The Rolling Stones 2

ONLY ROCK AND ROLL
The Rolling Stones had made some of their best, most original music in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. But following the ragged tour de force of Exile on
Main St. , the Stones quickly lost focus, resulting in a series of competent but
uninspired releases that maintained the band’s crowd-pleasing sound, while
adding little of substance to their recorded legacy. Many of their post- Exile
albums would be recorded in bits and pieces rather than as concerted creative
efforts, with various band members working in various combinations when
schedules permitted.

It probably wasn’t a coincidence that the Stones’ descent into the musical
doldrums coincided with a growing rift between the band’s principal members,
as Richards’s drug dependency deepened and Jagger continued to pursue
the high-society lifestyle that, in the eyes of many, distanced him from his
musical roots and alienated him from his longtime musical partner.
The Rolling Stones nonetheless remained as popular as ever through the
1970s, and became bigger than ever, as the record and concert industries expanded during the decade. But while fans continued to embrace their albums
and turn out in huge numbers for their tours, it was hard to ignore the general
air of excess and indifference that pervaded such LPs as 1973’s Goats Head
Soup and 1974’s It’s Only Rock ’N Roll , whose spotty contents supported the
widely held belief that the band members’ various indulgences had adversely
affected the quality of their musical output.
Goats Head Soup was memorable mainly for the heartrending hit ballad
“Angie,” which many fans interpreted as a paean to David Bowie’s new wife
Angela. The song was actually Richards’s ode to Anita Pallenberg, who’d left
Jones for Richards in 1967, and with whom the guitarist had a lengthy relationship
that would last for a decade and produce three children (one of whom
died in infancy). Another standout was the menacing urban nightmare “Doo
Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” and the compellingly nasty “Star Star” (originally
known as “Starfucker” but retitled for mass consumption). But most of
the album suffered from indifferent songwriting, as evidenced by such tunes
as “Dancing with Mr. D,” on which Jagger’s satanic posturing was more feeble
than frightening.
It’s Only Rock ’N Roll spawned a catchy, if somewhat obvious, anthem in
its title track, as well as the catchy “If You Can’t Rock Me,” the paranoid
“Fingerprint File,” and a respectable reading of the Temptations’ 1960s hit
“Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” But, like its predecessor, it was weighed down by a
surfeit of obvious fi ller—an issue that would be a recurring problem for the
band in years to come.
One factor in the Stones’ uninspired output during this period was Richards’s
heroin addiction, which may have enhanced his outlaw image but did
little for his musical consistency. Richards’s French villa had been the subject
of a drug raid in 1972, and his British home had been raided the following
year. The guitarist’s drug use took on such a mythic aura that it gave rise to
all manner of urban legends, including the memorable (but untrue) rumor
that he’d had all of his blood replaced during one effort to clean up.
Richards wasn’t the only one in the Stones camp whose chemical dependency
affected the quality of his work. Producer Jimmy Miller, who’d been a key
member of the band’s creative team since “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and Beggar’s
Banquet , was fi red from It’s Only Rock ’N Roll due to his own drug use.
Richards’s unreliability reportedly led Jagger to co-write several songs with
Mick Taylor during this period. But those compositions nonetheless bore the
familiar Jagger/Richards credit when they were released. Taylor’s frustration
over the situation—and his impatience over the band’s failure to tour in
1974—contributed to his surprise decision to quit the band.
Nineteen seventy-four also saw the release of Bill Wyman’s fi rst solo LP
Monkey Grip , which he would follow two years later with Stone Alone .
With Taylor gone, the Rolling Stones used the Munich recording sessions
for their next album, Black and Blue , as an opportunity to audition for
his replacement. The candidates included a pair of Americans, ex–Canned Heat/Bluesbreakers member Harvey Mandel and Muscle Shoals session man
Wayne Perkins, who ended up appearing on the album, as well as ex-Yardbird
Jeff Beck and former Humble Pie member Peter Frampton, who didn’t.
The winner was Ron Wood, a former member of the Faces and the Jeff Beck
Group who’d also guested on It’s Only Rock ’N Roll . Wood, coincidentally,
had fi rst been introduced to the Stones by his longtime friend Mick Taylor.
While Wood may not have possessed his predecessor’s technical chops, his
spiky, rhythmic style perfectly complemented Richards’s playing, and the
pair’s sympathetic instrumental rapport would quickly become a crucial element
in the Stones’ sound.
Prior to Black and Blue ’s release, Wood made his public debut with the
Stones on the band’s 1975 North American tour. In addition to introducing
the new lineup, those shows also marked the fi rst time that the Rolling Stones
had augmented their live act with an elaborate theatrical presentation, including
such unsubtle visual props as an infl atable giant phallus and a cherry
picker that would hoist Jagger over the audience.
