If You’re Only Going to Buy One Greatest Hits Set From… The Rolling Stones

Good news; you’ve got a lot of choices.  Bad news:  it ain’t gonna be cheap, and it’s ain’t gonna be simple.

First off, note that the Stones’ releases can be neatly chopped into two sections:  the London/Decca years from 1963-1971 (rights now held by Allen B. Klein’s company ABKCO), and everything after 1971, which has been on their own label, distributed in the United States by (deep breath)…

-          Atco (1971-1973)
-          Atlantic (1973-1986)
-          Columbia/Sony (1986-1992)
-          Virgin (1992-2008)
-          Interscope/Universal (2008-   )

So really, of all the majors left only Capitol hasn’t gotten their mitts on the band at one time or another, and that may be because Capitol has The Beatles.

Until 2002, there was no one single product with music from both the London/Decca era and the post-London/Decca era.  Finally, Klein’s representatives and the Stones were able to work things out and Forty Licks (40 songs spanning both eras) was released, with Virgin distributing.  Of course, now that Interscope has the band’s catalogue, they couldn’t leave well enough alone, so Forty Licks went out of print for something better, even though the Stones had released a grand total of one studio album (A Bigger Bang) in the interim.  (At least I assume it’s out of print; Amazon has it on disk for a ridiculous $45 and only has two copies left as I write this.)  So, reluctantly, here’s my recommendation:

 

Grrr!

What a stupid name for a greatest hits album.

First of all, if the Stones were really concerned about getting us one relatively inexpensive single-disk hits set, they could do it – they’ve had 22 top 10 hits in both England and the US, with a total of 30 making the top 10 between the two countries.  Get rid of a few of the lesser songs (off the top of my head:  “Little Red Rooster,” “We Love You,” “Dandelion,” “Fool to Cry,” and “Harlem Shuffle”) and you’d have an awesome one-disk 25-track set that would make a party mix for most Baby Boomers redundant.  Sadly, Mick and Keith seem determined to wring every single dollar from our wallets, so to get all the hits in one set, you’ll have to get this three-disk monster.

And three disks is the standard set.  There was a two-disk set that was available at some retailers in the U.S. (including my local Walgreens – which I admit is hardly the place to buy albums – for a limited time), and there are versions with 80 songs floating around for the truly obsessed.  But the 3-CD, 50-song version is the norm.  Forty Licks had 40 tracks, of course.

Here’s the rest:

-         Big Hits (High Tides and Green Grass), Flowers, and Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Volume 2) are all from the London era, and none are at bargain prices.  Flowers is especially a ripoff – it’s mostly songs that weren’t on other American albums, but three of the songs in fact were on American studio LPs.  (Basically, the London/Decca era of the Stones discography is a big mess; unlike the way Capitol Records handled the Beatles’ records when the CD era arrived by dumping out of the American configurations for the more economical original British ones, ABKCO has stubbornly stuck with the same configurations that they issued in the 1960s.)

-         Hot Rocks 1964-1971 and More Hot Rocks (Big Hits and Fazed Cookies) are ABKCO reissues from the 1970s that rendered the three previous hits sets redundant.  The first Hot Rocks was pretty much the gold standard for Stones hits sets; the rule of thumb in most dorms and fraternities when I was in school was one person would purchase the two-record set on vinyl, and everybody else would tape it.  More Hot Rocks is for the more serious fan, but most of those will want the studio albums anyway.

-         Made in the Shade (1975) is culled from the first four studio albums of the 1970s; Sucking in the Seventies (1981) is from the last two and Emotional Rescue, with a sprinkling of other songs unavailable elsewhere.  Made in the Shade is still in print, Sucking in the Seventies is not.  Rewind (1971-1984) was issued during the last of the Atlantic years and was a shuffle of all of the above plus songs from Tattoo You and Undercover, it’s out of print.

-         Singles Collection: The London Years is a great set, and still in print.  It’s basically all of the A and B sides of the Stones singles from 1963 to 1971 (with a couple of exceptions that are excluded for rights reasons, and are available elsewhere).  More expensive than it needs to be (it’s nearly twice the cost of Grrr!), but useful.

