Rolling Stones, The

views updated

THE ROLLING STONES

Formed: 1962, London, England

Members: Mick Jagger, vocals (Michael Philip Jagger; born Dartford, England, 26 July 1943); Keith Richards, guitar, vocals (born Dartford, England, 18 December 1943); Ron Wood, guitar, vocals (born Hillingdon, England, 1 June 1947); Charlie Watts, drums (born Islington, England, 2 June 1941). Former members: Brian Jones, guitar (Lewis Brian Hopkins-Jones; born Cheltenham, England, 28 February 1942; died London, England, 3 July 1969); Mick Taylor, guitar (born Hertfordshire, England, 17 January 1948); Bill Wyman, bass (born London, England, 24 October 1936).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Voodoo Lounge (1994)

Next to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones were the most important musical group to emerge from the so-called "British Invasion" of the 1960s. Distinguished from the Beatles in style as well as substance, the Stones early on developed a badboy image that would stick to them forever. From the first, they epitomized rebellion and cool eroticism in a way that made their music speak directly to the alienated youth culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In this respect, they reached the ears and hearts of political and social radicals more emphatically than the Beatles did.

However, if the only thing their music did was to convey such messages, it would long ago have joined history with many other groups of the period—of significance then, but not now. The Stones were also a first-rate rock and roll band, the British group that did most with the traditional American musical form, the blues. It was "Rolling Stone," a number by Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters, that gave the group its name, and it was the Chicago blues style—faster paced than the blues of the Mississippi Delta from which it was derived—that shaped the group's efforts in the genre. The combination of Mick Jagger's sexy vocals and Keith Richards's Chuck Berry–influenced guitar licks gave the group an edge over all competitors as the Beatles closed shop in 1970. The self-styled "world's greatest rock and roll band" was born.

The Stones Begin to Roll

Two school chums, friends from boyhood, formed the core of the Rolling Stones. Keith Richards and Michael (Mick) Philip Jagger first met in primary school in 1950, but it was ten years before they encountered each other again and realized they shared an enthusiasm for American rock and roll and blues. By 1963 the group—by then including Brian Jones on guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, and Charlie Watts on drums—cut its first single, Chuck Berry's
"Come On," which reached number twenty-one on the British charts. By January of the following year the Stones' cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" made it to the number four spot. The Stones had found their audience, and they began to roll.

As the Beatles began their first, sensational American tour in February 1964, the Stones presented a musical alternative. They didn't sing songs about holding hands or other high school events, at that time the core of the Beatles' repertory. Virtually from the beginning, the Stones went for the jugular, with songs that dealt explicitly with sex and violence. They also perfected a style, in the person of Jagger, of strutting, in-your-face sexuality that became (by the 1970s) the trademark of every lead singer in every major rock group in the Western world.

Jagger's performance style takes the sensual moves and gestures once associated only with certain black performers to their logical extreme. When he sang "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" he made it clear what he wanted, and how much. By contrast, the Beatles, even as they moved into their hippie phase, looked more like choirboys. At the same time, Richards's guitar work took the style of the most important black guitarist of the 1950s, Chuck Berry, and married it to the urbane and more than slightly decadent lyrics increasingly typical of the group.

Altamont and After

Early hits in the Stones' songbook like "Time Is on My Side" (1964) and "Heart of Stone" (1965) capture the blues tradition as surely as any other work of the period. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965) became not only their signature song but, in the opinion of many, the best rock and roll song ever. "Street Fighting Man" (1968) became an anthem of the radical activists of that year, while "Sympathy for the Devil" (also from the Beggars Banquet [1968] album) was the closest the Stones would get to a philosophical and political statement, with its topical references and special meanings for the young and hip.

