The Rolling Stones - Steel Wheels

Not the last time after all

As the 80s drew to a close, Stones fans were wondering if they’d ever hear from their heroes again. Sessions for 1985’s Dirty Work (also featured in this batch of remastered reissues) had been fraught with tension, there was no accompanying tour, and the rumour mill suggested Mick Jagger and Keith Richards hadn’t even spoken since carrying out minimal promotion for the album’s release.

Hatchets were ultimately buried, however, and if 1989’s Steel Wheels isn’t exactly a classic, it at least occasionally revisits touchstones from the glorious past. The crash and rattle of Hold On To Your Hat could have been exiled on … Main Street, Blinded By Love borrows a down-at-heel country strum from Sticky Fingers’ Dead Flowers, while Almost Hear You Sigh holds its own in the lachrymose school of balladry that brought us Angie and Fool To Cry.

Subsequent albums, 1994’s Voodoo Lounge and 1997’s Bridges To Babylon, have less to recommend, though some diehards will argue that 2005’s A Bigger Bang gets it more right than wrong. Arguably the group’s best of the last 20 years, though, is 1995’s Stripped collection of unplugged rehearsals and live club recordings, which sadly is not included in the current reissue programme.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Polydor | 2701567

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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