roots with impressive speed. There are some extremely strong songs here, which are not nearly as well known as they should be, because none of them have ever become an important part of their live show. In other words - there's not really very much guitar rock on the record, although "Miss Amanda Jones" is an absolute killer. Mick is starting to play the cynical young aristocrat and it seemed a fresh perspective in its moment. (It would eventually grow rather tiresome.) And Brian was still functional, and though he seemed to have lost all interest in playing guitar, he was very interested in playing all the other instruments. And the single missing from this collection (but tacked on to the North American editions?) The glorious "Ruby Tuesday," the thundering "Let's Spend the Night Together."
7. Some Girls (June 1978)
I've always thought the first album since incorporating Ronnie Wood into the band was somewhat over-rated. It's not Exile or Let it Bleed. But it is pretty damn great. It's very much Jagger's record and Mick was living in New York and hanging out at Studio 54 at the time. It reeks of cocaine and dance floors , and it sounds like everyone is on speed. Which may be how everyone manages to keep up. But it's that desperate rush that makes it all work.
6. Voodoo Lounge (July 1994)
Was this the last Stones album that seemed like an important event in the rock world of the day? Like your modern album in the day of the CD, it goes on too long and at least five tracks could be jettisoned without complaint, but the best tracks are very much up to standard. "You Got Me Rocking" has survived in their live shows to this day, which makes it probably the only song from the last 30 years to achieve that. But "Sparks Will Fly" is even better and Keith chips in an excellent ballad ("The Worst.")
5. Aftermath (April 1966)
The Stones' first album consisting entirely of original material was released five months after Rubber Soul, which was the Beatles sixth. Like I said at the top, the Stones were always playing catch-up with the boys from Liverpool. They were learning fast, though. This is a stunning leap forward. Sure "Going Home" - all 11 minutes of it - is a bit of an indulgence, but after the overwhelming rush of the first five tracks one can actually use a break. Just an incredible batch of songs. They had shown no indication whatsoever before this that they were capable of this quality in this quantity. The album is so great that it survives missing the great single that was left off - "19th Nervous Breakdown."
4. Sticky Fingers (April 1971)
This was the first time the Stones put out a hodge podge of tracks from various sessions and called it an album. It worked so well they'd try the same trick again when circumstances required. Keith, though, is already starting to disappear into the haze. He comes up with "Wild Horses," true, but he left it to Jagger to actually finish it. He isn't even on "Moonlight Mile." The other highlights come from Jagger ("Brown Sugar," "Dead Flowers") and Taylor ("Sway," "Can't You Hear Me Knockin.') So that's going to be a concern and a problem going forward- but in the meantime, just a great record.
3. Beggars Banquet (December 1968)
In its moment, with its mostly white cover and back to basics musical approach, this looked like Stones' own version of The Beatles (the White Album), which had been released exactly two weeks earlier. It's as if psychedelia had never happened. This album features Brian Jones' last great moment on record, the mournful slide on "No Expectations" - all the other instruments he'd taken up have been banished. That said, the Stones got back to basics in an original way. The famous opening track is a samba? Yes it is, and what a track it is. Most of the guitars on the record are acoustic, even the ones that sound electric - Keith had discovered a new sound by overdriving an acoustic guitar through a cassette machine until it started to distort. And as great as the album is, can you imagine how great it would be with its missing single? Which is nothing other than "Jumpin' Jack Flash."
2. Let It Bleed (December 1969)
The album recorded in between the Brian Jones and Mick Taylor versions of the band might have the strongest collection of songs of any Stones album. The bookend tracks - Keith 's "Gimme Shelter" and Mick's "You Can't Always Get What You Want" might be the finest such pairing on any record, ever. In between, we have the stunning mini-opera (the Stones would never actually call it that, such pretensions being best left to others) that is "Midnight Rambler", dreamed up, with all its weird stops and starts and twists and turns, by Mick and Keith sitting at an outdoor cafe somewhere in southern Europe one afternoon. There's a couple of gleeful country parodies, an overly respectful Robert Johnson cover, an even better blues from Keith, and another ferocious rocker with one of Mick's most memorable lyrics ever.
Keith is the only guitarist on most of it, which makes it unique in the band's catalogue (Brian may not have done much on Beggar's Banquet, but at least he had "No Expectations.") But that's just fine. Keith can play. The last great Stones single omitted from an album would have gone here, although they do provide a kind of country-western take on "Honky Tonk Women."
1. Exile on Main Street (May 1972)
It's always been very difficult for me to pick between this and Let it Bleed. I usually end up thinking that Let It Bleed has the best songs, but its recording is almost pristine. Not so here. This was, when it came out, a famously difficult album to absorb, guitars jamming ferociously, vocals buried in a dense and murky mix but startling snatches of words emerging from the din. It took quite a while for it all to sink in. But ultimately, Exile simply sounds like the Rolling Stones at their best: dense, weird, sloppy, falling off a cliff half the time, generally out of control, charging forward anyway. And the best songs here are pretty damn great themselves: "Torn and Frayed," "All Down the Line," "Shine a Light"... Yeah, there's fever in the funkhouse now.
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