This is the moment when the StonesвЂ™ excesses began to catch up with them, albeit slowly. Neither the disaster it has been reviled as nor the masterpiece some revisionist critics have claimed, Satanic Majesties is a likable, undisciplined psychedelic mess вЂ“ Sing This All TogetherвЂ™s subtitle, See What Happens, sums it up вЂ“ flecked with moments of genuine greatness: not just 2000 Light Years From Home and SheвЂ™s a Rainbow, but Citadel and the delicate 2000 Man. When they actually wrote songs вЂ“ Fool to Cry, Memory Motel вЂ“ they still sounded great. ItвЂ™s essentially a collection of jams recorded while auditioning for a new guitarist. The sense that the Stones were losing interest in making albums was hard to avoid when confronted with Black and Blue. On Undercover, Jagger won: a lot of the then-cutting edge 80s production falls flat, but when it does work, as on the hip-hop-influenced opener Undercover of the Night and Too Much Blood, you can really hear what he was driving at. Most post-70s Stones albums seem rooted in a power struggle between RichardsвЂ™ traditionalism and JaggerвЂ™s desire to stay relevant.

Steel Wheels (1989)ДЄ comeback of sorts, this set the template for latterday Stones albums: solid rather than amazing, a few decent tracks, some obvious filler, the odd lunge for contemporaneity, the sense of feral menace that once powered them noticeable by its absence and the whole business clearly a secondary consideration to going out on tour to crank out the hits.

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