Jump Back: The Best of the Rolling Stones by The Rolling Stones
Jump Back: The Best of The Rolling Stones is the sixth official compilation album by The Rolling Stones. It was initially released worldwide, except in North America, in 1993. The North American release came on 24 August 2004. It was the first Rolling Stones compilation packaged in the compact disc era, and covered the band's career from 1971's Sticky Fingers to then-most recent studio album Steel Wheels in 1989. It was also the band's first release under their contract with Virgin Records, which had been signed in November 1993, while Voodoo Lounge was being recorded. The album reached No. 16 in the UK and became an enduring seller. Despite its very belated release in the US in 2004, it managed to peak at No. 30 and go platinum. The album artwork was designed by Maurice Jones and all 4 shoes / boots illustrated are still in Mr Jones' possession. In 2009 it was remastered and reissued by Universal Music.
Part of loving 1976’s <i>Black and Blue</i>—and there’s a lot to love—is letting go of what you expect from The Rolling Stones. They were still a rock band, if rock was what you wanted: “Hand of Fate” could’ve been on <i>Beggars Banquet</i> and “Crazy Mama” on <i>Exile on Main St.</i> But where <i>Goats Head Soup</i> and <i>It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll</i> worked to keep continuity with the sound they developed in the late ’60s, <i>Black and Blue</i> didn’t bother trying.<br /> Jagger had moved to New York and fallen in love with funk and disco (“Hot Stuff”, “Hey Negrita”); Keith Richards with reggae (“Cherry Oh Baby”). Mick Taylor left the band and Ron Wood joined, stripping out the guitar solos and moving back towards pure rhythm. The songs were short, the grooves were long, and the performances—Jaggers’s, especially—combined sex and humour in ways they never had before. That “Hot Stuff” was the band’s first song to make the R&B charts since “19th Nervous Breakdown” 10 years earlier made sense: Not since their early albums had they sounded so connected to Black music, or so joyfully indebted to it.<br /> The critic Lester Bangs called it the “first meaningless Rolling Stones album”. An insult, of course—but it could’ve just as well been a compliment. After the relentless significance of the band’s late-’60s and early-’70s run—the politics, the violence, the cultural referenda—<i>Black and Blue</i> felt like a liberation, like fresh air. They sounded funny, weird and alive. And when they downshifted for the ballads (“Memory Motel” and the classic “Fool to Cry”), they did so with a softness that penetrated deeper than any heavy-handed approach might.
