The Rolling Stones Album: “Got Live If You Want It! [Remaster]”

Ignore the overdubs, the canned audience, the Albert Hall mislead. Find some way to slide past the muddy remastering and the twisted provenance. This is the only recorded instance of Keith and Charlie, maybe even Bill, playing mad. There's been plenty of malice, violence, and guile, but we have never heard anything like the raw seething anger boiling here on 'Under My Thumb', '19th Nervous Breakdown', and 'Satisfaction'. And we never will again.

(Note: This review based on the 2002 Hybrid SACD version/enhanced stereo layer only. Don't have an SACD player.)

Admittedly, this album doesn't exactly rate 5 stars, but it's been so maligned I thought it needed a few props because it's not that bad either.

The sound quality & mix aren't that great compared to todays standards (or even 1970's standards...the golden era of live albums) but hey, this was recorded in 1966. I'll be the first to admit I'm not an expert on 1960's recordings, but I can't think of any other live rock concert album pre-66 that sounds much better. Those I can think of sound a lot muddier (a Johnny Hallyday disc I have comes to mind.) If you listen to this album with that in mind I think you'll get along with it fine.

I do take exception to dubbing audience cheering overtop the 2 studio recordings (per reports), but again that's a bit of hindsight opinion. In '66 there weren't any "rules" on what a live album should or shouldn't be. To my ears though this aspect wasn't as obvious when listening as some have indicated. I had read about this, but listened to the CD without knowing which songs were involved, and had a hard time telling which ones they were. The other songs have overdubs too (more below) so these didn't stand out much more to me. And even then these were apparently recorded "live" just without an audience. Neither song sounds like a real multi-tracked multi-takes studio album quality recording, more like the band set up their gear on an empty stage and recorded a live version in one take, and then added crowd noise. "Fortune Teller" in particular has a very rushed & loosely imprecise feel to it. So maybe they're "semi-live". At any rate, I doubt many average listeners in '66 realized the difference until it was "declassified" sometime later.

Regarding the vocal overdubs, my general preference on a live recording is no overdubs at all, but again that's assuming decent recording equipment is being used that's capable of capturing all the vocals & instruments reasonably well, and can be properly mixed later on to make the album. In 1966 that wasn't the case. Even the best studios at that time were only using 3-5 track recording machines (what would be considered an entry-level amateur home recording system today) and getting a good mix & levels on all the tracks was difficult, even with the luxury of time to record multiple takes. And in reality, multi-tracking & stereo really didn't start to take off until 1967. Live recording is only more difficult, so it's not surprising if some vocal overdubs were added to the original live masters so you could hear them. And quite likely, if they hadn't overdubbed then fans would've been complaining that "the vocals are so buried in the mix you can't make out the words. Why didn't they fix that?" And again, whatever overdubs exist were recorded in a very live, loose sounding fashion.

To sum it up, to me this is a fun & listenable recording, that makes for an interesting historical peek at some of the more peculiar aspects of '60's British rock. The sound is rough, but the tonal quality & feel are consistent throughout the recording. (Descriptions of it being a collection of live songs, studio cuts & demos is misleading, implying it sounds like a compilation album...it doesn't and plays out like a single live show.) And in my current opinion, this CD has more energy & drive than "Ya-Ya's", though that one definitely sounds better.

this is a good album by the Stones. Admittedly, the sound quality is not so great, and at times, you can't hear the band playing so well over all of the screaming of teenage girls. But this is the Stones when when they were the Rolling Stones! Before Mick Jagger morphed into Tina Turner and when Brian Jones was still alive and with the band. They were still playing rock and roll and R&B music at this point, before they got into playing a lot of "world music". I like this CD and have liked it for years..........

Perhaps even more than "Their Satanic Majesties Request," "Got Live If you Want It" is *the* hated-by-fans 60s Stones catalogue title. It shares its name with a British EP of the same name (which was itself recently reissued in the expensive "Singles 1963-65" boxed-set), but does not duplicate its content; while that British EP was a short, live burst of the Stones at their prime, the LP is an odd mish-mash of live, demo, and studio tracks, many with overdubs and overlaid with a chorus of screaming teenagers. It isn't a bad album, per se, but it isn't what it presents itself as, and its sloppy, poorly-thought-out aura can be either endearing or maddening. Strangely, however, this inconsequential throwaway of an album has had a fairly storied history on CD.

When the first Stones albums came out on CD in the late eighties, "Got Live if you Want It" was present in two very different configurations. The CD released on West German/Japanese London Records was of the LP's stereo mix (albeit with a few oddly-inserted segues), a nice, wide, listenable affair which certainly accentuates the record's blatant artificially--those lead vocals sound re-recorded in the studio--but at least presents the album in an enjoyable context. In the states, however, Stones label ABKCO decided for reasons clear only to them that "Got Live if You Want It" was due for an overhaul. They remixed the album into muddy-sounding mono--in the process grabbing a few alternates takes of songs, most noticably a different mix of "Fortune Teller" which later appeared sans crowd-noise on ABKCO's original "More Hot Rocks" CD--layering on tons of artificial-sounding, 80's digital echo in the process, and then added insult to injury by adding another layer of crowd noise over the proceedings. Thus, "Got Live"'s reputation has, in the intervening years, gotten even worse, as the only disc commonly available was ABKCO's poorly-produced remix.

So does ABKCO's reissue of "Got Live If You Want It" restore the album to its former...well, uh, its relative former glory? Not exactly. What we have here is the same mono remix presented on ABKCO's old CD. However, this transfer seems to be of an earlier stage of preparation, and on many songs it sounds like the extra crowd noise had not yet been added. Additionally, the album's epilogue--the crowd noise and announcements after the last track--is also MIA in part. The entire programme sounds much less artificial, however; there's actual frequency response this time around!

So yes, "Got Live if You Want It" is an upgrade from ABKCO's previous disc. That said, this is really a case of a mediocre, yet enjoyable album made worse by a lot of ex-post-facto tampering. Its continued existence in the Stones catalogue is more justifiable than, say, Flowers's desperate attempt to stay relevant, but not in this form! Do yourselves a favor: if you want to listen to "Got Live," track down an original mono or stereo London vinyl. You'll pay a lot less, and you might actually find the thing (fake "live" cuts and all) to be quite listenable.

Most of the complaints coming from people are about the quality. And I admit the quality isn't great, either are the studio ABKO albums that ABKO says are really good. And even the case was ripped at the spine. But the music is rather nice to listen too. The Stones take some songs a little to fast and rush it sometimes, but overall it's a great live album. The guy who said the songs weren't reall,he's wrong. The Stones just added parts like organs and more guitars, but the music was taken from a live preformance, with just added overdubs in the studio after. This album is quite good!