Liceul Teoretic Spiru Haret
Clasa a XII-a F, 2008-2009
Profil: uman
Specializare: filologie, intensiv engleza
Proiect in vederea sustinerii
examenului pentru detinerea
atestatului de competenta lingvistica
The Rolling Stones
Contents
Foreword
The begining of The Rolling Stonnes
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in 1962 in London when multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were joined by vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early lineup. Stewart, deemed unsuitable as a teen idol, was removed from the official lineup in 1963 but continued to work with the band as road manager and keyboardist until his death in 1985.
Jagger and Richards early on formed a songwriting partnership and gradually took over leadership of the band from the increasingly troubled and erratic Jones. At first recording mainly covers of American blues and R&B songs, since 1966's Aftermath, The Rolling Stones new studio releases have had almost exlusively Jagger/Richards songs. Shortly before his death in 1969, the band fired Jones and replaced him with Mick Taylor. Taylor recorded five studio albums with The Rolling Stones before quitting in 1974. Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood replaced Taylor and has since remained with the band. Wyman left the Rolling Stones in 1993; bassist Darryl Jones, who is not an official band member, has worked with the group since 1994.
First popular in the UK and Europe, The Rolling Stones came to the US during the early 1960s 'British Invasion'. The Rolling Stones have released 22 studio albums in the UK (24 in the US), eight concert albums (nine in the US) and numerous compilations; and have sold more than 600 million albums worldwide.[1] Their latest album, A Bigger Bang, was released in 2005. Sticky Fingers (1971) began a string of eight consecutive studio albums that charted at number one in the United States. In 1989 The Rolling Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 they were ranked number 4 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Their image of unkempt and surly youth is one that many musicians still emulate.
Early history
In the early 1950s Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were classmates at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford, Kent. They met again in 1960 while Richards was attending Sidcup Art College. Richards recalled, 'I was still going to school, and he was going up to the London School of Economics So I get on this train one morning, and there's Jagger and under his arm he has four or five albums He's got Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters'. With mutual friend Dick Taylor (later of Pretty Things), they formed the band Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Stone 212f52c s founders Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were active in the London R&B scene fostered by Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner. Jagger and Richards met Jones while he was playing slide guitar sitting in with Korner's Blues Incorporated. Korner also had hired Jagger periodically and frequently future Stones drummer Charlie Watts. Their first rehearsal was organised by Jones and included Stewart, Jagger and Richards - the latter came along at Jagger's invitation. In June 1962 the lineup was: Jagger, Richards, Stewart, Jones, Taylor, and drummer Tony Chapman. Taylor then left the group. Jones named the band The Rollin' Stones, after the song 'Rollin' Stone' by Muddy Waters.
On 12 July 1962 the group played their first formal gig at the Marquee Club, billed as 'The Rollin' Stones'. The line-up was Jagger, Richards, Jones, Stewart on piano, Taylor on bass and Tony Chapman on drums. Jones intended for the band to play primarily Chicago blues, but Jagger and Richards brought the rock & roll of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley to the band. Bassist Bill Wyman joined in December and drummer Charlie Watts the following January to form the Stones' long-standing rhythm section.
The Rolling Stones' first manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, booked the band to play at his Crawdaddy Club for what became an eight-month residency. A young ex-publicist of The Beatles, Andrew Loog Oldham, signed the band to a management deal with his partner and veteran booker Eric Easton in early May 1963. (Gomelsky, who had no written agreement with the band, was not consulted.) George Harrison, meanwhile, encouraged Decca Records' Dick Rowe - who famously passed on the Beatles - to scout The Rolling Stones. The band toured the UK in July 1963 and played their first gig outside of Greater London on Saturday 13 July at the Outlook Club in Middlesbrough sharing billing that night with The Hollies.
The band's second UK LP - The Rolling Stones No. 2, released in January 1965 - was another #1 on the album charts; the US version, released in February as The Rolling Stones, Now!, went to #5. Most of the material had been recorded at Chess Studios in Chicago and RCA Studios in Los Angeles. In January/February 1965 the band also toured Australia and New Zealand for the first time, playing 34 shows for about 100,000 fans.
