Take your time George, I like this deeper dives everytime you review a classic, something new always comes up. I grew up with the UK version (well just because that's what I could tape-dub back in '81 or something). I think it flows more naturally, I'm so used to that thundering start with "She Said Yeah". "Talkin' Bout You" is also a good rocker to start off Side B, and "I'm Free" is a classic although shy Jagger-Richards (Nanker & Phelge?) original, but yeah I miss "The Spider And The Fly", what a song. The Stones managed to .. complement? The Beatles, yeah specially by Aftermath, an album like nothing else at the time. And "Play With Fire" is a gem. The singles is where it was at, back then. "The Last Time" really impressed me, and had a long life after all thanks to The Verve (indirectly through David Whitaker.. although ironically that was quite a different song right?)
One thing that always bothered me about Rolling Stones compared to Beatles is that I get a feeling like Stones just had worse quality recording hardware. Beatles sound clean and crisp from their first album, but Stones sound kind of like they're recording a live performance - even in 1965. Actually, I get the same feeling with early The Kinks (up to "Face to Face") and it irritates me enough that I can't pay much attention to the songs. I took a quick re-listen to the highlights here, and only "Spider and the Fly" sounds good to me. It makes me wonder if its not recording quality as such, but maybe something else. I have some kind of hyper-sensitivity to high frequencies, so maybe the problem is that Stones generally used different guitar effects than Beatles, and those effects combined with existing recording technology scratch my ears.
Well, you can't beat Abbey Road Studios and George Martin, can you? (meanwhile, the Stones had Andrew Oldham, who did far more posturing than actual producing - they had to wait until Jimmy Miller for high-quality production). Still, I have relatively few problems with that raw and echoey sound they got at RCA Studios - suited their vibe just fine.
True that bothered me for some time too, but now I feel it's part of the magic - a sorta garagey sound. The Who were not much different, and I read somewhere Pete saying that they made their records sound "metallic" on purpose, in fact to differentiate from The Beatles pristine sound. American sound engineers were in fact impressed by the Abbey Road/George Martin recording methods and their results (I gather that American studios at least back then were much superior, but skills are skills :D ). Although it seems a bit like a fad these days, these records really tend to sound better in mono, and on LP, a bit scratchy even better.
I never read anything specific on the subject, but to my ears, actually, it seems as if the UK studios - at least the London ones - gave a clearer sound in the early Sixties. It can be felt even on the early records by Cliff Richard and the Shadows. I chalk this up, hypothetically, to the fact that they were recording more classical music (percentage-wise, not absolute quantity, of course) than in the US, which required them to be more demanding. But it's just a guess, really.
Take your time George, I like this deeper dives everytime you review a classic, something new always comes up. I grew up with the UK version (well just because that's what I could tape-dub back in '81 or something). I think it flows more naturally, I'm so used to that thundering start with "She Said Yeah". "Talkin' Bout You" is also a good rocker to start off Side B, and "I'm Free" is a classic although shy Jagger-Richards (Nanker & Phelge?) original, but yeah I miss "The Spider And The Fly", what a song. The Stones managed to .. complement? The Beatles, yeah specially by Aftermath, an album like nothing else at the time. And "Play With Fire" is a gem. The singles is where it was at, back then. "The Last Time" really impressed me, and had a long life after all thanks to The Verve (indirectly through David Whitaker.. although ironically that was quite a different song right?)
One thing that always bothered me about Rolling Stones compared to Beatles is that I get a feeling like Stones just had worse quality recording hardware. Beatles sound clean and crisp from their first album, but Stones sound kind of like they're recording a live performance - even in 1965. Actually, I get the same feeling with early The Kinks (up to "Face to Face") and it irritates me enough that I can't pay much attention to the songs. I took a quick re-listen to the highlights here, and only "Spider and the Fly" sounds good to me. It makes me wonder if its not recording quality as such, but maybe something else. I have some kind of hyper-sensitivity to high frequencies, so maybe the problem is that Stones generally used different guitar effects than Beatles, and those effects combined with existing recording technology scratch my ears.
Well, you can't beat Abbey Road Studios and George Martin, can you? (meanwhile, the Stones had Andrew Oldham, who did far more posturing than actual producing - they had to wait until Jimmy Miller for high-quality production). Still, I have relatively few problems with that raw and echoey sound they got at RCA Studios - suited their vibe just fine.
True that bothered me for some time too, but now I feel it's part of the magic - a sorta garagey sound. The Who were not much different, and I read somewhere Pete saying that they made their records sound "metallic" on purpose, in fact to differentiate from The Beatles pristine sound. American sound engineers were in fact impressed by the Abbey Road/George Martin recording methods and their results (I gather that American studios at least back then were much superior, but skills are skills :D ). Although it seems a bit like a fad these days, these records really tend to sound better in mono, and on LP, a bit scratchy even better.
I never read anything specific on the subject, but to my ears, actually, it seems as if the UK studios - at least the London ones - gave a clearer sound in the early Sixties. It can be felt even on the early records by Cliff Richard and the Shadows. I chalk this up, hypothetically, to the fact that they were recording more classical music (percentage-wise, not absolute quantity, of course) than in the US, which required them to be more demanding. But it's just a guess, really.