Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is the third compilation album of Rolling Stones music released by former manager Allen Klein's ABKCO Records after the band's departure from Decca and Klein.Metamorphosis pulls a number of tracks from this latter grouping, and while "Each and Every Day of the Year" (covered by Bobby Jameson), "I'd Much Rather Be With the Boys" (the Toggery Five), "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind" (Vashti), "Sleepy City" (the Mighty Avengers), and "We're Wasting Time" (Jimmy Tarbuck) may not be Stones performances per se, they are certainly Stones songs and, for the most part, as strong as any of the band originals included on the group's first four or five LPs. Elsewhere, the 1964 Chess studio outtake "Don't Lie to Me" is as fine a Chuck Berry cover as the Stones ever mustered, while "Family," the rocking "Jiving Sister Fanny," Bill Wyman's "Downtown Suzie," and a delightfully lackadaisical version of Stevie Wonder's "I Don't Know Why" are outtakes from two of the Stones' finest-ever albums, Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. All of which adds up to an impressive pedigree, whatever the circumstances behind the album, and whatever else could have been included on it. Indeed, if there are any criticisms to be made, it is that the album sleeve itself is singularly uninformative, and the contents are seriously jumbled. But those are its only sins.