Rolling Stones Single-By-Single Thread

You have my eternal jealousy, Glenn. My dad saw the Stones live in the '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s but he never did see them in the '60s. He was a bit too young. He has "retired" from concert going now so nothing in the '10s either, but four different decades is still a pretty great run.

Is there anyone here who saw them in every decade starting in the '60s?

 

Heh. It's not your fault you were born too late .

I saw them in 66 with Brian and 1969 with Mick Taylor and that was good enough for me. I've never seen them since.
I didn't/don't want to dilute my memory of how great they were live... when they were young and the songs were fresh.

 

one of my friends saw them Nov. '65 here in Baltimore and would never see them again, even when I offered him free tickets in different decades for that same reason.

 

Under My Thumb was not a single?....wow....what a great song.

 

You saw The Stones in 1966!?!?!
Then 1969?

Where was the venue, and how big was it?
How was the general audience atmosphere...?
Was there hysterical crying and screaming?
Noticeable ratio of male vs female?
General Age range?

Lastly, how much was the ticket?

I’m sure it was cheaper than the cost of a tongue sticker decal, on the last tour...

 

Great set list with some of my favorites from the period.

Any photos?

 

have this thread on watch but not getting alerts most of the time so i just zipped through 4 pages to get caught up

Paint it Black - awesome. has that slightly menacing sound to it. and my front door is painted black

Mother's Little Helper - i like it ok i guess. it's a bit weird but i don't mind listening to it.

 

Sigh.

First of all I would find it strange for a songwriter to consider writing a song that was over the head in terms of complexity of the performers the song was intended to be played by. OF COURSE songs are written all the time without a specific performer in mind, but not in the context of this sort, when a song is written for the writer's group to perform. Also OF COURSE for a complex line perhaps someone else can be brought in, but that's not what happened here.

Second, where a performer's facility allows for greater complexity, that performer would be able to perform an easier part as well. If the writer wanted the easier line included all along, why make it more complex? You are pursuing a logical fallacy. I want to drive a car at 80 miles an hour, but car A can only go 70. Car B can go 90. I can't drive car A faster than 70, but I can drive car B less than 90. So since I WANT to drive it at 80, I will, and do not have to drive it faster merely because it can be. So your whole attempt to be comical here was a wasted effort.

The melody in Paint It Black is without question simple, consisting of all quarter notes in 3/4 time, up and down the scale, repeated through the verses, and echoed note for note by the sitar. Off hand I can't think of another Stones song that uses the same approach. Do I KNOW that Jagger and Richards consciously chose it solely because they were concerned Brian could not play something more complex on the sitar?

I concede my use of the term "chosen" in my first post on this was in artful. I did not mean to imply that they sat down at the beginning and said let's get Brian to play the sitar on this, but we will use a melody line that is all quarter notes and follow the scale because that's all he can play. It did however end up that way through what were likely a series of decisions in deciding on what the song would sound like. I did not mean to imply that the song was intended to be that from the beginning. Who knows? But it is what they ended up with, with those decisions having been made leading to the final result.

 

Being in the US I was very familiar with the US version of Aftermath, which was very popular with a number of my friends, as well as me. Noteworthy to the present discussion is that for this version Paint It Black was included but Mothers Little Helper was not. Helper appeared shortly on the compilation Flowers, which I also bought, and eventually on Through the Glass Darkly. As such I do not associate it directly with Aftermath, and to be frank have no problem with it not being on that album.

 

Under My Thumb is a great tune. A great cover was performed live by Blind Faith:

 

I'll keep it short because the thread is about the Stones singles.

So I don't send the thread off on a tangent, if you or any one else wants more detailed info regarding the 66 or 69 shows feel free to message me.

The concert was in the Arie Crown theater, which was inside McCormick Place in Chicago .
The theater held around 4,200 or so.

It was all teenagers and yes, plenty of screaming girls but probably a 50/50 mixture of guys and girls.

It was bedlam excitement- wise.
The Tradewinds opened, followed by the McCoys and the Standells.
It was my first concert!

The tickets were $6:50, $5:50, $4:50 or $3:50 .
We popped for the $6:50 seats .

 

You know, this makes me mad.
I saw the Beatles a month later and over the years I've collected a nice group of photos taken at the exact show I was at.

