Deep Catalog/ The Brussels Affair - Live Stones -10/17/73
When the Rolling Stones lost Mick Taylor, they lost that special sauce that made the recipe just perfect. Ron Woods is ok. Brian Jones was better. But Mick Taylor was something entirely different. When Mick Taylor was in the band, The Rolling Stones were the greatest rock band ever. Period.
Mick Taylor was a force in the studio, along with producer Jimmy Miller (another reason the Stones have only made one great record since the early 70s). But you have to listen to live recordings of The Stones in the Mick Taylor era to really hear what Mick Tyalor brought and what he took when he left.
My favorite bootleg from this period is a recording called The Brussels Affair recorded at a show in Brussels on October 17, 1973. My friend Andy Monfried (who I met blogging) sent it to me a year or two ago. I have listened to it regularly ever since, more often than any single Stones studio record.
This recording showcases Mick Taylor but it also captures Mick Jagger in classic form: “We’re going to get ‘eith up now and ‘e’s going to play a song called ‘appy.” The vocal work between Mick and Keith on Happy is terrific and the bluesy licks from Mick Taylor take the song up a gear.
But it is the version of Tumbling Dice that I just cannot get enough of. Everyone who knows me well knows that Exile On Main Street is my favorite record ever made. And you’d think that Tumbling Dice, being the single on that record, would be my favorite Stones song. Far from it. It’s not even in my top ten songs on Exile.
But the version of Tumbling Dice on Brussels Affair is one that I do love, and one that could not be on a studio record. There’s just too much soloing on it. The song starts off pretty much as it always does, but about two minutes into it Mick Jagger turns it over to Mick Taylor with the words “sugar pie”, and Taylor just takes over the song. Then Mick Jagger starts to get the crowd going with pleas that everyone needs a little help sometimes, and then Bobby Keys and Trevor Lawrence get their saxophones into it and the result is pure bliss (click on that link to hear the song).
From Tumbling Dice the Stones go into Heartbreaker, from the much maligned Goats Head Soup (this bootleg is from the Goat’s Head Soup tour). In my mind, Goats Head Soup was Jagger and Taylor’s record and Heartbreaker, maybe more than any other Stones song, is a Mick Taylor song. If you are a Goat’s Head Soup fan like me, you’ll also appreciate the super cool version of Dancing With Mr D on this bootleg.
The other song on this record that’s worth talking a bit about is You Can’t Always Get What You Want. By 1973, the Stones were doing a very different version of this song from the original recorded in 1969 and released on Let It Bleed–more horns, more bluesy riffs, more rock and roll. Mick Jagger actually wanted to release a record featuring live versions of earlier songs that had morphed as they played them live over and over. But contractual issues with Decca, the Stones previous record label, got in the way. In fact, Wikipedia suggests that the Stones actually recorded Brussels Affair with the intention to release it as a live record. There’s a lot of rumor and misinformation on this record on the Internet, but I don’t really care. I love listening to it.
So where can you get this record? Amazon has a listing for it, but I don’t see any sellers at the moment. You can listen to and buy most of the record on last.fm. I suspect that if you are into Bittorrent, you’ll find a torrent of this record on the Internet. And of course, I can send it to you just like Andy sent it to me.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a recurring feature we’re calling Deep Catalog, devoted to recorded music that is out of print or otherwise commercially unavailable. Readers interested in the high classical period of rock bootlegs should seek out Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, Clinton Heylin’s loving portrait of the pre-MP3 era illicit rock trade. Heylin lists The Brussels Affair, together with the famous LiveR Than You’ll Ever Be (Oakland 1969) as being among the 100 greatest rock boots
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Is Brain Jones better than Ron Wood (no 's', that's Tiger you're thinking of)?
One great record since the early 70's? I disagree. 'Black and Blue' is a oft maligned but great record. Why does verybody disrespect Tatoo You?
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