‘Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!’: The Live Album That Critics Still Can’t Shake

When Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! hit shelves in 1970, critics nearly fell over themselves calling it the definitive live album of its era. Rolling Stone gave it a rapturous review, praising the band’s lean, mean energy and Jagger’s command of the crowd. Compared to the psychedelic sprawl of the Grateful Dead’s Live/Dead or the bluesy jams of the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, the Stones’ record was tight, cocky, and hyper-focused — a document of a band at its absolute peak, not improvising but delivering a killer set like a closing argument.

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