Beggars Banquet, The Rolling Stones, 1968

Nicky Hopkins (1944-1994) is the true star of this album, with his amazing piano, everywhere but especially on "Salt of the Earth," "Jigsaw Puzzle," and "Sympathy For the Devil." It's interesting that what the Stones were so praised for is tantamount to a folk-rock album, though that term was probably never used by Stones-watchers.

Three songs I don't want to listen to: "Dear Doctor" (one joke and it mocks the South), "Street Fighting Man" (Stones wanting to say something about revolution but not being sure what -- great acoustic guitar, though), and "Sympathy For the Devil" (those fake-African drums and grunts annoy me).

One song I could listen to over and over: "Parachute Woman."

Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones, 1971

Until now I had never listened to this entire album. It's surprisingly good, in fact great (though no Exile). Back in 1971, the zipper cover and the whole macho image turned me off.

You can see the Stones starting to work out the musical ideas they’d take further and dirtier in Exile. The inhabiting of American musical forms like country, blues and soul, not just imitating them or paying tribute to them.

Let me dispose of the songs I don't like first. I could quite happily never hear "Brown Sugar" again. Sexist, racist trash with predictable chords. "You Gotta Move" is just an OK imitation of Southern blues.

I like all the rest of the songs. For all these years, I thought "Bitch" was about a woman... just read the lyrics and realized it's about a heroine called heroin. Surprise, surprise, on an album with "Sister Morphine" and a “needle and a spoon” in "Dead Flowers" and a “head full of snow” in "Moonlight Mile." What woman could compete with heroin and cocaine in their affections?

"Wild Horses" (sometimes a horse is just a horse). I liked it then, as everyone did then. I liked it because of the sentimentality and the minor key vocals. Now, it more than holds up. I like it because of the subtlety, how you can have mixed feelings about someone but still want to be with them.

"I Got the Blues" is a great Memphis soul song.

"Moonlight Mile" is another great song and a perfect ending. Also a road song.

Their Satanic Majesties Request, The Rolling Stones, 1967

How wonderful this album is. I had forgotten. Conventional wisdom at the time was that this wasn't a good album. How wrong that was. The Stones cross their normal blues-rock with psychedelia a bit uneasily, but the uneasiness makes for some great music.

On this re-listen, utter love. Loved it in the 70s, love it now. Why are the Stones punished for experimenting (with different instruments, orchestration, looser song structures) when others are rewarded? Unfair! Songwriting, playing and production (the Stones themselves) are great. Brian Jones still around to leaven Jagger and Richards' seriousness.

Goats Head Soup, The Rolling Stones, 1973

This album is way better than I thought, especially "Coming Down Again" and "Heartbreaker." For reasons I can't remember, I was overly biased against this album. Jeez, even hearing "Angie" isn’t a terrible experience.

It’s an OK album, but what’s fascinating is that it’s one year after Exile and it’s not at all cut from the same cloth. Were the Stones distracted with extra-musical things? Everything, writing, playing, and recording, sounds half-assed sometimes.

Transformer, Lou Reed, 1972 and Exile on Main St., The Rolling Stones, 1972

I see parallels between Transformer and Exile on Main St. Lou using strings, piano - the Stones using horns and adding other instruments. Recall that Exile got bad reviews because it was not guitar driven and buried Jagger's vocals in the mix! (The 2010 reissue cleaned it up too much! Keith didn't like it.) 

Artists should take care with their old work.  Remember how the painter Gully Jimson (in Joyce Cary's wonderful novel The Horse's Mouth) was trying to get people to forget the Sara Monday paintings (while simultaneously trying, without much success, to wring money from them).