Voodoo Lounge
Encyclopedia
Voodoo Lounge is the 20th British and 22nd American studio album by The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...

, released in July 1994. As their first new release under their new alliance with Virgin Records
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...

, it ended a five-year gap since their last studio album, Steel Wheels
Steel Wheels
Steel Wheels is the 19th British and 21st American studio album by The Rolling Stones and was released in 1989. Heralded as a major comeback upon its release, the project is notable for the patching up of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' relationship, a reversion to a more classic style of music and...

in 1989. Voodoo Lounge is also The Rolling Stones' first album without long-time bassist Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1992. Since 1997, he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings...

, who left the band in early 1993. In 2009, Voodoo Lounge was remastered and reissued by Universal Music.

Background

Following the release of Keith Richards
Keith Richards
Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...

' Main Offender
Main Offender
Main Offender is the second studio album by Keith Richards and the last to date. Released in 1992 in between The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge projects, Main Offender remains to date Richards' most recent offering as a solo artist.Regrouping with his group of musician friends known...

and Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....

's Wandering Spirit
Wandering Spirit (album)
Wandering Spirit is the third solo album by Mick Jagger. Released in 1993, it was his only solo album release of the 1990s.Following the The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels , Jagger began writing new material for what would become Wandering Spirit...

in 1992 and 1993 respectively, both leaders of The Rolling Stones began composing new songs in April 1993, deciding upon Don Was
Don Was
Don Was is an American musician, bassist and record producer.-Life and career:Was was born in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from Oak Park High School in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, then attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor but dropped out after the first year...

 as co-producer for the upcoming sessions. In November, after rehearsing and recording at Ronnie Wood's house in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 that September, The Rolling Stones shifted their gear to Windmill Lane Studios
Windmill Lane Studios
Windmill Lane Studios, also known as the "U2 studio", is a three-storey music recording studio located in Dublin, Ireland. It is located on Windmill Lane, a small street just south of City Quay and the River Liffey and a little north of Pearse Station. It was opened in 1978 by Brian Masterson who...

 in Dublin and began cutting Voodoo Lounge. Although not joining the band officially, Darryl Jones
Darryl Jones
Darryl Jones , also known as "The Munch", is an American bass guitarist. Jones began his notable career as a session musician, where he gained the experience and confidence to play with some of the most highly regarded recording artists, in jazz, blues, and rock music...

 would be taking Wyman's place as the group's regular bassist.

Don Was, noted for his retro rock production sensibilities, was reportedly responsible for pushing the band towards more conventional territory in an attempt to reproduce the archetypal "Rolling Stones" sound. Although this approach pleased critics and the Stones rock-oriented fanbase, Jagger in particular expressed some dissatisfaction with Was' aesthetic, commenting in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

:
"...there were a lot of things that we wrote for "Voodoo Lounge" that Don steered us away from: groove songs, African influences and things like that. And he steered us very clear of all that. And I think it was a mistake."


Was responded that he was not, "...anti-groove, just anti-groove without substance, in the context of this album. They had a number of great grooves. But it was like, 'OK, what goes on top of it? Where does it go?' I just felt that it's not what people were looking for from the Stones. I was looking for a sign that they can great real serious about this, still play better than anybody and write better than anybody."

The result was an essentially classicist recording that drew on the blues, R&B, and country that had informed the Stones classic late 1960s/early 1970s recordings. Jagger would insist on a more diverse, contemporary production cast for the subsequent Bridges to Babylon
Bridges to Babylon
Bridges to Babylon is a studio album by British rock band The Rolling Stones, released by Virgin Records on 29 September 1997. It would prove to be the band's final studio album of the 1990s and their last full-length release of new songs until 2005's A Bigger Bang...

. Nevertheless, Was (who has produced several Grammy-winning records) remains the Stones producer to this day. After a period of recording in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 in the first few months of 1994, Voodoo Lounge was complete and The Rolling Stones moved onto the rehearsals for the (yet another massive, worldwide) Voodoo Lounge Tour
Voodoo Lounge Tour
The Voodoo Lounge Tour was a worldwide concert tour by The Rolling Stones to promote their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge. This was their first tour without bassist Bill Wyman; he was replaced by Darryl Jones. The tour grossed $320 million, becoming the highest grossing tour of any artist at that time...

 which would begin in August.
  • During the recording of the album, Richards adopted a stray cat in Barbados which he named Voodoo, because they were in Barbados, and the kitten had survived the odds. He dubbed the terrace of the house, "the Voodoo Lounge".

