The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You Too (1982)

The Rolling Stones released Emotional Rescue, their 15th UK studio album, on 23 June 1980. A very inconsistent album, it nevertheless featured two major hits: "She's So Cold" and the title track. Coming on the heels of their comeback album Some Girls, it was considered a disappointment, but not enough to ground the momentum the band had gotten from that return to form. It came on a period of relative sobriety from guitarist Keith Richards, who sought to regain the control over the band he'd lost during his years of substance abuse. This led to a lot of conflict with singer Mick Jagger, with the two generally not getting along and butting heads over musical direction. As a result, the band didn't tour to promote Emotional Rescue, their first record since It's Only Rock and Roll not to have a tour in its support. However, despite their differences, Mick and Keith still wanted to tour and enjoy the critical and commercial renaissance the band was experiencing from '78 onwards, so a major tour was booked for 1981 in the US and for 1982 in the UK and Europe. With that, it became obvious that a new album was needed, as by the time the European tour rolled around, Emotional Rescue would be a whole two years old. However, the creative rift between Mick and Keith was still very much alive, and they didn't have enough time or patience to record a new LP from scratch. What to do now? Thankfully for us, band engineer Chris Kinsey suggested taking a look at the vaults, saying there were enough good outtakes for a new record. Mick agreed, and so they set out to look for possible release candidates.

Kinsey and Jagger spent the Winter of 1980 in Paris, listening to outtakes, bookmarking the ones they found release-worthy, and recording overdubs on them. The material was mostly culled from that year's Emotional Rescue sessions, but spanning all the way back to Goat's Head Soup, with the two selecting eleven songs out of the nearly a hundred outtakes. The overdubbing process got even more interesting when Mick spotted jazz great Sonny Rollins performing in a Parisian nightclub, and invited him to play on the record, where he appears on three songs and greatly defines the sound of the album. Upon release, the album became an unexpected commercial success, with Some Girls outtake "Start Me Up" turning into a massive hit in mid-1981. The album is also a critical success, hailed as a return to form and as the great follow-up to Some Girls, all while being a measly collection of outtakes, which goes to show the sheer quality of the Stones' vault. They go on an American tour that year and a European tour the next, riding high on the album's success. Tattoo You has since gone on to become the gold standard, the measure used to evaluate new Stones music to this day. But those eleven songs were only the tip of the iceberg, the cream of the crop of the hundreds of songs the Rolling Stones recorded through the 1970s, as the deluxe editions filled with repurposed outtakes of recent times go to show. It even leaves us wondering if they couldn't have done even more with what they had at their disposal back in 1981.

So what if Tattoo You was a double album? In this reconstruction, we will be trying to find a home for the many more worthwhile outtakes the Stones had in the vault by 1981, on the heels of a twenty-year-long recording career. For starters, we know that other songs were considered for Tattoo You way back in 1980, but we have no idea which ones, so we'll be left to speculate and use the most finished-sounding songs they would've had then. We will only consider material recorded during the 1973 to 1980 period, as that's when all of Tattoo You was recorded. As good as some of the Exile leftovers are, they wouldn't be contemporary enough for this album, which means they won't be considered. Songs begun during this period, but completely redone later will also not be considered, which means songs such as "Too Tough" and "Lonely at the Top" won't make the album. Similarly, no modern Jagger vocals will be included, as you can always tell they were done after the fact by a nearly eighty-year-old. He also mostly wrote new lyrics for songs he re-recorded vocals, making them essentially new songs with old backing tracks instead of actual outtakes. Also, no songs that still remain in the vaults will be included, as that means they didn't even consider them good enough for their deluxe editions. However, in two instances we will have to use unreleased versions of two officially released songs, an issue which will be explained later. Finally, this album will be eleven songs long, and have a rock side and a ballad side, just like the original. With that out of the way, here's what the album looks like:

Living in the Heart of Love (Tattoo You)

Claudine (Some Girls)

Everything's Turning to Gold (Sucking in the Seventies)

Fiji Jim (Fully Finished Studio Outtakes)

So Young (Some Girls)

Criss Cross Man (Goat's Head Soup)

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Through the Lonely Nights (Singles Box Set)

We Had It All (Some Girls)

I Think I'm Goin' Mad (Singles Box Set)

Drift Away (Tattoo You)

Fast Talking, Slow Walking (Fully Finished Studio Outtakes)

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The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You Too (1982)

Jagger, Wood, Richards, Wyman, and Watts, as photographed in August 1981.

