DVD/2CD Review: The Rolling Stones - From The Vault: L.A. Forum (Live in 1975)

As recording artists the Rolling Stones by 1975 were, depending on your perspective, either trudging through a provisional rut or growing accustomed to the status of a legacy act. Their magnum opus, Exile on Main Street, was ensconced three years in the past; their brazen resurgence (or anomalous triumph), Some Girls, lay three years ahead; and their weakest effort in the interim, It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, was what they’d ostensibly mounted their much-hyped Tour of the Americas to promote.

Of course by this point the Stones didn’t need to release a spectacular album to sell concert tickets. Not only was their reputation as live performers arguably unsurpassed in this era but, as evidenced on L.A. Forum (Live in 1975) — recorded during a five-night stand at the Forum, bootlegged for years thereafter, refurbished and most recently released as a DVD/2CD set by Eagle Rock — utterly justified.  


With the ever gregarious lead guitarist Ronnie Wood now in tow after having replaced the often taciturn Mick Taylor, the band is especially rambunctious during the 24-song set, even by Stones standards — not unlike Wood’s old mates, The Faces, veritable connoisseurs of errant behavior both on and off the stage. Auxiliary musicians (including percussionist Ollie E. Brown, saxophonist Trevor Lawrence, and keyboardist Billy Preston) no doubt enrich the sound and each man has his moments, but ultimately it’s the Stones stalwarts (Ian Stewart, Bobby Keys) that prove indispensable.


Flamboyant to a fault, Mick Jagger unleashes a primal, savage growl throughout that gives even the ballsiest songs (“Rip This Joint,” “Star Star,” “Brown Sugar”) an added guttural thrust. On the rare ballad (most notably “Angie”) he summons a soul man’s urgent ache, his gruff vocal suggesting Otis Redding’s raw, Southern-bred inspiration. Yet it’s on a torrid, sixteen-minute romp through “Midnight Rambler” that Jagger is at his most intoxicating, at turns humping and writhing atop the stage floor, brandishing his glittered belt like a whip as if in a masochistic fit. It’s a steal-the-show moment in any other band’s show. But this is the Rolling Stones in their prime as live performers, and L.A. Forum (Live in 1975) thrills from start to finish. 

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Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Look Back at a Classic

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had already achieved some success with their first two albums, but it was with their third, Damn The Torpedoes, that they really hit it big. Containing such radio staples as “Refugee,” “Even The Losers,” “Don't Do Me Like That,” and “Here Comes My Girl,” the 1979 LP in many ways remains the band’s defining work.

As the subject of the latest installment of Eagle Rock’s Classic Albums series, Damn The Torpedoes is examined in depth by the musicians and studio technicians who created it as well as by other discerning commentators.

A typical Classic Albums episode provides a fair amount of back-story to set the album in question into the context of its era and its creators’ career. However, perhaps because the 2007 Peter Bogdanovich documentary, Runnin’ Down a Dream, already covered such ground in detail, what’s presented here concentrates more on the actual making of Damn The Torpedoes rather than the circumstances surrounding it.

In doing so, Petty recalls plenty of perceptive anecdotes and kernels of wisdom—“I was always good,” he jokes at one point—but the most enlightening insights come from keyboardist Benmont Tench and guitarist Mike Campbell, both of whom are avid students of their musical influences and cognizant of how those influences manifested on Damn The Torpedoes.

In one particularly enlightening scene, Campbell demonstrates how he worked from an Albert King riff to craft the basic chord structure of “Refugee,” which (though he doesn’t say so) draws a distinct parallel to Petty and the Heartbreakers’ latest album, the blues-influenced Mojo. What’s most apparent in a general sense, though, is that the band’s ability to deconstruct their own songs isn't in any way compromised by the fact that they wrote them.

The bonus material (which runs almost as long as the near-60-minute main feature) continues in much the same vein and is every bit as interesting and informative. Altogether, it makes for one of the best, most informative editions of the Classic Albums series.

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