Rolling Stones Thread

[Swede]

What sounds like rap or hip-hop? On "The Rain Falls Down" the second verse go's into a rap rythme. It's very obvious to me. I think people are so used to rap & hip-hop that they don't realise it's there. The Stones obviously did this to cash in on that audiance.

Yeah, same goes for the whole Rolling Stones catalog of albums.. Sounds like Chuck Berry (rock'n'roll influence) and Elvis (country influence). They obviously been trying to cash in their whole career!!!

[Swede]

That's part of my point, it seems like rap & hip-hop are finding their way into all kinds of music these days. Rap sells. Everyone wants a piece of that. The "great effect " it has on me is it turns me off. If you like it, go ahead. But I'm disapionted in the Stones for doing it.

I think it's going to bite the record companys in the ass someday because they're pushing something that dosen't sell well as a catalog item. Who knows maybe that's part of their problem right now. I know it's not their only problem. This is just a theory but the more they promote music that doesn't need a good sound system the less people are going to need the record companys.

Boy we've gotten away from the original subject witch was the Rapping or I mean the Rolling Stones.

It's been fun though, talking to you. I gotta get to bed now. Another time OK?

This could have been said by Grandpa John Smith in the 60's when Chet Atkins released Pickin' on The Beatles..

That's part of my point, it seems like rock & roll are finding their way into all kinds of music these days. Rock & roll sells. Everyone wants a piece of that. The "great effect " it has on me is it turns me off. If you like it, go ahead. But I'm disapionted in for doing it.

I think it's going to bite the Nashville record companys in the ass someday because they're pushing something that dosen't sell well as a catalog item. Who knows maybe that's part of their problem right now. I know it's not their only problem. This is just a theory but the more they promote music that doesn't need a good sound system the less people are going to need the record companys.

[dragster]

Just saw the trailer to the SAL movie on the Stones..............wohhoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! :)

[SteveAJones]

Not Fade Away: Mick Jagger on the trials of life at 65

The Independent (UK) November 8, 2008

It's not very rock'n'roll, but Mick Jagger, the man who brought us 'Sympathy for the Devil', supermodel girlfriends and skin-tight jeans, recently acquired OAP status. So has he mellowed with age? James Mottram finds out

---------------

Before Mick Jagger enters the hotel room, I'm half expecting to be reminded of the opening line of The Rolling Stones' old number "Mother's Little Helper". You know the bit, as Jagger whines in that unmistakable voice of his, "What a drag it is getting old". This has been, after all, a watershed year for the Stones' lead singer. Turning 65 in July, all those jokes about the wrinkly rocker being old enough to collect his pension finally came true. Sir Mick – as he became in 2003 – is now officially an OAP. Not that he's ready to curl up with his cocoa just yet.

It's around 2pm when he finally arrives, a good half-hour late. "I didn't go to bed until five o'clock," he says, with a measure of pride, perhaps because it runs contrary to the image painted of him in the tabloids by his ex-wife Jerry Hall, that of a couch potato who likes an early night. He had spent the night partying with the other Stones in Berlin; if it got out of hand, it doesn't show. While the excesses of a rock'n'roll lifestyle may have taken their toll on his fellow band member Keith Richards, Jagger looks in remarkable shape. Rather like his slightly sucked-in cheeks, Jagger's torso, I imagine, is almost concave, as if he's had the flesh vacuumed out of him.

The Dartford-born singer puts his preternaturally skinny physique down to being raised in the aftermath of the Second World War. "It's the diet we had when we ......... were children," he smiles. "There was very little food, basically, and no junk food and no sugar." Never mind that his father, Joe, was a games teacher and relatively affluent compared to some. "Yeah, but that didn't get you any more food," he adds. "Teachers don't earn much money. Not to labour the point, but they think this is one reason why our generation doesn't get fat – unless you drink lots of beer, of course."

While the only things plump about him are those famous lips – more pink than bright red, as the Stones marketing might have us believe – he says "there's no secret" to staying fit. "You just have to do a bit of work when you get over 30. You have to go to the gym. Before 30, you don't really have to worry." Dressed in a striped shirt, lilac jumper and black jeans, lines already clustering around those ice-blue eyes, Jagger wisely makes no attempt to look younger by dressing up in rock-star clobber.