All we have to do now is scour the deluxe editions of Goat's Head Soup, Some Girls and Tattoo You for any vintage lead vocals we could use here. "Criss Cross Man" is the only song from the Goat's Head Soup deluxe edition to feature vintage vocals, while also featuring assorted modern backing vocals and instrumental overdubs. "Through the Lonely Nights", a Goat's Head Soup outtake, found limited release as the b-side of the "It's Only Rock and Roll" single. It's the only song in this reconstruction that was previously released, but since it wasn't on any album and we are pretty short on ballads for the slow side, we will allow it. With those two, we have filled the same two-song quota of GHS outtakes that was given on the original album. "Living in the Heart of Love" and the Dobie Gray cover "Drift Away" are the only songs from the Tattoo You deluxe edition to feature vintage vocals, with "Living in the Heart of Love" featuring a new Ronnie Wood guitar solo, and "Drift Away" featuring some instrumental overdubs. They are both also from the It's Only Rock and Roll sessions, the only period not to be featured in any capacity on the original Tattoo You, something we've fixed by including them. Also, given that we have no Black and Blue era outtakes left, those two songs take over their slots on the album, which I think is fair enough. "Claudine" and "So Young" are the only songs from the Some Girls deluxe edition to feature vintage vocals, with the former being a full-on vintage master, and the latter only featuring a new piano overdub, filling the two-song quota for Some Girls outtakes.

"We Had it All", also from the Some Girls deluxe edition but dating from the Emotional Rescue sessions, is our Keith lead vocal for the album, being a completely vintage master. It's also a cover, and while the Stones were no strangers to putting covers on their LPs, they hadn't done so on Tattoo You. I'll allow it given their history and the fact that we have some pretty serious constraints. "Everything's Turning to Gold" was an Emotional Rescue outtake featured in the Sucking in the Seventies compilation, which was mixed and mastered virtually concurrently with Tattoo You, in late 1980 in Paris. If any one song can claim to be the closest to the album, it's this one. Meanwhile, "I Think I'm Going Mad", another Emotional Rescue outtake, was the b-side of the "She Was Hot" single in 1983. Since it postdates the release of Tattoo You, it's fair game and we can use it without any issues. With that, we have reached nine songs, two short of the obligatory eleven, and have completely run out of vintage vocals from the officially released studio albums. That's when the bootlegs come to our rescue! In the Fully Finished Studio Outtakes boot, we gained access to many alternate versions of Stones outtakes, including good quality versions of the original "Fast Talking, Slow Walking" from the IORR sessions, as well as the original "Fiji Jim", from the Some Girls sessions, before old man Mick Jagger had laid his hands on them. Truth be told, they are pretty unfinished, but given the alternatives they are more than worthy inclusions on this album, giving us both our final ballad and our final rocker.

The second half of the album takes most of its cues from the first, with the single and best song in the album serving as the lead-off track, a weirder song as the second, a disco experiment as song three, a blues exercise as song five, and so on. As previously stated, it's divided into a fast first side and a slow second side, which I did consider swapping to make things interesting, but since it didn't work very well I kept it as it was. Clocking in at 45 minutes with a slightly longer side one, this collection is clearly not as good as the real deal, but a fun exercise nonetheless. It goes places where the original didn't manage to go, such as rockabilly, covers, or country ballads, which are an essential part of the Stones' music, becoming a nice complement to Tattoo You. The title is just me playing around with Too and Two, as apparently the album was supposed to be named simply "Tattoo", and no one has any idea where the "You" came from. The accompanying cover is Keith's face from the gatefold, a solid choice for a cover given this is just part two. With "Living in the Heart of Love" already hand-picked for a single release, I could see "Criss Cross Man" being the second single, with "I Think I'm Goin' Mad" and "Claudine" serving as their b-sides. And since the original 1981 album was just an excuse for the Stones to go on a tour that year, I could easily see this second volume getting released just in time for the European leg of that tour in May 1982. It's a shame that these outtakes had to linger in the vaults for almost another forty years, reminders of a bygone time when it seemed like everything these guys touched turned to gold.

Sources:

- The Rolling Stones Database by Nico Zentgraf

- IORR Forum - Tattoo You Deluxe Edition