Two-headed hydra: Mick and Keith on stage in America, summer 1972. Photo by the great Jim Marshall

A bend or a curtsy on stage in ’72 … or is it just warming up for the next number?

No caption needed. A great early unofficial LP from the July 4, Washington D.C date.

The hydra at rest between shows, backstage 1972. Photo credit goes to the incredible Ethan Russell, one of my favorite music photographers.

 

 

LADIES & GENTLEMEN, A PREFACE TO THE INTRODUCTION: Call it kismet or the hand of fate or the rock gods grinning with glee at the chemical convergence of impulse, intent, and circumstance. But I just noticed that this review essay, which I intended to serve as a kind of Part II piggybacking follow-up to my earlier “Exile On Main St.” anniversary essay (found elsewhere, without too much trouble, at this site), is about to be my 50th entry at this “RPM” cybernetic rock & roll flashback machine in cyberspace. Even better, it comes right as we’re about to go into the glorious weekend. Much like the happy accident of impulse and circumstance that “Exile” itself proved to be, so it is with this post, which reflects upon what I believe to be the Stones’ ultimate band-and-brand-defining tour that followed the release of “Exile” 42 years ago this week, and what was surely the band’s musical apex as a live (and, as you’ll read below, widely and lovingly bootlegged) touring unit. So, as the band continues to celebrate its “50 and Counting” world tour, I’ll think of this as my (and our) very own “50 and Counting” mini-“RPM” anniversary. Lots of links here to listen to and watch below you “head out on that dusty road,” to quote a line from “Rocks Off.” Enjoy the magic, mirth, and mayhem of 1972 my friends.

The 1972-73 golden age of the Stones has been a particularly long lasting and constant obsession for Rolling Stones fans specifically, and the collectors community in general. Much of this has to do with the irony that the band’s best and most iconic period as a stage act and as live performers is also the only era that has not been accorded official audio documentation on audio.

When  you consider that the last 20 years have brought roughly a half-dozen live albums — the same time the Stones made their most mediocre albums but nevertheless toured the world as a mega money-making juggernaut  flogging their old hits — the dearth of officially released music from the concert tours of 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1973 is ridiculous, even inexcusable. Perversely, until the recent DVD release of the seminal and highly recommended concert film, “Ladies & Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones” a few years back, audio or video of the “Exile” or “STP” tour had never been widely seen or heard, much less even officially released by the band, its management, or its record company.

STRAY CAT NAP: 40-wink Mick catching some quick Z’s with the Stones backstage between shows, somewhere along the road, 1972.

Consequently, it’s been solely up to enterprising “bootleggers” to document, preserve, and distribute this historically important — and great — music that might otherwise get easily ignored (Bob Dylan’s “Royal Albert Hall” concerts in 1966 are a good example of how much better bootleggers understood Bob Dylan’s legacy, the historical value of those shows, and the man’s audience than the man’s own record label, which finally got a clue and released an official version of the “RAH” show more than 30 years later; it was both a critical and commercial success — check out my earlier post on Dylan’s ’66 Sydney show for more on this topic).

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, you can’t always get what you want … and sometimes, alas, you don’t even get what you need. Rolling Stones collectors beware, or at least proceed with caution, if you see this tempting title and package (see the red Mick close-up cover art for “American Exile” below), as it circulates around Interweb music and auction sites. Think of this review as a public service to “RPM” subscribers and fellow Stones fans over at the Collectors Music Reviews blog and website, where the following review essay of this new release was recently published.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Stones guitars and gear backstage at Vancouver, 1972. Photo by the great Ken Regan

OK, so maybe it’s not exactly like helping a little old lady across a busy street. But it is a bit like helping a  poor schnook who’s saved up all their hard-earned dough for some high-class contraband — only to find out it’s skunk weed wrapped in a pretty package.  This is not to say that there aren’t some things here you may want to know about or listen to. Plus, the piece makes a pretty good primer on the nature and purpose of the bootleg collectors market (which, depending on how you look at it, has either expanded or shrunk due to the ready availability of digital file-sharing, torrent downloads, etc.).

Without further ado, here’s my take on the new unofficial live three-CD set entitled, “American Exile,” and my look back at what made this Stones era so special.

