The Rolling Stones Tattoo You (2021 Remaster) 180g 5LP Box Set

Tattoo You celebrates 40 years with the release of a brand new deluxe remastered edition of the chart topping, multiplatinum 1981 album. The Super Deluxe LP Box Set includes the newly remastered version of Tattoo You, Lost & Found, and Still Life: Wembley Stadium 1982 plus a 124 Page Book featuring over 180 rare photos from recording sessions & world tour + interviews with producer Chris Kimsey & photographer Hubert Kretzscmar. The package includes a special lenticular sleeve.

The Lost & Found disc contains no fewer than nine previously unreleased songs from the period of the album's original release, newly completed and enhanced with additional vocals and guitar by the band. Among these, "Living In The Heart Of Love" is a quintessential Stones rock workout with all of the group on top form, complete with urgent guitar licks and fine piano detail. Other highlights of Lost & Found include a killer version of "Shame, Shame, Shame", first recorded in 1963 by one of the band's blues heroes, Jimmy Reed; their reading of Dobie Gray's soul gem "Drift Away"; and a fascinating reggae-tinged version of "Start Me Up".

Still Life: Wembley Stadium 1982 is an unmissable memento of the band's London show in June of that year on the Tattoo You tour. The mighty 26-track set is packed with Stones mega-hits, including an opening "Under My Thumb" and all-time greats such as "Let's Spend The Night Together", "Honky Tonk Women" and "Brown Sugar". The Wembley show has covers of the Temptations' "Just My Imagination", Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock", the Miracles' "Going To A Go Go" and early rock 'n' roller the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace". It also features early live workouts for tracks from the then-new Tattoo You such as "Start Me Up", "Neighbours", "Little T&A" and "Hang Fire".

In the wake of the release of Emotional Rescue in 1980, the future of the Rolling Stones seemed in the balance. Sure, they'd survived the wild 1960s and even wilder '70s, but as the new decade dawned, they were in uncharted territory. No rock and roll band had lasted nearly 20 years. Still, plans were afoot.

With preparations proceeding for a massive tour of the United States at the end of 1981 and another the following year in Europe, a new album was urgently required. But the band's future was anything but certain. Reflecting on the relationships between the various Stones during the Tattoo You period, Mick says, "The difficulty in growing up in a rock and roll band, I think, is that you start with this gang of people and, as anyone knows that's been in a gang, that gang simply can't last forever."

The Stones, however, were determined to carry on. With everyone on a much-needed break after the completion of Emotional Rescue, but with an album owed to the powers that be, the band hit on a novel approach to make it. Chris Kimsey - a veteran of Stones sessions - relates how he knew that some of the band's outtakes from the 1970s had the potential to be powerful masters. He was tasked with uncovering the best of whatever might be buried in the band's rich archive.

"For Tattoo You," recalls Ron Wood, "we realized that there was a lot of great music that we had recorded in the past that had never been released, particularly from all the material we had amassed during the Some Girls and Emotional Rescue sessions."

"The music had to age like good wine," Keith adds with a chuckle.

Diligently, Kimsey set about his work. For three months he toiled, listening to every reel of tape he could lay his hands on that had rolled during a Stones session in the 1970s. Every step of the way, the band were involved.

Not surprisingly, it was the Paris session material for Emotional Rescue and, especially, Some Girls - when Keith Richards was living under the threat of spending time in jail after his February 1977 drug bust in Toronto, Canada - that turned out to be a boon for the team. Describing his drive and focus at that time, Keith says, "When I returned to the fold after 'closing down the laboratory,' I came back into the studio with Mick and the band to say, 'Thanks, man, for shouldering the burden.'"

Eventually, Kimsey had found enough great songs for an album. He sent another set of cassettes of rough mixes to Mick and Keith and waited for their responses. They loved what they heard and were convinced an extraordinarily strong and, considering its disparate sources, remarkably cohesive album was within their grasp.

In the autumn of 1980, Mick met up with Kimsey in a suburb of Paris. In a damp, cavernous warehouse, with the Rolling Stones Mobile truck parked inside, they began working in earnest on what would eventually become Tattoo You. After several months of recording, Mick then convened with Keith in New York to add the finishing touches to the album. Finally, to put the project to bed, the masterful mix by Bob Clearmountain and Gary Lyons made tracks taken from so many unrelated sources sound unified.

The '80s weren’t kind to many of the artists that grew out of the rock 'n' roll explosion of two decades' earlier. But one of the few groups that managed to adapt and, as a result, get even bigger was the Rolling Stones. Nowhere is that more apparent than on their 1981 album Tattoo You. On it, the band slipped past the new wave and disco courting sounds of the previous two full-lengths and settled into a weathered take on blues-rock that best suited their rare chemistry. This deluxe re-release of Tattoo widens the canvas of the album considerably. The remaster of the original LP juices the recordings nicely, and it comes with a second disc of rare tracks from the album sessions that include 'Living In The Heart of Love,' a scorcher that would have fit nicely in Tattoo's tracklist, and an early version of 'Start Me Up' that reveals its reggae roots. The jewel is a three LP set featuring a 1982 performance at Wembley Stadium. The Stones were ablaze throughout, ramping up the energy systematically before hitting the boosters on a breathless final run of songs.