Forty Licks
In 2002 The Rolling Stones were gearing up to mark their first forty years as a group with a world tour and retrospective record. While there are several terrific “best ofs” this one clearly needed to be special – and the band went all out.
Forty Licks, consisting of forty tracks, is the first compilation to cover the band’s entire career, surveying their output from their first recordings on Decca/London in the early ‘60s and including new recordings, made just for this album, in 2002.
As is often the case with Stones albums, the cover art is as exciting as the music itself. This time the band updated their classic “tongue and lips” logo in a variation to mark their Ruby anniversary. Can you find the hidden message..?
The “tongue and lips” represent one of the most recognized 
commercial brands on the planet and is part of what can only be called rock and roll’s first attempt at modern branding.
In 1969, the band was facing the end of their recording contract with Decca Records. They were contemplating something radical- their own record label, which would distribute and own all future recordings by the band. Stones front man Mick Jagger famously solicited London’s Royal College of Art for a design student to help create a new logo for the group. Upon visiting a showing of student John Pasche’s work, the band secured the young designer’s efforts not only for their iconographic logo but for album, tour and other promotional work spanning the ‘70s.
Forty Licks hit number 2 on the charts in the UK and America, fueled not only by forty years of classics, but the strength of one of the new numbers on the record, “Don’t Stop”, which was featured prominently in the set during their Licks World Tour. The tour ran through 2003 and played to almost 3.5 million people across 117 shows, which included the band’s first ones in China.
Speaking of China, there are only 36 licks on their version of the record… "Honky Tonk Women" , "Let's Spend the Night Together" ,"Brown Sugar" and "Beast of Burden" are apparently a little too racy for the 1.3 billion person audience there.
