The Rolling Stones brought the blues back with the sexy swagger of their audacious debut. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger had been childhood friends and rekindled their friendship over music one day after a fateful meeting at the train station in Dartford. Jagger considers: "I can't remember when I didn't know [Keith]. We lived one street away; his mother knew my mother, and we were at primary school together from [ages] 7 to 11. We used to play together, and we weren't the closest friends, but we were friends. Keith and I went to different schools when we were 11, but he went to a school which was really near where I used to live. But I always knew where he lived, because my mother would never lose contact with anybody, and she knew where they'd moved. I used to see him coming home from his school, which was less than a mile away from where I lived. And then – this is a true story – we met at the train station. And I had these rhythm & blues records, which were very prized possessions because they weren't available in England then. And he said, 'Oh, yeah, these are really interesting.' That kind of did it. That's how it started, really. We started to go to each other's house and play these records. And then we started to go to other people's houses to play other records. You know, it's the time in your life when you're almost stamp-collecting this stuff. I can't quite remember how all this worked. Keith always played the guitar, from even when he was 5. And he was keen on country music, cowboys. But obviously at some point, Keith, he had this guitar with this electric-guitar pickup. And he played it for me. So I said, 'Well, I sing, you know? And you play the guitar.' Very obvious stuff."
Richards reveals: "Mick and I had a totally identical taste in music. We never need to question or explain. It was all unsaid. We'd hear something, we'd both look at each other at once. Everything was to do with sound. We'd hear a record and go, 'That's wrong. That's faking. That's real. It was either that's the shit or that isn't the shit, no matter what kind of music you were talking about. I really liked some pop music if it was the shit. But there was a definite line of what the shit was and what wasn't the shit. Very strict. First off, I think to Mick and me it was like, we've got to learn more, there's more out there, because then we branched out into rhythm and blues ... With Mick, it was basically music. We had been playmates — we happened to go to the same school for awhile. But it was me seeing him again [on the train, as a teenager], with the [blues] records, that was the bombshell — to suddenly find we were both madly in love with the blues, churning to get to the bottom of this thing. It was the missionary feeling. Forming the band was kind of weird. Because, in a way, it formed itself. You didn't have to do much about it."
Jagger and Richards started playing together with Dick Taylor, Alan Etherington, and Bob Beckwith as the Blue Boys. They took a trip to the Ealing Jazz Club where they met Brian Jones, who was playing electric slide guitar with Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. Also playing with the group were Ian Stewart and Charlie Watts. Korner invited Jagger and Richards to sit in with Blues Incorporated after hearing their demo tape. At the same time, Jones and Stewart started their own group to play Chicago blues. Jagger, Richards, and Taylor soon joined them and they played their first show on July 12, 1962, at the Marquee Club. Jones came up with the name the Rollin' Stones from a Muddy Waters song. A few months later, the classic rhythm section of Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts were brought into the fold.
Jagger remembers: "The Stones thing was weekends, and college was in the week. God, the Rolling Stones had so little work – it was like one gig a month. So it wasn't really that difficult – we just couldn't get any work...I wasn't totally committed; it was a good, fun thing to do, but Keith [Richards] and Brian [Jones] didn't have anything else to do, so they wanted to rehearse all the time. I liked to rehearse once a week and do a show Saturday. The show that we did was three or four numbers, so there wasn't a tremendous amount of rehearsal needed."
Andrew Loog Oldham became their manager and tweaked their image a bit, adding a "g" to Rolling and taking the "s" from Keith's last name. He also kicked Stewart out of the band, although he remained as their road manager. The Rolling Stones secured a sweet deal with Decca Records that gave them artistic control, ownership of their recording masters, and a very high royalty rate. Their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry's 'Come On', made it to number twenty-one in the UK. The second single 'I Wanna Be Your Man' was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It went to number twelve. Oldham and Eric Easton co-produced the sessions at Regent Sound Studios that resulted in their eponymous debut.
'The Rolling Stones' features Mick Jagger on lead and backing vocals, harmonica on "Little by Little" and "I'm a King Bee", and percussion; Keith Richards on guitar and backing vocals; Brian Jones on guitar, harmonica, percussion, and backing vocals; Charlie Watts on drums and percussion; Bill Wyman on bass guitar and backing vocals; with Ian Stewart on organ and piano; Gene Pitney on piano on "Little by Little"; and Phil Spector on maracas on "Little by Little". Oldham pushed Jagger and Richards to come up with original music to take advantage of their high royalty rate; but only one of their songs made it onto the album. There were two numbers written by Nanker Phelge, the pseudonym for songs composed by the entire band. 'The Rolling Stones' became a sensation in the UK, going to the top of the album chart. It also hit number two in the Netherlands and number one in Australia. In the US, where the album had a slightly different track listing and a subtitle: 'England's Newest Hitmakers', it went to number eleven.
http://www.rollingstones.com/
performance on the TAMI show, 1964
Around and Around
Off the Hook
Time Is on My Side
It's All Over Now
I'm Alright
Let's Get Together
'Tell Me' was the only song on their debut that was written by Jagger and Richard. Jagger says: "Keith was playing 12-string and singing harmonies into the same microphone as the 12-string. We recorded it in this tiny studio in the West End of London called Regent Sound, which was a demo studio. I think the whole of that album was recorded in there. But it's very different from doing those R&B covers or Marvin Gaye covers and all that. There's a definite feel about it. It's a very pop song, as opposed to all the blues songs and the Motown covers, which everyone did at the time."
For the US release the Bo Diddley cover "Mona (I Need You Baby)" was replaced by their third single, a similar sounding cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" that went to number three in the UK.
'Not Fade Away' on the Dean Martin show
'The Rolling Stones (England's Newest Hitmakers)'
full album:
1-Not Fade Away(0:00) (Charles Hardin/Norman Petty)
2-Route 66(1:48) (Bobby Troup)
3-I Just Want to Make Love to You(4:16) (Willie Dixon)
4-Honest I Do(6:22) (Jimmy Reed)
5-Now I've Got A Witness(8:31) (Nanker Phelge)
6-Little by Little(11:04) (Phelge/Phil Spector)
7-I'm a King Bee(13:42) (Slim Harpo)
8-Carol(16:13) (Chuck Berry)
9-Tell Me(18:42) (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
10-Can I Get a Witness(22:23) (Brian Holland/Lamont Dozier/Eddie Holland)
11-You Can Make It If You Try(25:19) (Ted Jarrett)
12-Walking the Dog(27:19) (Rufus Thomas)
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