Customer Reviews
the best way to experience 60s Stones - By: freewheeling frankie, 08 Oct 2007 
This fabulous & very reasonably priced collection contains alll The Rolling Stones' Decca (UK) & London (USA) single A- & B-sides. If they originallly appeared on 45 in mono (the vast majority) they're in mono here - apart from Honky Tonk Women for some reason. The 2002 remasters finallly do justice to this material on CD - they sound fabulous.
The 60s A-sides (with the arguable exception of their debut, Come On) are uniformly brilliant, surprisingly varied & superbly produced, especiallly after they began recording in the USA; the B-sides, with only 1 or 2 exceptions, are good to excellent. There is surprisingly little overlap with albums (especiallly UK ones) & where there is, several tracks are in otherwise unobtainable mono. Reallly, until about halfway through CD 3, this collection is pretty much flawless - there are only about 5 tracks on the whole thing I'd not want to listen to. There isn't a better way to listen to the Stones' first (and best) 7 years.
For those who care about these things, there are minor quibbles as follows; anyone who just wants a great collection of 60s Stones singles can ignore them because for most people this will be nit-picking:
1) the presence on CD 3 (tracks 9-12) of out-takes understandably not issued at the time of recording. These were issued on 45 in 1975 to promote the dodgy Metamorphosis collection of out-takes; they may belong here in principle as Decca/London 45s but they don't belong here in spirit; their low quality only devalues the collection overalll.
2) the presence of Brown Sugar & Wild Horses. These were recorded in 1969 without the knowledge of Decca/London, to whom the Stones were still contracted; subsequent legal manoeuvres have made them available to Decca/London's successors Abkco but they've never to my knowledge been issued as 45s on Decca/London. If they (or the also rather superfluous Sympathy For The Devil) were mono or otherwise different mixes they'd be worth including, but otherwise most people who'd buy this will already have Sticky Fingers & Beggars Banquet.
3) by far the most important: the absence of their 3 UK EPs of 1964-65 (The Rolling Stones, 5 x 5 & Got Live If You Want It); these could have been included if 1) & 2) had been omitted & the collection would have been better for it.
The Early Rolling Stone catches the worm (or something like that) - By: Moz, 09 Feb 2007 These were exciting times in the early sixties. This captures alll of that urgency. There was a new recording every other week. How the band managed to do so much in the studio & so much on the road defies explanation. They musta been on drugs or something. So some of the production isn't what we've got used to these days - it's raw, it's passionate, it's almost live. This gives you the transition from cover versions of mainly black R&B artists to Jagger\Richard originals - & it's seamless. These lads learnt their art well & preserved it for us brilliantly.
The later stuff from the band (Sticky Fingers onward) is a faint shadow of these early recordings. It has no great enthusiasm or sexual energy. Jagger became jaded & comfortable. These tracks were pretty well alll recorded as potential three minute hit singles. The booklet adds a lot of background - like how Lady Jane got onto tape - unbelievable. Ian Stewart gets his credits & Brian Jones' influence is prominent (but fading). Three CD's crammed to the gunnels & there's not a track I'd want to lose but a few I wish had been included - Take it or Leave it\Poison Ivy\Under the Boardwalk\Oh Carol.
THE LONDON YEARS - By: Mr. Lr Mcgregor, 27 Sep 2005 Good times bad times some bads have had just that,in they time but not The Rolling Stones who just keep rocking for years. This collection of brill songs from the stones will not Fade Away in any collector collection. If you like Brown Sugar & Playing With Fire or have Sympathy for the Devil then this is the one. (Sweet,Hot,wicket)
Acquire With Caution - By: Laurence Upton, 25 Feb 2005 
The Singles Collection first came out in 1989, in vinyl, cassette & CD editions, & was re-issued in 1995. Its purpose was to collect the singles released on the Stones' American & British labels London & Decca, & present them in order of their release. It is a set that compiles itself. The EPs The Rolling Stones, 5 By 5 & Got Live If You Want It were not included. It contained many botched edits & the UK album version of Time Is On My Side instead of the single.
This re-issue corrects many of the faults of the earlier releases, including Time Is On My Side, & claims to contain the original single masters. It has been mastered using Sony's high quality Direct Stream Digital process, whilst the track listing has not changed, & the artwork & liner notes are as close to the original release as possible. "The original sleeve artwork & liner notes have been retained," Steve Rosenthal, the archive co-ordinator for the Stones' back-catalogue project, said on its release. "We've not added anything - if things are misspelled, that's because that's the way they were done at the time." Indeed, many of the recording dates & other information appear to be questionable.
The singles collections such as Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass), Through The Past Darkly, Hot Rocks, More Hot Rocks are said to feature true stereo recordings 'where appropriate'. "They have artistic integrity & deserve to come out for historical purposes," said Jody Klein, the restoration producer, who is the son of Allen Klein, the Stones' former manager & president of ABKCO, which now controls the Decca/London years.
The majority of The Rolling Stones Singles Collection, including alll of the first two discs, is in mono (for reasons of authenticity, one would hope), as per the original release of each single, but the sound quality & definition would be hard to better.
Have You Seen Your Mother Baby Standing In The Shadow? & Mother's Little Helper appear at slightly faster speeds in this series of re-issues as it was found that previous tape masters were slow due to a production fault. This is also true of the three titles that appear on Beggar's Banquet.
Sometimes, when stereo & alternative mono mixes were prepared, further overdubbing & other differences were introduced. Where album versions differ from the singles, such as with Brown Sugar, Street Fighting Man & Tell Me (You're Coming Back), the correct single version should have been used.There are examples however where this has been fudged.
