: Steve Pilkington
: Rolling Stones 1963 to 1980 Every Album, Every Song
: Sonicbond Publishing
: 9781789523874
: 1
: CHF 7.50
:
: Musik
: English
: 144
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

The Rolling Stones. Still going strong and defying the doubters, over 55 years since their formation, they possess a longevity almost unheard of in popular music - especially with three of the five original members still present.
The majority of people, however, would surely consider their work during the 1960s and 1970s to be their most creative, influential and original, from the early R&B material through the psychedelic experimentation of Their Satanic Majesties Request, the country/blues flavourings of Beggars Banquet , the louche swagger of Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street through to the mature and sophisticated feel of the more complex Goats Head Soup. With 'new boy' Ron Wood replacing Mick Taylor in 1975, the band returned to basics a little more with the album Black And Blue and a resultant world tour which saw over a million people apply for tickets to a run of six Earl's Court shows in 1976.
The band have continued as a major force since the turn of the '80s, but it is that period up to 1980 which this book looks at, studying in depth every single song released during the band in that time, via factual, anecdotal and critical analysis. It's only rock and roll, but this is the ultimate study.



Steve Pilkington is a music journalist, proof-reader and broadcaster. He is Editor in Chief for the Classic Rock Society magazine Rock Society, and contributes to other publications such as Prog. Before taking on this work full-time, he spent years writing for fanzines and an Internet music review site on a part-time basis. He has recently published Black Sabbath - Song By Song (Fonthill, 2018), Deep Purple and Rainbow - On Track (Sonicbond, 2018) and has written the official biography of legendary guitarist Gordon Giltrap. He lives in Wigan, Merseyside.
Chapter1

The Rolling Stones


US Title: England’s Newest Hit Makers (1964)

Personnel:

Mick Jagger: vocals, harmonica

Keith Richards: guitar, vocals

Brian Jones: guitar, harmonica, vocals

Bill Wyman: bass guitar, vocals

Charlie Watts: drums and percussion

With

Ian Stewart: piano, organ

Gene Pitney: piano

Phil Spector: maracas

Record Label: Decca (UK), London (US)

Recorded: Jan-Feb 1964, produced by Eric Easton and Andrew Loog Oldham

UK release date: April 1964. US release date: May 1964

Highest chart places: UK: 1, USA: 11

Running time: UK: 33:24 US: 31:05

The US track listing substituted the hit single ‘Not Fade Away’ for the song ‘Mona’.

This is covered at the end of this section.

Album Facts:


By the time the Stones entered Regent Studios in London to record their debut album they had already had a small taste of success via the Top 5 single ‘Not Fade Away’, so they were riding high on a wave of self-belief. The album itself was recorded in very basic fashion on a two-track Revox, so there was very little scope for embellishment beyond the most rudimentary of overdubs and everything you hear is more or less as it was played at the time. This factor, combined with the band’s cocksure arrogance and belief in their own abilities, resulted in an album which gets out of the starting blocks quickly and never lets up. It’s dated now, naturally – but in comparison to many of the albums churned out by ‘beat groups’ of the time, with a host of B-sides and filler tracks padding them out, it’s a beacon of excitement and bravado. One thing which is clear from the way the instrumentation is pushed forward as strongly as the vocals is that the band, even at this stage, regarded themselves as musicians first and foremost, rather than as pop stars.

The US release of the album included ‘Not Fade Away’ at the expense of ‘Mona’ – though it is difficult to see why it was necessary to drop that track, as the change left the first side of the US release at only 13 minutes and 42 seconds; extremely short, even for the time.

Album Cover:


By the time of this album’s release, after three singles and an EP of covers

calledThe Rolling Stones EP (none of those EP tracks are particularly noteworthy), the fledgling Stones had already cultivated a highly visual image as ‘rebels’, who parents across the land feared would come and steal their daughters away, which by turn heightened the cleaner-cut allure of the Beatles, whose ‘long-haired’ early demeanour quickly became almost cuddly

by comparison. Manager Andrew Loog Oldham, a shrewd individual, knew this only too well, and he traded on it in a risky move