The Rolling Stones released Stripped in the UK on November 13, 1995. Made during the Voodoo Lounge tour, the live album combined six concert recordings with eight studio performances. That unusual balance gave the Stones space to revisit familiar songs, dig into their catalogue and record Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”
The band already had five live albums behind them and wanted this one to have its own identity. In 1995 interviews with journalist Paul Sexton, later published by uDiscover Music, Mick Jagger explained that another conventional concert album risked repeating the approach of Flashpoint, their 1991 live release. He remembered the question they had been trying to answer: “how can we do a different record on the road?” Keith Richards was drawn to the opportunity to create an album while the band was already out touring.
The studio work took place in Tokyo in March and Lisbon in July. At Toshiba-EMI Studios in Tokyo, the band recorded songs including “Wild Horses” and “The Spider and the Fly.” Lisbon’s Estudios Valentim de Carvalho supplied “Sweet Virginia.” These were fresh recordings that gave acoustic arrangements and the country side of the Stones’ repertoire a prominent place in the album. The studio performances were recorded live, without overdubs, carrying the idea of musicians playing together through both sides of the project.
The concert recordings came from Paradiso in Amsterdam, L’Olympia in Paris and Brixton Academy in London. “Street Fighting Man,” recorded at Paradiso, opened the album; the Paris show supplied “Shine a Light,” while Brixton contributed the Dylan cover. Moving between those performances and the studio sessions, Stripped assembled its running order from several rooms and different stages of the tour.
Those smaller rooms also changed the experience for the band. In the same series of period interviews, Jagger described intimate shows as potentially more nerve-racking than stadium appearances because the audience was close enough to touch him. Richards remembered the London date differently: “Brixton Academy, I felt like at last I was back home.” Paris carried its own history. The Stones had played L’Olympia in 1964, and Jagger recalled that early visit when explaining the appeal of returning there for the project.
“Like a Rolling Stone” became the album’s lead single. The original Stripped used the performance recorded at Brixton Academy on July 19, 1995, and the single reached No. 12 in the UK. The album reached No. 9 on the UK albums chart.
The recordings became the basis for a substantially expanded account of the project in 2016. Totally Stripped paired a revised documentary with a newly compiled live album, while its deluxe edition included complete concerts from Paradiso, L’Olympia and Brixton Academy. The audio selection shared just one performance with the original Stripped. Even “Like a Rolling Stone” came from a different show: the 2016 release used Amsterdam’s version, giving listeners another performance of the song that had introduced the original album.
