Dear listeners,
I’ve spent the past week thinking a lot about the Rolling Stones — specifically, both poles of the band’s impossibly long existence.
That’s partly because I’m about a third of the way through Bob Spitz’s new book “The Rolling Stones: The Biography,” an authoritative but lively chronicle of all things Stones. I wasn’t sure the world needed yet another book about one of the most famous rock bands in all of Western civilization, but when I flipped through its prologue — which vividly recounts a chance meeting, on Oct. 17, 1961, between a teenage Keith Richards and Mick Jagger on a train platform in a London suburb — I was immediately drawn in and have barely been able to put it down.
Why am I such a sucker for an engagingly written music biography, especially if it’s about an act whose place in cultural history is so deeply entrenched? I think it’s because I enjoy the suspension of inevitability that occurs when an author is able to bring a band’s earliest days to life. In his opening chapters, Spitz effectively shows how unlikely it is that this particular band of peculiar characters came together at all, and how strange it was that a ragtag collection of degenerate British blues nerds established what would go on to become, by just about any measure, the most successful rock band of all time.
For the first hundred pages or so, their world-conquering triumph is anything but inevitable, which makes you realize anew all the particular contingencies that had to align for history as we so well know it to take place. So much depends upon being in the right place at the right time, which for Jagger and Richards was a westbound train to London on that October morning.
Nearly 65 years later — last Tuesday — I witnessed those same two lads standing together onstage at an event in Brooklyn, talking about the upcoming release of their 25th studio album, “Foreign Tongues.” (This was going to be the LP that finally put these guys on the map, joked the M.C., Conan O’Brien.) At this point in their existence, the Rolling Stones feel as much like a social experiment as they do a rock band, providing a rare example of what a group sounds like more than six decades into its improbably continuous existence.
Given that their past and present is on my mind, I thought it would be fun to make a playlist that juxtaposes their earliest material with their most recent, beginning with their very first single from 1963, and concluding with the two new “Foreign Tongues” songs they released last week, “Rough and Twisted” and “In the Stars.” It strikes me, listening in sequence, that recording technology has changed more than the Stones’ signature sound, which as ever centers on Richards’s bluesy riffs and Jagger’s punchy staccato vocals.
Also, today I’m introducing a new feature you’ll see in The Amplifier every so often: The Amplifier Quiz! Test your knowledge of music trivia — or learn a fun fact that you can share with your music-loving friends. See today’s Rolling Stones-themed question below.
What a drag it is getting old,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. “Come On”
Released in June 1963, the Rolling Stones’ debut single was a jaunty rendition of a relatively obscure 1961 Chuck Berry song. Punctuated by Richards’s rhythmic playing and a wailing harmonica riff from Brian Jones, “Come On” didn’t exactly set the world afire — it peaked at No. 21 on the British singles charts — and one of the first critics to write about the band, Norman Jopling, didn’t think it captured the energy of the group’s electric live performances. Still, “Come On” gave the Stones exposure and established a sound and attitude that they would continue to refine in the coming years.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. “I Wanna Be Your Man”
The Stones’ second single actually has a more notable place in rock history than the first: It was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Stones’ hustler of a manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, ran into them when they were in the middle of writing it, and convinced them to pay a visit to the studio where the Stones were then jamming; it remains the only Beatles-penned song recorded by the Stones. (Incidentally, McCartney makes an appearance on “Foreign Tongues,” his first credited contribution to a Rolling Stones record.) It’s illuminating to hear the comparatively raw and feral energy that the nascent Stones bring to an unmistakable Lennon-McCartney composition.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. “Tell Me”
So Lennon and McCartney wrote their own songs, eh? The Stones (and Oldham) started to think there might be something in that racket. I’m charmed by the relative simplicity and clumsiness of some of the earliest Jagger-Richards compositions, most of which were passed on to other artists. (See: Gene Pitney’s 1963 track “That Girl Belongs to Yesterday,” and Marianne Faithfull’s 1964 debut single “As Tears Go By.”) At least in the very beginning, songwriting didn’t seem to come as naturally to them as it did to those lads from Liverpool. But this sweet, lilting single — the first Jagger-Richards composition recorded by the Rolling Stones — shows that they were at least headed in the right direction.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. “Not Fade Away”
In the early days, the Stones usually sounded more like themselves when they were putting a distinct spin on someone else’s material than they did when attempting to write their own. This rough-hewed rendition of a Buddy Holly classic is a perfect example. By speeding up the tempo and leaning into the Bo Diddley beat, as well as adding bluesy harmonica and handclaps, the Rolling Stones stripped the veneer from Holly’s taut pop-rocker and turned it into, in Spitz’s words, “a one minute-and-forty-eight-second joyride that delivered the signature sound that would define the Rolling Stones for the rest of their career.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. “Rolling Stone Blues”
Let’s begin traveling forward in time with a recording that bridges the gap between the Stones’ distant and recent pasts. This closing track from the band’s 2023 album, “Hackney Diamonds,” is a stripped-down take on the Muddy Waters song from which the band got its name. Legend has it that when Brian Jones was on the phone with a club owner who asked for the name of his as-yet-untitled group, he looked around the room and riffed on the first thing he saw, which was a Muddy Waters LP featuring this track.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. “Rough and Twisted”
Of the two new songs the Stones released last week, I prefer this one: a growling, bluesy rocker that proves Jagger can still snarl and Richards can still shred.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. “In the Stars”
Here’s the sleeker track of the new pair, which features a chorus on which Jagger muses with a cosmic perspective, “It’s in the stars, it’s our destiny.” How have the Rolling Stones kept it going this long? Maybe, like that chance meeting 64 years ago on a train platform, it’s just fate.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Quiz
Test your knowledge of music trivia — or learn a fun fact that you can share with your music-loving friends. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
What did Mick Jagger’s father, rather appropriately, do for a living?
The Amplifier Playlist
“The Rolling Stones, Very Early and Very Late” track list Track 1: “Come On” Track 2: “I Wanna Be Your Man” Track 3: “Tell Me” Track 4: “Not Fade Away” Track 5: “Rolling Stone Blues” Track 6: “Rough and Twisted” Track 7: “In the Stars”
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Lindsay Zoladz is a pop music critic for The Times and writes the music newsletter The Amplifier.
The post The Rolling Stones, Very Early and Very Late appeared first on New York Times.