This is the third time I've encountered Jagger, though it's as if I've been in the presence of three different men. The first was pure accident, as I glimpsed him mooching around Selfridges' furniture department about five years ago. Making no attempt to conceal his identity with sunglasses or the like, he looked disarmingly ordinary – perhaps that's why he was able to browse through the store almost unnoticed. The second time, I saw the side most of us know: Jagger the Showman, doing what he does best. It was on stage during the Stones' recent A Bigger Bang tour, a two-year marathon jaunt around the globe that, after reportedly taking $558m, has become the highest-grossing tour of all time.

If you read anything about Jagger, it usually centres on his remarkable stage energy, undiluted despite his advancing years. Even now, there's still something animal about him in the spotlight. Does he see performance as an almost sexual act? "Is it like sex?" he ponders. "I don't know. Is there an orgasmic moment? Not that there necessarily has to be in sex. It's a different kind of thing. Often times, you have to be more calculated about what you do." It recalls Truman Capote's comment in light of touring with the band; that everything he saw "had been coolly and efficiently manufactured by the Stones and their managers". You don't get to last 46 years in the music business by leaving things to chance.

It's Jagger's vim and vigour that fuels Shine a Light, the band's first concert movie since 1983's Let's Spend The Night Together, which has just been released on DVD. Directed by long-time Stones fan Martin Scorsese, it captures the band's gig at New York's Beacon Theatre, a pit-stop during the Bigger Bang tour. Even with Scorsese's involvement, it doesn't come close to touching the likes of the notorious fly-on-the-wall documentary Cocksucker Blues, which detailed the band's drug-fuelled 1972 US tour, or Gimme Shelter, the seminal account of the 1969 Altamont gig when a Hell's Angel stabbed a fan to death. Not that Jagger wanted another behind-the-scenes documentary. "It's a bit of a cliché, Marty and I felt, doing the backstage stuff. Everyone's done that."

If the film is primarily a straight-up concert movie, it does hint at what a giant corporate machine The Rolling Stones have become, with Jagger leading the charge. One early shot sees him sitting in First Class, sipping champagne and working on the set-list for the show. As tongue-in-cheek as it is, it highlights a core truth: much of the Stones' success comes down to Jagger micro-managing the band's business affairs. As he puts it, "I don't think anyone else in the band is the slightest bit interested in that part of it. As long as it's successful." It was he who pushed the Stones into becoming the first band to truly exploit the money to be made from tours and merchandise.

Estimates vary, but Jagger's now worth in the region of £150m – and it's certainly convenient to think of the former economics student as an omniscient control freak, a man the US press dubbed "the greatest businessman in rock'n'roll history". In person, he's aloof and wary, not......... the charming stumble-drunk that is Keith Richards. Rarely given to introspection, he's uncomfortable being interviewed. Thus, in Kevin Macdonald's documentary Being Mick, showing him up close and personal with his numerous children, it was almost a given that this was an entirely manufactured exercise. Or as Jagger explains, slipping into a Nazi commandant voice as he does so, "It was all within my control."

It's understandable, given how little control he has over the reams of tabloid column inches his life has generated. Jagger has been painted as so many different personas: the gangly, blues-loving teen, the Crowley-esque dabbler in diabolism (inspired by the classic track "Sympathy for the Devil"), the sexually promiscuous rock star (dating everyone from Carla Bruni to Sophie Dahl), and the cricket-loving country gent. As he puts it, "People seem to find it hard to accept that you can be several people at the same time." Not least playing a gyrating hipster on stage. "Of course it's a different persona," he argues. "If you came to a dinner party as your stage persona, he wouldn't be a very welcome guest!"

Currently dating the stylist L'Wren Scott, who is more than two decades his junior, Jagger likes to promote himself as the doting father. There is Karis, who came from his brief affair with the singer Marsha Hunt; Jade, from his first marriage to Bianca; his four children with Jerry Hall – Elizabeth, 24, James, 23, Georgia, 16, and Gabriel, 11. Then there's nine-year-old Lucas, the product of a three-month affair with the Brazilian model Luciana Morad that effectively ended his two decades together with Hall. At one point, when discussing the band's former bassist Bill Wyman, he tells me, "I saw him at my kid's 16th birthday party." The mind boggles at what this bash was like – Jagger playing responsible parent to a bunch of rowdy teens is an amusing prospect.

Now nearly teetotal, there's nothing he likes more than eight hours sleep a night and Jagger is far removed from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, who lived fast and died young. "Most people did survive," he counters. "It's how you came out the other side and what shape you're in, I suppose." In Jagger's case, he'd been a whipping boy for the establishment – after the Stones became involved in a landmark drugs bust when Richards' Sussex mansion was raided in 1967. "Looking back it was very funny," he reflects, "but it wasn't at the time very funny. It completely took over our lives creatively. We couldn't do this or that. You had to spend all your time dealing with the police. We definitely were being targeted. It was quite a common thing really."

