Product Description

With BLACK AND BLUE the Rolling Stones geared up for another installment of records as the world's best-loved rock and roll band. Aided by Ronnie Wood's enrolment as foil to Keith's unmistakable guitar, BLACK AND BLUE assured, to those whodared doubt, a new era had begun.
Flavoring their existing rhythm-and-blues format with Caribbean beats and cocktail-swilling pianos, BLACK AND BLUE's strongest moments are in the band's obvious enjoyment. Catering to Mick's lounge-act instincts, "Melody" seems the obvious precursor to "Miss You", allowing Billy Preston's piano and vocal harmony to carrythe Stones with a more stylised, less formulaic batch of songs.
BLACK AND BLUE was the resting period which allowed the band to release a followup album with the punch of SOME GIRLS. The casualness of the album's material served as perfect contrast to the Motown-esque stylings of IT'S ONLY ROCK 'N ROLL and allowed the band to save their energy for another decade of releases.

Track Listing

1. Hot Stuff
2. Hand Of Fate
3. Cherry Oh Baby
4. Memory Motel
5. Hey Negrita
6. Fool To Cry
7. Crazy Mama
8. Melody (Inspiration By Billy Preston)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22400 in Music
• Released on: 1994-08-15
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

worth a listen
Not a patch on Sticky Fingers, Exile, Let it Bleed or Beggar's Banquet in the halcyon Mick Taylor period Stones, or even Some Girls. At just eight tracks, with two absolute duffers, it could be regarded as short-changing its fan-base. Yet... it's still one of my favourite Stones albums - partly because it was the first one I bought, and when you've laid out all your hard-earned pocket money for a piece of vinyl you're going to convince yourself that it's worth the money, but also because it has such a great feel and sound, illustrating how some good production can leave a record sounding greater than the sum of its parts.

Despite being recorded in Munich rather than Montserrat, it oozes tropical heat, the Fender Rhodes piano locates it in time, and Ronnie Wood's loose style perfectly complements the Stones' mid-seventies sound (while Nicky Hopkins' piano is always good value).

Cherry Oh Baby and Crazy Mama require operation of the skip button, Hot Stuff and Hey Negrita are basically jams (with a great groove), but Hand of Fate, Memory Motel, Melody and Fool to Cry lift this album into 'worth a listen' territory.

A strange but appealing curio
So, Ron Wood had arrived and supposedly "auditions" on this album, along with several other potential replacements for Mick Taylor, all on various tracks. It is a bit of a strange album, The Stones' "reggae" cut, recorded in the Caribbean and it certainly carries a laid-back groove and a general ambience of heat and langour. Contemporary disco and funk sounds and of course reggae are the influences and "Hot Stuff" takes over where "Fingerprint File" left off and acts as a precursor for "Miss You". Like it or not, The Stones do this sort of thing well. "Memory Motel" and "Fool To Cry" are ballads in the style continued by "Worried About You" from "Tattoo You" (which was written for this album but didn't make it - at only eight tracks maybe it should have done?). "Hey Negrita" has that reggae groove and "Hand Of Fate" is a true Stones rocker that shows they could still trot them out in their sleep. "Melody" is, in my opinion, possibly the worst piece of indulgence ever laid down by The Stones.

All being said, however, a worthy inclusion in a retrospective collection, with some razor sharp guitar, as always. Good production too, in comparison with the muddy sound of the three previous albums.

Stones Find A Few New Influences
'Black And Blue' is often described as the album recorded as an audition to find the Stones next guitarist but actually it turns out to be a great deal more than that.
It's an infinitely better album than its predecessor 'It's Only Rock 'n' Roll' as the Stones were not so much parodying their own style with insubstantial results but were prepared to move forward and inject some new influences into their sound.
The contemporary funk sounds of the mid-seventies was where their attention was focused and with 'Hot Stuff' and 'Hey Negrita' the Stones found their own way of interpreting these sounds. The songs themselves seem rather irrelevant - it's the rhythm which is of primary importance. Jagger sings in his best raw black affected vocal and the guitar playing has a vibrancy which is truly intoxicating.
Of course there is always more to a Stones album than one style of music and two of the highlights are a couple of incredibly tender ballads - 'Fool To Cry' and 'Memory Motel'. These songs are perhaps softer than typical Stones ballads in a way that makes them extremely radio friendly.
There's also songs which are more typically Stones sounding like 'Hand Of Fate' and 'Crazy Mama' and although these songs aren't amongst the Stones most disinguished they work out just fine.
'Cherry Oh Baby' comes in for a lot of stick but it's actually not a bad reggae cover and the jazzy 'Melody' must rate at one of the least typical sounding Stones songs in their entire catalogue. There's a certain Billy Preston influence here i believe and it's still pretty good.
'Black And Blue' overall is a good album, well produced and well performed (especially by the session guitarists) however it still lacks much of the focus that can be found in the Stones very best work.
A nice album nonetheless.