the TATTOO YOU poll

the slinky soul of "tops" is tops for me. there are a few others i could easily name on any given day, but side 2 > side 1, and "tops" is the one i come back to more often than the rest.

that's Hang FIRE

little t&a, keith all the way.

"Heaven" -- sounds like nothing else in their catalogue. Mick on guitar too.

for me its 'little t&a'

such a nice, slurred delivery

Has to be "Waiting On A Friend" - the Stones' greatest twilight anthem, plus a wonderful extended solo by Sonny Rollins.

Odd that no one's said "Start Me Up" yet.

I will. I don't love this record, it's good, but it feels like Stones Lite to me. But I love "Start me Up."

It's "Heaven" for me, too. Never heard that song until I downloaded it from Bumrocks 1-2 years ago - made me buy the Tattoo You lp on the same day! Well, at least in the same week. It sounds so loose, almost freeform. In contrast to "Start Me Up" (which I love as well).

I'll vote for "Hang Fire". I'd heard it on the radio for years, and as a result heard the "do do do" part for years in my heard and sung it around the house. But I didn't know what song it was until finally some internet lyrics site had the "do do do" part---then bought the album. Classic tune, and an enjoyable album. I'd love to read someone make a strong case for its greatness.

"Heaven." I think this album is about 1/2 great and 1/2 the Stones doing what only the Stones can do once they find their groove. Loved it all back-in-the-day, though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I don't expect it to be a popular choice, but I really like "Neighbors."

I'm with "Hang Fire" - such a nice tight concise opening couplet, it's got such a great tossed-off feel. Some sentimental associations with the theme too - railbirds - but beyond that the riff, the "Heartbreaker" doo-doo-doos, the vibe...unmannered fun, the band at their best.

Side A is 'At the party, hitting on chicks' and Side B is 'In the Bedroom.'

I was listening to this today and thinking about the poll. Really, the whole thing is all of a piece, despite its being a miscellany. "Hang Fire" may be one of their few political numbers that doesn't sound cynical; maybe its under-three-minutes length, the doo-doo-doos that John mentions, and compressed guitars help.

Meanwhile "Little T & A" turns raunchy into a kiss on the cheek.

In my younger days I was a fool, and told my boss at the record store I worked at that I didn't like Tattoo You. He told me "that's because you've never fucked to side 2."

I like Tattoo You a lot now.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I didn't see this, but incredible that "Start Me Up" did not win. The last classic Stones song.

'waiting on a friend' wins comprehensively. that's certainly a worthy choice.

this poll is introducing me to the merits of 'hang FIRE'. never looked upon it as a political song, but i'm seeing it now. a nice, rollicking little number it is too. love the keys.

incidentally, don't know how i wound up with hang TIME. that's what i've got it down as on my itunes somehow

and no love at all for "Worried About You." Listening to Wayne Perkins' solo makes me mourn Ronnie's continued employment with the organization.

would have voted tops, "never, never let success go to your pretty head"

"Heaven" is killing me hard at the moment. jeez, what a song.

No "Slave" votes? I'd have gone with that or "Hang Time" or "Little T&A," I think.

Lovelovelove the phased guitar on "Heaven."

the whole album sounded REALLY good to me just now. god, even "no use in crying" a song i usually completely forget about is awesome.

and no love at all for "Worried About You." Listening to Wayne Perkins' solo makes me mourn Ronnie's continued employment with the organization.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, December 20, 2007

everything about this post is OTM

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/08/charlie-help.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czNBG4ppuRM

Trivia

Mick Taylor plays guitar on "Tops" and "Waiting."

Sonny Rollins sax on "Slave" and "Waiting."

Super sessions at Mick's place!

Always thought Side 1 was the party, Side 2 was the bedroom down the hall.

Waiting on a friend is untouchably good

Keith discovers the Chorus effect on this record the same way he rode Phase on 'Some Girls.'

In the sweet old country where I come from
Nobody ever works
Yeah nothing gets done
We hang fire

the sequencing behind this album is basically genius. though i guess it's also a testament to the quality of the songs that i don't feel the urge to skip any of em.

incredible album!

"Tops" robbed here. Stones at their sexiest

Top 5 Stones album for me, love it love it love it

No votes for 'Slave'? That's developed into one of my favourite Stones grooves!

Y'know, for an album that was made up of outtakes, I think this record is far stronger on the whole than the albums immediately before and after. It's no Some Girls, but on the plus side it's so Undercover or Emotional Rescue, either.

