The Rolling Stones – On Air (Polydor)

 

“Like somebody reaching into my brain and turning a switch that suddenly changed my fundamental vision of life from grainy black and white into glorious Technicolor”. That’s how Nick Kent describes the first time he saw The Rolling Stones perform on February 28^th, 1964 in Cardiff.  That sound, that feeling, can now be revisited on On Air, a compilation of previously unreleased BBC Rolling Stones  recordings from 1963-65.

The Nick Kent quote comes from his 2010 memoir, Apathy For The Devil, and the acclaimed English music journalist further describes the scene at Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens thusly…” It was raucous and primordial and it sent young women into an instant state of full-on demonic possession. Something that had previously been forbidden in white culture was being let loose here.”

As I was reading Kent’s memoir…it was a Christmas present…I felt the urge to thrown down the book and rock on up to the record store to grab a copy of the just-released On Air compilation, after all, there were a few tracks that had been recorded just weeks before Kent’s revelatory live Stones experience and I wanted to see if the BBC captured that phenomenon in their studios.

When I returned home, I went directly to side C of the two-disc set and played I Wanna Be Your Man, recorded for The Saturday Club on February 8, 1964. The recording itself was fairly primitive, but the performance was prime early Stones with a searing slide guitar solo from Brian Jones.  Yes, fifty-plus years after the fact, that excitement still is evident.

On Air, the double-disc vinyl version consists of 32 such tracks, not all quite as thrilling as I Wanna Be Your Man, although a few are even better.

Take, for instance, the one-two punch of You Better Move On and Mona, both recorded in May of ’64, for a programme called Blues In Rhythm. Unlike I Wanna Be Your Man and much of the other material here, these were recorded in stereo, in front of a live audience. Again, the performances are top notch and you can feel the excitement that must have been running through the room.

By the time 1965 had rolled around, The Stones had staked their claim as one of the top bands on the planet…check out the version of Satisfaction from September ’65…but their enthusiasm for making these BBC recordings seems to have waned. They sound bored as the run through Solomon Burke’s Everybody Needs Somebody in March of ’65.

Fortunately, most of this compilation fizzes with the thrill of youthful exuberance and the blues-loving Stones play favourites such as Muddy Waters’ I Can’t Be Satisfied, Willie Dixon’s I Just Want To Make Love To You and Jimmy Reed’s Ain’t That Loving You Baby. Of course there are plenty of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley covers, along with a few early Jagger/Richards originals.

There are also eight titles that have not been released anywhere else by The Stones including Buster Brown’s Fannie Mae, a rare take on Bo Diddley’s Cops And Robbers and a souped-up version of Roll Over Beethoven that begs to be compared with The Beatles’ version.

The Stones may have been young, but they understood the blues, and that wisdom comes through in just about every track here, making it essential listening for any true-blue Stones fan.

Marty Duda