The Rolling Stones - Blue & Lonesome

Stones return to blues roots! Their first studio album in more than a decade!

Blue & Lonesome pressed on two 180-gram LPs, housed in a double gatefold sleeve

Coming December 2016, The Rolling Stones return to their blues roots with Blue & Lonesome, their first studio album in more than a decade! The 12 album tracks are all covers of songs by classic bluesmen.

Produced by Don Was and The Glimmer Twins, Blue & Lonesome takes the band back to their passion for blues music which has always been at the heart and soul of The Rolling Stones. The album was recorded throughout the course of just three days in December 2015 at British Grove Studios in West London, just a stone's throw from Richmond and Eel Pie Island where the group started out as a young blues act playing pubs and clubs.

Their approach to the album was that it should be spontaneous and played live in the studio without overdubs. The band — Mick Jagger (vocals & harp), Keith Richards (guitar), Charlie Watts (drums), and Ronnie Wood (guitar) were joined by their long time touring sidemen Darryl Jones (bass), Chuck Leavell (keyboards) and Matt Clifford (keyboards) and, for two of the 12 tracks, by old friend Eric Clapton, who happened to be in the next studio making his own album. Clapton guests on the group's cover of Little Johnny Taylor's "Everybody Knows About My Good Thing" and Otis Rush's "I Can't Quit You Baby."

Blue & Lonesome sees the Rolling Stones tipping their hats to their early days as a blues band when they played the music of Jimmy Reed, Willie Dixon, Eddie Taylor, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf — artists whose songs are featured on this album. "This album is manifest testament to the purity of their love for making music, and the blues is, for the Stones, the fountainhead of everything they do," longtime associate and album co-producer Don Was notes.

Was revealed in an interview with the French publication Le Figaro (via Ultimate Classic Rock) that the Stones had recorded the LP live in the studio with the musicians in a circle surrounding microphones. "The record sounds very crude, very authentic," he said. "It captures the essence of what they are."

Side 1

Just Your Fool

Commit a Crime

Blue and Lonesome

Side 2

All of Your Love

I Gotta Go

Everybody Knows About My Good Thing

Side 3

Ride ‘Em On Down

Hate To See You Go

Hoo Doo Blues

Side 4

Little Rain

Just Like I Treat You

I Can’t Quit You Baby

Customer Reviews (2.33 Stars) 3 person(s) rated this product.

Pass on this one posted on 02/17/2017 1 Stars Reviewer: gilzen Exile on Mainstreet grittiness is ok.. But this sounded like an unrehearsed mish mash. Not the blues sound that they are capable of. I do not know what happened but save your money for some good blues. Love the Stones followed them from their first tunes; but this has a horrible sound like something recorded in a U-haul trailer and played on cracked speakers. For audiophiles buy their mono box collection instead, well worth the price.

Terrible sound and recording. posted on 01/10/2017 1 Stars Reviewer: Jerome The biggest disappointment of 2016 for me. The sound is heavily compressed and sounds like it was recorded on equipment found at a Salvation Army Thrift Shop. It is a very fatiguing listen. Some might argue that the sound is what the Stones were striving for. I don't know, and I really don't care. This is one bad sounding record and it doesn't invite repeat listens. So if the Stones were trying to produce a record that you could barely stand to listen to once and then put it away and never spin it again -- they succeeded. Early Black Key's records sound considerably better than this -- and those are most certainly lo-fi recordings. Blue & Lonesome is Lowest-Fi. The music is great, 5 stars. But the recording is 1 star.

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