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.
Early in the band's history Jagger and Richards formed a
songwriting partnership and gradually took
over leadership of the band from the increasingly troubled and
erratic Jones. At first the group recorded mainly covers of
American
blues and
R&B songs, but since the 1966 album
Aftermath,
their releases have mainly featured Jagger/Richards songs.
Mick Taylor replaced an incapacitated Jones
shortly before Jones's death in 1969. Taylor quit in 1974, and was
replaced in 1975 by
Faces guitarist
Ronnie Wood, who has remained with the
band ever since. Wyman left the Rolling Stones in 1992; 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 album sales estimated at more than
200 million worldwide.
Sticky
Fingers (1971) began a string of eight consecutive studio
albums that charted at number one in the United States. Their
latest album,
A Bigger Bang,
was released in 2005.
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.
History
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. Stones founders
Brian Jones and pianist
Ian Stewart were active in the
nascent 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. Richards credits Stewart with instigating and finding a
space for rehearsals. The early rehearsals included Stewart, Jones,
Jagger and Richards, as well as guitarist Geoff Bradford and
vocalist Brian Knight. The latter two objected to the Chuck Berry
material that Richards favoured, and ended their involvement with
as-yet-unnamed band. In June 1962 the lineup was: Jagger, Richards,
Stewart, Jones, Taylor, and drummer Tony Chapman. Taylor then left
the group. According to Richards, Jones christened the band in a
"panic" while phoning
Jazz News to place an advertisement.
When asked what the band's name was, Jones glanced at a
Muddy Waters LP lying on the floor; one of the
tracks was "
Rollin' Stone".
1962–64
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 band's long-standing
rhythm
section.
The Rolling Stones' first manager
Giorgio Gomelsky booked the band to a
Sunday residency at The Crawdaddy Club, initially inside the
Station Hotel in Richmond, and later at the larger Richmond
Athletic Association. In Gomelsky's mind, the Rolling Stones'
eight-month residency at the club, along with the emergence of
The Beatles, helped herald "
Swinging London", in which "a whole new
generation of creative people came to the fore" and "[b]lues
enjoyed a worldwide renaissance." The Crawdaddy Club was named
after Bo Diddley's "Doin' the Crawdad", since the Rolling Stones
often closed their sets with an extended version of that
number.
The growing Crawdaddy crowds of a "rather chic, well-dressed
audience" drew the attention of
Record
Mirror journalist Peter Jones, who mentioned the band to a
former Beatles publicist named
Andrew
Loog Oldham. In April 1963 Oldham saw the band at The Crawdaddy
and approached them about management. Being 19 years old (younger
than any of the band members) and therefore ineligible for an
agent's license, Oldham partnered in early May 1963 with veteran
booker Eric Easton to sign the band to a management deal. Gomelsky,
who had no written agreement with the band, was not
consulted.
George Harrison, who with the rest
of The Beatles had attended a Rolling Stones gig at The Crawdaddy,
encouraged
Decca Records'
Dick Rowe – who had rejected The Beatles – to take
an interest in The Rolling Stones. An existing contract the band
had signed in place of paying for a recording session was disposed
of when the owner of I.B.C. studios accepted Jones's explanation
that the band was breaking up and agreed to a buy-out for 100
pounds cash (which Oldham and Easton had given Jones). In May 1963,
the Rolling Stones signed a tape-lease contract with Decca, which
allowed the band artistic control over their recordings and
ownership of the recording masters, which they leased to Decca –
conditions that were quite unusual for the time. Because of the
tape-lease agreement, the Rolling Stones could avoid Decca studios
with their rigid, limited time recording schedules as well as
possible interference from the
A&R
department.
They instead recorded at Regent Sound studios
in Denmark
Street
, with Oldham taking the role of record producer (though he had no previous
recording studio experience). Oldham has noted that the
greater freedom and time they had at Regent allowed them to
"stretch out a bit, experiment and learn from our mistakes."
Wyman disagrees with the theory that it was Oldham who conceived of
The Rolling Stones' image as "wild rebels" who would be "battling
against traditional show-business values." Oldham had initially
tried to make the band more presentable by having them wear
identical suits, but they soon returned to wearing their own attire
on stage. Wyman notes that "Our reputation and image as the Bad
Boys came later, completely accidentally. Andrew never did engineer
it. He simply exploited it exhaustively." Oldham thought Stewart
did not fit the image of "pretty, thin, long-haired boys", and had
Stewart removed from the official lineup Oldham proposed that
Stewart could remain with the band as road manager and occasional
studio pianist, and Stewart accepted the offer. "That takes a big
heart," Richards has said, "but Stu had one of the largest hearts
around."
