Rolling Stones

Beggar’s Banquet 50th Anniversary Ed ABKCO Jimmy Miller-produced ‘68 masterpiece in vinyl package and on single CD.

Yes, it’s great. Of course it’s great, it’s probably the Rolling Stones’ best album ever. It’s got Sympathy For The Devil on it, and Street Fighting Man, and Stray Cat Blues. It vaults entire genres in a single bound. It’s on heavyweight vinyl. It’s remastered. What’s not to like?

As you ask, plenty. Stones fans have waited 50 years for this, and the slim pickings of the expanded vinyl package border on the insulting. Compare it to The Beatles’ White Album’s

50th Anniversary Edition and weep. Instead of multiple discs of immersive 5:1s, unreleased material, early versions and remixes, you get a one-sided 12-inch of Sympathy’s mono mix and a contemporary interview with MIck Jagger. On a flexi-disc. A flexi-disc.

Of course it’s all down to who owns the rights, and the band aren’t at fault, and all the usual stuff that the punter on the street has to just suck up and swallow as they hand over yet another 40 quid for something they already own. But Stones fans are getting old, and the question has to be asked: if not after 50 years, then when are they going to get to hear the stuff that’s in the vaults? Sixty years? Seventy? Newsflash: they’re all going to be dead.