Let me start off by saying that I never bought into the whole Beatles vs. Stones debate. They're both amazing. Get over it.I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you don't know The Rolling Stones, give up on listening to music forever. You're wasting your time.
"Flowers" was released in 1967 and is technically a compilation album. Most of the songs are from different albums that were released in the few years leading up to it's release. A majority of them appeared as either singles or B-sides, or weren't included in the American releases of "Aftermath" and "Between The Buttons". "Flowers" would eventually reach third on the Billboard Pop charts and be certified gold after more than 500,000 copies sold.
The album opens with what is now considered to be a golden standard for The Rolling Stones. "Ruby Tuesday" (which was also featured on Between The Buttons) kick starts the album with what seems to me like a slower version of the song. It might be that they play it faster live and that's what I'm used too. Either way it's an awesome song. Following Ruby Tuesday is "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow" and "Let's Spend The Night Together".
"Let's Spend The Night Together" has become an infamous song because of the trouble the band got into because of the lyrics. When the British invasion happened in the late sixties, The Rolling Stones were supposed to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show to preform. When the band arrived at the set, they were told that either "the song goes, or you go". The group came to a compromise by changing the lyrics from "lets spend the night together" to "lets spend some time together". After the performance, the band was banned from ever performing on the show again. Looking back now, that seems kind of ridiculous.
After "Lady Jane" and "Out of Time" comes a previously unreleased track. The Rolling Stones cover the Smokey Robinson song "My Girl". I don't usually like cover songs more than the original version but this is an exception. To be honest, I always thought that The Rolling Stones wrote and performed the original version. It's just that much better. After "Backstreet Girl" and "Please Go Home", my favourite song on the album is up.
"Mother's Little Helper" is easily my favourite song on the album. Even if it is much darker in comparison to the all the other songs on the album, it still has the most pop sound on the record. The song mentions a "little yellow pill". It turns out that they were referring to a type of barbiturates. Mainly Nembutal which was used as a recreational drug in the sixties. Upon looking into it online, I found out that today, heavy doses are used to kill inmates that have been given the death penalty in the U.S.
So, there's that.
The album is closed out by a trio of solid Stones tracks. "Take It or Leave It", "Ride On, Baby" and "Sittin' on a Fence" are all wonderful songs, but on an album that contains so many established singles they kind of make it seem like the album is trailing off. That being said, they probably could have been sold as singles to promote the "Flowers" album because two of them were previously unreleased.
So overall I would probably end up giving the album an 80/100 ranking. It's definitely a strong album but because there's aren't many new songs, it doesn't get any higher. Still, I would say it's a must have if you like The Rolling Stones.
Buy it here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/flowers-remastered/id76532969
or here:
http://www.amazon.ca/Flowers-The-Rolling-Stones/dp/B00006AW2N
or here:
http://rollingstones.shop.bravadousa.com/Product.aspx?cp=150_15245&pc=RSDD16
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