  • "Sparks Will Fly" was written by Richards after a blow up with Jerry Lee Lewis
    Jerry Lee Lewis
    Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...

     in Ireland. Richards invited Lewis to Wood's home to jam on a few songs. Lewis took it seriously and thought they were making an album, and upon playback of the session, he started to pick apart Richards' band, which outraged Richards.

  • An Interactive CD-ROM was released using early Quicktime video technology.

Critical reception

Writing for Vox magazine
Vox (magazine)
Vox was a British music magazine, first issued in October 1990. It was published by IPC Media, and was later billed as a monthly sister-magazine to IPC's music weekly, the NME....

 in August 1994, Steven Dalton thought that the album's strongest tracks were filled with "echoes of the band's halcyon days", most notably 1972's Exile on Main Street and 1978's Some Girls
Some Girls
Some Girls is the 14th British and 16th American studio album by The Rolling Stones, released in 1978 on Rolling Stones Records, catalogue COC 39108...

. He went on to surmise that Voodoo Lounge "reminds us why we liked the Stones in the first place", and singled out "New Faces", "Out of Tears" and "Blinded By Rainbows" as the album's highlights, despite also stating that the record contained "too many sketchy, arsing-around-in-the-studio jobs" to be considered one of the group's overall best albums.

Accolades
In early 1995, while the Voodoo Lounge Tour was still in full force (not finishing until August that year) Voodoo Lounge won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album
Grammy Award for Best Rock Album
The Grammy Award for Best Rock Album is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality albums in the rock music genre...

.

Singles

"Love Is Strong
Love Is Strong
"Love Is Strong" is the opening track, and first single, by The Rolling Stones from their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge.-Inspiration and recording:...

", which was inspired by Richards' solo "Wicked As It Seems", was released as the first single, reaching #14 in the UK. However, although the track was a hit on US rock radio, it stalled on the overall US singles charts at #91, and (at least in the US) became The Rolling Stones' worst performing lead single
Lead single
A lead single is usually the first single released by a musician or a band before the release of its home album.During the era of the grammophone record, all music arrived in the marketplace as what is now termed a single, one potential hit song backed by an additional song of generally less...

 from an album to that time. Two follow-up US singles also received strong rock radio airplay, but failed to cross over into top 40 hits: "Out of Tears
Out of Tears
"Out of Tears" is a song by The Rolling Stones featured on their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge.A ballad, "Out of Tears" is credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, but is largely the work of Jagger...

" peaked at #60, and "You Got Me Rocking
You Got Me Rocking
"You Got Me Rocking" is a song by English rock and roll band The Rolling Stones, featured on their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge.Begun in early in 1993, "You Got Me Rocking" was initially a blues number; bootlegs have Jagger and Richards working the song as a slower, blues flavored ramble, with Jagger...

" fared even worse, peaking at #113. Consequently, Voodoo Lounge would be the first Rolling Stones album to not produce significant hits in the US, even with two million copies sold. In the UK, "Love Is Strong", "You Got Me Rocking", "Out Of Tears", and "I Go Wild" were all top 40 chart hits.

Track listing

All songs by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Jagger/Richards
The songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, known as Jagger/Richards , is a musical collaboration whose output has produced the majority of the catalogue of The Rolling Stones....

.
  1. "Love Is Strong
    Love Is Strong
    "Love Is Strong" is the opening track, and first single, by The Rolling Stones from their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge.-Inspiration and recording:...

    " – 3:46
  2. "You Got Me Rocking
    You Got Me Rocking
    "You Got Me Rocking" is a song by English rock and roll band The Rolling Stones, featured on their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge.Begun in early in 1993, "You Got Me Rocking" was initially a blues number; bootlegs have Jagger and Richards working the song as a slower, blues flavored ramble, with Jagger...

