The Rolling Stones’ Rolling Stone Blues: Don’t Let Bad Cover Art Fool You

Coop was right. This is a good song. Originally, I dismissed the Rolling Stones’ new record Hackney Diamonds because the cover art is so bad and the lead single Angry was very disappointing. Now, the cover art is still a crime against creativity (I couldn’t even bring myself to use it on this review) and Angry is still a wildly disappointing song, but the record is quite solid. Get past that first track and it is probably some of the best studio work from the band since Tattoo You. That’s not a high bar because there was a lot of filler between that record’s release in 1981 and now, but Hackney Diamonds is vastly better than the paint by numbers rock during that 40 plus year span.

Even though this might be considered a deep cut on the record, let’s be clear that it’s a Muddy Waters cover (more on that later), it is exactly what I am looking for in a Stones’ track. It goes against the bloated rock formula they have been using in the 90s and 2000s. For me, The Stones are the best when they have that raw, boarder line punk, energy you find on Let it Bleed and Exile. Recently, their stuff has been too overproduced and relied too much on classic rock tropes for my liking. You still find yourself on the corner of rock trope street and overproduced avenue on this record…I’m looking at you Whole Wide World…but Rolling Stone Blues is a breath of fresh air at the end of the record.

The track has this raw one take quality to it I love. The levels are all off and it sounds like everyone is blowing out their mics as vocals and guitar notes become distorted. I’m sure it cost $356,000 and 47 hours of post production to make something sound like it was recorded on a $2.50 mic in one take, but it works. I love the restraint on this track and trusting that minimal instrumentation would carry the track. You keep expecting the track to dial it up to the mega production on the rest of the record and I was very pleased that this didn’t happen.

Lyrically this song is a Muddy Waters cover of Rollin’ Stone, which gave the band its name. You could argue that it is a good blues track because The Stones didn’t write it. Jokes aside, it is cool that they bookended their career with the track that inspired their name. Let’s talk vocals. Now, no one can be Muddy Waters. Even though Mick does his best, he is a poor imitation of the soul and depth in the Muddy Waters original. Having said that, I think Mick’s vocals are pretty good on the track and pretty good on the record as a whole. As covers go, I think they honoured the original and did a good job with it.

This record will not replace Let it Bleed, but it is a solid studio record and Rolling Stone Blues is a well done cover that shows the band at its best. If you squint hard enough during that track you can see a glimmer of Love in Vain twinkling away in the background. This glimmer is not enough to light up the room, but it is vastly more life than we have heard on a studio release in the past 40 years. Even catching a glimmer of that fire that took the world by storm in the late 60s and 70s is worth it. Rolling Stone Blues has just enough magic to remind you of those gutsy records of the past, which is a fitting end to the band, if this is their last studio record. An ending that I frankly thought I would never see, but immensely glad that I did.

Listen to Rolling Stone Blues