written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, performed by The Rolling Stones

When I arrived at Southgate County Grammer School, the first thing I discovered after having my school cap thrown onto the roof of the school (which apparently was a traditional gesture for first years, on their first day) was that at morning break time and at lunch time all the boys played football, using a tennis ball I might add, in the tennis courts directly in front of the school building. The teams seemed to have been selected in advance and I quickly discovered what the criteria was as I was asked if I supported Arsenal or Spurs. These were the two major football teams in North London and it was soon apparent that the supporters of one team played against the supporters of the other. So, there I was, standing in front of everyone as they eagerly awaited my admission.

Unfortunately for them I just shrugged my shoulders and said “neither”, which was the truth. I’d watched football on TV but I’d never been to a football match and didn’t consider that I had a team. As the days went on, I came under further scrutiny and then there was an interesting development; a boy from each team invited me to go with them to see a game. So, on the following Saturday, I went to White Hart Lane, the home ground of Tottenham Hotspur (‘Spurs’) to see them play Leeds United. A week later, I was taken to Highbury Stadium to witness ‘The Arsenal’ play Manchester United; and then I was asked to choose.

One thing I had observed during those weeks was that the Arsenal boys at school had a habit of beating-up the Spurs boys, and vice-versa. This meant that whoever I chose I was going to be set upon by the other side – not something I liked the idea of. One evening as I was playing football in the street (again with a tennis ball) with some of the local lads I mentioned this problem and quick as a flash they came up with a solution which was ‘tell them you support someone else, not Spurs or Arsenal’.  A suggestion was made that I choose Manchester United, but that didn’t make much sense as I’d only get to see them play when they were in London, and so it was that I chose to support Chelsea, a decision that stopped me from getting beaten-up at school and which I’ve been happy with ever since.

Not long after the football team question I was asked the same thing about music. “Who do you like, The Beatles or The Stones?” I found this a really strange question as unlike football teams they weren’t in a competition trying to beat each other, so again I gave an honest answer, “Well, I like both.” I listened to music constantly and bought singles every week. The records I bought were generally by people I already liked, or if I heard something interesting that I liked I’d pick up on that as well. This idea that you either liked one group or the other was of course created by the teen magazines to give them more to write about, supported by the record companies who wanted as many column inches for their artists as possible and fuelled by the mainly teenage girl readership who bought into a love of their group, primarily on looks, against all others.

Interestingly there were a lot of similarities between the members of the two groups. They were all in their early twenties and had similar lifestyles sometimes socialising together. John Lennon and Paul McCartney (of The Beatles), Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones), although from different backgrounds, Richards and McCartney being from working class households whilst Jagger and Lennon were from middle class, were all well educated. In particular Jagger attended the London School of Economics. The other three all studied art to a high level, and of course all four had a love of music in common, but not just any music. In their teens, they were all influenced by American  Rock ‘n’ Roll artists, with all four being avid record buyers, and fans of Little Richard and Chuck Berry. But as time moved on there was a divergence. The Beatles, as can be seen with the songs they chose to cover on their early albums were picking up on U.S. black soul music in particular whereas Jagger and Richards were influenced by something very different indeed.

Since the late 1920s when U.K. audiences were able to see and hear American musicals in their cinemas, British musicians have always been influenced by American music. Whether it was the dance bands of the 1930s, the Big Bands of the 40s, or the crooners and jazz artists of the 50s, as soon as they could get hold of the sheet music, or in latter years records, they would start reproducing these songs on stage and then on radio. But, in the mid-1950s something different happened. A British trumpeter called Ken Colyer who had been in the Royal Navy came back to London from New Orleans enthused with the idea of reproducing not the current jazz music of America, but the line-up and sound of the earliest original Jazz groups. This idea caught on and very soon there were a variety of ‘Trad Jazz’ groups many of whom became household names: Chris Barber, Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball in particular.

The Trad Jazz groups which in the early days were very much dance bands, would often play a couple of sets in an evening and there was therefore an interval between sets. Whilst in Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, a young banjo player called Lonnie Donegan had the bright idea of filling in this gap with an impromptu performance on guitar assisted by an upright bass player and a chap with a washboard and a tea chest adding percussion. They played traditional American folk and blues songs and very soon audiences turned up just to see the ‘skiffle group’, as they became known.  Due to the low cost of the instruments skiffle groups started to spring up all over the country; John Lennon played in a skiffle group before the Beatles and many other famous artists including Van Morrison credit skiffle as the start of their careers.