The first Jagger/Richards composition to reach number 1 on the UK singles charts was 'The Last Time' (released in February 1965); it went to number 9 in the US. Their first international number-1 hit was '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', recorded in May 1965 during the band's third North American tour. Released as a US single in June 1965, it spent four weeks at the top of the charts there, and established the Stones as a worldwide premier act. The US version of the LP Out of Our Heads (released in July 1965) also went to number 1; it included seven original songs (three Jagger/Richards numbers and four credited to Nanker Phelge). Their second international number-1 single, 'Get Off of My Cloud' was released in the autumn of 1965, followed by another US-only LP: December's Children.
The release Aftermath (UK number 1; US 2) in the late spring of 1966 was the first Rolling Stones album to be composed entirely of Jagger/Richards songs. Jones's contribution was also at its all time height, with his command of exotic instruments greatly adding to the band's sound. The American version of the LP included the chart-topping, Middle Eastern-influenced 'Paint It Black', the ballad 'Lady Jane', and the almost 12-minute long 'Going Home', the first extended jam on a top selling rock & roll album; later Jimi Hendrix, Cream and other sixties and seventies bands would release long jams routinely.
The Stones' success on the British and American singles charts peaked during 1966. '19th Nervous Breakdown' (Feb. 1966, UK #2, US #2) was followed by their first trans-Atlantic #1 hit 'Paint It, Black' (May 1966). 'Mother's Little Helper' (June 1966) was only released as a single in the USA, where it reached #8; it was one of the first pop songs to address the issue of prescription drug abuse, and is also notable for the fact that Jagger sang the lyric in his natural London accent, rather than his usual affected southern American accent.
The Sep. 1966 single 'Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?' (UK #5, US #9) was notable in several respects -- it was the first Stones recording to feature brass in the arrangement, the (now-famous) back-cover photo on the original US picture sleeve depicted the group satirically dressed in drag, and the song was accompanied by one of the first purpose-made promotional film clips (music videos), directed by Peter Whitehead.
January 1967 saw the release of Between the Buttons (UK number 3; US 2); the album was Andrew Oldham's last venture as The Rolling Stones' producer (his role as the band's manager had been taken over by Allen Klein in 1965). The US version included the double A-side single 'Let's Spend the Night Together' and 'Ruby Tuesday', which went to #1 in America and #3 in the UK. When the band went to New York to perform the numbers on The Ed Sullivan Show, Jagger changed the lyrics in the refrain to 'let's spend some time together' to avoid having their appearance on the show cancelled.
The Rolling Stones were scheduled to play at a free concert in London's Hyde Park two days after Brian Jones's death; they decided to proceed with the show as a tribute to Jones. Their first concert with Mick Taylor was performed in front of an estimated 250,000 fans. The performance was filmed by a Granada Television production team, to be shown on British television as Stones in the Park. Jagger read an excerpt from Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy Adonais and released thousands of butterflies in memory of Jones. The show included the concert debut of 'Honky Tonk Women', which the band had just released. Their stage manager Sam Cutler introduced them as 'the greatest rock & roll band in the world' - a description he repeated throughout their 1969 US tour, and which has stuck to this day.
The release of Let It Bleed (UK number 1; US 3) came in December. Their last album of the Sixties, Let It Bleed featured 'Gimmie Shelter' (with backing vocals by female vocalist Merry Clayton), 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', 'Midnight Rambler', as well as a cover of Robert Johnson's 'Love in Vain'. Jones and Taylor are featured on two tracks each. Many of these numbers were played during the band's US tour in November 1969, their first in three years. Just after the tour the band also staged the Altamont Free Concert, at the Altamont Speedway, about 60 km east of San Francisco. The biker gang Hells Angels provided security, which resulted in a fan, Meredith Hunter, being stabbed and beaten to death by the Angels. Part of the tour and the Altamont concert were documented in Albert and David Maysles' film Gimme Shelter. As a response to the growing popularity of bootleg recordings, the album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! (UK 1; US 6) was released in 1970; it was declared by critic Lester Bangs to be the best live album ever.
In 1970 the band's contracts with both Allen Klein and Decca Records ended, and amid contractual disputes with Klein, they formed their own record company, Rolling Stones Records. Sticky Fingers (UK number 1; US 1), released in March 1971, the band's first album on their own label, featured an elaborate cover design by Andy Warhol. The album contains one of their best known hits, 'Brown Sugar', and the country-influenced 'Wild Horses'. Both were recorded at Alabama's Muscle Shoals Sound Studio during the 1969 American tour. The album continued the band's immersion into heavily blues-influenced compositions. The album is noted for its 'loose, ramshackle ambience'and marked Mick Taylor's first full release with the band.
