Stones Dig Goat's Head Soup from Their Vault

Goat's Head Soup deluxe reissue cover art. 

The Rolling Stones are taking the Clorox wipes to Goat's Head Soup.

Last week The Estate announced the upcoming deluxe reissue of the Stones' underrated 70s album, with a new look and new tunes. The deluxe version, available September 4, includes an extra disc with 3 unheard outtake tracks, instrumental versions, and 3 Glyn Johns original mixes.

 

"Criss Cross," the defacto single, is grimy, street-walking rock and roll.

It would fit right between "Can You Hear The Music?" and "Star Star" to finish the album on a high groove. "Scarlet" and "All The Rage" are the other titles.

Goat's Head Soup is one of -- only one of in a long edifying list -- their loosest, druggiest, but also, most heartbreaker of an album. It's equal adrenaline and inner ache.

Goat's Head Soup assembled in the ether during their second major output of productivity--

--the tailend of the 60s into the early 70s. It was their third of 3 consecutive yearly releases: the incredible excess of Sticky Fingers in 1971 and the infamous double-LP Exile on Main Street in 1972.

The Stones started recording the album at the end of 1972 in Kingston, Jamaica. The fresh locale seeped into the sessions with various percussion, trumpet, saxophone, piano and a range of instruments that skitter along with the band. "Dancing With Mr. D," "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)," and "Can You Hear The Music?" are the some of the Stones' sexiest, excessively 70s songs. Jagger screams raw exacerbated flesh. Richards cuts jags of aural delusion.

 

To counter the craze are other more melancholic songs from the group's catalogue.

"100 Years Ago," "Coming Down Again," "Winter," and of course, "Angie," find the group in contemplative remorse, nearly ballad, soul-bearing territory. Together it's a great set of songs, an emotional pinwheel.

Another surprise hides in the unreleased tracks. "Scarlet" features another legendary guitarist, Jimmy Page, from Led Zeppelin. Page has had a few run-ins over the decades with the Stones. That tends to happen with megastars hitting fame at the same rate. He laid down some guitar for the song "One Hit (To The Body)" that would end up on the Stones' 1986 album Dirty Work. As is usual with the Stones, there are numerous variations of the album and its iconography for sale. Browse here.

Original album cover art.