For the record, Jagger doesn't believe narcotics were particularly helpful in the songwriting process that he and Richards got down to a fine art. "I think they're overrated as a creative method," he says. Certainly, having watched his former band member, Brian Jones, head down a path into narcotic-fuelled oblivion before he wound up dead in a swimming pool, Jagger has been wise to remain relatively restrained. Far more dangerous to him was the aftermath of the Altamont gig. It was revealed earlier this year that a bunch of Hell's Angels plotted to kill Jagger after he sacked them as stage security following the concert stabbing. Plotting to raid his Long Island property by boat, their plan was foiled when a storm nearly sunk their craft. Yet in many ways, this sort of incident only serves to further the media mystique that surrounds Jagger and the Stones.

"I think journalism helped make the Stones dangerous and respectable all at the same time," he says. "After you've been around for 10 or 15 years, you can't be either a) new or subversive. People that try to be subversive for more than 10 years, you'll never get anywhere. So people get used to that whole idea. By the mid-1970s, it was very difficult. That's why punk tried to remake this subversive rock moment." So how does he see rock'n'roll now? "It's another time, but there are people still doing what we did. There are tons of bands, looking like they're playing guitars! Millions of them. I see them all the time." .........

Another side to Jagger is his movie work. Shine a Light aside, Jagger has enjoyed a rather indifferent career as a movie producer, beginning in 2001 with the Second World War code-cracking thriller Enigma for his company Jagged. This year, he produced The Women, a remake of the 1939 George Cukor comedy starring Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford. Despite a cast including Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and Eva Mendes, the film took just $26m in the US and garnered some scathing reviews ("a witless, straining mess," said the New York Times). "It gives me a different outlet," he explains, vaguely, when I ask him why he does it.

One can't help but think that Jagger is in it merely to dabble – rather like his four solo albums, including 2001's much-maligned Goddess in the Doorway, or his intermittent acting career. While his screen debut as a debauched rock star in Performance was hardly stretching him, his follow-up as the lead in 1970s outlaw story Ned Kelly left him looking faintly ridiculous in a wispy beard and iron helmet. Since then, his roles, from a time-travelling bounty hunter in Freejack to a cross-dressing cabaret owner in Bent, have been idiosyncratic to say the least.

So what attracts him to a part? "I don't know," he shrugs. "Sometimes I get offered little quirky roles and if I like the idea and I feel good at the time, I'll just do them. You never know how a film is going to turn out. There can be great people involved and it can turn out rubbish, so it's always a leap in the dark." Still, it's understandable why he does it: Jagger, by nature a performer, can't always be on stage. He is certainly aware of just how addictive it is. "You don't really want to be doing it all the time. Like when you're young, you think if you're not having sex, you're wasting your time. But as you get older you realise everything has its place."

It's the same thing with performance, he says. "You don't want to be thinking, 'I'm not performing tonight. Why am I not performing? I'm just going out to dinner with my friends – I should be on stage somewhere!' So it's a great thing to do but you don't want to be doing it all the time. But a lot of people are like that – a lot of actors. They do eight shows a week on stage. It's addictive. And if they don't go straight into the next one, they don't think that their life's worth living. I mean, you go to dinner with some comedians and they're trying out their jokes on you. They're still on. I'm not saying I'm boring, but you have to have a regular life. You don't want to be a performer all the time. You don't want me on the table singing."

It must be strange for Jagger, who now has homes all over the world – from the Loire Valley to Mustique and beyond – to realise how far he's come. After the Stones' first single, their 1963 cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On", Jagger admits he had no conception the band would last the next two years, let alone any further. "You didn't expect the work to go on and keep coming. You just do it for a year or two ... but it wasn't like we were going to break up or anything." Yet the band came close to implosion in the 1980s, when Jagger began to pursue a solo career and he and Richards began squabbling over songwriting credits. In the end, after Jagger's 1988 US solo tour was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, the Stones embarked on their hugely successful campaign to promote Steel Wheels, arguably the last album of any value they produced.

The Stones have lasted a further two decades, despite the departure in 1993 of Wyman, and show no signs of stopping. Does he know why they stuck it out?

"Because we were successful," he says. "I don't think we stayed together only for the success, but if we hadn't had the success, we wouldn't have stayed together. You need those two things – the love of doing it and the love of other people wanting you to do it." While Jagger claims he doesn't "feel there's a pressure to go on being sexy", I wonder if he wakes up at night, worrying about not being able to deliver on stage?