Their first single (released 7 June 1963) was a cover of Chuck
Berry's "Come On"; it reached number 21 in the UK. After the
release of their first record the band embarked on a UK club tour
playing their first gig outside of greater London at the Outlook
Club in Middlesbrough on 13 July. Later in the year Oldham and
Easton booked the band on their first big UK concert tour in the
autumn of 1963. They were billed as a supporting act for American
stars including Bo Diddley,
Little
Richard and
The Everly
Brothers, and the tour became a "training ground" for the young
band's stagecraft.
During this tour the Rolling Stones recorded their second single, a
Lennon/McCartney-penned number
entitled "
I Wanna Be Your Man;
it reached number 12 in the UK charts. Their third single featured
Buddy Holly's "
Not Fade Away" and reached number
3.
The band's first album
The Rolling Stones, (issued
in the US as
England's
Newest Hit Makers) was composed primarily of covers, but
also included a
Jagger/Richards
original – "
Tell Me " –
and two numbers credited to
Nanker
Phelge, the name used for songs composed by the entire group.
It was Oldham who had encouraged Jagger and Richards to write songs
together; he also had Richards adopt "Keith Richard" as a
professional name, because it "looked more pop".
The Rolling Stones' first US tour in June 1964 was, in Bill Wyman's
words, "a disaster. When we arrived, we didn't have a hit record
[there] or anything going for us." When the band appeared on
Dean Martin's TV variety show
The
Hollywood Palace, Martin mocked both their hair and their
performance. During the tour, however, they did a two-day recording
session at
Chess Studios in Chicago,
where many of their musical heroes recorded. These sessions
included what would become The Rolling Stones' first number 1 in
the UK: their cover of
Bobby and Shirley
Womack's "
It's All Over
Now".
On their second US tour in the autumn of 1964, the band immediately
followed
James Brown in the filmed
theatrical release of
The TAMI
Show, which showcased American acts with British Invasion
artists. According to Jagger in 2003, "We weren't actually
following James Brown because there were hours in between the
filming of each section. Nevertheless, he was still very annoyed
about it..." On 25 October the band also appeared on
The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan,
reacting to the pandemonium the Stones caused, promised to never
book them again, though he later did book them repeatedly. Their
second LP – the US-only
12 X 5 – was
released during this tour; it again contained mainly cover tunes,
augmented by Jagger/Richards and Nanker Phelge tracks.
The Rolling Stones' fifth UK single – a cover of
Willie Dixon's "
Little Red Rooster" backed by "Off the
Hook" (Nanker Phelge) – was released in November 1964 and became
their second number-1 hit in the UK – an unprecedented achievement
for a blues number. The band's US distributors (
London Records) declined to release "Little
Red Rooster" as a single there. In December 1964 London Records
released the band's first single with Jagger/Richards originals on
both sides: "
Heart
of Stone" backed with "What a Shame"; "Heart of Stone" went to
number 19 in the US.
1965–69
The band's second UK LP -
The Rolling Stones No.
2, released in
January 1965 - was another number 1 on the album charts; the US
version, released in February as
The Rolling Stones, Now!, went
to number 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. It was also later identified by Richards as the "the bridge to
into thinking about writing for The Stones. It gave us a level of
confidence; a pathway of how to do it." Their first international
number-1 hit was "
Satisfaction", recorded in May
1965 during the band's third North American tour. Richards had
recorded the fuzz guitar riff that drives the song as a
scratch track to guide the horn
section that he envisioned overdubbing. Oldham disagreed and,
forgoing horn overdubs, released "Satisfaction" 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. On this
album Jones's contributions expanded beyond guitar and harmonica.
Exploiting his adeptness at quickly learning different instruments
and became a colorist for the band. To the
Middle Eastern-influenced "
Paint It Black" he added sitar, to the ballad
"
Lady Jane" he added delicate dulcimer,
and to "Under My Thumb" he added marimbas. "Aftermath was also
remarkable for the almost 12-minute long "
Going Home", the first
extended jam on a top-selling rock & roll album.
