Reviewed by Dougie Adam

When this was released on vinyl in 1981 through Phydeaux it was one of the first live albums to emerge and sounded far better than the bootlegs enthusiasts had been acquiring and three songs had yet to be released as studio versions (“Watch What You’re Doing”, “Soul On Fire”, “Let That Tape Keep Rolling”). Now with umpteen other live albums available on CD and with all of them sounding sonically better and with better performances than ‘Roll Away The Stone’, this album will really only appeal to completists. For the CD issue we are treated to an eight page booklet which explains partly why the album sounds as raw, rough and ragged as it does plus a few new photos from the 1978 Chicago concert that album is taken from. Despite its sonic faults ‘Roll Away The Stone’ is said to be the only surviving archive of the Solid Rock artists playing together live and on that basis alone a few will no doubt to check it out. Some attempt has been made to improve the sound quality for this CD re-issue but to these ears at least this one falls a long way short of Larry’s best live work with other bands.

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