At long last it's here. Fans have been crying out for a proper Stones retrospective for aeons and, finally, the price is right for the respective record companies and 'Forty Licks' is the result. A double set, with the 60s Decca/ABKCO material on one album (plus 1971's 'Wild Horses') and everything post-'71 on the other, although the tracks aren't sequenced chronologically. All told 40 songs from four decades, including four new tracks.
Any an album that can boast 'Street Fighting Man', 'Gimme Shelter' and 'Satisfaction' as its opening three tracks is certainly onto a winner. Even though Mick Jagger's familiar pouting, snarling voice hurtles out from another place and another time, part of tracks that are now an integral part of our culture, it still sends shivers down the spine. Same goes for the opening chords, from 'Street Fighting Man's insistent, ringing acoustic opening to 'Gimme Shelter's menacing, serpent-like notes and, of course, the all-too familiar calling card of 'Satisfaction'.
The first album is as bulletproof a selection as you could want. From the breakneck cover of Buddy Holly's 'Not Fade Away', through the classic string of self-penned singles ('The Last Time', 'Satisfaction', 'Get Off Of My Cloud', '19th Nervous Breakdown', 'Paint It, Black') to the meltdown of 'Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?', this is the mid-60s documented in all its incense-scented, scandal-ridden, narcissistic glory.
That's the signal for the trip to get darker, though the provocative 'Let's Spend The Night Together' and the wistful beauty of 'Ruby Tuesday' proved that the band could still churn out incredible four-minute pop songs. Unsurprisingly, the nervous breakdown of a single that was 'We Love You', which documented their paranoid incarcerated summer of love, is omitted in favour of the light and airy 'She's A Rainbow'.
The second album also races out of the blocks, with the legendary riffs of 'Start Me Up' and 'Brown Sugar' followed by the disco shuffle of 'Miss You'. It's no secret what the Stones themselves consider their best albums of the later period, with 1978's 'Some Girls' getting three tracks, 1972's magnum opus 'Exile On Main Street' and 1994's semi-return to form 'Voodoo Lounge' two apiece.
Of the new tracks, 'Don't Stop' is a solid mid-paced rocker with a memorable chorus, the kind of single the Stones still seem able to churn out at will. But 'Keys To Your Love' and 'Stealing My Heart' are merely slight versions of what's gone before, the former with Jagger's falsetto vocal circa 1980-81 and the latter a countryfied ditty of the sort Sir Mick usually saves for his solo albums. Keith's 'Losing My Touch' is much better, though, the latest in a long line of slow-burning album closers he does so well.
As ever with compilations covering such a huge body of work, there are omissions - 'Little Red Rooster', 'Time Is On My Side', 'Rocks Off', 'All Down The Line' could have easily slotted in instead of the album tracks or a couple of the new ones. But to criticise a collection containing so many incredible songs would be churlish.
On the contrary, 'Forty Licks' exists as ample evidence that, away from the drugs, the women, the media manipulation, the huge stages filling one end of stadiums the world over, the Stones have got where they are because they've made music that has been, and will continue to be listened to and revered by generation after generation. Try as you might, you still can't lick 'em.
