There’s a moment deep in the 1975 “Blues Jam” the Rolling Stones recorded with Jeff Beck, a bonus track to the new super deluxe Black and Blue box set, where the six-string genius stops playing Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, and Keith Richards–style blues and starts fiddling with his instrument’s volume knobs to resemble a crying cat. It sounds transcendent and unlike anything else the Stones recorded, and that is likely why they didn’t hire the virtuoso to replace Mick Taylor, who’d quit a few months earlier over a lack of satisfaction with songwriting credits, among other gripes. Beck was just too good, too inventive for Stonehood, and, as history proved for both Beck and the Stones, he was never cut out to be a Stone anyway, since he largely refused to join any band that would have him as a member.
The three jam sessions Beck recorded with the group — including an impressive interpretation of his then-unreleased, jazzy Blow by Blow gem “Freeway Jam,” on which Richards sounds reserved, and drummer Charlie Watts sounds at home — are highlights of this compendium of the Stones’ most unusual era. Black and Blue’s legacy has always been billed as something like the Stones’ Star Search: 40 minutes of rockers, ballads, and reggae numbers to serve as auditions for Canned Heat guitarist Harvey Mandel, session man Wayne Perkins, and Faces face Ron Wood. It’s nobody’s favorite Stones record, but, in hindsight, it’s also underrated since the whole Who Wants to Be a Rolling Stone? narrative has always overshadowed the songs.
It’s notable, too, that it was the Stones themselves largely who short-shrifted the record, rarely playing the tunes live compared to those off the records that bookended it, It’s Only Rock and Roll (1974) and Some Girls (1978). When Black and Blue came out, the music press accused the Stones of being too professional, middle-aged 30-somethings who offered more “only” than likable rock & roll on the LP. It’s true that the record is more manicured than previous Stones offerings (other than the cringy ad campaign that they canceled almost immediately), but it also came out at a time when rock bands were still expected to die before they get old. On a purely musical level, the tracks are nuanced and well crafted, mature rock & roll songs (whether the Stones themselves cared to admit it.)
Black & Blue’s cover is also relatively subdued-looking, a portrait photo (their first since Between the Buttons), and its two singles — the plaintive, brilliant Smokey Robinson–falsetto-sung ballad “Fool to Cry” and disco rocker “Hot Stuff” — lacked the bite and parentheticals of recent hits “It’s Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)” and “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker).” But the album tracks “Hand of Fate” and “Crazy Mama” rocked nearly as hard as any other post-Exile joint ripper; they just weren’t as bloodthirsty as “Star Star.”
The ballads “Memory Motel” (a sentimental ode to remembering Long Island’s apparently unmemorable groupies) and “Melody” (hey, they at least remembered her second name!) swooned in a soulful, age-appropriate way, thanks in large part to Billy Preston’s pianisms and backing vocals. Their heavy-skanking rendition of Eric Dolandson’s “Cherry Oh Baby” is as convincing a white reggae rocker as anything else English rockers produced in the Seventies, and it certainly holds up better than Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff.” But all these songs largely fizzled out of Stones concerts after the tour for Some Girls, the album that showed why Wood became victor of the Great Guitar Wars.
In the context of the box set, the album still sounds sharp and lively. Porcupine Tree frontman and remixer to the stars Steven Wilson zhuzhed up the master tapes just enough to let the instrumentation breathe a little more without altering the songs themselves. He recently told Rolling Stone, “Some people say they think [Black and Blue is] sonically the best-sounding Stones record of the Seventies, and I might go along with that,” which explains why he took a light touch to the mix. The songs fade out in the same places they did in 1976 and there are no noticeable unearthed alternate guitar solos or Jaggerisms.
Where Wilson’s mix excels is how he made the ballads sparkle in new ways, with more obvious pretty piano playing on “Fool to Cry” and Richards’ soulful “she’s got a mind of her own” bridge on “Memory Motel” sounding more pronounced. The one place where the new mixes suffer is in the disco and reggae songs, genres that sounded purposefully claustrophobic in the Seventies, either as a side effect of musical taste, cocaine, or both. Wilson widened the audio spectrum on “Hot Stuff” and “Cherry Oh Baby” a little too much, but the soul’s still there, and Bill Wyman’s bass sounds better than ever. And overall, it’s a good thing the mix isn’t too dramatic since it never becomes distracting.
The bonus tracks, “I Love Ladies” and a cover of Shirley & Company’s disco song “Shame, Shame, Shame,” both foreshadow Emotional Rescue with Jagger’s Mickey Mouse via Studio 54 vocal exuberance. They’re fun but wouldn’t have fit with the rest of Black and Blue the way that “Slave” or the reggae version of “Start Me Up,” both recorded in the same sessions and later released on Tattoo You, might have.
And as good as the two previously unreleased songs are, you still have to wonder what else is in the vault, and if ever anyone will officially release “Carnival to Rio,” the funky song the Stones and Preston recorded with Eric Clapton around the time. Also, while the box set’s “Chuck Berry-Style Jam” with Harvey Mandel is great, and Robert A. Johnson trades licks well with Beck and Richards on the “Rotterdam Jam,” you have to wonder where are all the other jams, such as any featuring fleet-fingered Irishman Rory Gallagher, who allegedly had too much star quality for the Stones?
Ultimately, though, the included recordings from the band’s 1976 residency at London’s Earls Court (excerpts of which came out on Love You Live) show why Wood was the perfect choice for the band. Not only was he English (as opposed to Perkins, who almost got the job) but he weaves his parts perfectly with Richards, and his playing on “Hey Negrita,” a Jagger-Richards song he got an “inspiration by” credit on Black and Blue (even though Wood claims in the liner notes he wrote everything except the lyrics), is crisp and direct. He even plays Perkins’ parts on “Hand of Fate” and “Fool to Cry” as if he wrote them himself. With help from Preston, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” sounds funkier than usual, and “Get Off of My Cloud” has a honky-tonk vibe. Jagger also comes off particularly wild, changing lyrics to “It’s Only Rock and Roll,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Street Fighting Man” into edgelord sentiments that match the abandoned ad campaign. He wasn’t going to let the critics call him tame.
The Blu-ray’s concert film, shot in Paris at Abattoirs (recordings form which also featured on Love You Live), however, comes off a bit more subdued, possibly because the inflatable penis Jagger rides during “Star Star” maybe needed some Viagra that night. But he makes up for it by throwing water and confetti on everyone and swinging from a rope like Tarzan over the audience, which was still a novel idea in 1976. Also, Wood’s charisma is obvious. Perkins was a studio guy, while Woody had logged miles on the road with the Faces; he was the perfect pick.
Although the Stones always shrugged off Black and Blue as the bridge between Mick Taylor and Woody, the box set shows how they struggled to keep going at a crucial time, but were also open to new sounds and new musicians, all while never losing their mission. The reissue also makes the case that the album’s songs should get a second life. If a “black and blue” is a bruise, then the Stones healed quite nicely at the time. It’s just a shame, shame, shame that there’s not more recordings with Beck and others that could’ve shown what an alternative-universe Stones would’ve sounded like.