A young British musician Alexis Korner had played piano in Chris Barber’s band and then mandolin in a skiffle group but what he’d developed a passion for was ‘The Blues’. In 1961 he formed ‘Blues Incorporated’ with harmonica player Cyril Davies, which quickly became a magnet for young aspiring musicians including: Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce (who subsequently formed Cream with Eric Clapton), Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (of Led Zepplin fame) and John Mayall (whose subsequent band The Bluesbreakers included the members of what became Fleetwood Mac and of course Clapton) amongst others. But without a doubt, his best line-up featured Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts, and Ian Stewart. After a while,  they decided to form their own blues group, and adding Bill Wyman on bass guitar called themselves The Rolling Stones, after the Muddy Waters song. By now there were plenty of venues in and around London and this new line up debuted at the Ealing Jazz Club in January 1963.

The Rolling Stones signed for Decca Records on 5^th May 1963, a year and five months after they had rejected The Beatles saying, “ Guitar groups are on the way out.”  One of the interesting things about their contract was that it gave their manager Andrew Loog Oldham control of their recordings and so he also became the producer and was able to use a variety of recording studios for their albums rather than making them ‘in house’ at Decca. Two singles were released in 1963, their version of Chuck Berry’s ‘Come On’ and an at the time un-released Lennon & McCartney song ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’. Both made it into the top twenty but didn’t set the world alight. However, their third single, a cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’ released in Feb 64 did just that, reaching number three, and five months later they had their first UK number one with Bobby Womack’s ‘It’s All Over Now’.

I bought both ‘Not Fade Away’ and ‘It’s All Over Now’ as singles and played them endlessly. I was eleven in early 64 and had never heard of Buddy Holly, nor was I likely to hear an obscure Bobby Womack song that had been an R&B hit in the US. To me, these were simply Rolling Stones records, and their next single ‘Little Red Rooster’ released in Nov 64 went to number one. This was an out and out blues song by Howlin’Wolf, and is the only blues song to have ever topped the UK charts, introducing me and the wider world to bottleneck guitar.

The first two LPs, The Rolling Stones (released April 64) and No.2 (released Jan 65) contained 24 tracks between them, 20 of which were Blues or R&B covers. Both went to number one in the UK album charts and the group had started to gain in popularity in the US, although not to the same degree as The Beatles, but then something happened that changed things – ‘Little Red Rooster’ was not going to be released in the US as their record company thought it would be ‘banned’ by US radio stations.

The reason for this has always been clouded in mystery. The suggestion at the time was that the lyrics had ‘sexual connotations’, but that seems a bit far-fetched. What seems more likely was that the record company were aware that this was a song written by a black man and the Rolling Stones had an audience made up of predominately white teenage girls.

It seems strange to us now that this could have been seen as a problem, but legendary blues artists such as Muddy Waters, BB King, John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon and Howlin Wolf were almost unknown in the U.S. This was because of segregation. Black people were not allowed to mix with White people, even at a concert, but more than that, if something was noticeably ‘Black music’, it  wasn’t played on the white owned radio stations (something that was about to change with the success of labels such as Motown and Atlantic).

Andrew Oldham was a shrewd man who understood that success in the US was all important to the group. He had positioned the Stones to capitalise on the ‘British invasion’ which had been spearheaded by The Beatles but he needed them to stand out, so as he said in an interview, “ The Beatles looked like they were in show business (with their matching suits and haircuts), the important thing for The Rolling Stones was to look as if they were not.” This meant that to a lot of American parents these boys were not the kind of boys you’d want turning up on your doorstep to take your daughter out for the evening.

So whilst covering black music would work well in the UK, they needed to produce original songs to conquer the US, and he started to pressurise them into writing their own songs. Whilst Brian Jones at the time was seen as the leader of the group and the most creative musician, it was the surprising combination of Jagger and Richards who started to write together and produce songs that were as good, if not better than the songs they were covering.

June 1965 saw the Jagger & Richards composition ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ hit number one in the UK and the US, followed by ‘Get Off Of My Cloud (Sept 65)’, ‘Paint It Black (May 66)’, ‘Jumpin Jack Flash (May 68)’, ‘Honky Tonk Woman (July 69)’ and ‘Brown Sugar (April 71)’ some of the greatest rock tracks ever, which all topped the US charts.

‘Sympathy For The Devil’ was the opening track on the groups 1968 album ‘Beggars Banquet’. The lyrics focus on the failures of man-kind but from the Devil’s point of view: the crucifixion of Jesus, World Wars, Revolutions and the assassination of the Kennedys. Also on the album was ‘Street Fighting Man’ which was released as a single but was seen as controversial due to the US race riots and student protests in the US and Europe. Together these tracks show them as writers growing in maturity both lyrically and musically.

The Blues was considered by many parents in the ‘bible belt’ in the American South to be a sinful influence on the young, and so became referred to as the Devil’s music. So much so that when the BBC produced a four part series on it’s history, narrated by Alexis Korner, they actually called it ‘The Devil’s Music. If that is the case, then judging by the Stones catalogue, as has been rumoured,  the devil does seem to have some of the best songs.

Hot Rocks 1964-1971 Remastered The Rolling Stones

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