The Rolling Stones
History of the
Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones were probably the most
impressive set of talents to come together in Britain before the
Soft Machine: decadent vocalist Mick Jagger (who distorted soul
crooning and turned it into an animal instinct), guitarist Keith
Richards (who took Chuck Berry's riffs into a new dimension of
fractured harmony), multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones (who
penned their baroque and psychedelic arrangements), and the
phenomenal, funky rhythm section of bassist Bill Wyman and
drummer Charlie Watts. Steeped in the blues, the Rolling Stones
redefined the rock performer, the rock concert and the rock song.
They turned on the degree of vulgarity and provocation to levels
that made Chuck Berry look silly. Arguably the greatest rock and
roll band of all times, the Rolling Stones revolutionized each
of the classical instruments of rock music: the drums
incorporated the lascivious tom-tom of tribal folk, the martial
pace of military bands and the sophisticated swing of jazz; the
guitar amplified the raw and ringing style of Chuck Berry;
the bass invented a depraved sound, the singing turned the
sensual crooning of soul music in an animal howl, half sleazy
lust and half call to arms; and the arragements of keyboards,
flutes and exotic instruments completely misinterpreted the
intentions of the cultures from which they were borrowed. The
revolution carried out by the Rolling Stones was thorough and
radical.
Indirectly, the Rolling Stones invented
the fundamental axis of rock and roll: the sexy singer, sexual
object and shaman, and the charismatic guitarist. For at least
forty years that would remain the only constant in rock music
(and one of the external features that set it apart from jazz,
folk, classical music). In an era still crowded with vocal
groups of pop music (Beach Boys, Beatles) inspired by those of
the 1940s', the Stones represented a generational trauma.
After them, not only rock music but western civilization itself
will never be the same again.
The Stones constituted a rare miracle:
five reckless white boys from a European capital who managed not
only to appropriate the music of black Americans, but to surpass
all their teachers. Nobody ever did the blues like the Stones,
and perhaps nobody ever will. Their blues was a metaphysical,
political and mystical.
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When they appeared, in 1962, they
represented most of all an epic cry of revenge. The rockers of
the 50s, from Chuck Berry on, had been systematically chased
away by the recording industry who favored the "teen idols". The
Rolling Stones were the legitimate heirs of those forsaken
rockers. In fact, they married Berry's wicked ethos to the
violent impulses of urban vandalism. The result was an explosive
mix that the world of music, popular or classic, black or white,
had never heard.
The Stones were blues-rock specialists. A
banality really, a genre within a genre, yet it was fundamental
to the development of rock music. The world before and after the
Rolling Stones are actually two separate worlds. Before there
were only ditties. After there is rock as we have come to know
it. In a sense, the Rolling Stones invented the opposite of the
short, little songs that had dominated the preceding decades,
and that continued for a while, thanks to the Beatles. And the
binomial "blues+rock" remains today the dominant style of rock
music. From Led Zeppelin to Nirvana, directly or indirectly,
they're all children of The Rolling Stones. Without the Stones
the history of rock and roll would have been completely
different. Without most of the melodic bands of the time, rock
history would have remained precisely the same, only the names
in the hit parade would have changed. The short silly little
song was there before, was there after and it's still around,
but blues-rock was not there, and it has become the fundamental
structure of most modern genres, from hard rock, that the Stones
invented in 1963, to grunge, that the Stones invented in 1968.
The leaders, Mick Jagger and Keith
Richard, were from Kent. Jagger, a student of economy, was an
aspiring rhythm and blues singer being schooled by white blues
man Alexis Korner. Richards, a graphic designer, was a guitar
player fascinated by the John Lee Hooker's hypnotic riffs. They
both came across a jazz inspired multi-instrumentalist who, at
sixteen, had already fathered two children: Brian Jones.
Jones became from the beginning the soul
of the group. He was a prodigy, in music(he could already play
anything, from the organ to the saxophone) as well as sexually
(in a decade he fathered six children - the first at fifteen -
by six different girls). Jones was also the first rock agitator:
long hair, androgynous make-up, quarrelsome attitude, free use
of drugs. Jagger was among the first to imitate him, possibly
contributing to Jones' moral decay in a Dostoevskyan existence
that in end turned Hitchcockian.
Raised in the suburbs, Brian Jones fell in
love at an early age with Charlie Parker. He had played the sax
and the clarinet from London to Stockholm, from the metropolitan
clubs to the street corners before being introduced to Jagger
and Richard at the Ealing Blues Club. In the same club the trio
scouted pianist Ian Stewart, bass player Bill Wyman and drummer
Charlie Watts,three unemployed jazz aficionados. The Stones
began to play gaining in a short time the reputation of a white
rhythm and blues band.
