PAINT IT BLACK, YOU DEVILS The Rolling Stones
Nov 05, 2009
As Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! and related artifacts demonstrate, in 1969, the Stones were at the peak of their powers.
BY HAL BIENSTOCK AND FRED MILLS
In 1970, legendary rock critic Lester Bangs correctly called The Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out "the best rock concert ever put on record." And although the ensuing four decades have seen the release of scores of genuinely classic live albums, the Stones title continues to be ranked highly among critics and fans alike. It's undergone several iterations over the years, including an initial appearance on CD in '86 and a 2002 release as part of Abkco's remastering of much of the band's back catalog - there have also been bootleg editions boasting alternate sleeve art and bonus tracks - thus ensuring its enduring appeal.
With Abkco's new 40th anniversary deluxe reissue of Ya-Ya's, Stones collectors get the chance to open their wallets yet again. But how does a label improve upon the "best"? How about by adding five songs, a 56-page hardcover book full of photos and memories, and a DVD that includes not only performances but rare backstage and offstage footage of the band and friends like Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, all shot by Albert and David Maysles for a documentary project that would eventually morph into the film Gimme Shelter. Not good enough? Maybe we'll also throw in live sets from the opening acts - B.B. King and Ike & Tina Turner.
Put simply, this beautifully packaged box sets the standard for what a reissue should be. It sounds great, and the music it documents has lost none of its power. This is the Stones at their peak, when they truly earned the title of the world's greatest rock ‘n' roll band. Raw, sexy, powerful and dangerous - they were everything rock ‘n' roll should be. Are there minor quibbles? Sure. The mix on B.B. King's set could be better. And rather than give the Stones' five unreleased live tracks their own disc, it'd be nice to have them sequenced as they were in the original show. (Plus, with only 18 minutes of music on that disc, would it have killed Abkco to throw in a few extra songs from another gig on the tour?) But in the end, it's tough to complain about a new look at an essential piece of history. It won't come cheap (figure in the $50 range), but the new version of Ya-Ya's is something every music fan should own.
The album and the circumstances surrounding its release are further steeped in rock lore. It documented the Stones' 1969 U.S. tour - yes, that tour, the one which wound its way to the fateful Dec. 6 Altamont concert that resulted in a homicide and was subsequently depicted in grim detail in Gimme Shelter. Eight of the ten original Ya-Ya's tracks were culled from concerts at New York City's Madison Square Garden on November 27 and 28, while two songs, "Love in Vain" and "Street Fighting Man," were recorded in Baltimore Nov. 26 (a good account of the album can be found at Wikipedia). And as a summation of where the band was at in '69 - relying primarily, performance-wise, on Beggars Banquet- and Let It Bleed-era material, arguably the Stones' greatest studio albums - it fully supports the Bangs assessment.
Ya-Ya's, however, might never have happened had it not been for the late '69 appearance of a Stones bootleg titled LiveR Than You'll Ever Be. Along with Bob Dylan's Great White Wonder, the white-sleeved/rubber-stamped album was one of the first rock boots, and it was notable both for its sound quality and its timing: as outlined in Clinton Heylin's exhaustive '94 book Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, the Nov. 9, 1969, Oakland Coliseum Stones concert was recorded using top-notch gear and then rush-released before Christmas in order to capitalize on the still-lingering hoopla about the tour and Altamont. LiveR was an immediate sensation, even meriting a rave Greil Marcus review in Rolling Stone ("the most musically exciting record I have heard all year, fully the equal, in its own way, of Let It Bleed"), thereby essentially forcing the hand of the Stones' label London/Abkco to accelerate the timetable for its own LP from the tour (while additionally sending out a phalanx of lawyers in an attempt to track down the bootleggers).
LiveR caused such a stir, in fact, that there was even speculation the Stones themselves were ultimately behind it, a notion that the Heylin book firmly debunks but nevertheless still makes for a good campfire tale. Recounts Heylin:
"It was common knowledge in the industry that the Stones' relationship with Decca (and, in turn, London Records) had long passed breaking point... The Stones had already decided to leave the label after they did one final album - a live collection from their U.S. tour. What better way to deflate the potential demand for Decca's album than to pre-empt it with a bootleg version? Certainly when the official version eventually hit the racks, after overdubbing and rejigging in the studio had diminished some of the authentic live feel, [Ya-Ya's] lacked some of the vitality and freshness of [LiveR]."
By Heylin's estimation, LiveR went on to sell in the "tens of thousands," no doubt making it one of the best selling bootlegs of all time. And though not as sonically pristine as Ya-Ya's (chief among its flaws are tape saturation on vocal peaks, and a few dropouts), its visceral power is undeniable - potentially, in Clinton's words, "a more authentic take on the Stones live in '69 than Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, with its retinue of post-production credits." And like Ya-Ya's, over the years it has enjoyed periodic revivals, including a remastered 30th Anniversary Edition in 1999 by an underground Stones specialist label, the evocatively-named Turd On The Run. Pressed on a gold CD as part of TOTR's Original Master Series of classic reissues, this 16-song LiveR was subjected to some digital-era wizardry by legendary boot producer Cool Cool Hand, who cleaned up the drop-outs and provided significantly better equalization. A great bootleg summarily got better, and LiveR stands as a crucial companion piece to its officially-issued sibling.
Returning to Ya-Ya's for a moment: once the record industry entered the digital era, Stones aficionados quickly decried the so-so sound of the 1986 Abkco reissue compared to the original vinyl LP; as with many first-generation CDs, analog-to-digital mastering technology was still in its infancy (check an MCA Who or Capitol Beach Boys title from the mid/late ‘80s for some truly egregious examples of how not to make a compact disc). 2002 brought the above-mentioned, and welcome, Abkco remasters - there's no noticeable sonic difference between the 2002 and 2009 reissues, although of course the 40th Anniversary edition comes with all the extras - but in the meantime, another bootleg operation had stepped into the gap with its own take on Ya-Ya's. The SLK label's version purported to be "remastered" (in the absence of the actual master tapes, more likely it was just some innovative deployment of software; regardless, the boot sounded superb), and it added four bonus tracks: "Prodigal Son" and "Satisfaction," both from Madison Square Garden Nov. 27, and "Under My Thumb" and "Sympathy For the Devil" from - wait for it - the Altamont concert. This Ya-Ya's, along with other proximate high-quality CD bootlegs such as the DVD-sourced soundtrack to Gimme Shelter and the Risk Disc label's Queenie LA (from the Nov. 8 Los Angeles Forum concert), unquestionably played a part in perpetuating the admittedly not-unwarranted mystique surrounding the band and its epochal '69 road trip. To those tape collectors, archivists, bootleggers and entrepreneurs who over the years have had a hand in all of the above and more, we Stones fans owe an immense debt.
Writes journalist John Carr in the liner notes to the LiveR 30th Anniversary Edition, "In the winter of '69 the Stones hit the West Coast like some far-off English tsunami, blowing away old perceptions and minds like yesterday's papers. Every show was sold out in days and a Stones concert ticket was the hottest ticket in town... This would not be the last time [the Stones toured], but to many of us the '69 tour was the best time."
With the existence of time-proven artifacts such as LiveR and, of course, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, it's easy to see/hear why. On the latter album, an obviously enthralled young female is heard blurting out between songs, "Paint it black, you devils!" She's obviously invoking the song "Paint It Black" - but here, it sounds like a command for all posterity. Stoned, even.
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