No other band has stayed together longer!
The Rolling Stones are an English band whose RnB and rock & roll-infused tunes became popular during the so-called British Invasion in the early 60s.
Although they were around at the same time as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream, and The Kinks. The Rolling Stones have outlived all these bands, and incredibly, stuck together ever since. To this day, they still tour and record together, thoroughly living up to the English rock and roll lifestyle.
A year after The Beatles, in 1964, The Rolling Stones entered the world of album making with the hilariously entitled England’s Newest Hit Makers. A mantra they would stick to for at least twenty years, releasing a new album with at least one hit almost every year.
Notable tunes on the debut were Not Fade Away, I Just Wanna Make Love To You, Route 66, and Marvin Gaye’s Can I Get A Witness.
The same year they release 12×5 with tunes Under The Boardwalk and Susie Q. The U.K version of the album also had You Can’t Catch Me (Chuck Berry) on it.
Next they release The Rolling Stones, Now! and some tunes appear again, Everybody Needs Somebody To Love is new, (Blues Brothers covered this), Little Red Rooster was another reasonably big tune here. This one had been recorded by Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. This is a clear indication of how The Beatles would follow the Motown trail whereas The Stones was more into Chicago Blues.
By 1965, they release the most important album so far. Out Of Out Heads has (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction on it and this is where the bands career really starts to happen.
With the lyrics deemed too raunchy for U.K. radio, they gained a reputation as the bad boy alternative to The Beatles, a position they fully embraced and would capitalise on for decades to come!
During the same year they release Decembers Children (And Everybody’s). This one has As Tears Go By and Get Off My Cloud on it and now we can hear the songwriting of Jagger/Richards coming through.
On their next album, Aftermath, we get more classics in Under My thumb. On the U.S. edition we also find Paint It Black. Another example of how a more clean version of the band was presented to the U.K. market.
One can only imagine how this would cause rumours amongst the fans and frenzy among record collectors at the time.
1967 and the Stones release Between the Buttons. Here we get Ruby Tuesday and Let’s Spend The Night Together.
The same and following year they release two albums in The Satanic Majesties Request and Beggers Banquet. Only one significant tune here in Sympathy For The Devil.
Clearly the Rolling stones were going the controversial route with their album and song titles and as a bad boy alternative to The Beatles, it worked very well indeed.
The next year, 1969 the band release Let It Bleed, here we only find one tune to add to our stones classics collection in You Can’t Always Get What You Want.
Starngely, one of their best tunes was only released as a single around this time, only later included on revisions of Let It Bleed and that was Honky Tonk Women.
On Sticky Fingers, released in 1971 we get twice as many timeless tunes in Brown Sugar and Wild Horses.
Exile On Main St. was a double album and released in 1972, it had a Robert Johnson cover in Stop Breaking Down, as well as one hit they wrote themselves, Tumbling Dice.
As the years go by, The Rolling Stones continue to release an album a year with at least one hit on it. 1973 is no different as we get Goats Head Soup, the hit tune here is Angie.
1974 and we get another stones album in Its Only Rock ‘n Roll, unusually, here the lead single has almost the same title as the album, just with the addition (But I Like It).
This one also had a cover of Ain’t Too Proud To Beg on it as well, an old Temptations tune.
After a gap year, we get another album named Black and Blue, and for the first time, there are no hits!
Another gap year and they’re back with Some Girls in 1978, here we have two big tunes in Miss You and Beast Of Burden.
1980 and Emotional Rescue arrives, no hits. 1981 and Tattoo You brings us Start Me Up and Waiting On A Friend.
Following Tattoo You, we don’t get any more hit tunes that can stand up next to the classics.
Perhaps Saint Of Me from the 1997 Bridges to Babylon is as good, but somehow the race is run now for The Rolling Stones. it’s almost like the general public has moved on and the band is only allowed to be what they once were.
Not that this made them give up! Until Charlie Watts death in 2021, they basically just kept on going, getting close to six decades as a band!
The Rolling Stones | Related pages
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
Angie
| Am Amadd4 | E7 |
Angie, Angie,
| Gsus4 Fsus4 F | Csus4 C G/B |
when will those clouds all disappear?
Brown Sugar
| C | C |
Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields.
| F | F |
Sold in the market down in New Orleans.
Honky Tonk Women
| G | G | C F/A | C |
I met a gin-soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis.
| G | A (Asus4) | D G/B | D |
She tried to take me upstairs for a ride.
The Rolling Stones on the web
