It’s time to spin the clock back – this time to 2012 when The Rolling Stones were celebrating 50 years together. Fourteen years later, they’re still proving that rumours of their irrelevance has been greatly exaggerated.
It was 50 years ago that the Beatles released their first single, while Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys emerged with albums. The Stones, meanwhile, played their first gig… and are still rolling.
The year 1962 was a big one in music. Maybe there was something in the air – or whatever else was being breathed in. In March 1962, a young musician from Minnesota who called himself Bob Dylan released his first (self-titled) album. Most of the tracks were covers of folk or traditional songs; an exception was ‘Song for Woody’, a homage to Woody Guthrie.
In July, on the other side of the Atlantic, a band then called the Rollin’ Stones played their first gig at London’s Marquee Club. The original line-up included the band’s best-known members (and songwriters), Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Drummer Charlie Watts and bass player Bill Wyman joined a little later, as did the ‘g’ in ‘Rolling’.
When the Stones made their debut, a group from Liverpool, the Beatles, had already been playing together for a couple of years. In August 1962, drummer Ringo Starr joined Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison; two months later, their first single, ‘Love Me Do’, was released. It wasn’t long before that song and the hundreds that followed were also being played in the US, where, in October, the Beach Boys released a debut album called Surfin’ Safari. The group’s harmonies and the creativity of the talented but tormented leader, Brian Wilson, would be a huge influence on the Beatles.
From this Class of ’62, Dylan has (surprisingly) proved to be the most enduring. His so-called ‘Never Ending Tour’ continues: in July he performed in Spain, Italy and France; August will find him back in the US, playing in places like Missoula, Billings and Sioux Falls. Woody would have approved.
As a band, the Beatles were finished by the end of 1970. But in some ways their influence and standing have only increased since then. Unlike the Stones, Beach Boys and Dylan, there have not been poor, or downright perplexing, latter-career albums or shows to test the ardour of the most fervent fans. Only two Beatles, Starr and McCartney, are alive to acknowledge anniversaries. The Beach Boys, who have been through many, many line-up changes, did manage to mark their 50th with a new album, released this year, That’s Why God Made the Radio. It is unlikely to age as well as, say, Pet Sounds (1966).
The Stones, meanwhile, are still rolling – although their last studio album (A Bigger Bang) came out in 2005 and the accompanying, monolithic world tour wound up in 2007. Masters of marketing, the Stones have made much of that Marquee Club 50th anniversary, which is a bit rich given that only two of the four who posed for photos at a recent function in London – Jagger, Richards, Watts and Ronnie Wood – performed at that first, bluesy gig.
Given that much of the commentary today centres on their age, it’s worth remembering how young they once were: both Jagger and Richards were 18 at that first gig. Although Jagger insists, “I’ve never been a person who looks backwards,” the anniversary has caused the Stones to do just that, not least in a new book, The Rolling Stones 50, which is essentially a pictorial history.
On stage, certainly since the departure of Wyman in 1993, Watts has been the least expressive Stone, doing his job with little fuss. But his wry commentary makes him the star of the book. His introduction begins, “Ten years of working, 40 years of hanging about!” A little later, reflecting on 1965, Watts writes, “I’m told that it was in Ireland that we first performed ‘Satisfaction’ in concert. I can’t remember.” Accompanying a photo from a US show in 1966, which shows Watts at work, the
backs of other band members and dazzling lights, is his pithy comment: “This has been my view of the band – and the audience beyond – for the last 50 years.”
The Stones, like the Beatles, worked hard in their early days to build a fan-base. In the UK in 1964, this meant two shows a night at more than 32 far-flung venues in 37 days; in the US the following year, 30 cities in just over five weeks. No wonder some of it is now a blur even to those who were there. Watts, however, has an extraordinary eye for detail. His caption for a shot from a London gig in 1964 is, “The left hand of the two cymbals that you can see in this photo I still use, although not when I’m playing with the Stones. It’s too delicate for that. I use it when I’m playing with my jazz band.” Only a drummer could tell one cymbal from another.
From January 1963 Watts has been the Stones’ drummer. Of guitarists, meanwhile, there have been a few, although the book is short on sentiment. A photo from a 1968 show in London is captioned: “This was our last concert appearance with Brian [Jones, who died the next year].” At the Hyde Park memorial concert for Jones in 1969, where the slick-fingered Mick Taylor made his debut, Wood recalls, “There was a sea of people…and I was walking around the outside wondering how I could get into this band.” He got his chance in 1975, after Taylor had left, although Richards told him: “Let’s not announce you’re in the band, let’s just let it gradually filter out.”
The shift in the band’s history is seen in the book not only in the gradual transition from black-and-white to colour photographs, but also the venues themselves. In 1963, Watts recalls, “At the Crawdaddy [a Surrey club] there was no space on stage – that’s why Mick used to shake his head and all of that [instead of dancing].” Of a US tour 12 years later, Jagger writes: “It was during this time that the whole arena show started as an industry.”
There is room to shake more than your head in a stadium, but the massive numbers – 4.8 million people at 108 shows in 25 countries on the Bridges to Babylon tour in the late 1990s – come at a cost. Richards likes “sweating it up a bit” in smaller clubs and concedes, “The bigger shows are harder to play, even though that’s what we do most of the time, because we are so locked into lighting systems and computers.”
All of the musical survivors from 1962 have lasted longer than any of them could have imagined. The Bob Dylan album was not a great success; some in the record company wanted to ditch him. Brian Wilson thought he’d had enough of touring by the end of 1964. Jagger now says, “Everyone thought you had to be young to play rock’n’roll. I think we’ve successfully disproved that point.” Some may take issue with that. It’s arguable, in fact, that the aspect of the Stones that has not aged well is Jagger’s voice.
But Watts’ drumming is as good as ever. So let the last word be with Charlie, who, near the end of the book, declares, “I have resigned at the end of every tour since 1969.” But he also insists, “We respect our history, our heritage and our tradition.” Fifty years have given him perspective on this; perspective that’s often lacking on stage. Of a large-scale photo of the Stones’ 2006 Super Bowl concert in Michigan, Watts says: “It really does look amazing looking down on it from the crowd’s viewpoint. It’s what we miss when we’re playing on stage. We’re stuck in the eye of the storm.”
by Alan Attwood
First published Ed#412