The album Stone Age was released in the UK on 5 March 1971. However, in a mark of things to come, their former label sought to queer that impressive pitch.
Come April 1971, the band began their new lease of life with the double whammy of Brown Sugar and Sticky Fingers.
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They were now free to set up their own label, Rolling Stones Records, distributed originally by WEA. In consideration of their outstanding album commitment, the Stones gave Decca Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!, a live album they have never bettered. The Stones fulfilled their 45 obligation by delivering into Decca’s possession a tape of new songs of such deliberately low fidelity as to be unusable, to which was appended a little ditty that was unusable for different reasons: Cocksucker Blues. It was very staid… There’s no doubt that classical music was a big part of Decca and leant towards classics.” Alan Fitter, who became Decca Assistant Pop Marketing Manager circa 1973, recalls, “Decca was a very strange place. With the Stones being the flag-bearers for the 60s’ social revolution, it was astounding that Decca had always sold their UK wares. Infuriating though that was for the band, however, in truth it was, of course, the label’s philistinism that had repeatedly rubbed them up the wrong way, particularly in the protracted dispute over their original sleeve design for Beggars Banquet, which had held up the release of that 1968 album for three months. “We found out, and it wasn’t years till we did, that all the bread we made for Decca was going into making little black boxes that go into American Air Force bombers to bomb fucking North Vietnam,” he lamented to Rolling Stone. Stones guitarist Keith Richards had more bitter feelings. We owned the masters, right from the beginning.” Oldham later said, “Dick Rowe should be remembered not as the man who turned down The Beatles but the man who signed The Rolling Stones. Their original manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, signed the Stones to the label in 1963, securing his charges a record deal on the back of the embarrassment of Dick Rowe, who had turned down The Beatles on Decca’s behalf. The Stones now owed just one album and one single A-side to Decca Records. Pretty soon, the band would not have to put up with such crass imperviousness to artistic intent.
That both the artists’ and the album’s names were clearly visible on said label suggests that the LP was intended by the Stones to be issued sans additional lettering and that it was the record company that couldn’t resist plastering “Rolling Stones” and “Let It Bleed” up top, beside its logo. The sleeve of The Rolling Stones’ 1969 album Let It Bleed famously featured a grotesque, multi-layered cake sitting on a record spindle, on the bottom of which rested a vinyl album.