 By the time
the Rolling Stones began calling themselves the World's Greatest Rock & Roll
Band in the late '60s, they had already staked out an impressive claim on the
title. As the self-consciously dangerous alternative to the bouncy Merseybeat of
the Beatles in the British Invasion,
the Rolling Stones had pioneered the gritty, hard-driving blues-based rock & roll
that came to define hard rock. With his preening machismo and latent
maliciousness,
Mick Jagger became the prototypical rock frontman, tempering his macho
showmanship with a detached, campy irony while
Keith Richards and
Brian Jones wrote the blueprint for sinewy, interlocking rhythm guitars.
Backed by the strong yet subtly swinging rhythm section of bassist
Bill Wyman and drummer
Charlie Watts,
the Rolling Stones became the breakout band of the British blues scene, eclipsing
such contemporaries as
the Animals and
Them. Over the course of their career,
the Rolling Stones never really abandoned blues, but as soon as they reached
popularity in the U.K., they began experimenting musically, incorporating the
British pop of contemporaries like
the Beatles,
Kinks, and
Who into their sound. After a brief dalliance with psychedelia,
the Rolling Stones re-emerged in the late '60s as a jaded, blues-soaked hard rock
quintet.
The Rolling Stones always flirted with the seedy side of rock & roll, but as the
hippie dream began to break apart, they exposed and reveled in the new rock
culture. It wasn't without difficulty, of course. Shortly after he was fired
from the group,
Jones was found dead in a swimming pool, while at a 1969 free concert at
Altamont, a concertgoer was brutally killed during
the Rolling Stones' show. But
the Rolling Stones never stopped going. For the next 30 years, they continued to
record and perform, and while their records weren't always blockbusters, they
were never less than the most visible band of their era -- certainly, none of
their British peers continued to be as popular or productive as
the Rolling Stones. And no band since has proven to have such a broad fan base or
far-reaching popularity, and it is impossible to hear any of the groups that
followed them without detecting some sort of influence, whether it was musical
or aesthetic.
Contact Grabow for more information or to book
the Rolling Stones for your next corporate or private event.
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