The Stones' success on the British and American singles charts
peaked during 1966. "
19th Nervous
Breakdown" (Feb. 1966, UK number 2, US number 2) was followed
by their first trans-Atlantic number-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 number 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 September 1966 single "
Have
You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?" (UK number
5, US number 9) was notable in several respects—it was the first
Stones recording to feature brass horns, 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 number 1 in America and number 3 in the UK.
When the band went to
New
York
to perform the numbers on The Ed Sullivan
Show, they were ordered to change the lyrics of the refrain to
"let's spend some time together".
Jagger, Richards and Jones began to be hounded by authorities over
their recreational drug use. In early 1967 when
News of the World ran a three-part
feature entitled "Pop Stars and Drugs: Facts That Will Shock You".
The series alleged LSD parties hosted by
The Moody Blues and attended by top stars
including
The Who's
Pete Townshend and
Cream's
Ginger
Baker, and alleged admissions of drug use by leading pop
musicians. The first article targeted Donovan (who was raided and
charged soon after); the second installment (published on 5
February) targeted the Rolling Stones. A reporter who contributed
to the story spent an evening at the exclusive London club
Blaise's, where a member of the Stones allegedly
took several
Benzedrine tablets,
displayed a piece of
hashish and invited his
companions back to his flat for a "smoke". The article claimed that
this was Mick Jagger, but it turned out to be a case of mistaken
identity—the reporter had in fact been eavesdropping on Brian
Jones. On the night the article was published Jagger appeared on
the
Eammon Andrews chat show and
announced that he was filing a writ of libel against the
paper.
A week later on Sunday 12 February Sussex police (tipped off by the
News of the World) raided
a party at Keith Richards's home, Redlands. No arrests were made at
the time but Jagger, Richards and their friend
Robert Fraser (an art dealer) were
subsequently charged with drug offences. Richards said in 2003,
"When we got busted at Redlands, it suddenly made us realise that
this was a whole different ball game and that was when the fun
stopped. Up until then it had been as though London existed in a
beautiful space where you could do anything you wanted."
In March,
while awaiting the consequences of the police raid, Jagger,
Richards and Jones took a short trip to Morocco
, accompanied
by Marianne Faithfull, Jones's
girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and
other friends. During this trip the stormy relations between
Jones and Pallenberg deteriorated to the point that Pallenberg left
Morocco with Richards. Richards said later: "That was the final
nail in the coffin with me and Brian. He'd never forgive me for
that and I don't blame him, but hell, shit happens." Richards and
Pallenberg would remain a couple for twelve years. Despite these
complications, The Rolling Stones toured Europe in March and April
1967. The tour included the band's first performances in Poland,
Greece and Italy.
On 10 May 1967—the same day Jagger, Richards and Fraser were
arraigned in connection with the Redlands charges—Brian Jones's
house was raided by police and he was arrested and charged with
possession of
cannabis. With three
out of five Rolling Stones now facing criminal charges, Jagger and
Richards were tried at the end of June. On 29 June Jagger was
sentenced to three months' imprisonment for possession of four
amphetamine tablets; Richards was found
guilty of allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property and
sentenced to one year in prison. Both Jagger and Richards were
imprisoned at that point, but were released on bail the next day
pending appeal.
The Times ran the
famous editorial entitled "
Who breaks a butterfly on a
wheel?" in which editor
William
Rees-Mogg was strongly critical of the sentencing, pointing out
that Jagger had been treated far more harshly for a minor first
offence than "any purely anonymous young man".
While awaiting the appeal hearings, the band recorded a new single,
"
We Love You", as a thank-you for the
loyalty shown by their fans. It began with the sound of prison
doors closing, and the accompanying music video included allusions
to the trial of
Oscar Wilde. On 31 July,
the appeals court overturned Richards's conviction, and Jagger's
sentence was reduced to a
conditional discharge. Brian Jones's
trial took place in November 1967; in December, after appealing the
original prison sentence, Jones was fined £1000, put on three
years' probation and ordered to seek professional help.
December 1967 also saw the release of
Their Satanic Majesties
Request (UK number 3; US 2), released shortly after The
Beatles'
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band.
