[Hot Rocks portrays the] evolution of a rock & roll band from superlative interpreters of mostly borrowed R&B in a style that was never far from pop, to being pop artists, philosophers and social commentators couching their vision and fantasies in a style that seldom gets all that far away from R&B….

The crucial thread running through almost all of the Stones' early work, and much of what has followed, is the tension in the alternation of themes of utter arrogance and disdain, and of the sense of ennui and frustration deriving from living, however highly, in these desperate times. "Get Off Of My Cloud" brought the former razzberry to a pinnacle of derisive noise that many, including Jagger himself, found excessive, while "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" was, of course, the primal and perhaps still definitive statement of the latter condition. The balancing of these two...