4 Must-Have Albums To Start Your Rolling Stones Vinyl Collection

The Rolling Stones came of age in the vinyl era, hung around to watch vinyl fade from prosperity, and have sustained long enough to see it rise again. We’re choosing the four albums that you can buy right now to give you the best cross-section of their material.

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We’re not saying that these are their four best albums. But starting with these four LPs will help you build a collection that will be the envy of any Stones fan.

‘Aftermath’

We need to have the 60s Stones represented in some fashion. Beggars Banquet is fantastic, but it also resembles the two albums coming up next on this list enough that you can wait on purchasing that one. By contrast, Aftermath delivers a side of that band that’s somewhat forgotten but still crucial. This was the era when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were blossoming as songwriters. Meanwhile, Brian Jones’ multi-instrumental capabilities shone brightly on this record as well. You’re better off with the UK version if you have the choice. That one offers more bang for your buck, especially with the inclusion of “Mother’s Little Helper”.

‘Sticky Fingers’

Beggars Banquet righted the ship for the band in 1968, pulling them out of the psychedelic morass that wasn’t their strong suit. Let It Bleed solidified that a year later. But pound for pound, you won’t find a better Stones record than Sticky Fingers from 1971. What sets it apart? Well, it’s the first of their albums to fully integrate Mick Taylor, the brilliant guitarist who melded perfectly with Keith Richards. On top of that, Sticky Fingers presents the Stones at their most varied, touching on everything from soul to country to blues while making it all sound unified. On top of that, it contains “Moonlight Mile”, perhaps their greatest ever closing song.

‘Exile On Main St.’

You’ll have to open the wallet up a bit wider for this double album. But it might be the finest four-sided LP in rock history. And it’s an album that needs to be heard in analog, because a digital presentation only cleans the murkiness and messiness that were such a part of Exile On Main St. Recorded in shambolic conditions in a portable studio in France with the band coming and going at all hours, it’s a minor miracle that they got anything salvageable. Mick Jagger would argue with our selection because he always thought the record was poorly mixed. But we think the thick stew of instrumentation helps this masterpiece separate from its competition.

‘Tattoo You’

Only The Stones could deliver a classic at a time when their two chief songwriters were hardly speaking to each other. Faced with the prospect of recording an album so that they could go out on tour, the band headed to the vaults. Amidst the extra material that they’d never recorded, they found countless gems. The band also had the wherewithal to separate the album into one side of snotty rockers and another side of slinky ballads. That’s somewhat against the grain of the idea of providing balance from song to song. But it meant that you could choose a side based on your prevailing mood and always come away completely satisfied with Tattoo You.

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