Satanic Majesties had been recorded in
difficult circumstances while Jagger, Richards and Jones were
dealing with their court cases. The band parted ways with producer
Andrew Oldham during the sessions. The split was amicable, at least
publicly; but in 2003 Jagger said: "The reason Andrew left was
because he thought that we weren't concentrating and that we were
being childish. It was not a great moment really - and I would have
thought it wasn't a great moment for Andrew either. There were a
lot of distractions and you always need someone to focus you at
that point, that was Andrew's job."
Satanic Majesties thus became the first album The Rolling
Stones produced on their own. It was also the first of their albums
released in identical versions on both sides of the Atlantic.Its
psychedelic sound was complemented by
the cover art, which featured a 3D photo by
Michael Cooper, who had also
photographed the cover of
Sgt. Pepper. Bill Wyman
wrote and sang a track on the album: "
In
Another Land", which was also released as the first The Rolling
Stones single featuring lead vocals other than Jagger's.
The band spent the first few months of 1968 working on material for
their next album. Those sessions resulted in the song "
Jumpin' Jack Flash", released as a single
in May. The song, and later that year the resulting album,
Beggars Banquet (UK number
3; US 5), marked the band's return to their blues roots, and the
beginning of their collaboration with producer
Jimmy Miller. Featuring the album's
lead single, "
Street Fighting
Man" (which addressed the political upheavals of May 1968), and
the opening track "
Sympathy for
the Devil",
Beggars Banquet was another eclectic mix
of country and blues-inspired tunes, and was hailed as an
achievement for the Stones at the time of release. On the musical
evolution between albums, Richards said, "There is a change between
material on
Satanic Majesties and
Beggars
Banquet. I'd grown sick to death of the whole Maharishi guru
shit and the beads and bells. Who knows where these things come
from, but I guess [the music] was a reaction to what we'd done in
our time off and also that severe dose of reality. A spell in
prison... will certainly give you room for thought... I was fucking
pissed with being busted. So it was, 'Right we'll go and strip this
thing down.' There's a lot of anger in the music from that period."
Richards(1968) started using
open
tunings (often in conjunction with a
capo),
most prominently an open-E or open-D tuning, then in 1969, 5-string
open-G tuning (with the lower 6th string removed), as heard on the
1969 single "
Honky Tonk Women",
"
Brown Sugar" (
Sticky Fingers, 1971), "
Tumbling Dice"(capo IV), "
Happy"(capo IV) (
Exile on Main St., 1972), and
"
Start Me Up" (
Tattoo You, 1981). Open tunings became part
of the Rolling Stones' (and Richards's) trademark guitar
sound.
The end of 1968 saw the filming of
The Rolling Stones Rock
and Roll Circus. It featured
John
Lennon,
Yoko Ono,
The Dirty Mac,
The Who,
Jethro Tull,
Marianne Faithfull and
Taj Mahal. The footage was shelved for
twenty-eight years (the Rolling Stones were reportedly dissatisfied
with their own performance) but was finally released officially in
1996.
By the release of
Beggars Banquet, Brian Jones was
troubled and contributed sporadically to the band. Jagger said that
Jones was "not psychologically suited to this way of life". His
drug use had become a hindrance, and he was unable to obtain a US
visa. Richards reported that, in a
June meeting with Jagger, Richards, and Watts at Jones's house,
Jones admitted that he was unable to "go on the road again".
According to Richards, all agreed to let Jones "...say I've left,
and if I want to I can come back". His replacement was the
20-year-old guitarist
Mick Taylor, of
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, who started
recording with the band immediately. On 3 July 1969, less than a
month later, Jones drowned in the swimming pool at his Cotchford
Farm home in
Sussex.
1969–74

Richards on stage in 1972
Courtesy: Dina Regine
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 Nellcôte
, 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
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's 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's 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."
1974–82
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
next album. Yet Richards and Jagger also wanted the Stones to
remain purely a British band. When Ronnie Wood auditioned, everyone
agreed that he was the right choice. 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's 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 and were detained by
Canada Customs after Richards was
found in possession of a burnt spoon and hash residue. On 4 March,
Richards's partner
Anita Pallenberg
pleaded guilty to drug possession and was fined for the original
airport incident.
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's
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.
The drug
case dragged on for over a year until Richards received a suspended sentence and was ordered to
play two free concerts for the CNIB in Oshawa
; both shows
were played by the Rolling Stones and The New Barbarians, a group that
Wood had put together to promote his latest solo album, and which
Richards also joined. This episode strengthened Richards's
resolve to get off heroin. It also contributed to the end of his
relationship with Pallenberg, which had become strained since the
death of their third child (an infant son named Tara); her
inability to curb her heroin addiction while Keith struggled to get
clean. While Richards was settling his legal and personal problems,
Jagger continued his jet-set lifestyle.
