Though now considered the "world's greatest rock and roll band," the Rolling Stones began in 1962 as a blues group. Lead guitarist Brian Jones was a huge fan of rhythm and blues, black American music filtering into Britain as a result of a small but evangelical group of jazz critics who had fallen in love with the blues. Jones worshipped the blues bottleneck guitar player Elmore James; he re-christened himself Elmo Lewis and devoted himself to learning to play slide guitar. He moved from Cheltenham to London where a live blues scene was beginning to coalesce around the Ealing Club; in this club, Blues, Inc., billed as Britain's first rhythm and blues band, performed every Thursday. There he met Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, two local blues fans, and they decided to form a group. Through ads in the trade papers they found pianist Ian Stewart, and Mick Jagger's friend Dick Taylor (who would go on to found Pretty Things) joined on bass. Their first gigs were filling in for Blues, Inc. at the Marquee Club, where the Ealing Club moved when R&B started to become popular. Mick Jagger's comment to the jazz press was that he hoped no one would think the Rolling Stones, named after a Muddy Waters song and strictly devoted to the Chicago blues, was a rock and roll group!
The Stones quickly began to attract a devoted following, including Andrew Loog Oldham, a young go-getter in the pop business who'd done some work for the Beatles. Oldham advised the group to drop Ian Stewart, who didn't look right, and encouraged them to project a rough, unkempt, and aloof image. Dick Taylor quit and was replaced by bassist Bill Wyman, and the group convinced Charlie Watts, the drummer of Blues, Inc. (which also included future Cream members Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker), to join as well. Oldham sold the band as the "anti-Beatles"-and they became huge. At the time the Stones' repertoire consisted mostly of obscure blues and R&B songs. Oldham knew that paying others to write songs for the group would be expensive, and the Beatles had proven that pop singers could write their own songs and still enjoy chart success. No one in the group thought any of them could write, but the Stones' manager shut Jagger and Richards in a room together and wouldn't let them come out until they'd written at least one song. "Get Off of My Cloud" wasn't their first self-composed single, but it is typical of the songs that Jagger and Richards would turn out in 1965—66. The song was recorded by the Stones while they were on tour in the United States; it would prove to be their first song to reach number one simultaneously in the states and the UK. In fact, many of the Stones' early hits were recorded in the states, as the band felt that English sound engineers weren't capable of creating the right atmosphere. "Get Off of My Cloud" also helped launch the Rolling Stones in America; and though they were considered the top pop group in England (yes-bigger than the Beatles), they struggled through two tours before finally gaining similar status in the states.
|
 |
|
|
Muddy Waters, Blues, Inc., Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, the Beatles
Must Haves:
 "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
"Jumping Jack Flash"
"Sympathy for the Devil"
"Paint It Black"
"Beast of Burden"
All other blues rock groups, but especially the Yardbirds, Aerosmith, the Who, Bob Seger
|
|
