Stone that’s still rolling
QUESTION How many rock and pop songs include the words ‘rolling stone’?
According to the AllMusic database, there are more than 1,000 songs with ‘rolling stone’ in the title and thousands more with the phrase in the lyrics.
it all began in 1949 with the Hank Williams track Lost Highway, which contains the line: ‘i’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost.’ He took the term from the proverb a rolling stone gathers no moss for his song about a hobo paying the price for his life of sin.
Bob dylan borrowed the phrase to indicate loneliness and despair in his masterpiece Like A rolling Stone: ‘Without a home, like a complete unknown.’
rolling Stone magazine was named after the dylan song, and cover of The
rolling Stone was a big U.S. hit for dr Hook & The Medicine Show.
However, it was blues legend Muddy Waters who first used the term in a song title, for his 1950 track rollin’ Stone. The subject of his song lives this way by choice, moving from woman to woman and town to town.
The Muddy Waters track inspired a famous band name. As Keith richards explained, when his group got their first gig in 1962, they had to come up with a name quickly. A copy of The Best of
Muddy Waters was lying on the floor and Brian Jones spotted rollin’ Stone on the tracklist. Their management made them add the ‘g’.
despite the popularity of the phrase, relatively few tracks featuring ‘rolling stone’ in the title have entered the UK Top 40.
Bob dylan’s Like A rolling Stone was no 4 in 1965; a cover version by the rolling Stones was no12 in 1995; Papa Was A rollin’ Stone was a no 14 hit for The Temptations in 1973 and a no12 for Was (not Was) in 1990; and david Essex’s rolling Stone was no 5 in 1975.
Album tracks featuring the title cover just about every genre of music. Just a few of the artists who have recorded an original track called rolling Stone include
Lucky dube and culture (reggae), Pop Evil (heavy metal), grace Jones (electro pop), Passenger (folk/pop), out of Eden (gospel), Billy Joe Shaver (country), Humble Pie and Suzi Quatro (rock), Big Mama Thornton and gregg Allman (blues), robbie Williams and Pixie Lott (pop), 2KBABY (rap), Bedouin Soundclash (world) and raymond Matsuya (Japanese). Keith Smith, Wolverhampton, W. Mids.
QUESTION Has anyone suggested Worldvision to rival Eurovision?
BEHind the iron curtain, the Soviet Union could not take part in the Eurovision Song contest, so it set up a rival called intervision in 1977.
it was theoretically open to all and took place at Sopot, Poland, where there was already a song festival.
intervision didn’t catch on, running only until 1980. it mainly featured communist countries, though a few European nations had a go, including Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Belgium. The four intervision winners were czechoslovakia, the USSr, Poland and Finland.
To promote the first Eurovision broadcast in the U.S., Justin Timberlake performed his song can’t Stop The Feeling in Stockholm in 2016.
Afterwards he declared: ‘in my opinion, there should also be a Worldvision to let everybody in on the fun.’ Lisa Reed, Bingham, Notts.