Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) [UK Version]

Appearing as it did in the fall of 1966, six months after its American namesake, the British version of Big Hits: High Tide and Green Grass is a very different album from its U.S. equivalent. Issued to coincide with their first British tour in more than a year, the album reflected the fact that the Stones had moved into psychedelic music that year, albeit with a hard punk edge. Part of the change is captured by the cover photo, the American shot of the quintet of a rock-strewn embankment replaced by a fish-eyed view of the band in the latest Carnaby Street fashions, including Brian Jones' vertical striped suit and Keith Richards' military-style jacket. The disc also encompasses their U.K. singles (though not all of them, for "I Wanna Be Your Man," among others, is absent), which differed somewhat from their U.S. releases. The account of the group's development and evolution is startling, from the Chuck Berry cover "Come On" through the frenetic punk blowout "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" This version of Big Hits also has a bit less R&B and slightly more blues than its U.S. equivalent, principally in the form of "Little Red Rooster" (which was a hit in England) and also encompasses the group's excursion into folk-rock on "Lady Jane," scattered around the obvious classics like "The Last Time," "Satisfaction," "Get Off of My Cloud," and "19th Nervous Breakdown," which were hits on both sides of the Atlantic. The main virtue to the album, apart from some very good music, however, is the portrait it gives of Mick Jagger's voice and the ever-tightening cohesiveness of the band. By the time of "Paint It Black," he's an almost larger-than-life presence, while the group is generating enough wattage in concentrated enough fashion to punch a signal through a wash of overload on "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" Long out of print on vinyl, and only available as a Japanese import or as a bootleg CD.