-         Jump Back is a pretty good one-disk collection from 1971 to 1993 (really, 1989; there’s nothing on it more recent than “Mixed Emotions”).  At $8.39 on Amazon for the download, it’s also one of the cheapest, and you’re not missing anything by not having the liner notes.

-        And apparently ABKCO has released a single-disk 16-track set, The Very Best of The Rolling Stones 1964-1971 – to what end, I couldn’t guess.
 

Frankly, if you’ve already got Hot Rocks and Jump Back, you don’t really need Grrr!  Here’s a comparison of tracks between those albums, with Forty Licks thrown in for good measure:

Song Title	Year	Forty Licks	Grrr! (50 tracks)	Hot Rocks & Jump Back
Come On	1963	No	Yes	No
It's All Over Now	1964	Yes	Yes	No
Little Red Rooster	1964	No	Yes	No
Not Fade Away	1964	Yes	Yes	No
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction	1965	Yes	Yes	Yes
19th Nervous Breakdown	1965	Yes	Yes	Yes
Get Off of My Cloud	1965	Yes	Yes	Yes
Play With Fire	1965	No	No	Yes
The Last Time	1965	Yes	Yes	No
Time Is on My Side	1965	No	Yes	Yes
As Tears Go By	1966	No	Yes	Yes
Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow	1966	Yes	Yes	No
Heart of Stone	1966	No	Yes	Yes
Mother's Little Helper	1966	Yes	No	Yes
Paint It Black	1966	Yes	Yes	Yes
Under My Thumb	1966	Yes	Yes	Yes
Let's Spend the Night Together	1967	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ruby Tuesday	1967	Yes	Yes	Yes
She's a Rainbow	1967	Yes	Yes	No
We Love You	1967	No	Yes	No
Jumpin' Jack Flash	1968	Yes	Yes	Yes
Street Fighting Man	1968	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sympathy for the Devil	1968	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gimme Shelter	1969	Yes	Yes	Yes
Honky Tonk Women	1969	Yes	Yes	Yes
You Can't Always Get What You Want	1969	Yes	Yes	Yes
Midnight Rambler (Live)	1970	No	No	Yes
Brown Sugar	1971	Yes	Yes	Yes
Happy	1971	Yes	Yes	No
Wild Horses	1971	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bitch	1971	No	No	Yes
Tumbling Dice	1972	Yes	Yes	Yes
Angie	1973	Yes	Yes	Yes
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)	1973	No	Yes	No
Rocks Off	1973	No	Yes	No
It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)	1974	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hot Stuff	1976	No	No	Yes
Fool to Cry	1976	Yes	Yes	Yes
Beast of Burden	1978	Yes	Yes	Yes
Miss You	1978	Yes	Yes	Yes
Respectable	1978	No	Yes	Yes
Shattered	1978	Yes	No	No
Emotional Rescue	1980	Yes	Yes	Yes
Start Me Up	1981	Yes	Yes	Yes
Waiting on a Friend	1981	No	Yes	Yes
She Was Hot	1983	No	Yes	No
Undercover of the Night	1983	Yes	Yes	Yes
Harlem Shuffle	1986	No	Yes	Yes
Streets of Love	1986	No	Yes	No
Highwire	1989	No	Yes	No
Mixed Emotions	1989	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rock and a Hard Place	1990	No	No	Yes
Love Is Strong	1994	Yes	Yes	No
You Got Me Rocking	1994	Yes	No	No
Anybody Seen My Baby?	1997	Yes	Yes	No
Don't Stop	2002	Yes	Yes	No
Keys to Your Love	2002	Yes	No	No
Losing My Touch	2002	Yes	No	No
Stealing My Heart	2002	Yes	No	No
Doom and Gloom	2012	No	Yes	No
One More Shot	2012	No	Yes	No

 

Finally, for the truly obsessed, please note Mick, Bill Wyman, and Ron Wood all have their own solo best-ofs.  Mick’s actually has a couple of tracks not on his studio albums, including a one-off single with Peter Tosh, a remake of the Temptations’ “Don’t Look Back” (which the two memorably performed on Saturday Night Live) that’s hard to find otherwise.