Within a year they became one of the most
legendary attractions of the wild London underground. Their
sanguine, frenetic, loud and engaging style was exciting. The
concept of song was lost in these nocturnal sarabands, in which
a piece was twisted by improvisation and ended with a repetitive
theme, as in the best black tradition. Compared at first to the
bands of the Mersey beat, the Rolling Stones were a much more
sensational novelty. In Richmond, where they performed for four
dollars a head, all the VIPs of the "swinging London", Mary
Quant included,gathered to listen. Going back to the roots of
the ugly, dirty and bad music, they were awarded the palm of
best band of the area.
When they - minus Stewart, lost along the
way in 1963 - entered a recording studio for the first time,
their repertory had stabilized around the classics of rock and
roll. With their first three 45s, Come On (by Chuck Berry) in
June, I Wanna Be Your Man (by Lennon and McCartney) in November,
Not Fade Away (by Buddy Holly) in March 1964, they grabbed the
attention of the young and the hostility of the mass-media. The
young saw in them real and spontaneous spokespeople. The
mass-media saw them as dangerous and perverted subversives.
Their attitude conquered the young, their anger frightened the
old.
The Rolling Stones, unlike the bands of
the Mersey beat, were also good musicians: an expressive and
versatile vocalist, a razor-sharp rhythmic guitar and a natural
talent like Jones as the inspiration, the coordinator, the
arranger and saboteur. Richard in particular, whose style was
the first conscious imitation of Chuck Berry, imposed himself
immediately as the best beat guitarist. His fuzz tone functioned
to compensate for the absence of brasses. Watts and Wyman formed
the funkiest, most essential rhythmic session in the history of
rock and roll. Jagger was the principal attraction: he modeled
his vocals upon the suffering vocalizations of Otis Redding and
Solomon Burke, and he moved about so much on stage as to be
compared with the blackest performers of ten years before.
Although The Rolling Stones did not belong
to the "swinging London", the London boastful and loud, but to
the squalid and smoke-ridden neighborhoods, their songs dazed
and seduced even those who were not aspiring hooligans.
The group was as restless in public as it
was in private. Jagger and Richards, already subscribers to the
tryptich of sex/drugs/violence were led astray by Jones'
derailing personality. The inside story of the group was one
that women fought over (plenty of charming and fatal
"Faithfulls" self-destructed chasing their idols). It was a
story of dependency on heavy drugs, of corrupted and ambiguous
friendships, of straight degradation: all under the web of Brian
Jones.
Their first LP Rolling Stones (Decca,
April 1964) was the best album ever released in England. It
contains some rhythm and blues classics played with a rebel
stand of the youth of poor neighborhoods, and also the first
writing collaboration between Jagger and Richard: Tell Me. I'm A
King Bee (Slim Harpo), Carol (Berry), Route 66, I Just Want To
Make Love To You (Dixon) literally erupt from the grooves -
crackling, exciting, shattering. The Stones had a historic
illumination: nobody before them had ever correctly interpreted
blues and rock through the body. They were the first to do it,
the first to recognize without reserve, what was the real intent
of black musicians. For years every white rocker had
kindheartedly "justified" that sound, smuggling it as "race
music." With the Stones the truth came to surface: their music
was desperate, lewd, violent, sacrilegious, anarchic.
In monumentally confusing and fragmented
discography of the time, it is difficult to find the next album
as such. Nevertheless, The Rolling Stones were active with 45s
while their LPs were stuffed mostly with rhythm and blues and
rock and roll covers. The orgiastic climate was beginning to
tone down progressively into more mature performances that
preserved the stylistic ingredients of the first album (sharp
guitars, irreverent choruses, tribal rhythms, coarse harmonics),
in a more cautious mix.
Richard's urgent guitar playing, assault
by fingertips, dominates these new tracks, all covers: Around
And Around (by Chuck Berry), Empty Heart, She Said Yeah, and
It's All Over Now (by Bobby Womack), the 45 that introduces once
and for all their forceful and unconventional stance. Slow songs
also proliferate to showcase Jagger's vocal quality in all their
theatrical mode: covers Time Is On My Side, Confessing The Blues
and Little Red Rooster (Dixon), and much more melodramatic
originals: Heart Of Stone, I'm Free, and Good Times Bad Times.
