Music Arcades: The Rolling Stones: Singles Collection

So I got my first Rolling Stones album when I was thirteen, and my second was Exile on Main St, sometime in my twenties. But I was in my late thirties before I really caught on to how good their dirtiness was. Late developer.

That was around the time Forty Licks came out. I didn't fancy that one — although looking at the track listing now, it seems pretty decent. It was probably expensive, released for the Christmas market. Instead I became obsessed with getting this singles collection. I worried that the record label might take it off the shelves to avoid it competing with the new release. It now seems that was a misguided fear, because the two compilations are on different labels, or something. I remember the excitement-cum-relief when I found this copy in Record Collector, in Broomhill.

I think my guitar teacher may have been partly responsible for getting me to explore the Stones more fully. I also got the (considerably more expensive) sheet music for this collection. Together we tried to work out Wild Horses — one of my favourites — and made a passable job of it, though it turns out there are all sorts of complicated special tunings involved. Tsk. I never got good enough to play a decent version.

As compilations go, this one has no airs. No clever themes in the track sequences, just all the singles — A sides followed by B sides — in chronological order (aside from the last five songs, which are a kind of appendix). No fancy sleeve notes, just release details and 5-50 words of comments on each track. Still, it hangs together. The B sides give it space to breathe — and some of them (Play with Fire, Lady Jane) are great in their own right. Now if only it had Gimme Shelter and Angie as well.