Following the release of Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones left England on the advice of financial advisors. The band moved to the South of France where Richards rented the Villa Nellcōte, and sublet rooms to band members and entourage. Using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, they held recording sessions in the basement; they completed the resulting tracks, along with material dating as far back as 1969, at Sunset Studios in Los Angeles. The resulting double album, Exile on Main St. (UK number 1; US 1), was released in May 1972. Given an A+ grade by critic Robert Christgau and disparaged by Lester Bangs -- who reversed his opinion within months -- Exile is now accepted as one of the Stones' best albums. The films Cocksucker Blues (never officially released) and Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones (released in 1974) document the subsequent highly publicised 1972 North American ('STP') Tour, with its retinue of jet set hangers-on, including writer Terry Southern.
In November 1972, the band began sessions in Kingston, Jamaica, for their follow-up to Exile, Goats Head Soup (UK 1; US 1) (1973). The album spawned the worldwide hit 'Angie', but proved the first in a string of commercially successful but tepidly received studio albums. The sessions for Goats Head Soup led to a number of outtakes, most notably an early version of the popular ballad 'Waiting on a Friend', not released until Tattoo You eight years later.
The making of the record was interrupted by another legal battle over drugs, dating back to their stay in France; a warrant for Richards' arrest had been issued, and the other band members had to return briefly to France for questioning. This, along with Jagger's convictions on drug charges (in 1967 and 1970), also complicated the band's plans for their Pacific tour in early 1973: they were denied permission to play in Japan and almost banned from Australia. This was followed by a European tour (bypassing France) in September/October 1973 - prior to which Richards had been arrested once more on drug charges, this time in England.
The band went to Musicland studios in Munich to record their next album, 1974's It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (UK 2; US 1), but Jimmy Miller, who had drug abuse issues, was no longer producer. Instead, Jagger and Richards assumed production duties and were credited as 'the Glimmer Twins'. Both the album and the single of the same name were hits.
Nearing the end of 1974, Taylor began to get impatient. The band's situation made normal functioning complicated, with band members living in different countries and legal barriers restricting where they could tour. At the same time, Richards' drug use was affecting his creativity and productivity, while Taylor felt some of his own creative contributions were going unrecognized. At the end of 1974, with a recording session already booked in Munich to record another album, Taylor quit The Rolling Stones. Taylor said in 1980, 'I was getting a bit fed up. I wanted to broaden my scope as a guitarist and do something else I wasn't really composing songs or writing at that time. I was just beginning to write, and that influenced my decision There are some people who can just ride along from crest to crest; they can ride along somebody else's success. And there are some people for whom that's not enough. It really wasn't enough for me.'
The Stones used the recording sessions in Munich to audition replacements for Taylor. Guitarists as stylistically far-flung as Humble Pie lead Peter Frampton and ex-Yardbirds virtuoso Jeff Beck were auditioned. Rory Gallagher and Shuggie Otis also dropped by the Munich sessions. American session players Wayne Perkins and Harvey Mandel also appeared on much of the album. Yet Richards and Jagger also wanted the Stones to remain purely a British band. When Ron Wood walked in and jammed with the band, Richards and everyone else knew he was the one. Wood had already recorded and played live with Richards, and had contributed to the recording and writing of the track 'It's Only Rock 'n Roll'. The album, Black and Blue (UK 2; US 1) (1976), featured all their contributions. Though he had earlier declined Jagger's offer to join the Stones, because of his ties to the The Faces, Wood committed to the Stones in 1975 for their upcoming Tour of the Americas. He joined officially the following year, as the Faces dissolved; however, Wood remained on salary until Wyman's departure nearly two decades later, when he finally became a full member of the Rolling Stones' partnership.
The 1975 Tour of the Americas kicked off with the band performing on a flatbed trailer being pulled down Broadway in New York City. The tour featured stage props including a giant phallus and a rope on which Jagger swung out over the audience.
