Catalog# 2PS 606, 2PS 607 12/6/71 etched on the deadwax of side 4
Released 20 December 1971
Recorded October 1964 – January 1971
Label ABKCO
Producer Andrew Loog Oldham, Jimmy Miller, The Rolling Stones, and Glyn Johns
Hot Rocks 1964–1971 is the first compilation album of Rolling Stones music released by former manager
Allen Klein's ABKCO Records (who gained control of the band's Decca/London material in 1970) after the band's departure from Decca and Klein. Released in late 1971, it proved to be The Rolling Stones' biggest-selling release of their career and an enduring and popular retrospective.
After reportedly having been duped by Klein to unknowingly sign over the recording copyrights to all of their material from 1963 to 1970, The Rolling Stones left Decca and formed their own label, Rolling Stones Records, with a new distributor. They recorded Sticky Fingers throughout 1970, releasing it the following spring. Although Klein—and now ABKCO—no longer had The Rolling Stones as clients, their fruitful catalogue was ripe for the picking and, thus, Hot Rocks 1964-1971 was quickly compiled as a double album greatest hits package.
While the album carries most of the band's biggest hits during their first decade, it does drop a few of them in order to include standout tracks such as "Play With Fire", "Under My Thumb" and "Gimme Shelter" giving listeners a more well-rounded impression of The Rolling Stones' music in this era. Although "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" are a part of Sticky Fingers, those two songs are co-owned by the band and Allen Klein because The Rolling Stones owed Decca one more single in 1970, and the band responded by submitting the unreleasable "Cocksucker Blues".