He was a regular at
New York's Studio
54
disco club, often in the company of model Jerry Hall. His marriage to
Bianca Jagger ended in 1979.
Although The Rolling Stones remained popular through the first half
of the 1970s, music critics had grown increasingly dismissive of
the band's output, and record sales failed to meet expectations. By
the late 70s,
punk rock had become
influential, and the Stones were criticised as decadent, aging
millionaires, and their music considered by many to be stagnant or
irrelevant. This changed in 1978, when the band released
Some Girls (UK #2; US #1), which
included the hit single "
Miss You", the country
ballad "
Far Away Eyes", "
Beast of Burden", and "
Shattered". In part a response to punk,
many songs were fast, basic, guitar-driven rock and roll, and the
album's success re-established the Rolling Stones' immense
popularity among young people. Following the
US Tour 1978, the band guested
on the first show of the fourth season of the TV series "Saturday
Night Live". The group did not tour Europe the following year,
breaking the routine of touring Europe every three years that the
band had followed since 1967.
Following the success of
Some Girls, the band released
their next album
Emotional
Rescue (UK 1; US 1) in mid-1980. The recording of the
album was reportedly plagued by turmoil, with Jagger and Richards'
relationship reaching a new low. Richards, though still using
heroin according to keyboardist Ian Mclagan began to assert more
control in the studio — more than Jagger had become used to — and a
struggle ensued as Richards felt he was fighting for "his half of
the Glimmer Twins."
Emotional Rescue hit the top of the
charts on both sides of the Atlantic and the title track reached #3
in the US.
In early 1981, the group reconvened and decided to tour the US that
year, leaving little time to write and record a new album, as well
as rehearse for the tour. That year's resulting album,
Tattoo You (UK 2; US 1) featured a number of
outtakes, including lead single "
Start Me
Up", which reached #2 in the US and ranked #22 on Billboard's
Hot 100 year-end chart. Two songs ("
Waiting on a Friend" (US #13) and
"Tops") featured Mick Taylor's guitar playing, while jazz
saxophonist
Sonny Rollins played on
"
Slave" and dubbed a part on "Waiting
on a Friend". The Rolling Stones scored one more Top Twenty hit on
the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, the #20 hit "
Hang Fire". The Stones'
American Tour 1981 was
their biggest, longest and most colourful production to date, with
the band playing from 25 September through 19 December. It was the
highest grossing tour of that year. Some shows were recorded,
resulting in the 1982 live album
Still Life (UK 4; US
5), and the 1983
Hal Ashby concert film
Let's Spend the Night Together, which was filmed at Sun
Devil Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona and the Brendan Byrne Arena in
the Meadowlands, New Jersey.
In mid-1982, to commemorate their 20th anniversary, the Stones took
their American stage show to Europe. The
European Tour 1982 was
their first European tour in six years. The tour was essentially a
carbon copy of the 1981 American tour. For the tour, the band were
joined by former
Allman Brothers
Band piano player
Chuck Leavell,
who continues to play and record with the Stones. By the end of the
year, the band had signed a new four-album, 28 million dollar
recording deal with a new label,
CBS
Records.
1983–91
Before leaving Atlantic, the Stones released
Undercover (UK 3; US 4) in late
1983. Despite good reviews and the Top Ten peak position of the
title track, 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 Stones'
Atlantic catalogue.
By this time, the Jagger/Richards split was growing. Much to the
consternation of Richards, Jagger had signed a solo deal with CBS
Records, and he spent much of 1984 writing songs for this first
solo effort. He has also stated that he was feeling 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 despite
the presence of the US Top Five hit "
Harlem Shuffle"; Jagger refused to tour to
promote the album, stating later that several band members were in
no condition to tour. 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". 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. In 1988, with the Rolling Stones inactive,
Richards released his first solo album,
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" (US #5), "
Rock and a Hard Place" (US #23)
and "
Almost Hear You Sigh". It
also included "Continental Drift", which was 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".
