Songwriting genius and satanic majesty
The Rolling Stones’ powerhouse talents forged a swaggering soundtrack to the rock era
First in a 10- part countdown series about the rock ’ n’ roll- era visionaries who invented the musical vocabulary we’re still hearing today from rookie bands and veterans alike.
Mythology would have it the Rolling Stones came to North America as the unkempt, scarylooking bad boys your teen daughter might run away with, never to be heard from again. An alternative to the clean, polite Beatles who just wanted to hold your hand and have tea with your mom, some say.
Even today, “I was always more of a Stones person than a Beatles person” has become shorthand for how much cooler or rebellious one was or is.
That’s a revisionist con job. Still, I never forgot what my cousin Mel told me when I was 11 and he was 13. I got it only on an intuitive level, but it still kind of makes sense: “The Beatles are life. The Stones are action,” he said. They were. The Stones had their inspiration from black blues artists such as Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo and Big Bill Broonzy, rather than more gentrified acts such as the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly, who were the deities of many of the group’s British Invasion brethren. The Stones were grittier than most of the English pop groups. Maybe they did seem a little nastier.
But what ultimately sets the Stones apart from groups like the Animals and Manfred Mann, who were equally blues- savvy and arguably better musicians, was their ability to take it to the next level.
That was down to the formidable writing partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Bullied into easing back the covers and writing their own material by their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, they responded, legend tells us, with the pop ballad As Tears Go By.
But it wasn’t long before some of the rock era’s most unforgettable tracks came rushing out of these two kids from the London suburbs. The Last Time, ( I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Get Off of My Cloud, 19th Nervous Breakdown, Ruby Tuesday and Jumpin’ Jack Flash, to name only a few, followed in a burst of Technicolor.
And those were only the chapter headings. A new Stones single in an outrageous picture sleeve or an album with an appropriately dark- lit cover was always a major event.
They had it all: showmanship, songs and satanic majesty.
With the albums Beggar’s Banquet ( 1968) and Let It Bleed ( 1969), their musical vision reached a self- confident peak, with a swagger few could approach. It was one of the greatest one- two punches in rock history.
From that point on, the oeuvre is more debatable, although there have been some undeniable highs.
The Rolling Stones still roam the Earth as the self- proclaimed world’s greatest rock ’ n’ roll band, a title even they must realize is undeserved. But in fairness, that title belongs to a thousand different groups on a thousand different nights. It is owned by no one.
What the Stones do own is an attitude that made a couple of generations want to get behind an instrument and climb onstage, a raunchiness that redefined the rock in rock ’ n’ roll, a guitar sound — Richards’ five- string “open G” tuning — that bands still copy, and a deadly combination of hoodlike menace and incongruous effeminacy that altered the look of rock forever. Most of all, they gave us those powerhouse songs that still stop us dead in our tracks within a note or two.