Let It Bleed by Rolling Stones (The) (CD, Nov-1986, ABKCO Records)

The Rolling Stones in my mind are not really any type of band. They play some pretty heavy stuff like Sympathy For The Devil. They play some bluesy stuff, especially on their older albums. They play disco tunes like Miss You. They even play gospel sounding tunes. This is demonstrated by a whole album with Exile On Main Street. Let It Bleed is pretty much a country album. I'm not really a country fan at all. But like anything else, the Stones pull it off. One prime example of this is Country Honk, which is simply a country version of Honky Tonk Women. They play it slower with country style picking and even add in a fiddle. I don't like it as much as the original, but it's still a pretty cool version. Let It Bleed and Midnight Rambler are good ramblers. You Got The Silver is a cross between country and folk. If I didn't know any better I would think that it's Bob Dylan singing on that one, but of course, it's Keith. Monkey Man is kind of a country rock song, with enough twang on it to fit in with the rest. You Can't Always Get What You Want isn't a country style song, but it's a ballad that fits in nicely with everything else. For the most part I don't listen to country (I don't mind listening to Johnny Cash and stuff like that), but the Stones do it in such a way that you don't feel guilty listening to country. Kind of like what Creedence Clearwater Revival has done.

The only exceptions to this country album are Gimme Shelter and Live With Me which are your standard rock in your face Stones' classics. They actually seem a little out of place on this album. But the Stones have done this before, mixing different genres of music on the same album, namely Some Girls.

Could the Stones have been a good country band? After hearing this, I'd be inclined to say yes. But they decide to do whatever they feel, whether it's rock, blues, country, disco, or gospel. They don't care what people expect of them. They don't do the same album over and over like AC/DC (another band I love). Instead they do whatever they feel at the time, and they keep reinventing themselves, showing that they're not controlled by genre. Most people would label them as Classic Rock (and that's probably the closest), but they are truly a variety band, which you don't see too often in an original band. In this sense, the Rolling Stones are truly original.