HE 2002: More on the Rolling Stones SACD Releases

When the announcement of the Stones SACDs was made last week in New York, 22 titles were supposed to be released. Here at High Fidelity Review we’ve been pouring over the list of those titles, and the news is good; they include every ABKCO record released by the Stones (with one omission) either in the US or the UK.

The significance of this may not be clear, so it’s important to point out that unlike the reissue pattern followed by The Beatles and several other groups – withdrawing all earlier compilations, ‘greatest hits’ anthologies and US releases that combined tracks from multiple UK releases in order to have a single definitive catalog of albums in all territories of the World – ABKCO’s ‘The Rolling Stones Re-mastered Series’ will include both US and UK versions of certain titles as well as some US-only compilation discs.

It isn’t clear whether only the US versions of tracks will be used in the US and only the UK versions used in the UK, but given that the press release says that there will be 22 titles, it could be that all versions will be released in all territories.

Interestingly, it also appears that in some respects, the US versions are treated as more definitive than the UK versions. For example, the collection calls the Stones’ first album by its US name, ‘England’s Newest Hitmakers’ rather than its UK name, ‘The Rolling Stones’ and the second disc is ‘12Ч5’ not ‘Rolling Stones 2’.

The complete list is as follows:

  • England’s Newest Hitmakers
  • 12Ч5
  • The Rolling Stones Now
  • Out of Our Heads
  • Out of Our Heads’ – UK Version
  • December’s Children
  • Big Hits (High Tide & Green Grass)
  • Aftermath
  • Aftermath’ – UK Version
  • ‘Got Live If You Want It! ’
  • Between the Buttons
  • Between the Buttons’ – UK Version
  • Flowers
  • Their Satanic Majesties Request
  • Beggars Banquet
  • Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol 2)
  • Let It Bleed
  • Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out
  • Hot Rocks
  • More Hot Rocks
  • The Rolling Stones Singles Collection – The London Years
  • Metamorphosis

The missing title, by the way, is ‘The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus’.