That message seemed less definite after the Altamont disaster of December 1969. On the heels of a highly successful United States tour, the Stones promised their California fans a free concert at a venue near San Francisco. On the advice of the Grateful Dead's guitarist Jerry Garcia, members of the motorcycle gang Hells Angels were hired as security guards. The result was one death by stabbing and many others injured, as the Angels mercilessly beat random members of the audience. They also lobbed unopened 16-ounce beer cans in the air, laughing as they hit the stoned hippies, and even attacked members of the group Jefferson Airplane as they were about to perform on stage.

This disastrous event, combined with the mysterious death by drowning of band member Jones just before it, hurt the band's reputation as it was reaching a peak, but the 1970s saw a recovery with classic, sometimes controversial albums like Sticky Fingers (1971), the double-album Exile on Main Street (1972), and Black and Blue (1976). As the Stones moved on to the 1980s and 1990s, their music continued in a similar vein, with increasingly profitable tours and commercial connections.

The Stones as an Institution

Now an institution, the Stones went through a period in which Jagger and Richards became alienated from each other, yet still managed to produce albums that either went to the top of the charts or near it. With Ron Wood in the group, and Wyman gone by the early 1990s, the Stones remained as popular as ever, their tours raking in larger and larger revenues. The tour for Steel Wheels (1989), an album with nothing new to offer musically, grossed some $140 million, and the stakes continued to rise.

Rock and roll has always been a get-rich-quick business, inextricably tied to capitalist goals. Nonetheless, the Stones opened themselves up to criticism for ticket costs and commercial links, which have become endemic in the rock concert world. Musically, the 1990s saw riches that the preceding decade did not produce. In fact, three Stones albums of the 1990s would rank with the best work the Stones ever did.

Voodoo Lounge (1994) made it to the second place on the album charts and won the Stones their first ever Best Rock Album award in that year's Grammy Awards. Songs like "Love Is Strong" and "Sparks Will Fly" proved popular with audiences, and the Lounge tour topped any that preceded it with a gross of some $295 million. Stripped (1995), the live album from the tour, includes in acoustic format performances of old and new songs as well as covers like a version of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone."

A new multimillion-dollar deal with Virgin Records, which began with the Voodoo Lounge album, led to the re-release of some classic Stones sets, and also the long mothballed Rock & Roll Circus (1996), a soundtrack and concert film originally produced for the BBC in the late 1960s featuring leading players of the period like John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Eric Clapton. Among the reissues that the Virgin deal engendered, this was surely one of the most interesting.

Bridges to Babylon (1997) was another high point in the band's history, with a tour that Rolling Stone magazine called one of the peaks of the decade, a landmark in arena-staged rock concerts and a top grosser to the tune of $337 million worldwide. The legacy of blues, R&B, and soul remains as strong as ever in Bridges, but there are also touches of other musical styles, for instance, the rap passage in "Anybody Seen My Baby?" and the reggae in "You Don't Have to Mean It" (sung by Richards). The album was nominated for the Best Album category in the 1998 Grammy Awards, and was followed, as usual, by the live tour album No Security the same year.

As the Stones move into their fifth decade—vying for longevity with established rockers Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Eric Clapton—they have begun doing private party shows which, per performance, are costing billionaire birthday boys more than $10 million a date. Early in 2003, they played the birthday party of billionaire David Bonderman, a wealthy Texan, for $11.65 million, joining other luminaries, including the Eagles and Bob Dylan, who also play private parties.

The Stones released Forty Licks (2002), an anthology of work from their recorded beginnings to the present—a "Best of the Stones" selection that supersedes previous issues of the same kind. Rehearing past work only confirms, for their many die-hard fans, the truth of that self-styled designation from the late 1960s: "The World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band."

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Beggars Banquet (London, 1968); Sticky Fingers (Rolling Stones/Atlantic, 1971); Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones/Atlantic, 1972); Black and Blue (Rolling Stones/Atlantic, 1976); Voodoo Lounge (Virgin, 1994); Stripped (Virgin, 1995); Rock & Roll Circus (Virgin, 1996); Bridges to Babylon (Virgin,1997); No Security (Virgin, 1998); Forty Licks (Virgin, 2002).