STONES ROLL ONTO CDs; BEATLES DUE

Rock ‘n’ roll bands may die, but they never fade away.

The big news in the compact disc world is that the Rolling Stones have finally arrived and the Beatles are on the way.

In separate marketing campaigns, ABKCO Records and Columbia Records have released 27 Rolling Stones albums on CD in recent weeks. The 13 ABKCO packages range from the Stones’ 1964 debut album through 1969’s “Let It Bleed,” the final studio LP released in this country by London Records.

Columbia’s 14 Stones albums begin with 1971’s “Sticky Fingers” and include everything else the group has released on its own Rolling Stones Records label.

The first four Beatles albums will be released in separate CDs on Feb. 26, with the remaining studio LPs due--in chronological order--by the end of the year.

Bhaskar Menon, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music Worldwide, said the CDs will be based on the original British song lineups to standardize the packages worldwide.

Initially, the Beatles albums were released in England on the Parlophone label, but record companies around the world were then free to repackage the songs in any way they wished. Thus, the songs on the U.S. albums (released by Capitol) were frequently different from British collections.

The Beatles’ first English album, “Please Please Me” contained the title track and 12 other songs, including “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Love Me Do,” “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “Twist and Shout.”

Next came “With the Beatles,” with a lineup that included “All My Loving,” “Please Mr. Postman,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” “I Want to Be Your Man” and “Devil in Her Heart.”

It was followed by the “Hard Day’s Night” sound-track album and “Beatles for Sale,” whose tracks ranged from “I’m a Loser” and “Baby’s in Black” to “I’ll Follow the Sun” and “Eight Days a Week.”

In addition to the Beatles packages, EMI is releasing CDs by more than a dozen other artists over the next three months, including the Band, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Pink Floyd, Kenny Rogers, Bob Seger and Frank Sinatra.

But the Stones and, especially, the Beatles albums are expected to add most to the CD sales explosion.

In discussing the compact disc phenomenon by phone from his Sacramento office, Stan Goman, vice president of the California-based Tower Records chain, said CDs accounted for 29% of dollar volume in Tower stores last month, and he sees the percentage increasing as more product becomes available and as prices come down.

Allen B. Klein, head of ABKCO Records, and Arma Andon, vice president of artist development for Columbia Records, said the delays in getting the Stones CDs into the domestic marketplace were tied to insufficient capacity at compact disc plants and the technical work required to transfer the music to CD.

Klein and Andon said their initial shipments were both between 250,000 and 300,000 units with orders expected to double or even triple during the year.

“When you are talking Rolling Stones (and Beatles), you’re talking about the ideal album for the CD market,” Andon said. “We’re talking someone 25 to 35 years old with high income and well educated. The (demographics) match up perfectly.”

So how do the Stones sound on CD?

Terrific.

In many ways, it’s like listening to some of these albums for the first time. Even if you grew up with these LPs, they have probably sat on the shelf for years. So, the CD arrival is an invitation to listen to them again--and the sound quality gives them a new dimension, especially in the earlier releases. There’s little trace of the sterile sound that sometimes weakens CD versions of hard-rock records. The early ‘70s albums such as “Exile on Main Street” also benefit from the CD process--though the differences in sound become less apparent as you move into the late ‘70s.

It has been so long since the Rolling Stones lived up to the “World’s Greatest Rock Band” title that it is easy to forget the claim was ever valid. But spend time with some of the new CDs and you understand why the group once represented the height of excellence in rock. The challenge is picking the right albums.

In his book “The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record,” enthusiastic British pop critic Roy Carr calls the Stones’ first album (“The Rolling Stones”) the best rock debut ever, and the 1964 album does have a raw, gritty punch that makes it a quintessential example of the “garage band” spirit in rock. But it lacks the individuality of vision of such other, more convincing debuts. Among them: the Band’s “Music From Big Pink” and the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks.”

“The Rolling Stones, Now!” (1965) shows the Stones moving toward that vision. You sense Mick Jagger gaining confidence as a singer and you feel the guitar work moving beyond the early Bo Diddley/Chuck Berry influences to the contemporary blues style that the Stones eventually developed.

Most of the Stones hits from the ‘60s are collected in “Hot Rocks” (a two-disc set that runs 81 minutes), but “Beggar’s Banquet” (1968) is another essential step in the Stones’ growth. The LP--much of it acoustic--showcased a growing artistic ambition that combined the Stones’ own blues/rock instincts with a trace of Dylan-influenced social conscience.

“Let It Bleed” (1969) and “Sticky Fingers” (1971) are fascinating because they reflect the band’s twin goals of living up to its bad-boys-of-rock image and yet pushing forward artistically. The most striking example is the contrast on “Sticky Fingers” between the commercial calculation of “Brown Sugar” and the disarming poignancy of “Wild Horses.”

“Exile on Main Street” (1972) was the Stones’ greatest album; a work that both celebrates the rock ‘n’ roll life style and reflects with unexpected candor and power the weary, disillusioning nature of the excesses surrounding that life style. Except in occasional tracks, the Stones have not regained that excellence on record since “Exile,” but “Some Girls” (1978) deserves to be part of the basic Stones collection because the band has so much fun mocking its own image.

Together, these albums show that the Stones were more than simply an outrageous attitude and masters of media manipulation. They were also, for a spell, the world’s greatest rock band.

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Sunday for the Pretenders’ Feb. 21 concert at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Iggy Pop is the opening act. . . . . The Georgia Satellites and the Little Kings play the Roxy on Monday. . . . Tickets will be available Monday for the Beverly Theatre’s Feb. 7 reggae bill of Burning Spear and Toots & the Maytals. . . . Meat Loaf will be at the Palace Jan. 28. . . . Christian Death will be at the Whisky Jan. 23, and Icicle Works headlines the Roxy Jan. 27.