These were the last Rolling Stones tours for Bill Wyman, who left
the band after years of deliberation, although his retirement was
not made official until December 1992. He then published
Stone
Alone, an autobiography based on scrapbooks and diaries he had
been keeping since the band's early days. A few years later he
formed
Bill Wyman's Rhythm
Kings and began recording and touring again.
1992–2004
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 Rolling 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 Rolling
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
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.
Since 2005
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 magazine. 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 18 February 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.
On 24 March 2007, the band announced a tour of Europe called the
"Bigger Bang 2007" tour.
12 June 2007 saw the release of the band's
second four-disc DVD set: The
Biggest Bang, a seven-hour document featuring their shows
in Austin
, Rio de
Janeiro, Saitama, Shanghai and Buenos Aires
, along with extras. On 10 June 2007, the
band performed their first gig at a festival in 30 years, at the
Isle of Wight Festival, to a
crowd of 65,000. On 26 August 2007, they played their last concert
of the
A Bigger Bang Tour at the
O2 Arena in London, England. On 26 September 2007, it was announced
The Rolling Stones had made $437 million on the A Bigger Bang Tour
to list them in the latest edition of
Guinness World Records.
MSNBC
Another Stones record — this one in Guinness
Mick Jagger released a compilation of his solo work called
The Very Best of Mick
Jagger (UK 57; US 77), including three unreleased songs,
on 2 October 2007. On 12 November 2007, ABKCO released
Rolled Gold+:
The Very Best of the Rolling Stones, a double-CD remake of
the 1975 compilation
Rolled Gold; the reissue went to
number 26 in the UK charts.
In a 2007 interview with Mick Jagger after nearly two years of
touring, Jagger refused to say when the band are going to retire:
"I'm sure the Rolling Stones will do more things, more records and
more tours, we've got no plans to stop any of that really. As far
as I'm concerned, I'm sure we'll continue." In March 2008 Keith
Richards sparked rumours that a new Rolling Stones studio album may
be forthcoming, saying during an interview following the premiere
of
Shine a Light, "I think we might make another album.
Once we get over doing promotion on this film". Drummer Charlie
Watts remarked that he got ill whenever he stopped working. In July
2008 it was announced that the Rolling Stones were leaving EMI and
signing with Vivendi's
Universal
Music, taking with them their catalogue stretching back to
Sticky Fingers. New music released by the band while under
this contract will be issued through Universal's
Polydor label.
Universal Records will hold the US rights
to the pre-1994 material, while the post-1994 material will be
handled by
Interscope Records
(once a subsidiary of Atlantic). Coincidentally, Universal Music is
also the distributor for ABKCO, owners of the band's pre-
Sticky
Fingers releases.
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.
Infusion of American blues
Jagger and Richards shared an admiration of Jimmy Reed, Muddy
Waters and Little Walter, and their interest influenced 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 major American R&B artists, 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 heard...the most
expressive."
Early songwriting
Despite the Rolling 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 ," 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 Rolling 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." The song was based
on a traditional gospel song popularised by
The Staples Singers, but the Rolling
Stones' number features a distinctive guitar riff (played on stage
by Brian Jones).
Band members
Line-ups
1962 |
with
|
January–April 1963 |
- Mick Jagger – lead vocals, harmonica, percussion
- Brian Jones – guitars, backing vocals, harmonica,
percussion
- Keith Richards – guitars, backing vocals
- Ian Stewart – piano, percussion
- Charlie Watts – drums
- Bill Wyman – bass, backing vocals
|
May 1963 – May 1969 |
- Mick Jagger – lead vocals, harmonica, percussion
- Brian Jones – guitars, backing vocals, harmonica,
percussion, tamboura, sitar, dulcimer,
keyboards, autoharp, brass,
woodwinds, theremin
- Keith Richards – guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards,
percussion
- Charlie Watts – drums, percussion
- Bill Wyman – bass, vocals, percussion, keyboards
|
May 1969 – December 1974 |
- Mick Jagger – lead vocals, harmonica, keyboards,
percussion, guitar
- Keith Richards – guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards
- Mick Taylor – guitars, bass,
synthesizer, percussion, backing
vocals
- Charlie Watts – drums, percussion
- Bill Wyman – bass, synthesizer
|
December 1974 – May 1975 |
- Mick Jagger - lead vocals, harmonica, keyboards,
percussion, guitar
- Keith Richards – guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards
- Charlie Watts – drums, percussion
- Bill Wyman – bass, synthesizer
|
May 1975 – December 1992 |
- Mick Jagger – lead vocals, harmonica, keyboards,
guitar
- Keith Richards – guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards,
percussion
- Charlie Watts – drums, percussion
- Ronnie Wood – guitars, backing
vocals, bass, drums, percussion
- Bill Wyman – bass, synthesizer
|
1993–present |
- Mick Jagger – lead vocals, harmonica, percussion, guitar,
bass, keyboards
- Keith Richards – guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards
- Charlie Watts – drums, percussion
- Ronnie Wood – guitars, backing vocals, bass
with
|
Discography
In a career that has spanned nearly half a century, the band has
released over 90
singles, more than
two dozen
studio albums, and numerous
compilation and
live albums. Ten of their studio albums are among
Rolling Stone magazine's
The 500 Greatest
Albums of All Time, with their 1972
double album Exile on Main St. placing
seventh.
