Still Living

"KEEF!" Jagger shouts at his guitarist during the first of two red-hot performances in Hartford, Ct. last October. "Keef! Do you remember when it was the last time we played this tune, man?" Jagger just announced "Down the Road a Piece," a Chuck Berry classic off of the group's first album in 1964.

Keef, back to the crowd and chatting with drummer Charlie Watts, fakes heart failure, clutches his chest and collapses to his knees, guitar and all. It apparently had been quite a long time.

"Down the Road a Piece," didn't make it onto Still Life, the Stones' latest album, a live summary of their 1981 American tour. And that's something of a shame, because the Stones played plenty of true golden oldies while travelling the U.S. last summer and fall. They could have done a great service to rock and roll by recording only those tunes as a pure tribute to their own roots. As it is, the two best cuts on the return--Eddie Cochran's "Twenty-Flight Rock" and Smokey Robinson's "Goin to a Go-Go"--are both new additions to the Stones vast library of cover versions.

But Jagger and his boys hedge their bets. They thought the tour's best selling point was its breadth--covering everything from the fifties to "Start Me Up"--and that's what this album offers.

Still Life unfortunately does not capture fully the excitement of the 1981 tour a trans-continental jaunt which reaffirmed the Stones' ability to provide the best material in the field even in their dotage. The album is so cleanly recorded and finely re-mixed that pieces like "Under My Thumb" and "Let's Spend the Night Together" lose some of their bite, particularly the latter, which sounds downright cheerful. Though the Stones have mastered the art of making studio productions sound spontaneous, they have never succeeded consistently in producing top-notch concert records. Only Get Year Ya Ya's Out (1970) comes close to preserving the on-stage hysteria and thumping power of a concert engineered by Jagger and Richards.

Preserving that wondrous mayhem may be asking too much. The two covers on Still Life are fine, funky cuts powered by the Charlie Watts-Bill Wyman rhythm machine. Jagger reminds all of his still startling ability to transform black R & B and white honk into the Stones' own unique grinding sound.

"Twenty Flight" also provides a subtle reminder of the Stones' fascination with their own aging, as expressed on recent albums and in countless interviews. It's the tale of a fella hot to truth whose babe lives on you-know-which floor. She's all alone and ready to rock, but when he gets to the top he's too pooped to put out. The main thing is the bump-bump rhythm; no Stones song should be analyzed for too long, since they don't take much too seriously themselves. But why did they pick this selection out of Eddie Cochran's large repertoire of groin-grabbers?

Other highlights include double-time versions of "Let Me Go" and "Just My Imagination," both off of Some Girls (1978) and refreshing in their disorganization. Richards does splendid work on "Time is on My Side," but someone goofed by not mixing his vocals in louder. Keef's incomparable moaning is only barely audible behind Jagger's.

The album ends as the concerts did, with a rather hokey taped excerpt from Jim Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner." The message in person was. "No encore, but isn't this a funny cryptic way of ending the show?" Reassuring, however, is Jagger's last line before the distorted guitar begins. "Thank yew..See yew next year--bah bah!" Gray hair and all, that would be nice.