But I have never seen ONE picture EVER of the Stones show I saw on July 10,1966 in Chicago.
That seems so weird to me . I've checked all the Stones books, check Google literally every few months, Chicago Tribune online photo archive, a Chicago 60's Rock Facebook blog where people have posted a zillion pictures, but Stones 1966 show in Chicago ?
Not one. Nada .

Anyone here have one ?

 

That's a shame.

 

Wow people. So far I've had nothing to contribute but the thread gives me so much joy and I have listened to lots of Stones the last few days. I really remember now exactly discovering my favorite band back in 1983 or so. And I somehow relive that period.

Thanks for all contributions and of course to Parachute Woman for starting the thread.

 

I've always owned the UK version of Aftermath. Both versions were put on CD (for reasons I've never quite understood--why not release the first two UK albums but then double up on Aftermath and Out of Our Heads?) and I went to Circuit City to buy myself my next Stones album. I collected the whole discography while I was in high school. It took awhile! I chose to buy the UK Aftermath for the simple reason that it had more songs on it. All these years later, it's still the Aftermath I know and love.

So I'm the opposite. I associate "Mother's Little Helper" with Aftermath (and Flowers) and think of "Paint It Black" as a non-album single. But, really, either version of the album is just great.

 

One of my favorite openings to a song ever!

 

From the 66 US tour, July 1, at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. If you look closely Jagger had a jacket on that was a tree with arms that were branches, he would turn toward the audience backwards and hold his arms up. Heh.

 

As I understand it, up until 1986, all of the original pre-1971 releases remained on London, with no mention of Abcko. Abcko put out "new" compilations (e.g, Hot Rocks) and "new" releases of archival material (e.g., Metamorphosis and its attendant singles) containing material recorded before 1971, but reissues of releases that had originally come out on London before 1971 remained on London.

PolyGram bought Decca/London in the early '80s. As noted earlier in the thread, all of the Stones' 1960s singles remained in print with their original catalog numbers into the 1980s:

The label design of the 45 in the photo above was introduced by London around 1982, and was the last label design London used before the Stones' 45s went out of print. Because I've never seen one that mentions Abcko, I've always assumed they went out of print in 1986 when the album catalog was revamped, but I don't know that for certain.

 

Please feel free to chime in whenever you like! I have loved just reading people's memories and feelings regarding the songs. It's like a living time capsule of this band and how they impacted all of us.

 

Saw them 3 times 89, 94 & 97.
They were my last concert I ever attended.

 

Releases still carried London labels, but starting with Big Hits unique catalog numbers started to be used (NP = Nanker Phelge), and by Let It Bleed there were notes indicating releases were manufactured by Naker Phelge Music Ltd and/or ABKCO Records:



While those didn't end up on every release, it *seemed* like ABKCO was firmly in control of the catalog in the US, regardless of the London labels on the releases.

 

Thanks for sharing your experiences!
(Don’t hesitate to continue...)

I think your brief info gives us a general background sketch of the era when these great singles were first heard.
It reminds me that this music was just literally the first releases by a young band, distant years away from the iconic, near immortal, grizzled rock stars they are today.

Adding flesh to the bone

 

What song are we on? This thread moves fast!

 

Looking at label images online, I get the impression that the reference to Abcko was added to new releases starting in 1969. London titles that came out after that point (Through The Past Darkly, Let It Bleed, Get Your Ya-Ya's Out!, and the "Honky Tonk Women"/"You Can't Always Get What You Want" 45) always had a reference to Abcko, from the day they were first released. Anything released before 1969 never had any reference to Abcko until the 1986 catalog revamp.

I have to admit that I'd never noticed that reference to Abcko before. In my defense, I am more of a collector of 45s than LPs, and it looks like there was only one London Stones 45 that ever had the Abcko reference on it.

It would be interesting to know the legalities behind all of this. Why was the Abcko language added in 1969? What rights did London and Abcko each have after 1970?

IINM, CDs of the Stones' Abcko-controlled material never contained any mention of London, while the LP and cassette reissues that came out in 1986 at the same time as the CDs were still co-branded.

 

I want to say the 1966 contract meant NP/ABKCO would pay for manufacturing themselves, in return for a higher royalty rate.

Some of the original ABKCO CDs did in fact have London logos.