"Sure," he replies, "but don't look at the clouds of tomorrow through the sunshine of today!" Now that's sound advice from Sir Mick.

'Shine a Light' is out now on DVD

Edited November 11, 2008 by SteveAJones

[tophat]

'The worlds greatest rock n roll band'

All Stones albums is great, but here is my favourites:

Beggars Banquet

Let It Bleed

Sticky Fingers

Exile On Main Street

It's Only Rock N Roll

Edited November 11, 2008 by tophat

[59LesPaul]

Keith? the one that chose to trash Zeppelin? I love his songwriting, but doesnt he piss you off at all???

Not in the slightest,as a matter of fact,I thought the comments were fuckin' funny.

I certainly dont hate him. No way. But Im pissed at him. Just like Mr LP59 who isnt fooling me any.

Um,what?

Mick Jagger: Our Most Underrated Songwriter?

by Ron Rosenbaum | December 9, 2001 |

This article was published in the December 10, 2001, edition of The New York Observer.

In that spirit, I would like to argue that Mick Jagger is our most underrated songwriter.

But before I go any further, I think it's important to say that when I say "Mick Jagger has written," I mean the songs that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have written. Most of them are written for Mr. Jagger's voice , for his persona. But I have a feeling that the writing credit "Jagger/Richards" represents a real collaboration, whatever the division of labor may be.*

Then why not say that at the start?When everything else is said up front,it gives the lions' share to the wrong person.It's like a lawyer saying something in open court that he knows will be struck from the official record-it stays in the jurors' mind.

But what made the Stones the Stones is Jagger's jagged-edge incantation.

Really? News to me....I suppose the basically endless supply of incredible riffs has nothing to do with it?

I'm quite certain it isn't true for every song,but where do you think the inspiration comes from? Anyone?

I'll give you a hint:Of the many nicknames he has,no one is calling Mick Jagger "The Human Riff"....

Not Fade Away: Mick Jagger on the trials of life at 65

It was he who pushed the Stones into becoming the first band to truly exploit the money to be made from tours and merchandise. .

There you have it:The next time someone starts repeating the old argument about the Rolling Stones "selling out" you now have a scapegoat.

The fact that always seems to be conveniently overlooked is that their first manager fucked them over to the point that they were practically broke by 1969.

If you wanna blame somebody,blame Allen Klein,not Mick.

In person, he's aloof and wary, not......... the charming stumble-drunk that is Keith Richards.

Couldn't resist,could you Ron?

...including 2001's much-maligned Goddess in the Doorway, or his intermittent acting career.

Dogshit In The Doorway!?

...still think Jagger makes "the Stones the Stones"?

"but don't look at the clouds of tomorrow through the sunshine of today!"

Words to live by.

....but Keith still has better quotes.

I'm not trashing Mick here (this time ),I just want to make sure that credit goes where it belongs.I find it amazing that even after all this time,Keith Richards is still second fiddle to Mick.I understand that part of the reason is the fact that Mick is the lead singer,and is therefore going to get more than his fair share of attention,and I also get the reasons behind Keith becoming somewhat of a laughingstock to certain people-and why he's an easy target-but to somehow put him on a level that's lower than Mick in terms of the Rolling Stones is laughable.

Mick is the lead singer, main writer (with Keith),sometime producer (with Keith),sometime rhythm guitarist (taught by Keith) of the Rolling Stones....

Keith is the Rolling Stones

[danelectro]

Hmm I feel like I'm butting in in the middle of argument, though I have nothing to contribute to that.

The Stones are pretty much my fave band ever. If I had to pick a favorite era or favorite albums it would be the early stuff. I think many people miss some of the cool things they did back then. Like the killer 12 string guitar Keith plays on Good Times, Bad Times or the amazing harp Brian blows on Look What You've Done. I think what Keith was doing on guitar back then tends to get overlooked, he was all over the place, from tasty blues to intricate acoustic work. Despite all that it's the Yardbirds guys people get all wet over, I don't get it.

[59LesPaul]

Hmm I feel like I'm butting in in the middle of argument, though I have nothing to contribute to that.

Nah,that was just me playing catch-up.

[ZeppFanForever]

Nah,that was just me playing catch-up.

