April 2
Link


The Rolling Stones' are remastering and reissuing 14 albums this year.

The records - which include 'Sticky Fingers', 'Goats Head Soup', 'Some Girls' and 'A Bigger Bang' - will be released in three batches, with the first going on sale on May 4.

A special collectors box that houses all 14 albums is also planned for release, and each of the albums will be available digitally.

The following albums by The Rolling Stones are being reissued:

First batch (May 4)

'Sticky Fingers'
'Goats Head Soup'
'It's Only Rock 'N' Roll'
'Black And Blue'

Second batch (June 8)

'Some Girls'
'Emotional Rescue'
'Tattoo You'
'Undercover'

Third batch (July 13)

'Dirty Work'
'Steel Wheels'
'Voodoo Lounge'
'Bridges To Babylon'
'A Bigger Bang'

A special version of The Rolling Stones' iconic 1972 album 'Exile On Main Street' is also being planned, although no date has yet been announced for its release.

Sure to follow are reissues of the Allan Klein controlled records, who want a copy of Paint It Black remixed?

Didn't they do this in the 90s. I remember them reissuing remasters on Virgin.

Copycat said:

Second batch (June 8)

'Some Girls'
'Emotional Rescue'
'Tattoo You'

funkpill said:

Those are the three that I would be interested in,too I already have the remastered 'Some Girls',though.

I want these.

didn't they already do this? at or around the same time the 60's remasters came out earlier in the decade?


or are they going the Bowie route and endlessly reissuing/remastering their entire catalog and repackaging it infinite ways?

SoulAlive said:

The extended Miss You would be a great bonus


Same with 'Emotional Rescue' with both Dance & If I Was A Dancer as bonuses
[Edited 4/6/09 18:43pm]

funkpill said:

There are no extras on any of the CDs, except for Exile,which is out in October. The Stones back catalogue has been remastered (i.e: upgraded from the 1994 Virgin remasters) and repackaged. The live albums will be reissued next year. There may or may not be a genuine rarities

The Stones own their masters from 1970 onwards. Whenever they sign a new deal, whoever has the contract gets the rights to the back catalogue. It's so far changed hands four times - Atlantic, up until 1985, then CBS until 1993, then Virgin/EMI. Now it's Universal. The deal is worth $7.5 million and runs for five years.

The big bone of contention among Stones fans is the complete lack of bonus tracks on the reissued CDs. There may be a rarities/outtakes compilation from 1970-2006 out in the next couple of years, but The Stones want a lot of money upfront for those. Rumour is Jagger has asked for $5 million per disc of outtakes/live shows.

It's quite telling that the deal doesn't include a new album contract. This could well mean that The Stones are pretty much through as an active band.

Copycat said:

Like.....WHY???? Everywhere they sign to, they take their masters w/them, and 10 times outta 9 it's remastered & re-released anyway!!!!!
For instance, if they woulda signed with Death Row in the 90's, there woulda been remastered re-releases.....and probably Snoop & Dre & Pac on some "remixes"!!!!!
A certain someone should've had a deal like THIS.....

woogiebear said:

Sure, but the reason The Stones operate the way they do vis a vis their post 1970s masters is that they were totally screwed over by Allen Klein. Klein owns the rights to their (arguably more popular) 60s stuff. They barely make a penny from their back catalogue, pre-Sticky Fingers.

This will be a good opportunity for me to get caught up on my Stones collection. This will be the first reissue for some of these, correct? I don't think I recall Steel Wheels or Dirty Work ever being remastered.

NoVideo said:

Nope. Every Stones studio album up to and including Steel Wheels was remastered and reissued between 1994-5. Subsequent albums - Voodoo Lounge - A Bigger Bang came out between 1994 and 2006 and haven't been remastered. They don't really need to be either.

no sense in getting them if there's no bonuses

Shapeshifter said:

Cool, I must have missed those.

funkpill said:

Spoken like a true - disgruntled - fan.

There should, by rights, be a Stones equivalent of The Beatles Anthology, but the band want too much money for their outtakes (many of which are available on bootleg). A record company won't pony up for these because there will be little commercial interest in these outside of the band's hardcore fanbase. And then this will be cut by half because of the internet. And Jagger's notorious for not wanting to delve into the archives, despite the fact that he could easily cobble together a great "new" album from a fraction of what they have in the vault. Tattoo You (an outtakes album in all but name) was put together by Chris Kimsey. It was - at the time - their biggest selling album after Some Girls; it's also their last genuinely great album.

Ahhh, I'm not that interested,. No new tracks, and these days a remastering job is likely as not to sound WORSE than the last generation of CDs.

And I guess I'd better outlive Mick & Keith if I really want to hear the outtakes. But honestly I've heard quite a few bootlegged ones and there's not that many that are truly amazing. They seemed to have a good sense of what was right to release & what was crapola. I'm sure there's mountains of it though, based on how they'd write tunes in the studio for weeks on end and only finish & mix the good ones. The Trident Sessions from 1969 is a double bootleg of, I think, ALL unfinished tracks and only two of them were good enough for me to put on compilations later.

bobzilla77 said:

You're right - mostly. I think they tend to release their best stuff on the albums. Unlike Prince, Dylan, Neil Young, Springsteen and Bowie, who consign some of their best songs to the proverbial vault. That said, there are a couple of gems - a cover of For Your Precious Love from the Steel Wheels sessions is sublime, and there's the infamous Claudine, from the Some Girls and emotional Rescue sessions - brilliant song. And, like I said, Tattoo You was scraped together from outtakes.

If you listen to the Voodoo Lounge studio boots - EVERYTHING from those sessions was leaked and out in three sets, amounting to ten CDs. Most of the outtakes were aimless noodles. And much of the stuff you've heard on bootleg is unfinished.

I suspect that Jagger is behind this and that he has his eyes on the balance sheet rather than his ears on the remastering

I'm sort of interested since I don't have many studio releases from the Stones. More money for Mick!

Shapeshifter said:

Thanks for the info... without demos or bonus tracks I am not buying it.... Also how much more money do they need?

They some greedy bastards.

rocknrolldave said:

It's not just Jagger. He does the actual wheeling and dealing (with his financial advisers and lawyers), but the decision about releasing outtakes is a collective band one. The other three all have their say. As far as I know, only Keith has expressed any kind of interest in releasing outtakes - and that was when he was pissed off about how Bridges to Babylon turned out. He mentioned releasing an alternative version of the album without the trendy producers (well, The Dust Brothers) Jagger had brought in to give the album a contemporary feel. In the end, the idea fell by the wayside.

Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts aren't remotely interested in going through the archives, Keith's too lazy and Jagger wants to keep moving forward. Only Bill Wyman was interested in the outtakes. He compiled the original Stones outtakes collection - Black Box - for Allen Klein, but Klein nixed Bill's (excellent) collection and put Metamorphosis together himself. Black Box has since gone on to be one of the best loved collections of Stones outtakes .... on bootleg.

There were provisional plans to release a 20 CD archive collection in the late 90s. This would have covered The Stones live and in the studio between 1972 - 1979. This never happened because EMI wouldn't stump up the cash.

aalloca said:

They're either getting a lot of money for old rope (by our standards), or not very much at all. Past deals have been massive. $7.5 million is, for them, peanuts.