*no, rather.

Side One in particular is perfect, IMO. There's one or two clunkers on Side Two, but I dunno, at the end of the day I'm just glad all this stuff got turned into something.

I wonder if there's anything decent in the Stones' archives now that we're a few albums down the line? I suspect not.

TBF, they yanked a bunch more stuff from that well for the expanded Exile and Some Girls, so it would seem the archives could probably line up to your vision now.

Yeah, but I mean, offcuts from Undercover onwards? I'm sure there must be a few outtakes/unreleased things from 1983-present lying around, but I can't imagine there's anything spectacular.

i've been gradually moving forward in time thru the band's catalog as i know it, and this is the first album that sounds like what i think of as 'corporate'

Wait until you get a couple of albums further down the line and realise that Tattoo You is their last near-classic record...

...until A Bigger Bang.

From an interview with Mark and Jerry (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/devo-on-how-whip-it-changed-their-lives-meeting-the-rolling-stones-704123/):

In the book, you had a great story about meeting Mick Jagger, and he listened to your “Satisfaction” and he said he loved it because his manager told him to say that. Did you ever run into him again?
Mothersbaugh: Oh, my God, yeah. About three years later, we were recording at the Power Station and they were remixing old songs downstairs. And this old guy with a big, fat sweater and gray hair came upstairs and said, “Would someone here play synthesizer on a song for my band?” And I look at him and it was Charlie Watts. So I went downstairs and there was more marijuana than I’d ever seen in my life. Everybody got super stoned. And there was a vocoder that we’d borrowed from Bob Moog to use on the album. I didn’t have a microphone with a quarter-inch jack for it, so I got Mick to put a set of headphones on sideway so one of the earpieces was over his mouth. He sang into it while I played notes on a keyboard into the vocoder.

What song was it?
Mothersbaugh: “Worried About You.” They’d recorded it in, like, 1968 and were like, “Well, let’s add a synth track on it.” The next day, they played it for Keith Richards and he later told my brother, “Who played that synthesizer part? I’m gonna stab him!” (Laughs) So Keith hated it, but there’s a little of it still in the fadeout and that’s about it.

(Devo's Mark and Jerry, that is)

“Who played that synthesizer part? I’m gonna stab him!”

new board description

Could've just been 11 "Heaven"s.

Wyman plays synth on that one iirc

Jagger's guitar on "Heaven" is my favorite Jagger-on-guitar moment on record.

Yeah - Jagger came up with some neat things on guitar, both in writing and performances on the records, but holy shit does it just look utterly wrong to actually see him holding/playing one. There's some Some Girls era pics of Jagger with a guitar that just looks as if it's this thing getting in the way of him unleashing the inner chicken.

A critic friend who's older once told me that it was a shocking sight to see Jagger playing guitar live in '78. Gradually he became an integral part of their rhythm sound, though, and he's a solid player.

I think he's a better guitarist than many people think he is, just people in general wouldn't really recognise this as they're used to Jagger up there "being the frontman" ... but yeah, 'Heaven's great, that's him on 'Sway' too... I wonder when he started learning? Is this something he picked up later while in the Stones or was he messing about on the instrument long before that, I wonder?

He plays the acoustic part in "Moonlight Mile" too.

Ronnie taught him the electric rhythm stuff, they've both said.

Doesn't he play some guitar in "Performance", or did I imagine that?

What the general public doesn't know is that he's written many of the riff monsters that many think Keef wrote ("Brown Sugar," "Miss You," etc). My theory: unlike Keef he sits down with his guitar or keyboard and says, "I'm gonna write Stones songs" and writes to that so-called template.

When's this photo from? '65ish?

http://24.media.tumblr.com/f7637daa0c0a667576d429ea6807e97a/tumblr_mys0zy63B01qgfyaho1_500.png

Hmm. Either '65 or '66, from the looks of it. Jagger looks like he's messing on with some 12-bar/slow rock'n'roll thing, based on where his fingers are on the fretboard.

