The Rolling Stones - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: John Peel Show, Leeds University Union, University of Leeds, Leeds, Britain, 3-13-1971

I've posted three albums of the Rollings Stones playing for the BBC in the 1963 to 1965 time frame. (By the way, I've renumbered those albums, as I'll explain below.) I thought I was done with the Stones and the BBC. But I just stumbled across the fact that a famous concert the band played in Leeds, Britain, in 1971 was actually recorded for, and played on, BBC radio at the time. It was first broadcast on the "John Peel Show," although DJ John Peel wasn't there to act as emcee like he usually did since it took place outside of London and the band recorded the concert themselves.

This concert appeared as a bootleg for many years, usually with the name "Get Your Leeds Lungs Out" after a comment singer Mick Jagger made between songs. It was missing a couple of songs and the sound quality wasn't perfect. But then in 2015, the full concert was released with flawless sound quality as part of the "super deluxe" edition of the band's 1971 album "Sticky Fingers." If you haven't heard this yet, you're missing out! In terms of sound quality and performance, this is not only one of the very best recorded Rolling Stones concerts, I'd argue it's one of the best recorded concerts by anyone!

It's that good. It's a shame that it has only come out as part of an expensive "super deluxe" package and not as an individual release, when it blows most of the well known official Rolling Stones live albums away. One reason it's so good is because it was recorded in a small venue. The band actually played at the student union for the University of Leeds, which could only fit a couple hundred people. So that was the equivalent of playing at a small club. Whereas most of the band's official live albums were recorded in giant stadiums, with the sound quality and intimacy suffering as a result.

I'm one of those people who think the band was at its best when guitarist Mick Taylor was a member. This is arguably the peak of the Mick Taylor years, where he was fully integrated into the band and its sound, and before he started to pull away, before leaving in 1974. 

Thanks to the great sound quality, I didn't have to do anything except separate the banter between songs onto their own tracks.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

Oh yeah. I mentioned up above that I renamed the earlier Stones BBC albums posted here. That's because when I decided to post this, I realized I had a "Volume 1," "Volume 2," and a "Live at the BBC 1964" album. Now, "Volume 1" is still the same, the live album is called "Volume 2," and what had been "Volume 2" is "Volume 3." Fixing that cleared the way to naming this one "Volume 4." While I was at it, I also upgraded the sound quality on some songs for all three albums, using superior versions to the official BBC album versions, thanks to Prof. Stoned's music blog.

01 talk (Rolling Stones)
02 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Rolling Stones)
03 Live with Me (Rolling Stones)
04 Dead Flowers (Rolling Stones)
05 talk (Rolling Stones)
06 Stray Cat Blues (Rolling Stones)
07 Love in Vain (Rolling Stones)
08 Midnight Rambler (Rolling Stones)
09 talk (Rolling Stones)
10 Bitch (Rolling Stones)
11 talk (Rolling Stones)
12 Honky Tonk Women (Rolling Stones)
13 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Rolling Stones)
14 Little Queenie (Rolling Stones)
15 talk (Rolling Stones)
16 Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)
17 talk (Rolling Stones)
18 Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones)
19 talk (Rolling Stones)
20 Let It Rock (Rolling Stones)

https://www.imagenetz.de/iS4EF

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. With the roof visible in the background, maybe this can give you a sense of how small the room was. Sadly, the picture is in black and white, and it's too much of a pain in the butt for me to convert it into color, at least for now.