The tri-fold cover of the new 3-CD Scorpio/Bad Wizard release, “American Exile,” which is a listenable but scrambled hodge-podge of tracks taken from several of the Stones 1972 U.S. dates.

Rolling Stones – American Exile (Scorpio/Bad Wizard Am-Ex 1972/1-3)

Recorded Live at the Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, June 3, 1972; Center Coliseum (2^nd show), Seattle, Washington, June 4, 1972; Tarrant County Convention Center (1^st and 2^nd show), Fort Worth, Texas, June 24, 1972; Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, July 26, 1972.

DISC ONE (CORRECT RUNNING ORDER): Brown Sugar, Rocks Off, Gimme Shelter, Bitch, Tumbling Dice, Happy, Honky Tonk Women, Loving Cup, Torn and Frayed, Sweet Virginia, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Ventilator Blues, Midnight Rambler, All Down The Line.

DISC TWO: Intro, Brown Sugar, Bitch, Rocks Off, Gimme Shelter, Happy, The Loveliest Night Of The Year, Tumbling Dice, Love In Vain, Sweet Virginia, Loving Cup, Band Intro, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, All Down The Line, Midnight Rambler (false start), Midnight Rambler, Bye Bye Johnny, Rip This Joint.

DISC THREE: Bye Bye Johnny, Rip This Joint, Jumping Jack Flash, Street Fighting Man, Jumping Jack Flash, Street Fighting Man, Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia, Don’t Lie To Me, Love In Vain, Sweet Virginia, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, All Down The Line, Midnight Rambler, Band Intro, Bye Bye Johnny, Rip This Joint, Jumping Jack Flash, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

TWO MICKS & A KEEF: “Sweet Virginia” onstage, ’72.

1972. To longtime fans and followers, those four numerals add up to far more than merely one year in Rolling Stones lore. They mean magic.  And amazingly, the aura of myth surrounding the storied ‘72 tour has grown rather than diminished with time and distance. The golden glory of the Stones in their prime is practically dipped in the glitter of that fabled, press-and publicity-saturated junket across the United States that, for all intents and purposes, changed the way international rock stars toured the world (private jets, public displays of debauchery, groupies indexed and leisure-pursuit connections itemized).

A variation on the “Philadelphia Special” concerts, this time by the German collector’s label, The Swinging’ Pig.

BLACK & WHITE BLUES: One of the earliest LP examples documenting the “STP” tour (with a title reference to Jagger’s planned but aborted release of a ’72 live album)

The Stones’ hallowed “STP” jaunt enter the CD age. This is one of the very best live documents.

But it wasn’t myth. It was as real as the shit on your shoes; a tour and a moment in time that, while technically a mere two-month blip dotting their 50-year history, has loomed over everything the Stones have done since. It was the culmination and apex of everything we know (and I love) about the Rolling Stones: Mick’s moves, Keith’s muse, booze and blues, tribalism and decadence, and no less an album than “Exile On Main St.” to tour behind.

Keith’s pals Coors, Jack, and Coke keep his amp hydrated.

It is for those reasons and more that for some of us, it’s hard to be critically objective, or even rational, about hearing and reviewing a precious live document – or a piece of it, anyway – from the ‘72 tour. I can’t think of a single other rock band whose creative high water era has gone so  woefully undocumented on official (read: non-bootleg) audio.

Sure, the 1974 concert film, “Ladies & Gentlemen,” has made the occasional, midnight movie art-house rounds (but its holy grail renown has far more to do with the collectors’ market, which has encouraged and sustained countless VHS and DVD bootlegs over the decades).

STARFUCKER: Inquiring minds want to know. Apparently Keith doesn’t read the papers on the road.

MICK AT THE MIKE: Action shot ’72, used for the cover of The swingn’ Pig’s sequel to ‘Philadelphia Special”

Licks ‘N’ LIPS: The two Micks on stage, ’72. Credit: Photo by GLOBE PHOTOS / Rex Features ( 42336a )
ROLLING STONES, MICK JAGGER, MICK TAYLOR
VARIOUS – 1972

The truly maddening aspect of the debacle surrounding a dearth of official ’72 tour audio artifacts is that Mick Jagger had fully intended to release a live album from the tour, which is in large measure why several shows were professionally recorded in the first place (Mick even talked about the possibility of issuing a double LP composed of a half-and-half split between live recordings and new material).

