Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 43

Record label: Decca

Produced: Andrew Loog Oldham

Recorded: Regent Sound Studio; January 3–February 25, 1964

Released: April 17, 1964 (UK) May 30, 1964 (US)

Chart peaks: 1 (UK) 11 (US)

Personnel: Mick Jagger (v); Keith Richard (g); Brian Jones (g, v); Bill Wyman (b, v); Ian Stewart (k); Charlie Watts (d); Gene Pitney (p on Little By Little); Phil Spector (maracas on Little By Little)

Track listing: May–Route 66; I Just Want To Make Love To You; Honest I Do; Mona (S/UK); Now I’ve Got A Witness; Little By Little; I’m A King Bee; Carol; Tell Me (S/US); Can I Get A Witness; You Can Make It If You Try; Walking The Dog; Not Fade Away (S/US)

Running time: 30.48 (US) 33.24 (UK)

Current CD: Decca 8823162 – not available on CD in original form, current CD replicates US release England’s Newest Hitmakers: The Rolling Stones

Further listening: Rolling Stones #2 (1964); Boxed Set Singles 1963–69 (1980)

Further reading: Stoned (Andrew Loog Oldham, 2000); www.rollingstones.com

Download: iTunes

The time manager Andrew Loog Oldham walked in on Keith Richards revising Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away was the day he knew his Stones could write as well as roll; the time he locked Mick and Keith in the kitchen and wouldn’t let them out until they’d finished a song was the night that they realised it too. And the January 1964 sessions which produced the Stones’ debut album told the world that they weren’t going to be a blues band forever. Stylistically, of course, The Rolling Stones is little more than a verbatim recounting of the band’s live set of the period – Bobby Troup, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, American soul and R&B. One dramatic Jagger/Richard ballad, Tell Me, joined a couple of pseudonymous efforts which disguised the team’s own early bashfulness – the instrumental Now I’ve Got A Witness, dedicated to Phil Spector and Gene Pitney (and rewriting the stage staple Everybody Needs Somebody To Love), and Little By Little, co-starring both, and co-written with Spector. On paper, the album is the sound of British beat 1964, pure and simple. It was what was done with the beat that mattered, though. Engineer Bill Farley recalls, ‘When they arrived, no one had any thought about arrangements. They just busked it until they got the feeling of the number,’ and that is what made the Stones as musicians, and Oldham as producer, so special.

The Rolling Stones emerged with a freshness and vitality which belied the rigidity of its repertoire and the sterility of the studio. There was no overdubbing, no gimmickry, no prima donna virtuosity. They played, they taped, they jammed, they relaxed, and when it felt right to everyone, it was finished.

Making a record, Oldham confirms, is not a craft, it’s an art. ‘It’s not something you know, it’s something you feel, in your heart, in your gut, in every fibre of your instinct.’ The Rolling Stones is all heart, gut and instinct.