A brief history of Ya-Ya's and more Stones vs Who

[Marcus Surrealius <bushchoked@xxxxxxxxx>]

> It's said - and I accept it may be an urban legend -
that the only reason
Get your ya ya's out is any good is because Decca (the
Stones' UK label)
heard the album, and were so appalled at how shitty
they sounded that it was
virtually re recorded in the studio, with an invited
"audience" to give it
that live sound.

John:

It is a fact that some of the footage on Gimme Shelter
is also on the LP with absolutely no differences. I
wasn't there, so I can't say for certain. But
listening to the SACD, as I did again tonight (cranked
- the stereo I mean not me), and with some knowledge
of the technology of the time (being in the biz), I'd
say it's unlikely in the extreme. To match the sound
of a hall like MSG to a studio would be damned near
impossible. There is no variation in sound throughout
the entire album.
The story I read, thanks to Derrick for giving me the
book Bootleg by Clinton Heylin, was that a bootleg
came out from the second Oakland (CA) show of the 1969
tour and it was so good and popular Decca felt forced
to release a statement that it was not an official
release. The bootleg is called Live'R Than You'll Ever
Be and quite good...some say better than Ya-Ya's, but
I wouldn't.
However, since the Baltimore and NYC shows were taped,
it seems obvious a live album was meant for this tour
all along. Again I find it hard to believe they didn't
have a decent recording from any of the shows they
taped (at least four). The bootleg shows the band was
in good form.

BTW, I thought London was the UK Stones label and
Decca was the American one. No? I know the only place
you could get a stereo mix of Satisfaction, Mother's
Little Helper, 19th Nervous Breakdown and Get Off Of
My Cloud was the London release of Hot Rocks disc one.
The US ABKCO/Decca version had and still has mono
versions.

IMHO if you were to judge the Stones live from that
period, the Leeds show from 3/13/71 is the best I've
ever heard. Mick Taylor was recently a band member
when they did Ya-Ya's. Two years later, he takes
command of the band.

> And as for 3 best live albums of all time, really
it's only subjective

Yes, that's true. But in the Rock critic circles I've
been involved with for some 35 years now, it was
generally accepted that Ya-Ya's and Leeds were they
two best. I brought Fillmore East into the picture
myself, and it was accepted wholeheartedly. These
three albums, coming within a year of each other and
when the technology was finally in place to capture
the live experience as well as a watershed period for
Rock music, have a quality I can't put into words but
were among the most exciting albums anyone at the time
had heard. Raw and driven purely by emotion. Rough and
powerful, the stuff of dreams.
Since that time, the technology has gotten better and
too good to capture what it's like to be in an
audience. You might have heard about Lou Reed's
experiments along these lines a few years later...he
had mikes in a head-shaped object suspended over the
crowd (resulting in the excellent Rock And Roll Animal
album, my fourth choice you could say)...but even so,
it's not as good. A great comparison would be Ya-Ya's
and Love You Live. LYL is too clean, with less
emotion. Sterile. The way most live albums still sound
today. Even comparing the four songs we have from the
Who's 1972 tour (Bargain, My Wife, Going Down and Baby
Don't You Do It) to Leeds shows, it's easy to hear
they aren't nearly as powerful.

> opinions but I'd say that Thin Lizzy's Live and
Dangerous or James Brown at the Apollo stand higher

I've never been a Lizzy fan, and haven't heard that
one, so I can't speak to it. However the Brown Apollo
album is great for its time but doesn't quite come up
to the standard of LAL, YY's and Fillmore. At least,
with the American critics...I'm sure as with most
things there's a different perspective in the UK.
Personally, I think James Brown was best on the Cold
Sweat album, 1967.

> Some Girls no filler, nuff said.

Bruce:

I hate to disagree with you, but Some Girls seemed to
me to be all recycle and nothing new, except for the
Disco song (yikes!). IMHO Exile was their peak, just
as Quad was The Who's peak a year later, but 1973's
Goat's Head Soup was still great and a bit
experiemental for a band like the Stones. Apparently
the lessor success caused them to retreat to safer
ground, and from then on (starting with It's Only RnR)
they were recycling Sticky Fingers...a bit weaker with
each sucessive version. Start Me Up, mentioned here a
few times, is Brown Sugar fourth time around...and
since Brown Sugar is only a slightly less funky
version of Monkey Man...

Jim:

BTW, Shattered peaked on the (Billboard) charts at 31.
Even the lackluster One Hit To The Body beat it with a
28. Shattered is the lowest charting Stones single to
break into the Top 40.


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--- March 13, 2002
 George "Interity with a capital zero" Bush 

=====
Cheers         ML

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