Concert tours
Official videography
Officially released films featuring the Rolling Stones are listed
with their original release dates. (The formats mentioned are the
most recent versions officially available, not necessarily the
original release formats.)
- 1966: Charlie Is My
Darling, directed by Peter Whitehead) (released on
DVD in 2009 without the Rolling Stones' music)
- 1968: One Plus One (also
titled Sympathy for the Devil), directed by Jean-Luc Godard (DVD)
- 1969: Stones in the
Park (DVD)
- 1970: Gimme
Shelter, directed by Albert and David Maysles (DVD)
- 1974: Ladies and Gentlemen:
The Rolling Stones, directed by Rolin Binzer
- 1982: Rocks Off and
Let's Spend
the Night Together, both directed by Hal Ashby (DVD)
- 1984: Video Rewind
(VHS)
- 1989: 25x5 -
The Continuing Adventures of the Rolling Stones (VHS)
- 1992: Stones at the
Max, directed by Julien
Temple (DVD)
- 1995: The
Rolling Stones: Voodoo Lounge Live (DVD)
- 1996: The Rolling Stones Rock
and Roll Circus, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (filmed in 1968)
(DVD)
- 1998: Bridges to
Babylon Tour '97-98 (DVD)
- 2003: Four Flicks
(DVD)
- 2007: The Biggest Bang
(DVD/Blu-ray Disc)
- 2008: Shine a
Light, directed by Martin
Scorsese, released to theaters in standard and IMAX presentations (DVD/Blu-ray
Disc)
- 2009: Stones at the
Max Remastered Edition, directed by Julien Temple (DVD/Blu-ray Disc)
References
Further reading
- Gered Mankowitz: The Rolling Stones - Out of Their
Heads. Photographs 1965-67 and 1982, ISBN 3-89602-664-X
- Stanley Booth, The True
Adventures of the Rolling Stones, Chicago Review Press (2000),
ISBN 1-55652-400-5 (also published as Dance with the Devil: The
Rolling Stones and Their Times, Random House (1984), ISBN
0-394-53488-3
- Stanley Booth, Keith: Standing in the Shadows, St.
Martin's Press (1995), ISBN 0-312-11841-4
- Bill Wyman, Rolling with the
Stones, DK Publishing (2002), ISBN 0-7894-9998-3
- Roy Carr, The Rolling Stones: An
Illustrated Record, Harmony Books (1976), ISBN
0-517-52641-7
- Robert Greenfield, S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with
the Rolling Stones (1974), Reissued De Capo Press, 2002. ISBN
0-306-81199-5
- James Phelge, Nankering with the Stones 2000. ISBN
1556523734
- The Rolling Stones, According to the Rolling Stones,
Chronicle Books (2003), ISBN 0-8118-4060-3
- Andrew Loog Oldham,
Stoned, St. Martin's Griffin (2000), ISBN
0-312-27094-1
- Chet Flippo, On the Road With the Rolling Stones,
Doubleday/Dolphin (1985), ISBN 0-385-19374
- Greil Marcus, "Myth and
Misquotation", The Dustbin Of History, Harvard University
Press (1997), ISBN 0-674-21858-2
- "The Ecstasy and the Irony: The Evolution of a Rhythm
& Blues Band" Ian McPherson (2000)
- The
Gram Parsons Homepage FAQ
- CBC Digital Archives - The Rolling Stones: Canada
gets satisfaction
External links