Customer Reviews

The Rolling Stones Songbook

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all the current reviews of this album focus on an event that happened three decades after the fact. but the fact is that this album is listenable, enjoyable, quirky and surprising, lush, fun and full of offbeat percussion that works with and against the strings in a spector-esque way. oldham's arrangements and production are a lot of fun. and if any of this sounds like fun to YOU, then get it and dig it. - bobby cormier

Let me start this by warning anyone who's buying this to hear the loop from The Last Time which was used in The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony: The sweet string arrangement that starts the latter song is NOT part of this loop. I purchased this disc expecting to hear that pretty phrase somewhere in the song, but instead...well, I didn't. Somewhere, I even got the impression that the disc contained a sample of the loop they used for Bittersweet Symphony, but this is not the case.

Not that this is a poor disc musically or sonically. Oldham created some very nice arrangements of these tunes and the mix sounds fine for 1966. The orchestra is augmented by drums and guitars and, in some ways, parts of the disc remind me of the song No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In) by the T-Bones, from that same year, only with strings and horns.

Beyond that, all I can say is this in an OK album for what it offers, but it doesn't offer the loop I was expecting.

Ok. People have said in the past that Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" merely 'borrowed' a few notes from Oldham's rendition of "The Last Time". Granted. They looped the main section and at the same time tried to pawn off their over produced song as their own. Many people have stated that the loop doesn't really sound like the original presented here. Granted again. The added strings featured on the Verve's are gorgeous and practically cover the 1960's recording completely. In fact, the string arrangement was the only reason I liked their song. I have seen reviews that do their best to make the reader feel sympathy for the Verve and animosity towards the people who sued them. I may have felt a little twinge in my heart had the Verve not blatantly stolen the original melody for their lead vocal. This is exactly what they did. I defy anyone to listen to this version of "The Last Time" and not sing the lyrics to "Bitter Sweet Symphony" to Oldham's arrangement. When I first heard this I could not stop laughing. In 1997- when "BS" (appropriate initials) was released, I was proud of myself for liking something 'current' as I was never too enamoured with the music of the 1980's onward. How typical that I would zone in on the one song that was already 30 some odd years old and written by one of my all time fave bands, the Rolling Stones. Oh and yes, this Oldham album is rather interesting in itself. Very mid 1960's with some nice arrangements.

I'm not a fan of The Rolling Stones. But I gotta confess that David Sinclair Whitaker took a piece of banal pop-crap called THE LAST TIME and transmogrified it into a masterpiece. And it incidentally contains the best-ever usage of tubular bells that I've ever heard in any piece of music.