Product Description

THE ROLLING STONES, NOW! is a masterpiece of early British R&B, Rolling Stones style. Things start off with a powerful rendition of Solomon Burke's signature tune "Everybody NeedsSomebody To Love". Elsewhere, the Stones take a tour of American music, from Bo Diddley's "Mona", complete with choppy,reverbed guitar, to a slow, churning version of Willie Dixon's blues evergreen "Little Red Rooster", probably the firstversion of the song to feature fuzz bass.
Amid all this esteemed company, though, the standout tracks are the Jagger-Richards originals. With its heartbreaking lyrics and poignant accompaniment, "Heart of Stone" could have been a classic soul ballad appropriated from some great, obscure Americansinger. On "What a Shame", the Stones prove that they don'thave to look to outside sources for their blues. Keith's penetrating slide here, as on "Little Red Rooster", foreshadows greater things to come.

Track Listing

1. Everybody Needs Somebody To Love
2. Down Home Girl
3. You Can't Catch Me
4. Heart Of Stone
5. What A Shame
6. I Need You Baby (Mona)
7. Down The Road Apiece
8. Off The Hook
9. Pain In My Heart
10. Oh Baby (We Got A Good Thing Goin')
11. Little Red Rooster
12. Surprise, Surprise

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51653 in Music
• Released on: 2006-08-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 36 minutes

Customer Reviews

Great slice of true 60s r'n'b
This album was the US edition of the Rolling Stones' second album, which was released in different form in the UK as "The Rolling Stones # 2". Stunningly remastered to produce a quality of sound that renders it barely comprehensible that this is a 1964 album the listener is taken on a roller coaster of a romp through some classic r'n'b covers - "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love", "You Can't Catch Me", "Mona" and a great blues in the iconic "Little Red Rooster". There are also the first efforts of Jagger and Richards at songwriting in the impressive "Heart Of Stone" and the blues-by-numbers of "Off The Hook", "Surprise Surprise" and "What A Shame", inserted in a similar way to the Beatles' originals in "Beatles For Sale". Both this album and The Stones' debut are, in my opinion, greater and more advanced products than the first four Beatles' albums. They are gutsier, earthier, bassier and generally just contain more soul, more blues and more rock.

Listen to this album, forget that it is basically a collection of covers (that was de riguer at the time) and remember that it was 1964, rock music was still in its infancy and these lads were barely into their twenties. With that in mind, it is a great album, outstripping most other UK bands' output from the time by far.

Yet another permutation on the originals
One of my favourite Stones tracks is the five minute version of Everybody Needs Somebody on my old LP (Decca LK4661), so seeing E.N.S. on this CD was reason enough to buy even though some of my other favourites were missing (where are Not Fade Away, I Can't be Satisfied, and I Wanna be Your Man?).
It came, I played it... Aargghh! Here, E.N.S. is a weak, insipid, short version, totally horrible, unlistenable. All the more disappointment, since all the rest of the CD blurb from Andrew Loog Oldham is exactly the same as on my LP, so it is unlikely that what I would consider the proper UK version (The Rolling Stones 2 as LK4661) will be released.
The rest of the CD is OK; You Can't Catch me, Mona, and Down Home Girl are as excellent as ever, but I still feel somehow cheated by this US version.

Superb
"The Rolling Stones Now!" isn't often mentioned when people talk about the Stones' greatest albums, but in all fairness it should be.
"Now!" is almost uniformly strong from start to finish, including superb covers of "Down The Road Apiece", Bo Diddley's vibrating "Mona", Otis Redding's "Pain In My Heart", and one of the group's best early gems, "Little Red Rooster", a pure blues with wonderful slide guitar playing by Brian Jones (it gave the Stones a #1 single in Britain).

As songwriters, Jagger and Richards were still learning, but they did come up with an American Top 20 hit, the great, soulful "Heart of Stone", as well as the thumping, Chuck Berry-styled rocker "Off The Hook".

"The Rolling Stones Now!" is a muscular slice of blues, rock n' roll and soul music, and a must-own even for moderately serious fans.
4 1/2 stars - highly recommended.