Got Live If You Want It! (stylized on the front cover as got LIVE if you want it!) is a six-song
extended play (EP) release by
the Rolling Stones featuring live recordings from 1965. The title is a pun on the
swamp blues song "I Got Love If You Want It" by
Slim Harpo; the Stones recorded his "
I'm a King Bee" for their
1964 debut album.[1]Got Live If You Want It! reached number one in the UK and was the group's last EP.
Renowned for its raw-sounding quality, Got Live If You Want It! has endured as a live artifact, more for its historical than musical appeal. Reportedly
engineerGlyn Johns had hung microphones over the balcony for the recording; however, this is called into question as "I'm Alright" on the Got Live If You Want It! LP (recorded and released a year later) contains the same backing track but with different vocals. This would have been impossible if the recordings were made as described. Additionally, "
I'm Moving On" features (at the very least) a harmonica overdub as the instrument can be heard underneath Jagger's vocal during the first verse while Brian Jones (the group's other harmonica player) is playing slide guitar. These two tracks may even be studio recordings re-tooled to give the impression of being live. The lack of studio documentation relating to The Stones' Decca recordings makes this difficult to confirm, but this approach was used the following year on the US Got Live If You Want It! LP.
In a review for
AllMusic,
Richie Unterberger gave the EP three out of five stars. He noted, "The EP was crudely recorded, but the raw energy of the group's early performances does shine through, particularly on the two best tracks, the cover of Hank Snow's 'I'm Moving On', and [Bo Diddley's] 'I'm Alright'."[3][2]
Unavailable for decades, Got Live If You Want It! was reissued on
CD in 2004 on the Singles 1963–1965 box set. In November 2010, it was made available digitally and in 2011 as part of the 60's UK EP Collection digital compilation. On 29 November 2013, the EP was reissued on 7-inch vinyl record as a part of
Record Store Day Black Friday 2013.
Track listing
Side one
No.
Title
Writer(s)
Length
1.
"We Want the Stones" (Audience chanting, not a Stones performance)
^Nyman, Jake (2005). Suomi soi 4: Suuri suomalainen listakirja (in Finnish) (1st ed.). Helsinki: Tammi. p. 240.
ISBN951-31-2503-3.
^"Archived copy". Archived from
the original on 2007-07-17. Retrieved 2008-07-25.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (
link) Type in "Rolling Stones" under "Name of Artist"
