Retro Vinyl Cupboard: Necrophilia - The Rolling Stones

How this title was even granted a catalog number - AB4224 - is a mystery. Much like the legendary unreleased 1966 Stones LP Could You Walk On Water?, this set was to have featured 17 previously-unreleased tracks including alternate takes of Heart of Stone, Out of Time and Pay Your Dues, which was the original version of Street Fighting Man. Story has it that Andrew Loog Oldham and Allen Klein had a major disagreement on the track selection - more specifically on the extremely vulgar Andrew's Blues. It would have been unprecedented at the time for such a song to be released to the public, but not as far-fetched an idea if you consider that Lonesome Schoolboy Blues [aka: C**ksucker Blues] was included for a limited time in an official 1984 German albums boxed set. This title would be replaced by the friendlier More Hot Rocks but fans fear not, as nine (9) of these selections later appeared in the 1975 LP Metamorphosis. Not surprisingly, Andrew's Blues has since become a popular bootleg track.

As the sound on the Rolling Stones' legitimate CDs has been upgraded since 2001, so the bootleggers have followed along. No, this disc isn't an SACD hybrid, but it does offer some of the cleanest and loudest masters ever heard on the outtakes and unauthorized releases programmed onto it, with an audio quality of which any legitimate CD producer could be proud. This is a cleverly designed and very nicely mastered variation on Hot Rocks and More Hot Rocks, based on what was the supposed originally intended follow-up to Hot Rocks, which was to have been called Necrophilia and using original artwork (and was, instead, utilized as the basis for More Hot Rocks). How close this came to release is a matter of speculation; could anyone in 1972 have thought that "Andrew's Blues" was releasable? And the results are actually closer to what became the Metamorphosis album four years or so later. The orchestra-accompanied "Out of Time" opens the compilation, followed by "Don't Lie to Me" and a wonderfully lean, stripped-down, undubbed "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow," on which every jagged note of Keith Richards' guitar can be heard -- the song sounds much more of a piece with Aftermath and Between the Buttons (between which it fell) than it ever did before -- and an instrumental mixing acoustic guitar and orchestra entitled "Hear It." The rest of what was supposed to be side one finishes with the Jagger/Richards "Something Just Stuck in Your Mind"; a Nanker Phelge blues composition entitled "Aftermath;" the homoerotic Jagger/Richards song "I'd Much Rather Be With the Boys" (which now seems like it could have been slotted into the score of Sidney J. Furie's film The Leather Boys); and "Andrew's Blues" in one of its cleanest and loudest masterings. What purports to have been side two of the original LP opens with the working version of "Street Fighting Man," credited here as "Pay Your Dues" (but usually referred to as "Did Everybody Pay His Dues"). Following outtakes of "Good Times" and "Heart of Stone," we get the over-dramatic "Each and Every Day of the Year" and "Walking Through the Sleepy City," coming out of the Stones' arty 1965-1966 period. The tougher "Try a Little Harder," a much leaner and harder version of "Blue Turns to Grey," and the country-ish "We're Wastin' Time" then close out the CD.

01 Out of Time.mp3

02 Don't Lie to Me.mp3

03 Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby [Standing in the Shadow].mp3

04 Think.mp3

05 Hear It [Instrumental].mp3

06 Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind.mp3

07 Aftermath [Instrumental].mp3

08 I'd Much Rather Be with the Boys.mp3

09 Andrew's Blues.mp3

10 Pay Your Dues.mp3

11 Let the Good Times Roll.mp3

12 Heart of Stone.mp3