Jagger had booked a live recording session at the El Mocambo club in Toronto to balance a long-overdue live album, 1977's Love You Live (UK 3; US 5), the first Stones live album since 1970's Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!. Richards' addiction to heroin delayed his arrival in Toronto; the other members had already assembled, awaiting Richards, and sent him a telegram asking him where he was. On 24 February 1977, Richards and his family flew in from London on a direct BOAC flight and were detained by Canada Customs after Richards was found in possession of a burnt spoon and hash residue. On 4 March, Richards' partner Anita Pallenberg pleaded guilty to drug possession and was fined for the original airport event. On Sunday, 27 February, after two days of Stones rehearsals, armed with an arrest warrant for Pallenberg, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police discovered '22 grams of heroin' in Richards' room. Richards was charged with importing narcotics into Canada, which carried a minimum seven-year sentence upon conviction. Later the Crown prosecutor conceded that Richards had procured the drugs after arrival. Despite the arrest, the band played two shows in Toronto, only to raise more controversy when Margaret Trudeau, then-wife of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was seen partying with the band after the show. These two shows were kept secret from the public and the El Mocambo had been booked for the entire week by April Wine for a recording session. 1050 CHUM, A local radio station ran a contest for free tickets to see April Wine and the winners were allowed to pick a night to see the band. The winners that picked tickets for the Friday or Saturday night were surprised to find that the Stones were playing.
Before leaving Atlantic, the Stones released Undercover (UK 3; US 4) in late 1983. Despite good reviews the record sold below expectations and there was no tour to support it. Subsequently the Stones' new marketer/distributor CBS Records took over distributing the Stone's Atlantic catalogue.
By this time, the Jagger/Richards split was growing. Jagger had signed a solo deal with CBS to be distributed by Columbia, much to the consternation of Richards. Jagger spent much of 1984 writing songs for his first solo effort and, as he admitted, he began to feel stultified within the framework of the Rolling Stones By 1985, Jagger was spending more time on solo recordings, and much of the material on 1986's Dirty Work (UK 4; US 4) was generated by Keith Richards, with more contributions by Ron Wood than on previous Rolling Stones albums. Rumours surfaced that Jagger and Richards were rarely, if ever, in the studio at the same time, leaving Richards to keep the recording sessions moving forward.
In December 1985, the band's co-founder, pianist, road manager and long-time friend Ian Stewart died of a heart attack. The Rolling Stones played a private tribute concert for him at London's 100 Club in February 1986, two days before they were presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dirty Work came out in March 1986 to mixed reviews; Jagger refused to tour to promote the album, stating later that several band members were in no condition to tour.[citation needed] Richards was infuriated when Jagger instead undertook his own solo tour; he has referred to this period in his relations with Jagger as 'World War III'.[66] Jagger's solo records, She's The Boss (UK 6; US 13) (1985) and Primitive Cool (UK 26; US 41) (1987), met with moderate success, although Richards disparaged both. With the Rolling Stones inactive, Richards released his first solo album in 1988, Talk Is Cheap (UK 37; US 24). It was well received by fans and critics, going gold in the US.
In early 1989, The Rolling Stones, including Mick Taylor, Ronnie Wood and Ian Stewart (posthumously), were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Jagger and Richards appeared to have set animosities aside, and The Rolling Stones went to work on the album that would be called Steel Wheels (UK 2; US 3). Heralded as a return to form, it included the singles 'Mixed Emotions', 'Rock and a Hard Place' and 'Almost Hear You Sigh'. The album also included 'Continental Drift', recorded in Tangier in 1989 with Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka, whom Brian Jones had recorded in 1968.
The subsequent Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tours, encompassing North America, Japan and Europe, saw the Rolling Stones touring for the first time in seven years (since Europe 1982), and it was their biggest stage production to date. Opening acts included Living Colour and Guns N' Roses; the onstage personnel included a horn section and backup singers Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler, both of whom continue to tour regularly with the Rolling Stones. Recordings from the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tours produced the 1991 concert album Flashpoint (UK 6; US 16), which also included two studio tracks recorded in 1991: the single 'Highwire' and 'Sex Drive'.
After the successes of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tours, the band took a break. Charlie Watts released two jazz albums; Ronnie Wood made his fifth solo album, the first in 11 years, called Slide On This; Keith Richards released his second solo album in late 1992, Main Offender (UK 45; US 99), and did a small tour including big concerts in Spain and Argentina. Mick Jagger got good reviews and sales with his third solo album, Wandering Spirit (UK 12; US 11). The album sold more than two million copies worldwide, going gold in the US.
