Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By The Rolling Stones, Universal Records 2020.
The old debate about who was the better band, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, has surfaced again largely as a result of comments made by Sir Paul McCartney claiming that The Beatles were probably more creative than the Stones who mostly mined the blues for their songs.
It’s an argument that will always divide and has no resolution, although there is some truth to McCartney’s assertions about creativity.
It really comes down to what was the prime driver for the respective bands.
For the Stones it was live performance, they’ve always been a phenomenal live band.
If you need proof I suggest you listen to Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!
The album captures the Stones at the height of their powers live at Madison Square Gardens in New York in 1969 and it is rightly considered one of the all-time great live albums.
For The Beatles however their main driver was songwriting.
They stopped performing live after their 1965 American tour because, frankly, couldn’t hear themselves above the din made by their screaming fans and they knew their performances were suffering.
Instead they turned their attention to the recording studio.
Simple song structures gave way to complex forms and the palette of sounds they employed broadened substantially as they tried to replicate the mind shifting sounds, often substance induced, that they were experiencing.
The result was a series of ground-breaking albums from Rubber Soul onwards.
Albums such as Revolver, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Abbey Road and a series of outstanding and revolutionary singles like I Am The Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane created a new benchmark for other bands to emulate.
The Stones however marched on to become ‘The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band In The World,’ far outstripping any live performance records set by their rivals.
Ghost Town is their latest single, it was recorded in Los Angeles and London, in isolation, and it proves that they still have relevance.
It’s a classic piece of blues inspired Rolling Stones with an infectious funky rhythm and fantastic Jagger vocal.
It’s one of a series of tracks for a new album which is yet to be completed, written before the coronavirus pandemic, but reworked by Jagger and Richards to make it more applicable to our current situation.
