But guess what? They didn't always!I know. Crazy, right?
Recently for the first time in at least 25 years and maybe longer, I listened to their first live album, got LIVE if you want it! from 1966. And my eyes got opened pretty wide.
Charlie and Bill play like what they always sounded like on the albums, a rhythm section with an intricate knowledge of each other and clear view from each other as to where they go next. Brian Jones rhythm lines are crisp and delightful, while Keith actually seems into playing the guitar, something he obviously could do quite well when he felt like it. The way he and the notoriously quirky Brian play off each other on a lot of these tracks, such as "19th Nervous Breakdown," is awesome. The musicians bring it throughout all 10 songs (there are 12, but apparently two of them are not actually live. Pretty sneaky sis!).
But more than anything...Mick.
Mick Jagger is rock-n-roll incarnate. For 55 years or so he has strutted the strut like few ever have, ever inch of him oozing "rock-n-roll star." It's who he is and it's now embedded in his DNA. And he made the name for himself not just by dripping sexuality and outlaw intrigue, but by having some serious fucking chops as both a singer and songwriter.
The Rolling Stones began their long, long LONG journey as the most badass white boy blues outfit the world had ever seen (although Led Zeppelin would then show up and take that title from them just as the Stones hit their peak and began a long, long LONG descent into something that can only be described as "not peak"). They were raunchy and dangerous, they had soulful swagger and such a deep love of the American blues they even borrowed their band name from a Muddy Waters song. Their early records, the ones leading up to got LIVE, were explorations of that American Blues Songbook, some well-known and some obscure. And damn did they play it well.
At the center of it was Mick Jagger's voice, one of the truly unique voices in modern music history. It wasn't as pretty as, say, Paul McCartney's or as powerful as Roger Daltrey's. He couldn't screech and howl like Robert Plant and he didn't have the crispness of, say, Chuck Berry or even one of the Beach Boys. But what he had was a perfect voice to sing sexy, sassy blue-eyed soul more convincingly than anyone since the British Invasion made its way ashore. It's funny to think of a lead singer as being a band's secret weapon, but in some ways that's kinda what Mick was.
And if you listen to his live output from the last 45 years or so, maybe a little longer, you hear basically none of that. Instead you hear a toneless drawl, like he's just trying to spit out the syllables and get to his next hip shake. That's really what the Stones have sounded like, by and large, since the early 70s. It's not all Mick's fault. Keef detaches more easily than a boxer's retina, and while Charlie usually seems up to the task, Ronnie Wood...well...he tends to get distracted by bright shiny objects and just go along with what his lead-playing sidekick is doing. And again, that sucks. Because they had the talent to do so much more in front of a live audience.
But on got LIVE, Mick is unfathomably good. His voice is strong and strident, and everything we love about it on the studio recordings--the pout, the confidence, the ability to go from gentle to acid in about three seconds--it's all there. From the opening strains of "Under My Thumb" and into a purely joyous "Get Off My Cloud" which follows (the happiest celebration of curmudgeonism ever written), Mick is just SO on. He nails it through and through. And the strength and power of his voice holds up all the way through the end on "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." I have to tell you I was ferschimmeled. I've seen the Stones live and heard them play live countless times and have never been impressed. THIS impressed me.
Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! seems to get all the love from the critics and fans alike as the definitive representation of the Stones at their live best. And in fact was where the "Greatest Rock-n-Roll Band in the World" thingee really took off. But to this I say, "Feh."
got LIVE has it over the latter live set in every way. Sure, I know two of the songs were recorded in a studio and then had crowd noise piped in. Cheesy, sure. But the other 10 songs on the album give you an up close, grimy and emotional look at a then-young band on their way up, up and up. A band with an almost pathological connection to its audience in those days, something that seemed to be shared in the bloodstream with them. It's a live look-in on what it took to get them on the path to superstardom, and what made them so intoxicating in the first place. As live albums got from young bands on the journey skyward, only The Who's Live at Leeds can match it. Yes, I said that. (Actually I wrote it. Hee!)
Apparently the band later scoffed at got LIVE and basically disowned it, due to the overdubs and who knows what else. But what do they know, right? On 10 of these 12 tracks we hear live music as visceral, tight and passionate as any band is capable of putting together. Their greatest studio years were about to arrive, but they were never this good live again. Probably because they figured they didn't have to be.
And that's a damn shame. Because got Live shows just what happened when the Rolling Stones struck a match to their particular kind of gasoline. And it's staggering.
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