No other band has stayed together longer!
The Rolling Stones is 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 n roll lifestyle.
A year after The Beatles, in 1964, The Rolling Stones entered the world of album-making with the hilariously named 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 released 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 released 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 were more into Chicago Blues.
By 1965, they released the most important album so far. Out Of Out Heads has (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction on it and this is where the band’s 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 capitalize on for decades to come!
During the same year, they released December’s 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 cleaner version of the band was presented to the U.K. market.
One can only imagine how this would cause rumors amongst the fans and a frenzy among record collectors at the time.
1967 and the Stones released Between the Buttons. Here we get Ruby Tuesday and Let’s Spend The Night Together.
Next, they release two albums The Satanic Majesties Request and Beggars 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, in 1969 the band released Let It Bleed, we only find one tune to add to our Stones classics collection in You Can’t Always Get What You Want.
Strangely, one of their best tunes was only released as a single around this time, only later included in 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 of 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’s death in 2021, they basically just kept on going, getting close to six decades as a band!
The Rolling Stones tunes | Related pages
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
Angie
You can learn how to play Angie by The Rolling Stones using chords, lyrics, TAB, chord analysis, and Spytunes video guitar lessons.
| Am Amadd4 | E7 |
Angie, Angie…
Brown Sugar
You can learn how to play Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, and the original recording.
| C | C |
Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields…
Honky Tonk Women
You can learn how to play Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, and the original recording.
| G | G | C F/A | C |
I met a gin-soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis…
The Rolling Stones on the web
