It is the kind of packaging that makes you wonder what people made of it when they first saw it and put the music on. Was it really this bunch of long haired thugs really the ones who began with the jaunty speeded up version of Solomon Burke's Everybody Needs Somebody to Love? Where Burke's original is groovy and smooth with audience sounds that morph into backing vocals, the Stones version perks it up to a strut as Jagger welcomes everyone to the show and the twin guitar assault of Richards and Jones bring a bounce and slash to the 2/4 beat. Like with the first album, the band pushes the cover version into how they did it live. Same song but the treatment is younger and brasher.
Down Home Girl mixes a chunky rhythm guitar with a warbling slide as Jagger adopts more of a swagger for this song with its muddling of sex and eating (she smells like turnip greens and her kisses taste of pork and beans). There is neither the brass of Alvin Robinson's original nor his big voiced delivery. Both come across as comedic and groovy.
You Can't Catch Me is delivered faithfully. The breathless story of getting a streamlined new car and tearing up the pike is one of Chuck Berry's most defiant statements of personal freedom. It's a different thing, though for a young black man to be happily and openly proud of his new car and for a group of post war Brits. There is an odd reversal to what the surface of this suggests, though. The U.K. was not a car culture at the time and any kind of car of a young 'un's own was a hell of a flex. By this stage, the band had crossed the U.S.A. on wheels and could add that to the mix. Oldham's production was always a blend of guesswork and input from the band but the decision to add a delay to Keith Richards' rhythm guitar was a zapper, it adds combustion to the rolling rattle and bass thump. Jones's soloing and licks add new material from the original, providing extra texture. It's a great effort.
Time is On My Side is moved significantly from the version that the band would have been thinking of. The first recording had a sung chorus but a trombone verse melody which The Rolling Stones would have quietly overlooked. Irma Thomas' big version is like a gospel number with glorious choral backing and a soaring lead voice. It's great but strange as the congregational sound doesn't suggest the lyric of an abandoned lover taunting his fleeing partner that they will just come running back. The Stones start with a moody organ and stinging lead guitar before the harmony chorus barges in. Jagger adds a plaintive vocal for the verses but it's rendered acidic by a dash of world wise observation. When the band comes back in for the, "you'll come running back" pre-chorus and the guitars are thundering below, it's the first moment of true magic from the band on the record as they lift a difficult cover to heights by pushing what they already were.
The first Jagger Richards number on the record is What a Shame. It mixes a slinky blues guitar figure and a shouted Jagger vocal. There's not a lot to it but it does sound like a band learning from the music they were covering and doing it for themselves. Brian Jones plays a thrilling if brief slide solo and Jagger presents a decent blues harp break. Grown Up Wrong does the same thing but adds a bluesy harmony to the chorus that would launch a thousand American garage bands.
Side two opens with a real oldie from the '40s but it's the Chuck Berry version that fired the Stones'. The lead guitar licks are lifted wholesale and Jagger's vocal is a honed version of Berry's. The pace is stepped up and the soloing guitar tone benefits from the early decade's overdrive but it's still a recognisable cover.
The Drifters' Under the Boardwalk is a bold choice given its vocal-heavy arrangement in the chorus. They keep to the original, adding the Spanish style licks on a 12 string acoustic and relatively exotic percussion. Jagger's vocal is smooth and creamy against the joyous take by Johnny Moore out front of the Drifters. But it's the execution of the chorus that steals it with a big booming group harmony that comes in like a storm cloud. It's close to the original but, again, the band is starting to sound much more like the one they would mature into.
Muddy Waters' I Can't Be Satisfied is delivered with reverence with the slide licks of the original intact and the whole extended opening repeated. Jagger sings it almost as thought he's afraid of it, his voice sounds boyish against Waters' bellowing declaration. It's a perfectly pleasant version but if you hear the way it first sounded it doesn't quite survive the comparison.
Pain in My Heart sees the band fleeing from the notion of recreating Otis Redding's master yearn and providing their own retooling. Instead of the brass that serves as the foundation of Redding's take, a very cleverly inserted fuzz bass adds weight and size to the recording. Jagger doesn't go near Redding's but keeps to the aggression of his best tracks here, sad but not tortured. Oldham's worship of Phil Spector's massy sound gave him some ideas and they serve well to create a monstrous monolith on the way to the end of the record.
Off the Hook is the last of the three originals and it's an amiable laddish strut with blues tinged rock guitars and a confident vocal by Jagger whose shouted lyrics are at a higher pitch than he'd revisit. It's fine, you wouldn't skip it.
Then comes the blistering take on Suzie Q. Dale Hawkins original is no slouch at bluesy sleaze and he's held aloft by unaccredited co writer James Burton whose searing Telecaster riffs and licks dominate. The Stones don't go near emulating Burton, wisely keeping to be more themselves but the tune and tude were made for Jagger whose snarl and growl float on the raw guitar attack like a snake on river water. If they played that live like they do here, the night would turn to day from calls of encore. And that's the closer.
If the debut feels a little shy of the greatness that the band was emulating it feels confident here. The all important singles were telling the story as they do with all bands from this era. This album was sandwiched between two titanic originals after years of mostly covers. The Last Time has a snakey riff that every bedroom guitarist who hears it tries to work out (and most are wrong, it's played way up high on the middle strings). After the LP was the epochal (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction with an unkillable riff and defiant vocal that never gets old. The Stones would seldom not record covers but from the time of those two singles they never had to release any to chart.
This means that the singles kicked their profile above the skyline while the next album was for the connoisseur with interpretations of R&B classics and a sprinkle of dwarfed originals. But, back here on album two, they were still happy to serve an apprenticeship, getting the energy of their live sets on record until come what may. They own Time is on my Side and Suzie Q the way their chart rivals The Beatles owned Twist and Shout and Long Tall Sally. That's getting somewhere. It would only take one more year for the albums to turn original and the singles to chart the unknown. The best sign off I can think of is to say that this band is still playing to crowds and dipping into these numbers out of love as much as nostalgia. This is how they sounded before the nostalgia.
