Rarities 1971–2003 is a compilation album by The Rolling Stones that was released in 2005 worldwide by Virgin Records – as well as by the coffee-chain Starbucks in North America – and features a selection of rare and obscure material recorded between 1971 and 2003. The album peaked at No. 76 on the Billboard chart. Several B-sides were included, such as "Fancy Man Blues", "Anyway You Look at It", "Wish I'd Never Met You", "Through the Lonely Nights", and the band's live rendition of Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock" from 1971. Track 3, "Wild Horses" (live), from Stripped, and Tracks 6 and 15, taken from the 1981 compilation Sucking in the Seventies, appeared on previously released albums. In the liner notes, Ronnie Wood acknowledges... "There are songs we've done for albums in the past that I've thought, oh, it's a shame that song didn't make the album. Then you get carried away with promoting it and you forget about it."

Cover art

Although the cover image is from 1978 (from the music video for "Respectable") it only shows the current four members of the band and does not feature bassist Bill Wyman, who was removed from the picture; the original colour image can be seen in the booklet from Forty Licks, showing him standing in the back behind Jagger and Richards.

Release and reception

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic writes "Rarities 1971–2003 isn't exactly the clearing-house of outtakes, rarities, and B-sides that fans have been waiting for. Not only are there plenty of heavily bootlegged outtakes such as "Blood Red Wine", "Claudine", and "Brown Sugar" with Eric Clapton on guitar missing, but there are plenty of B-sides from these three decades missing." (Notably, "Claudine" and the rare version of "Brown Sugar" were later released on the Deluxe Special Editions of Some Girls and Sticky Fingers.) Another glaring omission was the B-side only track "Think I'm Going Mad", from the 1984 single for "She Was Hot".

Track listing

All songs by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, except where noted.

Personnel

Charts