    " – 3:40
  3. "Sparks Will Fly" – 3:15
  4. "The Worst" – 2:25
  5. "New Faces" – 2:50
  6. "Moon Is Up" – 3:41
  7. "Out of Tears
    Out of Tears
    "Out of Tears" is a song by The Rolling Stones featured on their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge.A ballad, "Out of Tears" is credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, but is largely the work of Jagger...

    " – 5:25
  8. "I Go Wild
    I Go Wild
    "I Go Wild" is a song by The Rolling Stones featured on their 1994 album Voodoo Lounge. Credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "I Go Wild" is largely a Jagger composition....

    " – 4:23
  9. "Brand New Car" – 4:13
  10. "Sweethearts Together" – 4:45
  11. "Suck on the Jugular" – 4:26
  12. "Blinded by Rainbows" – 4:33
  13. "Baby Break It Down" – 4:08
  14. "Thru and Thru" – 6:00
  15. "Mean Disposition" – 4:08 (not included on LP version)

Personnel

The Rolling Stones
  • Mick Jagger
    Mick Jagger
    Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....

     – lead and backing vocals, electric
    Electric guitar
    An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

     and acoustic guitar
    Acoustic guitar
    An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

    s, harmonica
    Harmonica
    The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...

    , maracas
    Maracás
    Maracás is a town and municipality in the state of Bahia in the North-East region of Brazil.-References:...

    , castanets
  • Keith Richards
    Keith Richards
    Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...

     – electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals, lead vocals on "The Worst" and "Thru and Thru", piano
    Piano
    The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

    , tambourine
    Tambourine
    The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....

  • Ronnie Wood – electric, pedal steel
    Pedal steel guitar
    The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...

    , acoustic, slide
    Slide guitar
    Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...

    , and lap steel guitar
    Lap steel guitar
    The lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar, an instrument derived from and similar to the guitar. The player changes pitch by pressing a metal or glass bar against the strings instead of by pressing strings against the fingerboard....

    s, backing vocals
  • Charlie Watts
    Charlie Watts
    Charles Robert "Charlie" Watts is an English drummer, best known as a member of The Rolling Stones. He is also the leader of a jazz band, a record producer, commercial artist, and horse breeder.-Early life:...

     – drums
    Drum kit
    A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

    , tambourine


Additional personnel
  • Darryl Jones
    Darryl Jones
    Darryl Jones , also known as "The Munch", is an American bass guitarist. Jones began his notable career as a session musician, where he gained the experience and confidence to play with some of the most highly regarded recording artists, in jazz, blues, and rock music...

     – bass guitar
    Bass guitar
    The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

  • Max Baca – bajo sexto
  • David Campbell – string
    String instrument
    A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

     arrangement
    Arrangement
    The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...

  • Lenny Castro
    Lenny Castro
    Lenny Castro is an American freelancing percussionist in the studio recording industry in the Los Angeles area.-Early life:Castro is a percussionist of Puerto Rican descent and was born and raised in New York City. His father, Hector Castro, played the keyboard in a Latin style and gave his son...

     – percussion
    Percussion instrument
    A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

  • Pierre de Beauport – acoustic guitar
  • Bernard Fowler
    Bernard Fowler
    Bernard Fowler is an American musician, songwriter, producer, and actor. He has provided backing vocals with The Rolling Stones for over 20 years on recordings and tours, and has been a featured guest vocalist on the majority of solo albums released by the members of that band. He has also been a...

     – backing vocals
  • Frankie Gavin
    Frankie Gavin
    Frankie Gavin, b.1956, Corrandulla, County Galway, is a fiddle player of traditional Irish music.Frankie Gavin is from a musical family; parents and siblings being players of the fiddle and accordion. As a child he played the tin whistle and, later, the flute. He received some formal training in...

     – fiddle
    Fiddle
    The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...

    , pennywhistle
  • Mark Isham
    Mark Isham
    Mark Isham is an American trumpeter, synthesist, and film composer. He works in a variety of genres, including jazz, electronic, and film.-Life and career:...

     – trumpet
    Trumpet
    The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

  • Luis Jardim – percussion, shaker
    Shaker (percussion)
    The word shaker describes a large number of percussive musical instruments used for creating rhythm in music.They are so called because the method of creating sound involves shaking them—moving them back and forth rather than striking them. Most may also be struck for a greater accent on certain...