Heart Of Stone and Little Red Rooster
entered the English hit parade and brought the Stones to the
United States. The following October they released a second LP
for the States (12x5). Rolling Stones n. 2 came out in February
1965 (entitled Now in the United States).
1965 began a succession of Jagger and
Richard masterpieces: The Last Time (February, stolen from the
Staple Singers' 1958 This May Be The Last Time),
Satisfaction (May), Get Off Of My Cloud (September), all
originated by a corrosive and haunting mix of distorted blues
riffs, of wickedly sensual vocals and of demonic rhythms, all
catapulted to the top on both sides of the Atlantic, and also
Fortune Teller, a bursting performance with a frantic cadence.
The menacing and anxious synthesis of blues and rock and roll
had reached the boiling point. The stentorian riff of Last Time
keeps going without respite, hypnotic and obsessive like a war
cry, while Jagger twists without mercy a feverish gospel
refrain. The shouting impetus of Get Off Of My Cloud unhinges
the door of gospel with alternating hammering rhythms and choral
slogans. With Satisfaction, under the influence of a Tamla soul
party, Jagger's perverted tone and Richard's maniacal
distortions (wah-wah, wah-wah-wah ...) set a sex flick to music.
The anthem reached the top of "Billboard" where it stayed for
four weeks, definitely consecrating the group and pulling to the
top the album Out Of Our Heads (1965, mostly the American
release). Never before had people so wretched ousted established
musicians from the best seller lists. An army of frustrated
youth saw itself in those five shady characters and their
raunchy music.
In those years the Stones didn't play
songs, they shouted in people faces. While the Beatles had tea
with the Queen, the Stones were pissing in public.
Conversely, at the same time the band
presented two delicate and melodic acoustic ballads, carefully
arranged: Play With Fire an aggressive "slow song" for
harpsichord and harness bells, and As Tears Go By (September), a
tender serenade with a sentimental string section. They are the
first signs of a new sensibility.
December's Children (1965), mostly a
compilation of already released material, puts the spotlight on
the rhythm section of Watts and Wyman, perhaps the greatest of
all time.
1965 also marked the persecution of the
mass-media, of the moralists and of the authorities: the sexual
references were too explicit - in the text as well as in
Jagger's mimicking stage performances - their behavior at
concerts promoted violence, behind the scene there was incessant
talk of drugs. Rooted in the lower classes, Jagger, Richard and
Jones knew how to excite the crowd with forceful body language,
exploiting the frustrations of the young masses. Trouble
followed them everywhere: the pillage of Berlin in 1966 after
Jagger's provoking Nazi goose-step, the disturbances from Paris
to Vienna, from Cortina to Warsaw, with the police always on
alert and the insurance companies refusing to guarantee their
concerts. The recurrent trials for illegal drugs made them
outlaws or martyrs for the opposing factions of media detractors
and infatuated fans. Jagger, Richard and Jones spent a night
together in jail. They were convicted and came very close to
spending several months in prison.
Actually, by the end of 1965 the Rolling
Stones had already accomplished their mission. After having
turned upside down the world of music with their sound, their
words and their body language, and after having entrusted their
name to two immortal pieces (The Last Time, a masterpiece of
white rhythm and blues and Satisfaction, a hymn to the
frustration of their generation), the five found themselves
wanting to remain faithful to their image of bandits but also
willing to adjust to the changing times.
Aftermath (Decca, 1966), recorded in Los
Angeles in march 1966, is the first album that doesn't showcase
only hits and it's also the first entirely composed by Jagger
and Richard. With it, the Stones aligned themselves with the
wind of newness that blew over rock music and showed the
competence required to put together an LP. Another precious and
velvety acoustic ballad Lady Jane,with the dulcimer, and a long,
pulsating and obsessive jam Going Home, are the most substantial
contributions to the new, progressive sound. Under My Thumb set
to a marimba rhythm keeps high the banner of the captivating,
dirty sound, the image of the macho who enslaves the girl. The
more melodic and exciting blues of Out Of Time stretches over a
Caribbean rhythm.
Although the Stones still have their sound
solidly rooted in black music, as the faithfully rendered High
And Dry, Stupid Girl and Doncha Bother Me show, Brian Jones
knows how to arrange each piece using instruments such as the
dulcimer, the marimbas, the sitar, the flute and all kinds of
keyboards.