After Wyman's departure, the Stones' new distributor/record label, Virgin Records, remastered and repackaged the band's back catalogue from Sticky Fingers to Steel Wheels, except for the three live albums, and issued another hits compilation in 1993 entitled Jump Back (UK 16; US 30). By 1993 the Stones set upon their next studio album. Darryl Jones, former sideman of Miles Davis and Sting, was chosen by Charlie Watts as Wyman's replacement for 1994's Voodoo Lounge (UK 1; US 2). The album met strong reviews and sales, going double platinum in the US. Reviewers took note of the album's 'traditionalist' sounds, which were credited to the Stones' new producer Don Was. It would go on to win the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album.
1994 also brought the accompanying Voodoo Lounge Tour, which lasted into 1995. Numbers from various concerts and rehearsals (mostly acoustic) made up Stripped (UK 9; US 9), which featured a cover of Bob Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone', as well as infrequently played songs like 'Shine a Light', 'Sweet Virginia' and 'The Spider and the Fly'.
The Rolling Stones ended the 1990s with the album Bridges To Babylon (UK 6; US 3), released in 1997 to mixed reviews. The video of the single 'Anybody Seen My Baby?' featured Angelina Jolie as guest and met steady rotation on both MTV and VH1. Sales were reasonably equivalent to those of previous records (about 1.2 million copies sold in the US), and the subsequent Bridges to Babylon Tour, which crossed Europe, North America and other destinations, proved the band to be a strong live attraction. Once again, a live album was culled from the tour, No Security (UK 67; US 34), only this time all but two songs ('Live With Me' and 'The Last Time') were previously unreleased on live albums. In 1999, the Stones staged the No Security Tour in the US and continued the Bridges to Babylon tour in Europe. The No Security Tour offered a stripped-down production in contrast to the pyrotechnics and mammoth stages of other recent tours.
In late 2001, Mick Jagger released his fourth solo album, Goddess in the Doorway (UK 44; US 39) which met with mixed reviews. Jagger and Richards took part in 'The Concert for New York City', performing 'Salt of the Earth' and 'Miss You' with a backing band.
In 2002, the band released Forty Licks (UK 2; US 2), a greatest hits double album, to mark their forty years as a band. The collection contained four new songs recorded with the latter-day core band of Jagger, Richards, Watts, Wood, Leavell and Jones. The album has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. The same year, Q magazine named The Rolling Stones as one of the '50 Bands To See Before You Die', and the 2002-2003 Licks Tour gave people that chance. The band's 2002-2003 Licks Tour included shows in small theatres, arenas and stadiums. The band headlined the Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto concert in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to help the city - which they have used for rehearsals since the Steel Wheels tour - recover from the 2003 SARS epidemic. The concert was attended by an estimated 490,000 people.
On 9 November 2003, the band played their first concert in Hong Kong as part of the Harbour Fest celebration, also in support of the SARS-affected economy. In November 2003, the band exclusively licensed the right to sell their new four-DVD boxed set, Four Flicks, recorded on the band's most recent world tour, to the US Best Buy chain of stores. In response, some Canadian and US music retail chains (including HMV Canada and Circuit City) pulled Rolling Stones CDs and related merchandise from their shelves and replaced them with signs explaining the situation. In 2004, a double live album of the Licks Tour, Live Licks (UK 38; US 50), was released, going gold in the US.
On 26 July 2005, Jagger's birthday, the band announced the name of their new album, A Bigger Bang (UK 2; US 3), their first album in almost eight years. A Bigger Bang was released on 6 September to strong reviews, including a glowing write-up in Rolling Stone (noted for its consistent support of the group). The single, Streets of Love reached the Top 15 in UK and Europe.
The album included the most controversial song from the Stones in years, 'Sweet Neo Con', a criticism of American Neoconservatism from Jagger. The song was reportedly almost dropped from the album because of objections from Richards. When asked if he was afraid of political backlash such as the Dixie Chicks had endured for criticism of American involvement in the war in Iraq, Richards responded that the album came first, and that, 'I don't want to be sidetracked by some little political 'storm in a teacup'.'
The subsequent A Bigger Bang Tour began in August 2005, and visited North America, South America and East Asia. In February 2006, the group played the half-time show of Super Bowl XL in Detroit, Michigan. By the end of 2005, the Bigger Bang tour set a record of $162 million in gross receipts, breaking the North American mark also set by the Stones in 1994. On February 18, 2006 the band played a free concert with a claimed 1.5 million attendance at the Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro.
