The Editors of LIFE - LIFE The Rolling Stones

THE ROLLING STONES

Their Rock n Roll Life

JEAN-MARIE PRIER/PHOTO12/POLARIS

Mick Jagger in Paris, 1966.

JUST ONE MORE

VINTAGE CONCERT POSTER BUYER INC.

Heres a true rarity, from the collection of Andrew Hawley: a poster for a Stones show that never happenedcanceled, believe it or not, due to lack of interest and low ticket sales. While this 1964 New Haven gig didnt come off during the Stones first U.S. tour, despite DJ Murray the Ks sponsorship and entreaties, the band did play that Connecticut city (and this venue) the next year. The Stones also thrilled fans at Toads Place in New Haven on August 12, 1989, when they commandeered the club and delivered a surprise set that is still talked about today.

JEAN-MARIE PRIER/PHOTO12/POLARIS

Keith Richards in Los Angeles, 1967.

INTRODUCTION

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones

BY KOSTYA KENNEDY

DAVE J. HOGAN/GETTY

THEN AND NOW: Ronnie, Mick, Keith and Charlie in Paris in October 2017.

Of the many things that Mick Jagger has said in publicaside, that is, from the lyrical improvisations and the onstage declarations he has made across more than 2,000 live performances over 56 yearsamong the more enduring is this bit of bravura from 1975: Id rather be dead than sing Satisfaction when Im 45, he told People magazine. Jagger was 31, and he and the Rolling Stones had recorded the game changer 10 years before, in the early stages of a decade in which the band reframed the blues, the British Invasion and rock n roll itself. The hubris of Micks comment, the implication that there were other worlds to be conquered and, more ominously, that the Stones might leave behind the world they had forged, struck the metaphorical chord. (I Cant Get No) Satisfaction was the bands axe-grinding soul: Keith Richards came up with the hook and the title while drifting to sleep one night and recorded it, bare bones, on a cassette player by his bed. Jagger later wrote the lyrics poolside at a Tampa hotel while the band was on tour. Add drums. Add bass. Book it at 3:45. When the song landed in America in June of 65, it went to No. 1 and stayed there.

Jagger certainly was singing Satisfaction at age 45 (actually hed just turned 46), snapping it out as a set-closer on the Stones bristling Steel Wheels tour in 1989. He was singing it onstage in 2015 as well, as a guest of Taylor Swift, who was born in 1989. Over the many years, Jaggers Id rather be dead pronouncement has evolved away from arrogance and toward happy irony. He and Richards both turn 75 this year, and as the Stones opened their 2018 tour, with dates in the U.K., there was Satisfaction on the set listthe predetermined final encore, the classic and quintessential rock n roll song.

Despite the portentous demise of guitarist Brian Jones in 1969 and the bands historical fondness for hard drugs, despite the departure of backbone bassist Bill Wyman in the early 90s, and despite the Keith-vs.-Mick feuds that have long dotted the landscape, time has remained improbably on the Rolling Stones side. Theyre not only still together, theyre still more or less doing what theyve always done. Their latest album, 2016s Blue & Lonesome , by way of example, is made up of covers of songs written by the same folks the Stones were covering 50-some years agoblues colossi like Willie Dixon and Howlin Wolf.

And of the 19 songs that anchored the 2018 tour, 17 of them were Jagger/Richards numbers composed during the 1960s and early 1970s, soul-lifters off of one monumental album after another ( Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers ...) Another song on the list was 1981s Start Me Up, which, along with Satisfaction and Jumpin Jack Flash, hinges upon one of the Richards riffs that have burrowed unstoppably into auditory history. Keith, in 2018, is still out there on his Fender, after the sound. Mick is still glorious: preening and plaintive. Charlie Watts still swings, driving the action, cool on his simple kit. And thats Ronnie Wood playing the tasty guitar. Ladies and gentlemen: the Rolling Stones.

Theyve aged of course, to be sure, and some fans grumbled about the U.K. shows. A ticket at 250 quid? Reviewers allowed that there were some imprecisions in the gigs, the occasional softened edge. Yet by and by the crowd and the critics could not help themselves. Theyd been elevated. And they were acutely aware, as the old Stones ripped through the songs that will never dieSugar, Shelter, Sympathythat even now you could see and hear straight into their beating hearts. Straight into, yes, thats right, wait for it, the greatest rock n roll band in the world.

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The boys in their early days.

Who Was Ian Stewart?

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IN MAY 1967, five years after cofounding the Rolling Stones, Ian Stu Stewart is at Olympic Studios in Barnes, in southwest London, working on the track We Love You with Keith Richards. In his 2010 memoir, Life , Richards wrote that every time he takes the stage with the Stones, he still feels as if he is working for Stu.

If there are several claimants to the title of fifth Beatlethe most legitimate being George Martin and Brian Epstein, though such individuals as Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe have worthy casesthere is no doubt as to who was the sixth Rolling Stone in the early days. In fact, the audition in the spring of 1962 that saw Mick Jagger and Keith Richards join Ian Stewart and Brian Jones in forming a new rhythm-and-blues banda historic meeting now seen by historians and the band itself as the birth of the groupwas largely Stus gig. To me the Rolling Stones is his band, wrote Richards in his memoir. Without his knowledge and organization... wed be nowhere. Stu was the one guy we tried to please, said Jagger. We wanted his approval when we were writing or rehearsing a song. It needs to be said: Not only Stus knowledge and organization but also his boogie-woogie piano playing and arranging skills, which pushed the Stones toward their gutbucket rock n roll sound, were vital to their success. If all of this is true, then why is Stewart so relatively anonymous as a Stone? The answer is on these next several pages.

DEZO HOFFMANN/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

THIS IS WHAT the Rolling Stones once looked like. From left: Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Ian Stewart, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Five sixths of this lineup would become famous, Stewart being the odd man out. And that had everything to do with a man named Andrew Loog Oldham.