The progression of the masterpieces at
45rpm keeps going with the loud and epileptic 19th Nervous
Breakdown (February) and with the mystical epic Paint It Black
(May), which, on the painful notes of the sitar and Jagger's
vibrating baritone, lights an historic ode to the disquietude of
young people, completing the great trilogy of frustration (with
Last Time and Satisfaction).
The blasphemous Indian litany Mother's
Little Helper (June), with the chorus "what a drag it is getting
old" and drug references, and the cynical sarcasm of Have You
Seen Your Mother Baby (September) with psychedelic trumpets and
a bacchanal of percussion complete (with 19th Nervous Breakdown)
a trilogy of psychotic rock.
That memorable year ends with Let's Spend
The Night Together (December), a relentless boogie with an
allegedly obscene text (many radio stations will censure the
word "night").
The Stones were navigating the road of
irreverence, much like a sort of Kinks of the underworld. Their
songs are a gallery of characters vile and depraved: neurotics,
psychopaths, prostitutes, hooligans, drug addicts.
Between The Buttons (Decca, 1967) and
Their Satanic Majesties Request (Decca, 1967), are esoteric and
surreal works that attempt to ride the tiger of psychedelia, but
they also are perhaps masterpiece compilations.
Buttons puts to use the instrumental
chromatism of Aftermath with pieces such as Yesterday's Papers
(xylophone and harpsichord), Complicated (tribal drums), Miss
Amanda Jones (the most rocking), and Cool Calm & Collected (a
Vaudeville-style rag) and Something Happening To Me (played in
the style of a 1920s Salvation Army Band). In the proudest acid
style there is All Sold Out: a trombone rhythm section, scorched
by guitar distortions, piano dissonance and flute
improvisations, a stentorian blues and an aggressive refrain.
Ruby Tuesday, accompanied by flute counterpointed by contrabass
and piano is a form of chamber psychedelia; the refrain, perhaps
the simplest of their career, is worthy of the Beatles.
This LP completes the progression toward
"album-oriented" production. If Aftermath had provided them with
artistic autonomy, Buttons had emancipated them from past
styles. The Stones were now on to a varied and original sound.
Their Satanic Majesties Request shows how
much they had progressed artistically -holographic jacket,
fantastic text, impressive arrangements. Majesties is a
milestone of English psychedelia and magical rock, although at
times it falls due to mannerism and sensationalism. Majestic,
chaotic, poetic and unbalanced, this album (the least "Rolling
Stoned" of all the Stones' albums) is a pretentious medley of
relentless riffs (Citadel), of catchy melodies (Sing This All
Together/I, 2000 Man), and of eccentric arrangements. The
deployment of instruments is imposing: harpsichord, flutes,
organ, electronic effects, etc. Nicky Hopkins' keyboards
contribution is pivotal.
The charm of the album (the charm of Brian
Jones, that is) is in bizarre modernist pieces such as the
tribal orgy Sing This All Together/II, the oriental inspiration
of Gomper, the futuristic electronic effects in 2000 Light Years
From Home. The masterpiece She's A Rainbow, fuses the sonic
attack of the early Stones' rhythm and blues with psychedelic
trumpets, a string session and a musicbox-like piano (Hopkins,
again).
In line with that acid/baroque tendency
that obsesses over the arrangements - and seems to want to copy
The Beatles (guests of honor in the choruses), We Love You (the
single of August, with Jones on mellotron), completes the
trilogy, along with Ruby and Rainbow, of the Stones' great
psychedelic songs, hammering, cacophonous and ethereal,
continuing the ascent of melodic and harmonic refinement.
The great creative season of the
psychedelic Stones was heading for an early and very tragic end.
The real protagonist of that turn of events, Brian Jones, now
completely dulled by drugs, was being progressively
marginalized, while Jagger kept the mass media busy with his
relationship with Marianne Faithful and with plenty of drug
charges. Jagger took advantage of these early signals of
disintegration to take over the control of the band.
The pretext for change came with student
riots.When generational frustrations finally exploded in May
1968, Jagger, making use of his experience as public meddler and
bringing the language of the working classes up to date, didn't
hesitate to join in. It was the year of Jumping Jack Flash (May)
- their first try in the field of belligerent anthems - and of
Beggar's Banquet (Decca, 1968), the bluesiest, most socially
oriented album of their career.
