Goats Head Soup | ||||
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Studio album by The Rolling Stones | ||||
Released | 31 August 1973 | |||
Recorded | 25 November – 21 December 1972 and 23 May – 20 June 1973, Dynamic Sound Studio, Kingston, Jamaica, except Hide Your Love, recorded at De Doelen, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Summer 1973 | |||
Genre | Rock | |||
Length | 46:56 46:52 (The USA Collection - 2005 Remaster) |
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Language | English | |||
Label | Rolling Stones | |||
Producer | Jimmy Miller | |||
The Rolling Stones chronology | ||||
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Singles from Goats Head Soup | ||||
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Professional ratings | |
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Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | |
Robert Christgau | B |
The Great Rock Discography | 6/10 |
MusicHound | 2/5 |
NME | 6/10 |
Q | |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Stylus | favourable |
Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music |
Goats Head Soup is the 11th British and 13th American studio album by The Rolling Stones, released in August 1973. Like its predecessor, Exile on Main St., the band was forced to compose and record it outside of the United Kingdom due to tax legal issues. Goats Head Soup was recorded in Jamaica and the Netherlands. The album contained 10 tracks, all written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, including lead single "Angie", which went to No. 1 as a single in the United States and top 5 in the UK. Goats Head Soup received positive reviews and achieved number one chart positions in the UK, US, and several other World markets.
In November 1972 the band relocated to Kingston, Jamaica's Dynamic Sound Studios. Keith Richards said in year 2002: "Jamaica was one of the few places that would let us all in! By that time about the only country that I was allowed to exist in was Switzerland, which was damn boring for me, at least for the first year, because I didn't like to ski... Nine countries kicked me out, thank you very much, so it was a matter of how to keep this thing together..."
Of the recording process, Marshall Chess, the president of Rolling Stones Records at the time, said in 2002, "We used to book studios for a month, 24 hours a day, so that the band could keep the same set-up and develop their songs in their free-form way, starting with a few lyrics and rhythms, jamming and rehearsing while we fixed the sound. It amazed me, as an old-time record guy, that the Stones might not have played together for six or eight months, but within an hour of jamming, the synergy that is their strength would come into play and they would lock it together as one..."
Jagger said of their approach to recording at the time, "Songwriting and playing is a mood. Like the last album we did (Exile on Main St.) was basically recorded in short concentrated periods. Two weeks here, two weeks there – then another two weeks. And, similarly, all the writing was concentrated so that you get the feel of one particular period of time. Three months later it's all very different and we won't be writing the same kind of material as Goats Head Soup."