After performances in Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand in March/April 2006, the Rolling Stones tour took a scheduled break before proceeding to Europe; during this break Keith Richards was hospitalized in New Zealand for cranial surgery after a fall from a tree on Fiji, where he had been on holiday. The incident led to a six-week delay in launching the European leg of the tour. In June 2006 it was reported that Ronnie Wood was continuing his programme of rehabilitation for alcohol abuse but this did not affect the rearranged European tour schedule. Two out of the 21 shows scheduled for July-September 2006 were later cancelled due to Mick Jagger's throat problems.
The Stones returned to North America for concerts in September 2006, and returned to Europe on 5 June 2007. By November 2006, the Bigger Bang tour had been declared the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning $437 million. The North American leg brought in the third-highest receipts ever ($138.5 million), trailing their own 2005 tour ($162 million) and the U2 tour of that same year ($138.9 million).
On 29 October and 1 November 2006, director Martin Scorsese filmed the Rolling Stones performing at New York City's Beacon Theatre, in front of an audience that included Bill and Hillary Clinton, released as the 2008 film Shine a Light; the film also features guest appearances by Buddy Guy, Jack White and Christina Aguilera. An accompanying soundtrack, also titled Shine a Light (UK 2; US 11), was released in April 2008. The album's debut at number 2 in the UK charts was the highest position for a Rolling Stones concert album since Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! in 1970.
Chapter II. Musical evolution
The Rolling Stones are notable in modern popular music for assimilating various musical genres into their recording and performance, ultimately making the styles their very own. The band's career is marked by a continual reference and reliance on musical styles like American blues, country, folk, reggae, dance; world music exemplified by the Master Musicians of Jajouka; as well as traditional English styles that use stringed instrumentation like harps. The band cut their musical teeth by covering early rock and roll and blues songs, and have never stopped playing live or recording cover songs.
Often the first instances of this come through the Stones' use of a blues-based R&B sound. Jagger and Richards' shared interest in the Americans Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter, were influential on the band's leader, Brian Jones, of whom Richards says, 'He was more into T-Bone Walker and jazz-blues stuff. We'd turn him onto Chuck Berry and say, 'Look, it's all the same shit, man, and you can do it.''[ Charlie Watts, a traditional jazz drummer, was also turned onto the blues after his introduction to the Stones. 'Keith and Brian turned me on to Jimmy Reed and people like that. I learned that Earl Phillips was playing on those records like a jazz drummer, playing swing, with a straight four' Jagger, recalling when he first heard the likes of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino and other heavies of the American blues scene, said it 'seemed the most real thing'he had heard up to that point. Similarly, Keith Richards, describing the first time he listened to Muddy Waters, said it was the 'most powerful music [he had] ever heardthe most expressive.'
Despite the Stones' predilection for blues and R&B numbers on their early live setlists, the first original compositions by the band reflected a more wide-ranging interest. The first Jagger/Richards single, 'Tell Me (You're Coming Back),' is called by critic Richie Unterberger a 'pop/rock ballad When [Jagger and Richards] began to write songs, they were usually not derived from the blues, but were often surprisingly fey, slow, Mersey-type pop numbers.' 'As Tears Go By,' the ballad originally written for Marianne Faithfull, was one of the first songs written by Jagger and Richards and also one of many written by the duo for other artists. Jagger said of the song, 'It's a relatively mature song considering the rest of the output at the time. And we didn't think of [recording] it, because the Rolling Stones were a butch blues group.' The Stones did later record a version which became a top five hit in the US.
On the early experience, Richards said, 'The amazing thing is that although Mick and I thought these songs were really puerile and kindergarten-time, every one that got put out made a decent showing in the charts. That gave us extraordinary confidence to carry on, because at the beginning songwriting was something we were going to do in order to say to Andrew [Loog Oldham], 'Well, at least we gave it a try'' Jagger said, 'We were very pop-orientated. We didn't sit around listening to Muddy Waters; we listened to everything. In some ways it's easy to write to order Keith and I got into the groove of writing those kind of tunes; they were done in ten minutes. I think we thought it was a bit of a laugh, and it turned out to be something of an apprenticeship for us.'
