The Rolling Stones - The 1969 Preservation Tapes (1969)

Fans of bands such as The Rolling Stones have become used to an annual New Years treat as their parent record company attempts to extend the copyright of unissued archive material by making it publicly available online. The difference this year was the method they used was Youtube, with 115 unissued Stones tracks appearing on 31st December 2019 under the user 69RSTRAX. By the time they'd been flagged by US websites they'd been taken down, but luckily there were Stones fans who were expecting this, and they managed to save the tracks before they were deleted. The downside, however, was that there an in-built spoiler in the recordings, resulting in a high-pitched whine throughout, but using some free software, the foremost Rolling Stones fansite www.iorr.org has removed this spoiler and made the tracks available for fans to hear these unique, and often very different versions of some the band's best songs from 1969. They've been around for a month or so now, and are already getting hard to find, so I've tracked them down before they disappear completely. Of the 115 tracks released, there were 98 live recordings from a variety of gigs throughout the year, but I've concentrated on the studio recordings, and for the collection that I found the compiler has just removed one track which was actually a 1978 rehearsal uploaded in error, so we now have a bluesier version of 'Love In Vain', and a take of 'You Got The Silver' featuring Jagger on vocals, with Richards returning the favour by singing 'Gimme Shelter'. There's also an early take of 'Sister Morphine', a radically reworked 'Wild Horses', 'Honky Tonk Women' with alternate lyrics, and instrumental versions of 'Stray Cat Blues', 'Midnight Rambler', 'Let It Bleed' and 'Country Honk'. To close the album we have 22 minutes of Jagger and the London Bach Choir laying down the choral vocals for 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' (at the end, as you might only ever want to hear it once!), and the whole collection gives us a fascinating insight into the studio workings of the band from over 50 years ago. 

   
Track listing

01 Sympathy For The Devil (Rock And Roll Circus rehearsals)
02 Stray Cat Blues (instrumental)
03 Ruby Tuesday (Rock And Roll Circus rehearsals)
04 Midnight Rambler (instrumental)
05 Wild Horses (with strings and glass harmonica)
06 Country Honk (instrumental)
07 Sister Morphine (longer early version)
08 Let It Bleed (instrumental)
09 Love In Vain (bluesier version)
10 You Got The Silver (Jagger lead vocal)
11 Gimme Shelter (alternate vocals)
12 Honky Tonk Women (alternate lyrics)
13 Gimme Shelter (Jagger and Richards double-tracked vocals)
14 You Can't Always Get What You Want (choir overdub sessions)