The retooled stage show was Jagger’s effort to stay competitive with the
overblown extravaganzas that had become standard for touring rock superstars
at the time. But it also created another source of tension in his increasingly
fractious relationship with Keith Richards, who considered the onstage
frills to be an unnecessary distraction.
Black and Blue , released in April 1976, was a marginal improvement over
Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock ’N Roll . The album’s emphasis on loose,
funky grooves—like those of the disco-leaning “Hot Stuff” and the reggaeifi
ed “Cherry Oh Baby”—rather than concise songs wasn’t surprising, in light
of the fact that most of the material was derived via casual studio jams. But
Black and Blue ’s standout tracks were a pair of moody ballads, “Fool to Cry”
and “Memory Motel.”
Black and Blue did little to reverse critics’ assertions that the Stones had
grown stagnant. But Keith Richards had bigger problems than musical direction.
Although he’d gone through a series of therapies attempting to cure his heroin
addiction, in February 1977 he and Anita Pallenberg were arrested for heroin
and cocaine possession in a room at Toronto’s Harbour Castle Hotel. Richards
was charged with importing narcotics, an offense that carried a minimum
prison sentence of seven years.
Jagger, meanwhile, continued to play the role of glamorous globe-hopping
celebrity to the hilt. The singer, whose marriage to Bianca would end in 1977,
was a regular at the notorious New York disco Studio 54, often in the company
of his new girlfriend, model Jerry Hall. Jagger would marry Hall in
1990; the couple would have four children before divorcing in 1999.
By now, the punk rock movement had emerged as a signifi cant force, rebelling
against entrenched millionaire rock stars who’d lost touch with their
original inspiration. That description certainly applied to the Rolling Stones
at the time, and was confi rmed when the Clash’s Joe Strummer sang “No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones” in the song “1977.” The rote performances
on the Stones’ 1977 double concert set Love You Live supported the band’s
growing reputation as a spent force coasting on past glories.
But the Stones made an unexpected return to form with 1978’s Some Girls .
That album recaptured the raw, rude spirit of the band’s best work, channeling
its recent internal turmoil into raucous, spirited music, and drawing energy
from punk as well as the then-ubiquitous disco explosion. The result was their
most focused and consistent music in years, music that instantly made the
Rolling Stones seem current once again.
Along with the disco-infl ected number one single “Miss You,” the punchy
mid-tempo “Beast of Burden,” and the droll country parody “Far Away
Eyes,” Some Girls was loaded with tough, witty rockers that showcased Jagger’s
reenergized presence and the solid guitar rapport of Richards and Wood,
for example, “Shattered,” “Respectable,” “When the Whip Comes Down,”
and the Richards-sung outlaw anthem “Before They Make Me Run.”
The latter track was a liberating shout of defi ance in the face of Richards’s
recent problems with drugs and the law. The song held particular resonance,
since the guitarist was still under the threat of imprisonment when it was
recorded and released. Richards ultimately escaped serving time, and instead
was sentenced to play two benefi t concerts in Toronto for the Canadian
National Institute for the Blind.
For that purpose, Richards put together the New Barbarians, a short-lived
supergroup that also included Ron Wood, ex-Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan
(who’d been working with the Stones as a studio and stage sideman), jazzfusion
bassist Stanley Clarke, drummer Zigaboo Modeliste of fabled New
Orleans funk combo the Meters, and frequent Stones saxophonist Bobby
Keys. Following the court-mandated Toronto shows on April 22, the ensemble
did a month-long U.S. tour, ostensibly to promote Wood’s then-current
solo album Gimme Some Neck , to which Richards, McLagan, and Keys all
contributed.
His legal problems apparently motivated Richards to successfully overcome
his heroin addiction, after multiple attempts. At around the same time, he
ended his relationship with Anita Pallenberg. 1979 also saw the fi rst offi cial
Richards solo release, a Christmas single combining covers of Chuck Berry’s
seasonal tune “Run Rudolph Run” and Jimmy Cliff’s reggae classic “The
Harder They Come.”
In addition to making the Rolling Stones artistically relevant again, Some
Girls restored their commercial status. It became their best-selling album in
years, topping the American charts and reaching number two in punk-gripped
Britain.
But the band was unable to maintain that level of quality with 1980’s Emotional
Rescue . That disc, partially comprising Some Girls outtakes, had an
unmistakable throwaway feel, with such numbers as “She’s So Cold,” “Send It to Me,” and the reggae-fl avored title track sounding like pale reworkings of
older, better Stones songs.
Emotional Rescue ’s lackluster quality betrayed the Stones’ unstable internal
state. With Richards having curbed some of his drug excesses, he began to
become a more active and assertive participant in the studio, leading to
personal tensions and creative power struggles with Jagger.