  • Flaco Jimenez
    Flaco Jiménez
    Leonardo "Flaco" Jiménez is a Tejano music accordionist from San Antonio, Texas. Jiménez's father, Santiago Jiménez Sr. was a pioneer of conjunto music. He began performing with his father at age seven and recording at age fifteen, as a member of Los Caporales...

     – accordion
    Accordion
    The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

  • Phil Jones – percussion
  • Chuck Leavell
    Chuck Leavell
    Chuck Leavell is an American pianist and keyboardist, who was a member of The Allman Brothers Band throughout the height of their popularity, a founding member of the jazz-rock combo Sea Level, a frequently-employed session musician, and later, the keyboardist for Eric Clapton and The Rolling...

     – piano, organ
    Organ (music)
    The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

    , harmonium
    Harmonium
    A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument similar to a reed organ. Sound is produced by air being blown through sets of free reeds, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion...

    , harpsichord
    Harpsichord
    A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

  • David McMurray – saxophone
    Saxophone
    The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

  • Ivan Neville
    Ivan Neville
    Ivan Neville is a multi-instrumentalist musician, singer, and songwriter. He is the son of Aaron Neville and nephew to members of The Neville Brothers....

     – backing vocals, organ
  • Benmont Tench
    Benmont Tench
    Benjamin Montmorency Tench, III is an American keyboardist best known as a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.-Early years:...

     – organ, piano, accordion
  • Bobby Womack
    Bobby Womack
    Robert Dwayne "Bobby" Womack is an American singer-songwriter and musician. An active recording artist since the early 1960s where he started his career as the lead singer of his family musical group The Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist, Womack's career has spanned more than 40...

     – backing vocals

Album

Released in July 1994, Voodoo Lounge received strong reviews and debuted at #1 in the UK (their first chart-topper there since 1980's Emotional Rescue
Emotional Rescue
Emotional Rescue is the 15th British and 17th American studio album by The Rolling Stones, released in 1980. Upon release, the album topped the charts in both the US and UK.-History:...

) and #2 in the US where it went double platinum
Double Platinum
Double Platinum is a 1999 musical telefilm starring Diana Ross and Brandy.-Plot:The story begins with a scene featuring star singer Olivia King leaving her daughter Kayla, who was an infant at the time. It is revealed that Kayla was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but in her later years, she would move...

.
Year Chart Position
1994 UK Top 75 Albums 1
1994 The Billboard 200 2
1994 Australian ARIA
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...

 Albums Chart
1
1994 French Charts 2

Singles

Year Single Chart Position
1994 "Love Is Strong" UK Top 75 Singles 14
1994 "Love Is Strong" The Billboard Hot 100 91
1994 "Love Is Strong" Mainstream Rock Tracks 2
1994 "Love Is Strong" Hot 100 Singles Sales 63
1994 "You Got Me Rocking" Mainstream Rock Tracks 2
1994 "You Got Me Rocking" UK Top 75 Singles 23
1994 "Out of Tears" Adult Contemporary 31
1994 "Out of Tears" The Billboard Hot 100 60
1994 "Out of Tears" Hot 100 Singles Sales 47
1994 "Out of Tears" Mainstream Rock Tracks 14
1994 "Out of Tears" UK Top 75 Singles 36
1995 "You Got Me Rocking" Bubbling Under Hot 100 113
1995 "Sparks Will Fly" Mainstream Rock Tracks 30
1995 "I Go Wild" Mainstream Rock Tracks 20
1995 "I Go Wild" UK Top 75 Singles 29

Certifications

Country Provider Certification
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...


(sales thresholds)
United States RIAA
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...

2× Platinum
France SNEP
Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique
The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry...

2× Gold
United Kingdom BPI
British Phonographic Industry
The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies...

Gold
Germany IFPI Platinum

PC game

A Windows/Macintosh game entitled Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge CD ROM was published by GTE Interactive Media
GTE Interactive Media
GTE Interactive Media was founded in 1990 as a unit of GTE. Located in Carlsbad, California, the unit's focus was on developing interactive entertainment products including development and publishing of video games and other entertainment software under the GTE Entertainment brand. The division...

in 1995.
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