Steel Wheels (Reis) [Original recording remastered]

The Rolling Stones | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 14, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Umvd Labels
• ASIN: B00272NH04
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,398 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The release of Steel Wheels in 1989 followed the group's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame and coincided with their eagerly-awaited return to the live arena. Recorded at Air Studios in Montserrat and Olympic in London, it made the Top 3 in Britain and in the States. It contains classic tracks like the US Top 5 single Mixed Emotions as well as Rock And A Hard Place, which boasts a trademark riff as infectious as any they've come up with. The incredibly atmospheric Almost Hear You Sigh also charted while Richards often reprises the ballad Slipping Away in concert.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a nice comeback, May 15, 2004

By 

Riccardo Pelizzo (baltimore, maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Steel Wheels (Audio CD)

After Mick Jagger's first solo album (she's the boss), after Dirty Work, the Stones got together and did a pretty good album.
Mixed Emotions and Rock and a Hard Place were the most immediate hits of that record. But they're not necessarily the best songs. Continental Drift is an expected piece from the Stones and one which testifies how broad they can be when they want to.
The best song in the album - recorded live in Stripped few years later and now a staple in most live performances by the Stones - is Slipping Away. It's a great great song. It's very basic and yet very intriguing. It's - possibly - a turning point in Keith Richards' songwriting. It opened a new line of songs -- Losing My Touch (in Forty Licks); The worst as well as thru and thru (voodoo lounge); thief in the night (bridges to babylon)--
that has expended the Stones'musical vocabulary.
It's a nice comeback.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stones Comeback; First Album of Their Elder Years, September 12, 2009

By 

Socrates Stewart "Baltimore Boy, Music Collec... (Owings Mills, MD) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Steel Wheels (Reis) (Audio CD)

This is the third release of "Steel Wheels" which was recorded as a digital album in the first place. This version is louder as most newer CD's are these days, but there really isn't any reason for someone who has enjoyed a previous release of this album to go rushing out to buy this release. That being said, "Steel Wheels" is a good album, not a great album but is a huge improvement over "Dirty Work" and surely better than the all-too conspicuous attempt to sound current, "Uundercover." It's also the last album that Bill Wyman served as a member of the band. The album opens with "Sad Sad Sad" a pretty standard Stones rocker. "Mixed Emotion" is the first single from the album often called "Mick's Demotion" given Keith Richiards plays a more central position in the band. Other noteworthy numbers include, "Terrifying" a song with latin jazz overtones. "Rock and a Hard Place" is another single with some fine Ronnie Wood guitar work. "Almost Hear You Sigh" is an incredible soulful ballad. Keith Richards' strongest number on the album is a fine Al Green tempo number, "Almost Hear You Sigh." About half the album is filler, but the good is very good not an essential Stones album but definitely worth it for Stones' fans and even a mediocre Stones album is better than most bands at their best because even the Stones' worst albums have at least a couple great tunes. "Steel Wheels" have more than a couple great ones.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The archetypal Stones album!, December 24, 2004

By 

Docendo Discimus (Vita scholae) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steel Wheels (Audio CD)

It's almost as if Mick Jagger and Keith Richards sat down and wrote the songs for this album thinking "what is it that people want from a Stones album?".

They apparently decided that people want both the rockers, the ballads, and perhaps a bit of modest experimentalism ("Continental Drift"), and that's what "Steel Wheels" provides.

It opens with two tough rockers, "Sad, Sad, Sad" and "Mixed Emotions", followed by the somewhat less remarkable "Terrifying" and "Hold On To Your Hat", and the nice, bluesy "Hearts For Sale".

"Blinded By Love" is a lovely melody, a folkish, acoustic ballad with Phil Beer (who worked with the Fairport Convention, Mike Oldfield and the Albion Band among others) playing mandolin.

Then comes one of the six (!) singles that were lifted off "Steel Wheels", the ever-so-slightly disco-influenced "Rock And A Hard Place".

Keith Richards supplies the groovy, muscular rocker "Can't Be Seen", which sounds like something off one of his solo albums, and the fine, soulful ballad "Almost Hear You Sigh" is actually a Keith Richards-number as well, although Mick Jagger sings it. Richards is playing a classical Velasquez guitar, and suddenly breaks into a magnificent, if too short, classical guitar solo.

And finally, after the very African-sounding "Continental Drift" and the so-so "Break The Spell", another ballad, this time with the lead vocal done by Keith Richards himself: "Slipping Away" is one of the best songs Richards has penned, lyrically and musically, and one of the best vocal tracks he and his whiskey-soaked pipes have laid down as well.

"Steel Wheels" feels a lot like Keith Richards' album, probably in part because Richards already had some more or less finished material to work with, and his influence means that "Steel Wheels" rocks with a lot more sincerity than the two or three records that preceded it.

It has a few lesser tracks, but nothing is terrible, and there is a lot of good stuff here as well - dense, powerful rock n' roll from the only band who can seriously lay claim to the title "the World's greatest rock band".