Beggar's Banquet is the opposite of the
two albums that preceded it. It significantly modifies the image
of the Stones. As much as Jones had tried to transform them in
altar boys, Jagger gives them back the charisma of evil in
accordance with the dictates of a more modern blues - masculine,
hard, vibrant, syncopated - sustained by the sharp shavings of
electric guitar and by the relentless marathon of drums: the
powerful Stray Cat Blues, the country-gospel choral Salt Of The
Earth and the slowest, most intricate post-war blues Parachute
Woman and Prodigal Son. The lyrics speak of sex, drugs,
politics. The Stones are the modern outlaws of music, they court
the devil and sing by his inspiration, like their legendary
black forefathers.
The road was paved by Street Fighting Man,
the revolutionary hymn (sequestered for two years by the
recording studio), that burst with the most martial riff of
Richard's career and cadenced by Watts' war drums. It is
surpassed in wickedness only by the demonic tribalism of
Sympathy For The Devil - Jagger's last will and testament -
thanks to the epic piano phrasing of Hopkins.
>From this moment on, however, the story
of The Rolling Stones became a monotonous chronicle of mundane
foul deeds and a list of albums always dignified but held
together more by undeniable class than by new ideas, a slow,
descending parable of hedonism, fetishism, narcissism,
bohemianism, aura, erotomania and schizophrenia.
In July 1969 Brian Jones - the sitar of
Paint It Black, the dulcimer of Lady Jane, the flute of Ruby
Tuesday - was found dead of an overdose in his swimming pool.
Neurotic, hallucinated, broken by loneliness and powerlessness,
Jones had become a wreck. He had been replaced in the band a
month before by Mick Taylor.
In December of the same year, during a
concert in Altamont, California the Hell's Angels fueled
disturbances that culminated with the death a spectator. At
last, Jagger left Marianne Faithful full of drugs (she would
attempt suicide shortly after) to marry a model.
By now The Rolling Stones were eccentric
multi-millionaires surrounded by a team of managers (to handle
their millions), of lawyers (to run from the laws they
continuously broke), of technicians (to prepare their concerts),
of doctors (to avoid the risk that someone could wind up like
Jones).
In those same months came the obscene
affront Honky Tonk Women (July), not for nothing one of the most
syncopated rhythm and blues of all time, the masterpiece of the
Stones rhythm section, to complete the trilogy - with Let's
Spend The Night Together and Sympathy For The Devil, of a
depraved and blasphemous rock.
Among the most creative blues of the times
must be added You Can't Always Get What You Want, introduced by
a cappella by choir of children, then immediately underlined by
Latin percussions, a jazz piano, a church organ and the London
Bach Choir.
At the end of the year the Stone released
Let It Bleed (1969), another frenetic and rugged album ,
featuring Gimme Shelter, a quintessential jam that featured
lascivious post-psychedelic guitar counterpoint, pounding
pseudo-voodoo rhythm section and profane gospel invocation.
After the death of Brian Jones, their
sound became sort of a puritan rhythm and blues, a sound
reluctant to accept any instrumental extravaganza.
Through those years The Rolling Stones
became by all accounts one of the greatest rock and roll bands.
Their continuous concerts established a standard reference for
younger bands, a fact not to be overlooked considering that in
general the new generation was better served technically than
the old one. But that's not the case for The Rolling Stones, who
would continue to dominate even when their albums were mediocre.
While The Beatles (and many others of their generation) were no
longer playing live, realizing their mediocrity as musicians and
embarrassed to confront themselves with a much better prepared
generation, The Rolling Stones put on the best show on earth.
Sticky Fingers (Rolling Stones, 1971) left
behind the psychedelic and avant guard craziness to mark a
singular comeback to their blues roots. With this album the
Stones found a post-blues format, intellectual yet spartan,
vulgar yet elegant, rowdy yet impeccable, lewd yet austere, that
would become the classic of classics. The album was much talked
about because of its sexy jacket, the zipper designed by Andy
Warhol, a metaphor of the contents. It's one of the most
explicit and provocative albums of all time, a continuous
apology to dependency - from lascivious to self-destructive; a
collection of libidinous chants and grim sabbaths to drugs. The
animalesque assault of Brown Sugar, one of their best works and
a masterpiece of rugged rock is the quintessence of their savage
style. Also worthy are the passionate ode Wild Horses and the
languid and rarefied Sister Morphine. It's blues, labored blues,
ghoulish and romantic, but it's not the blues of the plantations,
it's the blues of psychedelic lights. Musically the band
achieves an even higher level with the bold and fearless Bitch,
a mini jam seven minutes long, and with the conga and sax of
Can't You Hear Me Knocking.