Alas, thorny legal issues arose involving song publishing ownership with thorn-in-Stones-side

Folk at Norfolk, VA., ’72

Allen Klein, and the idea never came to fruition. Instead, fans have ironically been subjected to a half-dozen or so inferior ”live” albums such as the unintentional though accurately titled “Still Life” that have never come close to touching the ‘72-‘73 era for spirit, musicianship, and Stones quintessence.

So it is with “American Exile,” one of a new string of Stones releases that’s been issued recently by the revived Scorpio label in Japan (with a co-credit assist from Bad Wizard). It is, on the surface, a beautifully presented three-disc package that comes with a glossy tri-fold cover sleeve, sumptuous “Exile”-era stage photographs, a reproduction of the concert-date itinerary taken from the official John Pasche 1972 tour poster, and a nice little eight-page booklet of photos and text (albeit oddly focused on tangential elements of the tour such as press coverage and security concerns).

But unfortunately, the package is a bit like that big Stones reflecting mirror and dramatic lighting deftly used to substantially amplify the human-scale proportions. In terms of both performance and recording quality, the music here is good to very good. But the contents are ultimately a rehash of repeatedly released shows that have shown up roughly a dozen times previously in different configurations.

Keith delicately de-planes without spilling a drop, 1972.

Unless you have missed most of those titles, proceed with caution. Basically, we get the June 3 kick-off date in Vancouver and the late June 4 Seattle show. As for the handful of considerably stronger (in terms of audio fidelity) tracks culled from Fort Worth, New York, and Philadelphia that round out this set, you would be far better served tracking down any one of the plethora of already-issued titles that contain complete concerts of those seminal ‘72 dates.

JUMPIN’ JACK’S JUMPSUIT: Mick Jagger’s ’72 stage uniform (one of ’em, anyway), reportedly auctioned for serious money (no, it wasn’t me who snagged this number…I would need to be in a different line of work). Rumor has it that when she was 16, Georgia raided her dad’s tour wardrobe closet, tried it on…and it fit!

Be that as it may, most of the music here is presented (again) as very good mono/stereo audience recordings of a typically chugging Stones set list from that tour – “Brown Sugar”; “Bitch”; “Rocks Off”; “Gimme Shelter”; “Happy”; “Tumbling Dice” etc. The Vancouver show has always been far more appealing for its novelty than for the quality of the performance (short-lived “Exile” and shaky stage experiments including “Ventilator Blues”; “Loving Cup”; and “Torn and Frayed” are auditioned; none of which made the long-term cut). Even hopes for a significant upgrade fall short, unfortunately. Jagger’s vocals have always been boom-y and distant on the Vancouver tape, no matter the release, and that has not changed, sorry to say (and hear).

The Seattle show is spirited enough, if occasionally sloppy – the band re-starts “Midnight Rambler” after an opening gaffe (but recovers to deliver a solid reading), and abruptly cuts “Gimme Shelter” short amid what appears to be some confusion on stage. But the audience recording is fairly clear and strong, with both Jagger’s voice and Keith Richards’s and Mick Taylor’s guitars nicely placed in the mix, especially on a rip-snorting Chuck Berry cover, “Bye Bye Johnny,” which features Keith really climbing the ladder (or neck, as it were) while feeding his Berry jones.

The main drawback here (besides the glaring track listing errors which I’ll get to in a minute) is that this set initially comes across as a tour souvenir compilation of sorts. But the shows that have been chosen are neither definitive nor especially rare or well-recorded. For the casual collector, the best place to start surely isn’t Vancouver or Seattle, as there are far better definitive documents. And hardcore collectors will likely already have at least one or more of these shows.

It goes like this: MT and Keith Richards backstage, 1972.

But far and away, the biggest problem is the wildly inaccurate track list for disc one. This gripe is  perhaps chiefly an aesthetic one, yes, but the fact that this mistake could have so easily been prevented somehow makes it all the more egregious. Only the opening number, “Brown Sugar,” is listed correctly. The remaining 13 tracks are badly scrambled and look amiss from even a cursory glance at the list. “Sweet Virginia” the second song the Stones play? Huh? “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” four songs in? Given the premium placed on historical accuracy in this medium of underground recordings released for posterity as well as profit, the garbled track listing is jarring and off-putting to listeners left to manually match up the incorrect tracks with the correct show.