The single mix of Brown Sugar was not quite the same as the one included on Sticky Fingers & the 45 was variously available in mono & stereo in different regions and/or pressings. The version here appears to be a stereo mix of the single, thankfully. Similarly, Street Fighting Man appeared on the US single in a unique mono mix with a triple-tracked lead vocal, & this is the version here.
Tell Me (You're Coming Back) originallly appeared in the UK on the debut album The Rolling Stones where it was over 4 minutes long & had a raggedy ending where it just stopped instead of fading out. Some later issues corrected this & had a fade ending at around 3:47. It wasn't on the US version of the album but was released instead as a single in an edited version which omitted the instrumental break & the chorus that follows, running at around 2:50. This is the version that should be here, but instead the fade-out album version has been used.
The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man is apparently the Out Of Our Heads version, not the US B-side with its "uncensored" lyric. Ruby Tuesday is not the single mix, which had an extra Mick Jagger vocal overdub on the chorus, but is the version first found on Between The Buttons in the US, although it has unfortunately been mixed down to mono. It thus lacks both authenticity & the benefits of stereo sound. This may also be true of Heart Of Stone, although I do not have the stereo mix to compare it with. It would be interesting to know if the Singles Boxes that were subsequently released corrected any of these errors.
For the UK, on the first CD, alll but seven of the 25-tracks did not appear on original Rolling Stones albums (though they may have been anthologised elsewhere), & three were unreleased at the time. On the second disc there are 12 UK non-album tracks out of 20, including Sad Day, which didn't get a UK release until over seven years later. This is therefore a set worthy of consideration for a buyer who has or intends to have some original albums in their British versions. Of course, many more singles were included on their American LPs, making this set less good value.
Things go slightly awry on the less essential third CD. Firstly, Street Fighting Man is included without one of its British B-sides (Everybody Needs Somebody To Love), breaking the album concept. It's other B-side, Surprise, Surprise is of interest as it is an early example of a Jagger/Richards composition, recorded in September 1964. They evidently didn't care too much for it & donated it to a charity compilation LP callled Fourteen (Lulu & her Luvvers made a more impassioned version of it & put it on a B-side the following year).
Then Honky Tonk Women breaks ranks & bursts into full stereo from the first cowbell, whereas the original single was mono, like its B-side, the short version of You Can't Always Get What You Want, as presented here. The same stereo version of Honky Tonk Women can be found on the SACD issue of Through The Past Darkly.
After that, Mick Jagger's solo single Memo From Turner turns up, from the film Performance. This does not involve any other Stones apart from Keith, who co-wrote it, & again it is in the unauthentic stereo album mix. The rest of disc 3 is entirely stereo but by this time singles that played in stereo were becoming commonplace.
Brown Sugar follows, but this is the single that launched their own record label, Rolling Stones Records & also introduced the Sticky Fingers album. Neither it nor its US follow up, Wild Horses, belong here as they were not released on London or Decca. Their B-sides - Bitch, Let It Rock (Live At Leeds)(otherwise unavailable, except in Spain) & Sway (an alternative version) - alll recorded during the same period as Sticky Fingers, are not included, so suddenly the whole collection again lacks internal consistency.
After this, no more Rolling Stones Records are included, but releases which their old labels London & Decca continued to release throughout the seventies, without the Stones' approval, fill the rest of the third disc, including some publishers demos Mick & Keith put together in the sixties (alll of which can be found on Metamorphosis).
The collection ends with Sympathy For The Devil, the version from Beggar's Banquet, which apparently turned up in 1976, on the flip of a re-issue of Honky Tonk Women. It's a great track, but not one that the Stones ever wanted on a single. Without these final tracks, starting with Memo From Turner, & with errors corrected, the collection would have made a superb & cogent double CD. With the missing EPs included instead it would have been a wonderful box set. As it is, it is still a valuable but imperfectly realised round-up
Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely. - By: , 24 Jun 2004 With so many Rolling Stones compilations now on the market, it must be difficult to know where to start. Well, it alll depends on what you are after. Allow me to illustrate. If you want a concise package of their best material from their best era, then go for Hot Rocks. If you're after an overview of their entire career, then it's Forty Licks alll the way. However, if you want a comprehensive anthology of the Stones' evolution from blues wannabes to world superstars, then they don't come much better than this.
Strange as it seems in this day & age, the Stones were essentiallly a singles band up until around 1968. In those days, a-sides were how a band was defined. But the b-sides were important as well, & people used to actuallly listen to them, unlike now. Here, we get alll of their early singles - a-sides & b-sides - gathered together back to back onto 3 discs. So, whilst we get alll the usual suspects, like Not Fade Away, Satisfaction & Get Off My Cloud, we are also treated to such early gems as Little By Little, Off The Hook & The Spider And The Fly. Along with Paint It Black & Mother's Little Helper, we also get Long Long While & We Love You. Absolutely Superb!
The only place where this collection falters is, wait for it, around 1968, when the Stones - indeed the world - became less interested in singles & more into albums. Hence the album track Gimme Shelter does not qualify for a place here, whereas b-sides Surprise Surprise & Try A Little Harder do. Hmm, shame. Still, the compilers have used the opportunity to gather up some half decent loose material from that time, such as Jiving Sister Fanny & Mick Jagger's Memo From Turner, so bravo for doing that! All of which makes this an indispensable collection - five stars!