The double album Exile On Main Street
(Rolling Stones, 1972) completes the maturation. Abandoning all
pretenses and concentrating only on their infernal nature, the
Stones deliver on the concept of sexual obsession. The songs are
luxuriously bacchanalian, syncopated and droll, but the album is
self-referential, a sort of museum of the styles absorbed by the
Stones sound, from the hiccuping gospel of Tumbling Dice to the
visceral, percussive and stentorian funk of Rocks Off. It's a
multi-voiced shouting style mostly derived from gospel, with a
rumbling jump-blues rhythmic counterpoint of swooping horn
blasts and heavy drum rolls. Percussion dominates, albeit in
different styles from song to song, along with suggestive
instrumental combinations and rhythmic patterns that go well
beyond their legendary syncopation. Exemplary are the saraband
Happy and the choral decadence of All Down The Line.
The quieter episodes are counterbalanced
by a sinister aspect: the solemn and martial blues Torn And
Frayed, the frenetic and possessed boogie Turd On The Run, the
tribal and demonic serenade Black Angel. The autobiographical
choral hymn Soul Survivor seals the work. Perhaps not by chance
the best piece is a cover, the captivating dance Hip Shake by
Slim Harpo.
Having replaced Taylor - another victim of
the band's excesses - with Ron Wood in 1974, the Stones were
enticed by reggae and disco, but substantially their music
wouldn't change, still solid and gruff as in the beginning but
lacking the attitude and the fantasy of earlier times. For the
remainder of the decade their albums parade yearly but the
singles are not the "chansons de geste" of the past: the
struggling Angie (1973) from the mediocre Goat Head's Soup, the
anthem It's Only Rock And Roll (1974) from the album of the same
name, the disco crossovers Miss You (1978) from Some Girls and
Emotional Rescue (1980) from its album. There is nothing worth
mentioning from Black And Blue (1976), an album mined from
Jagger's passion for reggae.
Schizophrenically stretched between a
bourgeois normalcy (home, marriage, hobbies) and the image of
heroin addicts afflicted with the "millionaire loneliness
syndrome" (permanently engulfed from one side of the world to
the other in a sort of consumerist caricature of the road
adventures of Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac: entire hotels
reserved in their name, million dollars nights of beer and fruit
juice, gargantuan dinners) but still able to suck into their
tragic vortex groupies and casual friends (plenty killed or
grown stupid from drug abuse, from suicide or otherwise ruined),
the Stones ascended to living legends, venerated by the media
and by fans of every age from every country, masterful as they
were in feeding their own cult.
In 1984 they are the first band to gain
admission in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, the shrine of the
stars who filled Madison Square Garden. At the end of 1985
keyboardist Ian Stewart, the unofficial sixth member of the
group, died. The progressive marginalization of drug addict Ron
Wood began. The disagreements and fights between Richard and
Jagger filled the papers.
Their later hits pushed their ideology of
music for the body to the extreme, preserving only the
rhythmical qualities of rhythm and blues, their forte. The
compositions, dried to the bone, lost their melodic packaging,
submerged completely in the sweat and breath of movement: the
hyper-syncopated voluptuous She`s So Cold (1980), the sweeping
Start Me Up (1980), ennobled by the beat of the most skin tight
rhythm section in the history of music, Undercover Of The Night
(1983) from the album of the same name, Had It With You (1984),
a quintessential essay on the Stones' ritualism and One Hit To
The Body (1986), another hyper-cadenced classic that "sounds"
like The Rolling Stones. After that a modernistic coloring seems
to erase the might of the band. There is really little to save
in Steel Wheels (1989).
The Rolling Stones tabs:
The Rolling
Stones - Angie tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - As Tears Go By tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Beast of Burden tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar tab and chord
The Rolling Stones - Get off of my cloud tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Honky tonk women tab and chord
The Rolling Stones - It's only rock'n'roll but I like it tab and
chord
The Rolling Stones - Jumpin' Jack Flash tab and chord
The Rolling Stones - Let's Spend The Night Together tab and
chord
The
Rolling Stones - Midnight Rambler tab and chord
The Rolling
Stones - Miss You tab and chord
The Rolling Stones - Mother's little helper tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Paint it black tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Ruby Tuesday tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction tab and chord
The Rolling
Stones - Shattered tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Start me up tab and chord
The Rolling Stones - Street Fighting Man tab and chord
The Rolling Stones - Sympathi for the devil tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Tumbling Dice tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Under my thumb tab and chord
The
Rolling Stones - Wild Horses tab and chord
The Rolling Stones - You can't always get what you want tab and
chord
