Album Review: The Rolling Stones, On Air

There’s a nice circularity to this release following on the heels of 2016 excellent blues-cover jolly-up, Blue & Lonesome. The songs on that album could all have fitted on the Stones debut from 1964, as could these recordings, made for various BBC shows between ’63 and ‘65’, as The Stones were refashioning the past into the future.

A holy grail for fans, this long delayed release, previously available only on a thousand bootlegs, proves what a kick arse band they were right from the off. The only time they even came close to an official release before was on the super deluxe, and super expensive, version of 2012’s hits compilation, GRRR! Along with a five-track disc of the famed IBC demos from 1963, that set included a seven inch vinyl E.P. with four BBC tracks from ’64. A quick look on discogs.com shows mint copies heading north of two hundred euros, so it’s a relief to see this set hit the shelves.

“It was so frantic. Everything was frantic. The schedule was frantic. The fans were particularly frantic. This was the teeny-bopper time,” Keith Richards recalls. “It was overwhelming ... At 19 years old, it’s all a bit of a blur, but a very pleasant one I have to say. To me, they’re incredible pieces of history”

Take ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, recorded for Saturday Club in October, ’63, one of eight songs on this collection that they never recorded for release anywhere else. Charlie Watts appears to be connected to the mains, and Keith Richards’ guitar playing is the same ragged glory that’s been keeping him in booze and fags ever since, while Bo Diddley’s ‘Cops And Robbers’ features Jagger giving it some delightfully un-PC shuck n’ jive. Cuts like ‘You Better Move On’ run their more familiar studio versions a very close second.

Only ever meant to be broadcast once, the tracks have gone through some figs into the fig rolls jiggery-pokery referred to in the notes as “Audio Source Separation” and the effect on most of the music here (the quality dips a bit on the deluxe edition, despite a great version of ‘2120 South Michigan Avenue’) is pretty amazing. None of this would matter a jot, of course, if the material wasn’t up to scratch, but this is some of the finest R&B known to man, performed by the nascent greatest rock n’ roll band of all time. How exciting must this noise have been coming out of a transistor radio fifty something years ago?