Article from The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
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.
While making the rounds of London blues clubs, Jagger and Richards met guitarist Brian Jones, a member of Blues Incorporated (fronted by Alexis Korner, a key figure in the early London blues-rock scene). Jagger and Richards had been knocked out by Jones’ slide-guitar work on his solo reading of Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom.” Soon, the trio of Jagger, Richards and Jones became roommates and musical collaborators.
Keith Richards is clear about whose band it was in the beginning: “Brian was really fantastic, the first person I ever heard playing slide electric guitar,” Richards said in Stone Alone: The Story of a Rock ’n’ Roll Band, by Bill Wyman. “Mick and I both thought he was incredible. He mentioned he was forming a band. He could have easily joined another group, but he wanted to form his own. The Rolling Stones was Brian’s baby.”
When Alexis Korner skipped one of his regular Marquee gigs to appear on a BBC radio show, Jagger, Jones and Richards seized the opportunity to debut their new group. And so it came to pass that the earliest version of the Rolling Stones – which also included bassist Dick Taylor (later a founding member and guitarist for the Pretty Things), drummer Mick Avory (a future member of the Kinks) and keyboardist Ian Stewart (the Stones’ lifelong road manager and adjunct member) - made their first public appearance on July 12th, 1962.
The Rolling Stones thereafter commandeered an eight-month residency at the Crawdaddy Club, where they attracted a following of fans and fellow musicians. By that time, the group’s final lineup had been set, with founding members Jagger, Richards and Jones augmented by drummer Charlie Watts (a Blues Incorporated alumnus) and bassist Bill Wyman. They also took on a young manager-producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, who saw in the Stones a chance to exploit “the opposite to what the Beatles are doing.” Indeed, the Stones would come to epitomize the darker, scruffier and more boldly sexual side of rock and roll in a kind of ongoing counterpoint with the Beatles sunnier, more pop-oriented vistas.
The Rolling Stones cut their first record, “Come On” b/w “I Wanna Be Loved,” in May 1963 for the Decca label. With a Chuck Berry-penned A side and a Willie Dixon cover on the flip, it blatantly set forth the dichotomy whose eventual melding in the Jagger/Richards songwriting team would soon come to define the sound and sensibility of the Rolling Stones. The group’s second single, “I Wanna Be Your Man,” was given to them by the Lennon/McCartney songwriting tandem, thereby establishing from the outset that no hostile rivalry existed between the Beatles and the Stones. The first half of 1964 saw the Rolling Stones headline their first British tour (with the Ronettes) and release the single “Not Fade Away” (a powerfully retooled Buddy Holly cover) and their eponymous first album, retitled England’s Newest Hitmakers/The Rolling Stones for U.S. release.
The Rolling Stones’ commercial breakthrough came in mid-1964 with their rollicking, country-blues rendition of Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now,” which went to #3 on the British chart and just missed the U.S. Top Forty. But it was in 1965 that the Stones discovered their own voice with the singles “The Last Time” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The last of these, built around a compelling fuzztone guitar riff from Richard, is more than a standard; many consider it the all-time greatest rock and roll song. It also captured the Stones’ attitude: an impolite, plainspoken surliness that brought them into disfavor with rock-hating elements in the establishment. Of course, that only made the group more appealing to those sons and daughters who found themselves estranged from the hypocrisies of the adult world - an element that would solidify into an increasingly militant and disenchanted counterculture as the decade wore on.
Aftermath, released in April 1966, was the first Stones albums to consist entirely of Jagger-Richards originals. It found them setting aside their blues roots to explore artful, unsentimental, hard-rocking pop that detailed battles between sexes, classes and generations. The contributions of Brian Jones, the one-time blues purist, were now key to the Stones’ eclectic sound, as he colored the songs with arcane embellishments on a variety of instruments ranging from marimba ("Under My Thumb") to dulcimer ("Lady Jane"). The group’s subsequent singles pushed the envelope of outrage, which the Stones were learning to exploit to their benefit. “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing in the Shadow)” was a surreal and speedy freakout whose picture sleeve depicted the Stones in drag, while “Let’s Spend the Night Together” brooked controversy for the bluntly sexual come-on of its title and lyrics.
At mid-decade, the three pre-eminent forces in rock music were the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. They mutually influenced one another, and aspects of Dylan’s folk-rock and the Beatles’ similar turn in that direction with Rubber Soul are clearly evident on the Stones’ Between the Buttons, which appeared in 1967. It remains the group’s most baroque and understated recording. After the release of Flowers, an album that collected stray tracks for the American market, the Stones surrendered subtlety for the bombastic psychedelia of Their Satanic Majesties Request. It was the group’s more portentous-sounding retort to the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles’ Summer of Love manifesto. It also marked the last time that the Stones would creatively shadow the Beatles.
