Still Life

Still Life

By 1981, the Rolling Stones were considered rock’s elder statesmen, though Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had yet to turn forty. For their 1981 American Tour, they took on corporate sponsorship, had concerts filmed for the movie Let’s Spend the Night Together and released this live album. While it is not “prime” Stones, it does capture the group cruising on the success of their latest studio album, Tattoo You, and their latest classic, “Start Me Up.” The selections for this collection feel loose and arbitrary. “Under My Thumb,” “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” “Time Is On My Side” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” represent their 1960s catalog. The Smokey Robinson and the Miracles cover, “Going to a Go-Go,” and the Temptations cover, “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” represents their debt to soul music. Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” goes back to their roots, while “Shattered” and “Let Me Go” flash their resurgence in the wake of the punk era. Strange to think that this was the beginning of the Stones becoming primarily a lucrative live act whose studio albums would be clearly secondary.

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