The Rolling Stones - Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert: 40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set

Charlie’s good tonight, in’e? Even better on this sumptuous remastered extravaganza built on the best live album ever

The Stones 1969 US tour signalled their serious return to the live stage after over three years, consolidating what Keith Richards calls “our first resurrection‘, which had started with the previous year’s Beggars Banquet, continued with Mick Taylor replacing the recently-deceased Brian Jones and Let it Bleed about to kick-start the band’s unstoppable early 70s rise. Now playing through decent PAs to seated, attentive crowds rather than screaming fans (which meant they could hear themselves for the first time), the Stones had embarked on their road to box office-busting live gig supremacy. It started here, with MC Sam Cutler announcing, quite accurately, “The greatest rock’n’roll band in the world.”

At the time, the album was regarded as a response to LIVEr Than You’ll Ever Be, recorded on 9 November at Oakland Coliseum, appearing as one of the first bootlegs after Dylan’s Great White Wonder launched this new form of vinyl mischief earlier in the year (though LIVEr was also a contract-filler for the Stones’ about-toexpire Decca deal). Named after a 1938 Blind Boy Fuller single, Ya-Ya’s was drawn from shows recorded at New York’s Madison Square Gardens on 27-28 November, and also the previous day’s stint at Baltimore Civic Centre, according to Bill Wyman. With Richards determined to keep it as authentic as possible, the album was mixed and touched up at Olympic and Trident studios by Glynn Johns, and released the following September to hit No 1 in the UK. Lester Bangs subsequently called it “the best rock concert ever put on record”.

It still sounds mesmerising, incendiary and eerily timeless, with Jagger the lascivious ringmaster, whipping up both excitement levels and ladies (“Think I bust a button on my trousers… You don’t want my trousers to fall down now, do you?”). The remastering heightens the band’s supernatural dynamic at this time; Richards’ ferocious, metronomic chopping bolted to Charlie’s effortless swing, particularly deadly on the two Chuck Berry covers and a sweltering Honky Tonk Women. Midnight Rambler, the set’s pièce de résistance sounded cloudy on Let It Bleed, but here it flares into a magnificent orgy of locomotive grooves and stage-lashing menace. Mick Taylor, meanwhile, is searingly incandescent on Robert Johnson’s Love In Vain. Nothing could touch this in 1969 and little could now.

The Stones’ eternal mission to introduce their audience to artists which had inspired them continued with opening spots given to BB King and Ike & Tina Turner. The Stones originally planned Ya-Ya’s as a double album, with one disc devoted to their super-tight supports. Decca baulked, however, as both acts were little-known outside their respective stomping grounds. It finally surfaces here, along with another disc of previouslyunreleased versions of Prodigal Son, Mississippi Fred McDowell’s You Gotta Move, Under My Thumb/I’m Free and Satisfaction.

Apart from these genuinely-useful extras, the bonus DVD is a film by Albert and David Maysles, featuring these performances, plus footage including David Bailey’s Charlie-donkey cover shoot, remixing sessions and a visiting Jimi Hendrix. There’s also a 56-page book featuring photos and and essay from tour photographer Ethan Russell, plus a poster. (The super deluxe edition adds three vinyl albums, one etched with cover art and band signatures.)

At that precise moment, with Altamont, Keith’s drug problems, inter-band civil war and untold obstacles yet to come, the Stones embodied rock’n’roll’s coming of age: satanic, majestic, rootsy, untouchable. And Lester still isn’t far from the truth.

5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars

Universal/ABKCO | tbc

Reviewed by Kris Needs
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