How's it going "59LesPaul" and "danelectro?" I LOVE THE ROLLING STONES! Evidently, I have seen THE STONES more times than I thought. Counting all of the STONES ticket stubs ALONE of all of the STONES concerts that I've been to through the years, I counted 40 ticket stubs! I SHIT YOU NOT! I've been to more of their concerts than I thought. That's what happens when you party too much and are having too much of a good time. ROCK ON!

Edited November 11, 2008 by ZeppFanForever

[danelectro]

How's it going "59LesPaul" and "danelectro?" I LOVE THE ROLLING STONES! Evidently, I have seen THE STONES more times than I thought. Counting all of the STONES ticket stubs ALONE of all of the STONES concerts that I've been to through the years, I counted 40 ticket stubs! I SHIT YOU NOT! I've been to more of their concerts than I thought. That's what happens when you party too much and are having too much of a good time. ROCK ON!

Wow 40 Stones shows, that's a lot.

[ZeppFanForever]

Wow 40 Stones shows, that's a lot.

How's it going "danelectro?" I just about shit in my pants when I counted them all. I couldn't believe it. I even counted them over and over again at least 4 times to make sure I wasn't exaggerating. ROCK ON!

[eternal light]

Saw you stretched out in room ten-o-nine

With a smile on your face

And a tear right in your eye

I could not see to get a line on you

My sweet honey love

Berber jewelry jangling down the street

Make you shut your eyes at every woman that you meet

I could not not seem to get a high on you

My sweet honey love

May the good Lord shine a light on you,

Make every song you sing your favorite tune.

May the good Lord shine a light on you,

Warm like the evening sun.

When you're drunk in the alley, baby, with your clothes all torn

And your late night friends leave you in the cold gray dawn.

Just seemed too many flies on you, I just can't brush them off.

Angels beating all their wings in time,

With smiles on their faces and a gleam right in their eyes.

Whoa, thought I heard one sigh for you,

Come on up, come on up, now, come on up now.

May the good Lord shine a light on you,

Make every song you sing your favorite tune.

May the good Lord shine a light on you,

Warm like the evening sun.

(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Edited November 26, 2008 by eternal light

[ArmsofAtlas]

Sticky Fingers is their best album, but Exile is damn good.

[Devil's Haircut]

How's it going "59LesPaul" and "danelectro?" I LOVE THE ROLLING STONES! Evidently, I have seen THE STONES more times than I thought. Counting all of the STONES ticket stubs ALONE of all of the STONES concerts that I've been to through the years, I counted 40 ticket stubs! I SHIT YOU NOT! I've been to more of their concerts than I thought. That's what happens when you party too much and are having too much of a good time. ROCK ON!

NO SHIT !!!

Did you get to see them in their Mick Taylor years or even before with Brian Jones by chance?

[eternal light]

Did you get to see them in their Mick Taylor years or even before with Brian Jones by chance?

I saw them with Brian Jones.

[Devil's Haircut]

I saw them with Brian Jones.

Wow ! Very cool !

Did you see them in the US or elsewhere ? And did you get close or meet the band ?

[eternal light]

Wow ! Very cool !

Did you see them in the US or elsewhere ? And did you get close or meet the band ?

I saw them at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California during the 1966 Aftermath tour, but did not get especially close or meet the band. My best friend wandered into the backstage entrance area and chatted with security about what she was not willing to do to gain access. Then she returned to her seat. She rocked.

Edited November 26, 2008 by eternal light

[Devil's Haircut]

I saw them at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California during the 1966 Aftermath tour, but did not get especially close or meet the band. My best friend wandered into the backstage entrance area and chatted with security about what she was not willing to do to gain access. Then she returned to her seat. She rocked.

Surely a little coaxing by a member of the band might've swayed her, she just didn't care for the security detail.

Urrmmphh !!

One less tale to tell.

[eternal light]

Surely a little coaxing by a member of the band might've swayed her, she just didn't care for the security detail.

She was a little bit underage.

Edited November 26, 2008 by eternal light

[bigstickbonzo]

It's that time of year again..

Goat's Head Soup is back in the mix.

[Devil's Haircut]

She was a little bit underage.

Since when did that stop rocknroll ?

[eternal light]

Since when did that stop rocknroll ?

They were dating older girls like Chrissie Shrimpton in those days.

[Devil's Haircut]

They were dating older girls like Chrissie Shrimpton in those days.

Oh I see. I suppose they played the field throughout their career. I'm sure they ran the gamut.

Bill Wyman certainly got back to his roots later on didn't he?

[Roxie]

Bill Wyman certainly got back to his roots later on didn't he?

Wonder what happened to Mandy? She's gotta be at least 20 by now.

[ally]

Stones at their best