The Stones’ 1981 release Tattoo You was also largely assembled from leftover
tracks from prior recording projects, some of them nearly a decade old,
but was a substantial improvement over Emotional Rescue . Divided into
separate sides of rockers and ballads, its rock half featured such highlights as
the insistent “Start Me Up,” the self-mocking “Hang Fire,” and one of the
band’s best Richards-fronted tracks, the cheerfully sleazy “Little T & A.” The
Richards-sung ballad “Worried About You” was another standout, as was the
hit ballad “Waiting on a Friend,” which caught Jagger in an uncharacteristically
refl ective mood and featured a sax solo by jazz great Sonny Rollins.
Rollins overdubbed his part years after the original track was recorded; it and
“Tops” had both been cut during the Goats Head Soup sessions and featured
the guitar work of the long-departed Mick Taylor.
Tattoo You was followed by a stadium tour that was captured on the 1982
live album Still Life and shot by director Hal Ashby for the concert fi lm Let’s
Spend the Night Together . That tour also marked the introduction of American
pianist Chuck Leavell, formerly of the Allman Brothers Band and Sea Level,
to the Stones’ stage lineup.
In 1982, Bill Wyman, who rarely got the chance to display his songwriting
abilities within the Stones, achieved a surprise European solo smash with “(Si
Si) Je suis un Rock Star,” a playful, new-wavey pop novelty that spoofed his
status as a French tax exile.

ACHING IN THE 1980S
The Rolling Stones continued to tour and record consistently through the
1980s. While their tours continued to be tremendous money makers, their
albums were largely disappointing, both musically and commercially. The creative
rut was widely assumed to be the result of the ongoing strained relations
between Jagger and Richards. One source of disagreement was Jagger’s desire
to take the band in a direction more in keeping with contemporary pop trends
and Richards’s insistence on sticking with rock and roll basics.
Nineteen eighty-three’s Undercover is generally regarded as Jagger’s attempt
to give the Rolling Stones a more modern sound, integrating a variety of thencontemporary
beats and fl ashy production techniques. But the ionic frills felt
awkward, and the songs’ self-consciously nasty, nihilistic lyrics—manifested
in the tawdry images of kinky sex, sleazy violence, and political corruption on such numbers as “Undercover of the Night,” “Pretty Beat Up,” and “Too
Much Blood”—seemed less like musical growth and more like a forced
attempt to give the band an edgy veneer.
The ill will between Jagger and Richards was exacerbated when Jagger signed
a solo deal with Rolling Stones Records’ new distributor, CBS. Richards, who’d
largely refrained from extracurricular musical pursuits, resented Jagger’s apparent
lack of commitment to the group. The public feuding between the two
longtime bandmates seemed to cast serious doubt on the Stones’ future.
The much-ballyhooed 1985 release of Jagger’s fi rst solo effort She’s the
Boss seemed to confi rm the widely held assumption that the Stones were nearing
the end of their run. But the album—recorded with a sprawling cast of
players that included Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Herbie Hancock, and the
reggae rhythm section of Sly and Robbie—was a fl imsy collection of trendy,
lightweight 1980s pop, with nary a trace of stonesy spirit.
To help promote She’s the Boss , Jagger shot a series of elaborate promotional
videos that received heavy MTV airplay. Although the exposure pushed
the album to platinum status and helped to send its fi rst single “Just Another
Night” into the Top Twenty, the public response seemed muted in comparison
to the promotional hype that had accompanied the project. That summer, Jagger
teamed up with David Bowie to record a cover of Martha and the Vandellas’
1964 Motown classic “Dancing in the Street” to benefi t the Live Aid organization.
The single reached number seven in the United States.
A further blow to the Stones’ stability came when beloved pianist and band
retainer Ian Stewart—whose calming infl uence had long had a stabilizing
effect on the group’s internal confl icts—died of a heart attack in December
1985. A set at a Stewart tribute concert in February 1986 was the Rolling
Stones’ only public appearance during that period.
The Stones paid further tribute to their fallen comrade by including a snippet
of a Stewart boogie-woogie piano solo in the fi nal fadeout of 1986’s Dirty Work .
That troubled album represented a conscious attempt to return the Stones to
their rock and roll roots. But the largely Richards-penned album suffered from a
paucity of memorable songs, and the lukewarm performances—not to mention
the lightweight 1980s production—did little to put the subpar material across.
Despite its musical defi ciencies, Dirty Work ’s relatively lackluster sales
probably had as much to do with Jagger’s decision that the Stones not tour to
promote it. The growing perception of his lack of interest in the band was
supported by the release of his solo title song for the fi lm Ruthless People
concurrently with Dirty Work .
Also in 1986, the Rolling Stones were honored with a Grammy lifetime
achievement award. But that honor was undercut by the spectacle of Jagger
and Richards frequently sniping at each other in interviews. The pair would
have little contact over the next few years.
