The Rolling Stones – Leeds (Archive Master Series)

Leeds (Archive Master Series)

(70:54):  University Of Leeds, Leeds, England – March 13th, 1971: Dead Flowers, Stray Cat Blues, Love In Vain, Midnight Rambler, Bitch, band introduction, Honky Tonk Women, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Little Queenie, Brown Sugar, Street Fighting Man, Let It Rock. Bonus, Newcastle City Hall, Newcastle, England – September 13th, 1973 (first show):  Brown Sugar, Star Star, Angie

The University of Leeds hosted many famous acts in the seventies who delivered some of their best shows before an appreciative audience.  This tape was broadcast as a BBC Radio special on April 13th and again on May 30th on “Sunday Music” hosted by John Peel.  The show was played a month before the release of Sticky Fingers (with the radio broadcast a month after to benefit from from the LP’s release), and their playing in these live shows has the same dark, cut throat nihilism. 

It first surfaced on vinyl and has seen many releases on compact disc through the years including Get Your Leeds Lungs Out! (The Swinging Pig TSP-CD-030, Excitable Recordworks 4511.1 A/B, Masters Of Sounds MOS 008, Royal Sound Records RD 001, TMQ Smoking Pig 73033 1701 A/B), Charlie Watts Live At Leeds (Speed Records SR MI 3002A/B), Get Your Leeds Lungs Out!-Revisited (The Swinging Pig TSP-CD-215), Hell’s Stones (Lobster 033/3).   

Others include Leed Guitars…TV Stars (Turd On The Run TOTR-002), Leed Stones:  The Flamin’ Groupie (Speed Records SR MI 3002 A/B), Leeds ‘71 (Royal Sound), Live In Leeds 1971 (Armando Curcio Editore 02), Rockstars In Concert (611711 2), The Rolling Stones Live (CDDV 5512), Sonic Barbecue (Beacon Island 2S717 A/B/C/D), Live In Leeds 1971 (Dizionario Del Rock DIR-02), Live In Leeds (Sister Morphine Morph 22), Dave Lee Travis Show 1971, and In Concert 1971 (Diamond Sound DS 004).

Some releases come with an additional mix of “Let It Rock” which, it is claimed, in true stereo.  It really isn’t, just being the same mono track as the others.  There have been seven compact disc releases of the Leeds tape including Get Your Leeds Lungs Out (Halcyon) released in 2006 and disc one of Get Your Leeds Lungs Out (Dog N Cat DAC-089), coupled with the following night’s show in the Roundhouse in London in 2009.

Archive Master Series sounds much better than the DAC release.  It’s very clear and has a better bottom end compared to the Halcyon.

It is still missing the first song of the set “Jumping Jack Flash,” which is known to have been played based upon a review of the show, and presumably ”Live With Me.”  The tape cuts in with Mick Jagger introducing the new song “Dead Flowers” and what follows is a brilliant performance all around.

“Midnight Rambler” has a strange sounding, happy introduction before the song gets started.  Jagger is very animated during “Midnight Rambler” as he repeats his smut with “go down on me baby.”  The new song “Bitch” is referred to as an “uptempo ditty.” 

But the arrangement of “Satisfaction” is very strange.  The ending has two Chuck Berry covers and one of the most aggressive performances of “Brown Sugar” on tape. 

To fill out the disc Archive Master Series include the three song Newcastle fragment of “Brown Sugar,” “Star Star” and “Angie.”  These were recorded for the KBFH and can be found on other titles, most recently Back To The Graveyard (Dogs N Cat DAC – 113).   The sound quality on the bonus tracks are excellent, as are the performances.  It’s a nice bonus to have on the disc, even though it comes from a different time period.  

The entire Newcastle show can be found on an audience tape on Newcastle 1973 (Vinyl Gang VGP-035). 

Leeds is packaged in a pretty tri-fold digipack with several very rare photographs on the artwork.  The cover photo is especially dramatic.  Archive Master Series always does very good work with their tapes and puts a lot of care into their releases.  This is a very good way to obtain the Leeds and Newcastle soundboards in one convenient package.