‘Dear Doctor’ is a fun country-blues track from 1968’s Beggars Banquet, The Rolling Stones’ first masterpiece.
By my count, The Stones released four albums on which I would hang that m-word. And they released them all in a row.
First up was Beggars Banquet, followed by Let it Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1961), and Exile on Main St. (1972).
It’s tough to consider the most recent year when compiling a ‘best of the decade’ list. The films both benefit from being freshest in your mind and suffer from not having enough time to really sink in.
I’ve read a couple of decade recaps that set aside 2019 altogether for that reason, which I find silly. How can you assess a movie decade while looking at just nine years’ worth of films?
Another alternative would be to hold off on creating this list until 6 months or a year from now, when 2019 has the benefit of a little more hindsight. But I’m not that patient.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time with The Rolling Stones’ catalog, after coming to them a little late in my musical life. I know seven or eight of their albums very well, including the half-dozen classics they released between 1966 and 1972.
Somehow, though, I never got around to 1973’s Goats Head Soup. Maybe that’s because, as the follow-up to Exile on Main St. and the start of a half-decade period considered their first creative slump, it just doesn’t have the cachet of the rest of their work.
Between the Buttons, released in 1967, was the seventh Rolling Stones album and the second (following the previous year’s Aftermath) to feature only songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
As was the custom back then, a separate American version was released, swapping out two tracks for two songs released in England as a double-A single: ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ and ‘Ruby Tuesday.’ While I generally hate the concept of different UK and U.S. releases, there’s no question that the addition of those two songs make the American version of this album a bona fide masterpiece.
As I look at ten celebrated albums of 1981, I’ll highlight some I don’t know at all and some with which I have passing familiarity.
The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You falls into the second category. I’ve done my share of dipping into The Stones’ catalog, with most of my focus on the remarkable period between 1966 and 1972 (regardless of your opinion of the band, it’s hard to deny the sustained creative excellence of that stretch). The latest Stones album I know well is 1978’s Some Girls.
Meet Me In Montauk 