The year 1967 was an eventful one for the Rolling Stones. Not only did they release three albums, but also they were beset with legal troubles stemming from a string of media-instigated drug busts. When the dust cleared, Jagger, Richards and Jones had narrowly escaped draconian prison sentences. However, whereas the ordeal seemed to strengthen Jagger and Richards’ steely resolve, ongoing substance abuse was rapidly causing Jones’ physical and mental state to degenerate. He was only marginally involved in sessions for Beggar’s Banquet, the Stones’ 1968 masterpiece, and his departure from the group was announced on June 8th, 1969, with “musical differences” being cited as the reason. On July 3rd of that year, Jones was found dead in his swimming pool, the official cause being given as “death by misadventure.”
Jones’ replacement was Mick Taylor, an alumnus of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers who made his debut with the Stones at a July 5th free concert in London’s Hyde Park. Attended by a crowd of 250,000, the concert launched the Stones’ 1969 tour while paying last respects to Jones. By this time the Stones had returned to basic rock and roll with a vengeance, the difference between 1964 and 1969 being that now their music was not so much derivative as definitive. The string of muscular Stones classics from 1968-69 includes “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler.” The last two of these came from their decade-closing Let It Bleed, an album filled with portents of violence, decadence and social cataclysm.
As the Beatles’ final chapters were being written, the Stones shifted into high gear. If the former group expressed the heady idealism of the Sixties, the Stones were, by contrast, hardened realists whose music provided a kind of survival tonic for the embattled counterculture. And it was the Stones to whom the baton passed as the Sixties gave way to the Seventies. In fact, the Rolling Stones staged another free concert - at Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco on December 6, 1969, barely three months after Woodstock - that symbolically and literally marked the end the Sixties. A violence-prone, drugged-out, daylong nightmare marked by the stabbing death of a concert attendee by Hell’s Angels, Altamont was forever captured and preserved in the unnerving film documentary Gimme Shelter.
In 1971, the Stones launched their own record company, Rolling Stones Records, with the release of Sticky Fingers and its raunchy, exuberant first single, “Brown Sugar.” With a cover designed by Andy Warhol that featured an actual working zipper, Sticky Fingers came across as an assured, prototypically Seventies rock album whose varied musical settings benefited from guitarist Taylor’s melodic touch. They followed this succinct, fine-tuned work with a sprawling, raucous masterpiece: the double album Exile on Main Street. At this point, the Stones’ clearly had their fingers on the pulse of the fractured mood of the Seventies. It also reflected the group’s own inimitable yin-yang in grainy aural black-and-white: bristling musical energy vs. heavy-lidded world-weariness, love of rock vs. loyalty to the blues, the downward pull of decadence vs. a dogged professional effort to capture the moment. They took this juggernaut on the road shortly after Exile’s release in 1972, helping to refine the parameters of what would become known as “arena tours” with a well-oiled machine typified, again, by decadence and professionalism existing cheek-by-jowl.
Subsequent albums - such as Goats Head Soup (1973), It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (1974) and Black and Blue (1976) - yielded solid individual songs but represented a kind of creative lull, lacking the sustained brilliance of the band’s recorded output from 1968 to 1972, when they could do no wrong. Internal factors, including Richards’ mounting drug problems, Taylor’s abrupt departure in 1974 and Jagger’s jet-setting lifestyle, contributed to the air of instability. Ron Wood, a member of the Faces and Rod Stewart’s frequent collaborator and accompanist, was chosen as Taylor’s replacement for the Stones’ 1975 tour. He became an official member by the time of Black and Blue’s release, although he played on only a handful of tracks. With Wood’s complete integration into the lineup, and driven by the insurgent challenge of punk-rock, the Stones delivered one of the hardest-hitting albums of their career, Some Girls, in 1978. Once again, it was back to business as usual for the Stones: the cover and certain lyrics proved controversial, and the songs were timely, including unmistakably Stonesy takes on disco ("Miss You") and punk ("Shattered").
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.
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That was an article from The Roll and Pole Hall of Fame which give some back ground info on the Rolling Stone one of the greats band to play music in any decade. "Pre-eminent forces in rock music were the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones"' was one of the statements that stands out to me when I read this article because everyone in the world that listern to some type of American or British music knows, those 3 are common associtated with being legends in the music industry. I know that when the Roll Stones was at there peek most of you were not around and some of parents were kid or not even an idea yet but the Stone are one of those bands that never dies and the still are around today maybe not put out albums but could be heard alot of places. There influnce are all over the music industry. With countless hit single that have made them legendry like Paint it Black (p.s. one of my favorites) its not hard to see there musical impact. In the eyes on many the Rolling Stones are ''the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band'' and with good reasoning.
