Classic Album Review - 02 - Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out - The Rolling Stones Live in Concert

"Everything appears to be ready - are you ready?. . . is everybody ready? . . . I think I better fasten up my trousers so they don't fall down - you don't want my trousers to fall down now do ya?. . . . . . paint it black..paint it black....paint it black you Devil. . . . . . Charlie's good tonight innit he? . . . . . . We're gonna do one more, and we gotta go. . . The Greatest Rock n Roll Band in the World -- The Rolling Stones -- The Rolling Stones !"

By the time I was 12 years old, I was a full-on believer in Rock n Roll, and I had my first guitar -- a little acoustic number that my Dad had found for sale somewhere. I don't remember the make or the model - I think it was a fairly no-name type of affair. A school friend of mine had gotten one about the same time, and we started hanging out on the weekends, trying to teach ourselves how to play. He figured out a thing here and showed me, and I figured out a thing there and showed him. We both know older kids who played and we got tips and lessons that way. In retrospect, a lot of what we thought we had "figured out" was way off in terms of melody, but we had a good sense of relative pitch and good rhythm -- I have always had a good sense of rhythm.

Mostly how we learned was to do what most every other self-taught musician does - play along with records. We each had our favorites. He was fond of Black Sabbath as I recall, and I tried to cop a lot of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Beatles, and whatever was on the radio. For a period of about 2 years, the majority of my lessons came from my turntable in the form of "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out - The Rolling Stones in Concert."

Released in the fall of 1970, GYYYO has long been considered one of the best live albums ever - certainly the best live album by the Rolling Stones. It is drenched in Rhythm and Blues, features the excellent lead guitar playing of Mick Taylor, some of Jagger's best singing, and nary a beat is dropped by the duo of Watts and Wyman. This live recording represents the Stones at their absolute peak of potency -- they were coming off the "Beggar's Banquet" and "Let it Bleed" albums, and a few days after these concerts, they entered the studio at Muscle Shoals and put down the first tracks of "Sticky Fingers."

For a kid learning to play guitar, "Ya-Ya's" is a blues-inspired garden of earthly delights. Heavy riffs in the lower registers on Jumpin' Jack Flash and Live With Me. Two shots at working out "that Chuck Berry thing," on Carol and Little Queenie. A very soulful lesson in arpeggiation on the Robert Johnson classic, Love in Vain. Bo Diddley lessons from Keith himself on Sympathy for the Devil, as well as monster chord mashing on Street Fighting Man. And the creme de la creme of rhythm workouts -- the ultimate live version of Midnight Rambler. After the breakdown section in Rambler, the band locks into a 6/8 triplet groove that builds in intensity on a slow grind, until finally busting out -- up-shifting the tempo into the original riff in 4/4 meter. I didn't know how to describe that moment when I was 12, but it knocked my socks off! It still does.

And if you were lucky enough to have had an older kid teach you the magic "blues scale," then GYYYO gave you an entire album to work out your solo technique. Remember - above all else, and throughout all of their various permutations - the Stones have always been about the blues. When I got older, I arrived at the source of this - "discovering" Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and many other blues men. The Rolling Stones got this great music from America, ingested it, made it their own, and then brought it back to us. "Get Yer Ya Ya's Out" bears the finest fruits of that endeavor.

Title: Get Yer Ya Ya's Out - The Rolling Stones in Concert
Release: September, 1970

Track Listing - Side One:
1. Jumpin' Jack Flash (3:13)
2. Carol (3:35)
3. Stray Cat Blues (3:35)
4. Love in Vain (4:50)
5. Midnight Rambler (8:32)

Side Two:
1. Sympathy for the Devil (5:45)
2. Live With Me (2:58)
3. Little Queenie (4:10)
4. Honky Tonk Women (3:00)
5. Street Fighting Man (3:47)

a seminal moment in the wonder years

we had a hi-fi set when i was growing up. it was one of those all in one units that they used to make - the size of a buffet table, with simulated wood-grain, and a heavy hinged top that opened to reveal a turntable and a receiver dial. i remember the tuner had a big bumpy silver knob and when you turned it a thin orange band went up and down the narrow rows of numbers - AM along one side and FM along another. It looked sort of like a thermometer where you controlled the temperature.

mostly, we listened to the radio. by "we" i mean my two older sisters who were the only people in the house truly interested in current pop music (i was just coming into my own). AM radio was king then - this would be in the years between 1971 and 1975.

i grew up along U.S. 12 in southern Michigan, and we had our choice of Jackson, Lansing, and if the weather was good, Detroit. AM radio puts out a strong clear signal and CKLW was a favorite choice from Detroit and Windsor Ontario.

a lot of my early memories are associated with music - sound always attracted me, especially the human voice. i clearly remember driving my sisters crazy one day requesting a song i wanted to hear. i was probably 6 years old and didn't know the artist or the title - i just knew it was the "water song with the crickets." I expected them to know exactly what i was talking about - they didn't. they thought i was insane. they always thought i was a weird kid, and maybe they were right.

years later, when i was able to piece this memory back together, i realized that the song had been "Uncle Albert /Admiral Halsey" by Paul McCartney. Go ahead - indulge yourself and listen to it - how long has it been? See if you can decipher the cryptic notions of a 6 year old.

Sooner or later i figured out that we had some "big" record albums stashed in a cabinet in my parent's room - the kind of records that have more than one song. i knew this because that's where i was dispatched one Christmas to get some holiday music. my mom had a collection of Christmas albums: Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Burl Ives, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and The Royal Guardsmen who sang "Snoopy and the Red Baron" which was my favorite.

going to fetch these records a few times, i noticed that there were some other albums in there - not Christmas records - something else. these were records that my mom had had since she was a teenager. inevitably i was curious enough to want to hear them, and my mom didn't see any reason why not.

most times, the power inherent in an inanimate product and the power it can have over the imagination of a child is severely underestimated. i was about to experience an awakening i have never recovered from.

Check Out My Formative Experience

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