A photograph of the band at Swarkestone Hall Pavilion, taken by Michael Joseph in 1968, was printed on the back cover of the vinyl release.

The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks 1964-1971 | Releases | Discogs

Some tracks like the Aftermath/Bleed/Sticky tracks, sound great, while others, like the Beggars Banquet tracks, sound awful. I've played them back to back several times and the mono first release always sounds so much better to me. It’s on the second record of Hot Rocks, however, that the big thematic shift in the Stones’ music becomes unmistakable.It has company inner sleeves promoting releases contemporary to the time of the original release of this album. But somehow this album merely falls into that venerable Stones tradition of supra-throwaway albums, collections like December’s Children and Flowers that by their very slapdash cynicism validate themselves and charm us into feeling that they’re as sure a representation of the Stones ethos as brand-new and more unified efforts like Let It Bleed.

Hot Rocks 1964-1971 by The Rolling Stones - Apple Music

When I went away to college I didn’t take the records with me and my mom thought I no longer wanted them and gave them away. I doubt if they’ll ever stop writing songs like “Bitch” and “Live With Me” any more than they’ll ever stop copping licks from Chuck Berry. Gimme Shelter” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” may be the two most crucial and enduring things ever laid on wax by this band; certainly they demonstrated an unprecedented maturity, a view of the world as it is and a promise that the Stones’ most vital work may well lie ahead of them. Sympathy For the Devil” cemented this process, of course, and helped give the Stones the “bad-vibes” patina which led so many to lay the blame for Altamont solely at their feet. All tracks on sides three and four were produced by Jimmy Miller, except "Midnight Rambler", which was produced by the Rolling Stones and Glyn Johns.As historical document of Greatest Hits culling, Hot Rocks takes almost no chances, and if the Stones or London sometimes display an unexpected sense of what may be the band’s most important statements (as in the inclusion of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”), there is also much left out. The balancing of these two senses is at once the strength and limitation of the Stones: strength, because nothing is more universal now than boredom and dissatisfaction and the Stones’ particular brand of charismatic swagger has been affected by more adolescents than any other posture of the generation: limitation, since yesterday’s outrageous strut is today’s cornball signal to get the hook, and keeping a sure grasp on the shifting modes in malaise o’ the day is one of the most difficult feats for any artist to maintain in this fast-mutating era. No one person, business, or organization is allowed to re-publish any of our original content anywhere on the web or in print without our permission. Along the way, they’ve juiced up the process by turning now and then from their narcissistic role to cast a caustic eye at the society around them, as in “Mother’s Little Helper,” and borrowing whatever was handily trendy, from the sitar in “Paint It Black” to the Memphis horns in “Brown Sugar” and Sticky Fingers, to garnish their basic sound.