Next Stones Reissue, Sez Woody

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/rolling-stones-tattoo-you-box-new-tracks/

Full details on the 40th anniversary edition

Known for the singles “Start Me Up” and “Waiting on a Friend,” “Tattoo You” was a collection of 11 songs that mostly had been begun during sessions for albums from the previous decade and completed later. That also appears to be the case for the nine bonus studio tracks included here under the title “Lost & Found,” some of which, like the bonus tracks for the 2010 “Exile on Main Street” reissue, were completed decades after they were begun (“newly completed and enhanced with additional vocals and guitar by the band,” according to the announcement). Along with “Living in the Heart of Love,” those tracks include covers of blues legend Jimmy Reed’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” and soul singer Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away,” as well as a reggae-tinged version of “Start Me Up.”

I love this, because for decades the story with "Start Me Up" was "we kept trying it as a reggae song and it sucked, then we found one rock version that was worth keeping," and now that it's deluxe reissue time, it's "hey, here's a reggae version of 'Start Me Up'!"

The set also includes a full concert from the group’s 1982 stand at London’s Wembley Stadium, which bears the title “Still Life” (confusingly, it is a different-but-similar album from the live album released from the group’s 1981 North American tour, which was also called “Still Life”). Along with the group’s classic hits and a healthy portion of songs from “Tattoo You,” the live set includes covers of the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination,” Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,” Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ “Going to a Go Go” and the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace.”

"Shame x3" and "Drift Away" were part of the original half-covers/half-live lineup for It's Only Rock'n'Roll.

Still Life was a terrible live album, but I don't know a whole lot about the making of it or the tour - any chance the full concert from Wembley will be really good?

Usually newly completed outtakes are a dubious enterprise, but that's essentially Tattoo You. Granted 40+ years is a whole lot longer than a decade or less, but the 2011 bonus disc on Some Girls was an excellent Stones album in itself that was just as good as Tattoo You.

lol I'm just now finding out about the Some Girls bonus disc, ten years after the fact. This is pretty fun so far.

"Living in the Heart of Love" is bog standard Stones raver.

Living in the Heart is like a mashup of Luxury and Brown Sugar

This deluxe thing is out today I guess

Reggae Me Up reminds me of Keith’s x pensive winos stuff

HANG FIRE HANG FIRE HANG FIE-YAAAHH

Every man is the same come on

Wow Tops got robbed.

xpost - came out last Friday, actually.

The bonus disc with the "new" songs is my favorite of all of these, even if they are even more reliant on modern overdubs than some of the past ones have been. It's still a great little batch of songs and, hell, wasn't overdubbing old scraps pretty much what the original album was anyway?

Every man is the same come on

wild results. can’t say for sure I would have voted for it but if I’m making a stones mix “Worried…” is absolutely going on it

I posted a brief note about the bonus disc last Friday, but yeah, it's a fine disc and it's grown on me. Almost as good as No Spare Parts from the Some Girls set which is still easily the best "outtakes" disc they've released so far. I can't say they made the wrong decision to shelve these songs, but I'm glad this got a release, and like No Spare Parts, it's nice that it was shaped into an album of sorts. (Watts and the others recorded some overdubs to finish these songs, correct? Would this be his last studio work with the Stones?)

the drift away cover is really nice, I could honestly listen to a whole album of the stones playing “drift away” 12 times in a row

you might be rifht, calstars, I just hear a slight contraction and a comma

Would this be his last studio work with the Stones?

Possibly? Jagger and/or Richards have alluded to there being some new Stones songs awaiting finishing touches. Blue and Lonesome emerged out of sessions for a long-gestating new album of originals.

"Heaven" sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday, love that song

otm, so dreamy, it sounds watching cigarette smoke disperse in the air

Billy Gibbons on "Start Me Up":

This track is continually a mystery. I've even talked with Keith Richards about it, because the introduction, when the band is just starting to kick in, it's difficult to pinpoint where the downbeat exists. Charlie Watts seemingly comes in backwards and miraculously turns it around. Keith pointed out another great record that also has that peculiar 'can't find the downbeat' intro, "Crackin' Up" by Bo Diddley. I would defy anyone to find the downbeat before the band kicks in!

Or "Come on Down to My Boat"

Or "I Go to Pieces." These are some of the greatest mysteries.

I’d never listened to this until today. Please tell me “Heaven” is one of those RS heads numbers because that just catapulted into my top 20.

Lol just noticed this for the first time

many people failed to recognize the cover photo to be Jagger and believed it to be an unknown female.

The first time I heard "Heaven" it instantly became my No. 1! It's still top five probably.

Second fiddle even on its own album to "Waiting for a Friend", however

on* a

Well the back cover has Keith so yeah mick on front

she's my little rock n roll
haw haw HAW

her tits her ASS her soullll