The writing of the single 'The Last Time,' The Stones' first major single, proved a turning point. Richards called it, 'a bridge into thinking about writing for The Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it.' Built around a riff played by Brian Jones, the song was based on a traditional gospel song popularised by The Staples Singers and would be emblematic of the heavily guitar based sound to come.
Line-ups
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May 1963 - May 1969 |
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May 1969 - December 1974 |
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May 1975 - 1993 |
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Since 1963, English rock group The Rolling Stones has performed hundreds of concerts around the world, being one of the world's most popular live music attractions.
In their early years of performing, the band would undertake numerous short tours of Great Britain and North America, playing in small- and medium-size venues to audiences composed largely of screaming girls. As time moved on, they would favour larger arenas and stadiums. For many years, the group would choose to play North America, Continental Europe, and the United Kingdom on a three-year rotating cycle.
Many audio recordings exist of Rolling Stones concerts, both official and unofficial. Eight official concert albums (nine in the US) have been released by the band. There also exists an unreleased live album entitled Brussels Affair. Several of their concerts have also been filmed and released under a variety of titles, such as Stones in the Park which records the band's performance at Hyde Park in 1969.
The most famous and heavily documented of all the band's concerts was the Altamont Free Concert at the Altamont Speedway in 1969. For this concert, the biker gang Hells Angels provided security, which resulted in a fan, Meredith Hunter, being stabbed and beaten to death by the Angels. Part of the tour and the Altamont concert were documented in Albert and David Maysles' film Gimme Shelter. As a response to the growing popularity of bootleg recordings, the album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! (UK 1; US 6) was released in 1970; it was declared by critic Lester Bangs to be the best live album ever.
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Conclusion
Little did the Rolling Stones know how apt their name - inspired by the title of a Muddy Waters song, "Rollin' Stone" - would turn out to be. Formed in 1962, they are the longest-lived continuously active group in rock and roll history. They are also, according to a slogan that is supported by critical and popular consensus, "the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band." Throughout four decades of shifting tastes in the arena of popular music, the Stones have kept rolling, adapting to the latest sounds and styles without straying too far from their origins as a blues-loving, guitar-based rock and roll band. In all aspects, theirs has been a remarkable career - and one with no apparent end in sight.
The Rolling Stones' earliest origins date back to the boyhood friendship of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, forged in 1951. Their acquaintance was interrupted when both families moved in the mid-Fifties but got rekindled in October 1960, when the two ran into each other at a train station. (Richards noticed the imported R&B albums Jagger was carrying under his arm.) Jagger, a student at the London School of Economics, was a hardcore blues aficionado, while Richards' interest leaned more toward Chuck Berry-style rock and roll. Richards soon joined Jagger's group, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys.
The Eighties yielded both the group's best-selling album (Tattoo You, #1 for nine weeks in 1981) and the longest period ever between Stones tours (eight years). A growing estrangement between Jagger and Richards culminated in a three-year lull after the release of Dirty Work (1986). Happily, the standoff ended when Jagger and Richards successfully resumed their working relationship during a ten-day songwriting retreat in Barbados. The Stones regrouped for an energetic, well-received world tour following the recording of strong, creatively resurgent Steel Wheels. (Wanting to exit on a high note, bassist Wyman announced his retirement from the band in 1992). In the Nineties, the Rolling Stones have found a way to accommodate the solo careers of its two principals, Jagger and Richards, while leaving time for band projects. In fact, the group is seemingly more active now than it's been since the Seventies, having released studio albums (including the Stones' first Best Rock Album Grammy-winner, Voodoo Lounge) and the live No Security, and kicked off lengthy tours in 1994 (Voodoo Lounge) and 1997 (Bridges to Babylon). Through it all, no one has yet dethroned the Rolling Stones of their title as the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band.
Annexes
Bibliography
Gered Mankowitz: The Rolling Stones - Out of their Heads
Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones, Chicago Review Press
Stanley Booth, Dance with the Devil: The Rolling Stones & their times, Random House
Roy Carr, The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record, Harmony Books
Greil Marcus, "Myth & Misqotation", The Dustbin of History, Harward University Press
The Rolling Stones, According to The Rolling Stones, Chronical Books
CBC Digital Archives - The Rolling Stones: Canada Gets Satisfaction
TOTA`75 The official Illustrated account of The Rolling Stones Tour of the Americas `75
Stanley Booth, "Keith: Standing In The Shadows", St. Martin`s Press
www.wikipedia.com
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