This is my Jagger-designed silk tour jacket specially given out only to the band and road crew/tour members during the 1972 tour in support of “Exile On Main St.” The striking black and white color combo was picked so the members of the Stones Touring Party could be easily spotted in any arena or venue. Of course, this stuff (and the attendant merchandising) is routine now, but this jacket was a predecessor for the major rock tour gear of the 1970s and beyond. Not available to the public, and one of the gems of my Stones collection. It was there, even if I was not.

HIGH & (ANYTHING BUT) DRY: Airborne and Rolling to the next gig, STP-style.

As if this wasn’t unfortunate enough, the decision to break up portions of the concerts, separate one show from another, randomly insert and tack on songs is bewildering. Why, for instance, spread the Vancouver show between disc one and then finish the final four tracks from the show not on disc two but rather on disc three? Or sprinkle two Seattle tracks (“Jumping Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man”) smack dab in the middle of disc three? And why have four consecutive versions of these two numbers on the third disc?

No matter how you add it up, it just doesn’t make any coherent sense. Ultimately, the resultant effect is as confusing and sloppy as the Stones’ stumble on “Midnight Rambler” in Seattle. And as with the Stones on an off night, we know from its track record that Scorpio, despite the shambolic display here,  is capable of much better.

Mega-rare pro-shot Stones footage from Madison Square Garden on July 25, 1972 and more, courtesy of the great underground label Idol Mind Productions:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLN3O4w7a9o

Feelin’ drunk, juiced-up and sloppy … Yeah, you got the fix, it must be love, it’s a Bitch!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoQqAI2Zgdk

Watch and listen to a definitive “Midnight Rambler” from the Fort Worth/Houston, Texas shows, filmed for the finally officially released “Ladies & Gentlemen” DVD (highly recommended for purchase!) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNaAEJv_sDQ

For my money, this is hands-down THE absolute best, most simultaneously tender, pragmatic, and powerful live version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” the band was ever documented performing (also from “Ladies & Gents”) right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Uh9NaICdVw

Great historical time-capsule footage of the Stones visiting the Dick Cavett Show, with interviews and live music at Madison Square Garden, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXCIdfU7xlw&list=PL0oNMPgMFSie65ABAvKwtzeo0h3GG-K2A

From my personal collection, an unused ticket for the second of the Stones’ three-night stand at MSG, on their iconic ’72 U.S. tour. From the archive of a ticket manufacturer affiliated with MSG’s box office.

The Rattlesnake label used the official ’72 tour poster for the cover of their massively ambitious eight-disc box set of multiple shows on the tour.

Philly Cheesteak with hots: One of the most iconic unofficial recordings capturing the Stones in Philadelphia, June 1972. This double-LP had a gatefold cover, delectable artwork, and was pressed in several varieties of colored and splattered wax. The RSVP label put this out and both art and title was later copied by other notables including the Swingin’ Pig etc.

The esteemed artist and illustrator William Stout did this amazing cover for the “Dragon Slayers” bootleg of the Stones’ ’72 Houston and Fort Worth shows.

STREET THUG STONES: Back in the ’70s, the legendary illustrator William Stout did the cover art for many iconic bootleg LPs (thus making them even more iconic). One of my faves is “Welcome To New York,” which captured Taylor and the Stones at Madison Square Garden on Mick Jagger’s birthday, July 26, 1972. As incredible as it looks, folks!

A super-scarce version of one of the best sounding unofficial audio documents of the ’72 tour: the band’s July 26 date at Madison square garden, which was the occasion of Mick Jagger’s 29th birthday. Rumors swirled over the years that the tape, because of its professional clarity, was pilfered right from the MSG soundboard.

Rocks Off/Rock On: Another iconic, and highly sought after, double LP of the Stones’ stand at the L.A. Forum. Different colored wax pressings exist, as does the black vinyl press of this baby. Sound is only decent, but the cover shot and color vinyl make this a must-have!