Rolling Stones - Got Live If You Want It

[lukpac]

Every once and a while I have to indulge myself and discuss this one. For those not familiar with it, on the surface it's simply a very strange sounding live album from 1966 with a couple of studio tracks (complete with overdubbed crowd noise) thrown in. Start to explore it some more, though, and things get *very* confusing.

The Sound
First there's the matter of the sound itself. [For now I'll concentrate on the stereo LP mix] The instruments are all isolated in the left channel, sounding as if they were recorded in another room. The vocals are center and right, and in stark contrast to the music, are as "direct" sounding as anything - it's as if Mick is right there in the room with you. And then on (mostly) the right you've got a constant ocean of screaming girls. Pretty strange.

In addition to all of that, there are some *crazy* edits between songs, where the sound of the audience dramatically changes. A good example is between Have You Seen Your Mother and Satisfaction. At the end of "Mother", they start playing the Satisfaction riff. This then quickly edits to Satisfaction itself, whereupon the girls in the right channel suddenly get *much* louder.

On the surface, this would seem to be easy enough to explain: live music and scream tracks, with vocals overdubbed in the studio. In fact, in a few places you can hear what sounds like the remains of the live vocals (check out the end of Not Fade Away, where it sounds like Mick sang "la la la", which is followed by what sounds like "thank you"). However, there are many holes in this theory:

Crowd Noise
Listen to the edit after Not Fade Away (when things move to the "studio" tracks). The crowd noise in the left channel is loud but not overpowering, and cuts off abruptly. The crowd noise in the right channel, however, gets *much* louder near the end of the song and continues into I've Been Loving You Too Long. This would seem to indicate that, at the very least, the "live" crowd noise was augmented by some type of canned crowd. Not to mention the fact that in the intro you can hear "We want the Stones", obviously from the EP of the same name, recorded over a year earlier.

Studio Instrumentation
We all know that in 1966, the Stones' stage presence consisted of Mike, Keith, Brian, Bill and Charlie. Ian wasn't present on stage till the '69 tour. Yet on Satisfaction there's a piano and on Under My Thumb there's what sounds like a marimba. One would immediately think they were overdubs laid on top of the basic live tracks, but unlike the vocal overdubs, they are not clear at all. Instead, they are buried with the rest of the backing in the left channel.

This leads to the question - are the backing tracks live at all? If they are, where did these instruments come from? If they aren't, why do they sound so horrible, and why can you hear traces of live vocals?

I'm Alright
The song was (supposedly) first recorded in early 1965 live in the UK, (supposedly) in mono, and released on the "Got Live" EP in the UK and Out Of Our Heads in the US. A brief listen would seem to indicate that it's a different recording - the vocals are totally different. However, if one plays the "1965" and "1966" versions next to each other it becomes very clear that the backing track is 100% identical. So clearly the Got Live EP was recorded on some type of multitrack equipment, and they weren't afraid of throwing in something from over a year ago on the LP.

Different Mixes
When the LP was released, it was released in both mono and stereo formats. Unfortunately, I have never heard the original mono mix, although I've been told it's pretty much like the stereo, albeit with some different edits. When ABKCO released the album on CD in 1986, however, they created a totally different beast. The sound is basically mono, in stark contrast to the heavily separated stereo LP mix. The crowd noise seems to be louder in most places, and several of the edits are different. For instance, where "Mother" and Satisfaction are edited together on the LP, there's several seconds of crowd noise between them on the CD.

Perhaps most importantly, Under My Thumb is a different take. Or so it would seem. The first few bars are clearly different, and the vocals are different as well. However, a more in depth listen reveals that the intro is simply edited, and that the backing is indeed the same as on the LP. So again we've got a case of the same backing track with two different vocal tracks.

Add to all of this a totally different house announcer intro, the music to Satisfaction fading out (as it did on LP) while the screams stay loud (NOT like the LP) and other strange things and you've got yourself yet another head scratcher.

Studio Tracks
It doesn't seem to make any sense that they would throw on two songs clearly recorded in the studio, when they could have pulled another I'm Alright and used a few other songs from the Got Live EP and added new vocals. And why those two songs?

Final Thoughts
One theory I've been floating regarding the obvious studio instrumentation/overdubs was that they were actually using pre-recorded backing tracks on stage, and that what we've got on the album is Mick singing along to a "concert" where girls were screaming at a tape. Add to that some more canned screaming to "liven things up". Yet the entire concept of that just seems a bit too absurd. Or does it?

The question of course is, why would they go through all of this trouble for an LP that was basically a throwaway? It wasn't even released in the UK at the time, and live albums at that time were clearly just a way to cash in.

The other question, then, would be where did that ABKCO CD (and now SACD) version come from? Assuming it was remixed in 1986, again, why? Because they could?

It's perhaps one of the most maddeningly crazy albums known to man, but I still enjoy it, in spite of (or perhaps because of) all of its issues.

Comments?

[JohnS]

To muddy the waters a little more (no blues pun intended), I have a copy of the LP 'Collectors Only' on TelDec (German Decca) from the early 1980s, a compilation of B-sides, foreign versions and EP tracks that had not appeared on other Stones compilations like 'No Stone Unturned.' Side 2 is described as the UK 'Got Live If You Want It' EP - but at the end there's a 'live' take of Get Off My Cloud. The sleeve notes list it as though it's part of the regular EP, which it's not - the EP was released long before 'Cloud' was even recorded I think - but it's crossfaded in with the audience noise, ie. there's no pause or edit as such, and someone had taken a bit of time to mix it in quite well.
I don't have the LP to hand to check, but I think I found it to be very similar in sound to the version of 'Cloud' on my Decca Export 'Got Live...' LP.
It could be a TelDec-assembled edit to spice up the LP (eg. the LP also features the studio outtake 'I've Been Loving You Too Long' WITHOUT the 'Got Live' crowd noise, but i think it's just lifted from one channel of the stereo 'Got Live' album) but the way it's not addressed as such on the sleeve suggests not - no 'previously unreleased Live bonus track' sort of thing. I wondered if the TelDec compiler had stumbled across some work-in-progress tape in Decca's vaults by mistake: he thought he'd got the 'Got Live' EP tapes but in fact it was an alternative, scrapped version of the LP - maybe Decca were planning to expand the EP into an album at some point...
Just a theory...

[lukpac]

As I don't have the ABKCO CD handy, can anyone confirm if Under My Thumb has the marimba and Satisfaction has the piano? For some reason I'm thinking it doesn't have those parts, which would blow a hole in my crazy theory.

BTW, thanks for a fellow Forum Member (TM), I've now got a copy of the London Between The Buttons. Other than being the US track lineup (a crime), it's quite good. It's a shame a few tracks run too fast, but other than that, I'd say it's as good or better than the SACD. No narrowing, no NR, etc. Yesterday's Papers sounded ever so slightly better, IMO.

Did I mention I really dislike the US lineup?

[Christer]

I have kept my "old" Got LIVE If You Want It! ABKCO CD mainly because I prefer the mono version to the strange sounding stereo version.

I cannot hear a marimba on the "Under My Thumb" track. The sound quality is not very good! But "Satisfaction" does indeed have a piano. But I can only hear it after about 2 minutes into the track.

[lukpac]

Keep in mind the SACD uses the same version as the old ABKCO CD - ie, neither the original mono or stereo mixes. The SACD does sound a bit better than the CD, though, at least what I've heard of it.