We simply played what we liked to play, because we loved it.
The fact that we knew more about black music than the black kids on the street was just an accident. “We haven't ripped off black music at all,” he said.
The deliberate reversion to the band's rhythm‐and‐blues roots on the third side of the new set brings up an old question that people who aren't close to rock‐androll ask continuously: What did the American and British white rockers bring to the black rock of the 1950's? Is the very essence of white rock a rip‐off of unknown and superior black artists? Jagger, for one, is clear on the issue. Richard himself has long been an advocate of such experimentation. Some of them have begun to do something about it-Bob Dylan and the early days of his Rolling Thunder Revue Neil Young with hit‐and‐run club appearances in Northern California the Stones in Toronto. More and more these days, successful rock stars are talking about the need for alternatives to the big‐concert syndrome. I don't see why that should be-you should be able to rely on it.” And from the standpoint of the audience, if the sound is good, you can count yourself lucky. is working or the monitors sound, you're not going to play as well. “If you're not happy with the way the P.A. The other difference is that on a big stage, everybody's hearing something different from his own monitor speakers. “The difference between playing a large arena and a small room is that to fill an arena with music, you have to surrender the sound of the band to somebody on a mixing board. “I can hear well enough to play in those large halls,” said Richardrecently in the band's New York office. The sound of the El Mocambo side reflects what one actually heard in the club, and the situation was conducive to the band's playing at its best. But they aren't satisfactory acoustically, and because of that, the band doesn't play at its best in such situations. The economics of 1970's rockand‐roll seem to demand playing in such massive arenas. Although the other three sides sound remarkably clear on these disks, that clarity is itself a distortion of what one actually encountered during the concerts. The other is the sound-close, dry and tight. One is the repertory-the sort of rhythm‐and‐blues basics that the band began playing in the early 1960's. The third side is interesting for two reasons. Yet when all that is admitted, this is still a superbly invigorating pair of disks, capturing rock's greatest performing band at the peak of its skills, and clearly the best live album they've ever made. One might regret that the clearer balances on the records distort the cruder sound one heard in concert-particularly the twanging dominance of the guitars. One can complain about some relatively recent Stones songs here that aren't all that great to start with (e.g., “Fingerprint File”). One could complain that apart from a couple of oldies heretofore unrecorded by the Stones, these songs have all been heard on Stones albums before, in studio versions and some on previous live albums. I'm not saying it's a bad album, though.” Indeed. The prognosis about the band's current health is derived from the excellence of its performances on tour in 19, which., have now been documented on a two‐disk live set called “Love You Live.” The set isn't ideal, perhaps-as Mick Jagger put it the other day, “I'm not happy with any of our albums, because I know they're not good enough. Yet these confusions and troubles come at a time in which the band seems to be in the best shape it's been in for years-and at a time in which the winds of taste may at last be shifting back to the kind of hard, driving rock that the Stones have espoused all along. authorities, who have charged him with possession of heroin and cocaine). They're attacked by the punks for being plutocrats even as their lead guitarist, Keith Richard, is being held up once again by the Establishment as an evil example for youth (this time by Canadian. They're still making the same crude, rude and raw rock‐and‐roll they always made. Well, here we are in the middle of the soft‐rocking 70's, and the Rolling Stones just won't go away.