The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones (UK) [ABKCO]

Why you'll love it

This ABKCO reissue presents the UK debut in mono, the way most British fans first heard it. It went to No. 1 in the UK and set the template for the band's raw, blues-loving sound.

This edition

• Mono
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

The front cover of the original LP didn't bother with the band's name or a title, just five unsmiling faces in the gloom. Manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham reckoned that was all anyone needed, and he was right.

Inside is the Stones' London club set, cut fast and loud with Oldham and Eric Easton producing. Bobby Troup's "Route 66" kicks things off, Chuck Berry's "Carol" rattles along, Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee" and Jimmy Reed's "Honest I Do" go straight to the source, and Rufus Thomas's "Walking the Dog" closes it out. "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)" is the first Jagger/Richards song on a Stones album, and "Now I've Got a Witness" is credited to the band's group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge.

Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts are already a gang to be reckoned with here. Sixty-odd years on, the band have kept going rather longer than this cover's lack of a name might have suggested, which counts as a quiet triumph of marketing.

Also at Kops: more The Rolling Stones on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On ABKCO (cat# 2140-1), a reissue of the 1964 album.