With no Dirty Work tour to keep him busy, Richards found an even more
stubborn musical partner in his idol Chuck Berry, when Richards volunteered to serve as musical director for a pair of concerts in Berry’s hometown of
St. Louis to honor the legendary singer/guitarist on his sixtieth birthday. The
turbulent process of staging those shows was chronicled in the documentary
fi lm Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll .
Rather than touring with the Stones, Jagger continued to put his energies
into establishing his individual career. He teamed up with producer Dave
Stewart, of Eurhythmics fame, to record a second solo album, 1987’s Primitive
Cool . Like She’s the Boss , it was another attempt to reinvent the oncerebellious
rock icon as a state-of-the-art 1980s pop star. Minus the curiosity
factor and corporate hype that had accompanied its predecessor’s release,
Primitive Cool was a commercial bust.
Ironically, the lower-profi le Richards—who had long been reluctant to
record without the Stones, but was motivated to strike out on his own by Jagger’s
extracurricular ambitions—fared much better than Jagger as a solo artist.
Richards’s 1988 release Talk Is Cheap contrasted his bandmate’s work by
concentrating on spare, no-frills rock and roll. The album mixed catchy,
Stones-style grooves and the guitarist’s own enthusiastically ragged vocals, to
make music that rocked harder than anything the Stones had done in years.
Richards proved a capable frontman when he supported Talk Is Cheap by
doing a brief tour with a backup combo he dubbed the X-Pensive Winos.
That lineup included veteran session guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist Charley
Drayton, keyboardist Ivan Neville, and drummer Steve Jordan; Jordan had
done some playing on Dirty Work and was part of the band that Richards had
assembled to back Chuck Berry. That tour yielded the album Live at the
Hollywood Palladium , December 15, 1988 , released in 1991.
Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones’ most low-key member, used the band’s
frequent hiatuses to indulge his lifelong love for jazz. In 1986, he recorded
and toured with the Charlie Watts Orchestra, the fi rst of a series of instrumental
groups that included many of England’s top jazz players.
The Rolling Stones’ 1989 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
set the stage for the band’s studio reconciliation on Steel Wheels . If not in the
same league as their best work, the album at least found Jagger and Richards
working in relative harmony again. Although Steel Wheels was generally well
received, the world tour that accompanied it was bigger news. The tour
grossed over $140 million and spawned yet another live album, Flashpoint .
The success of the Steel Wheels tour demonstrated that public demand for
the Rolling Stones remained as high as ever. For years to come, the band
would follow a similar pattern, releasing a new album, followed by a highprofi
le tour, with both events routinely accompanied by widespread media
speculation over whether they would be the band’s last.
Those projects would proceed without founding bassist Bill Wyman, who
quit the band following the Steel Wheels tour. Although he’d never had the
high media profi le of Jagger and Richards, Wyman had recently received much
unwelcome publicity regarding his marriage to the thirty-four-years-younger Mandy Smith, whom Wyman had begun dating when she was thirteen (the
couple divorced after a year). The tabloid stories grew juicier when Wyman’s
thirty-year-old son Stephen became romantically involved with Mandy’s
forty-six-year-old mother.
The Stones did not announce an immediate replacement for Wyman, since
various members were all working on individual projects in the period following
Steel Wheels . In 1991, Wyman published a frank tell-all autobiography,
Stone Alone , which recounted a litany of his randy exploits during his years
with the band. In the years to come, Wyman would also publish books of his
photography and his cartoon drawings, as well as launching the all-star R&Boriented
cover outfi t Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, featuring such notable contemporaries
as Gary Brooker, Eric Clapton, Georgie Fame, Peter Frampton,
George Harrison, Albert Lee, and even fellow ex-Stone Mick Taylor.
The Stones’ return to active duty with Steel Wheels was apparently enough
to satisfy Richards’s musical urges, and he put his solo career on hold after
releasing a second studio solo outing, Main Offender , in 1992. Jagger, meanwhile,
recorded a third slickly produced solo release, Wandering Spirit , with
Beastie Boys/Red Hot Chili Peppers producer Rick Rubin in 1993.
Although Steel Wheels had apparently helped to mend the Jagger/Richards
feud, it took fi ve more years—two years longer than the gap between Dirty
Work and Steel Wheels —for the Rolling Stones to reconvene for 1994’s Voodoo
Lounge .
Voodoo Lounge ’s producer, versatile American Don Was, was noted for
helping veteran acts recapture their original essence. The album did, indeed,
retain much of the stones’ classic sound, with some additional nods to their
Beggar’s Banquet / Let It Bleed –era folk and blues excursions. But as with
many of the recent Stones releases, Voodoo Lounge ’s songwriting was more
functional than inspired.
To fi ll the void left by Wyman’s departure, the band, at Chuck Leavell’s suggestion,
tapped bassist Darryl Jones, a seasoned jazz/funk player whose credits
included work with Miles Davis and Sting. Although Jones was hired as a
sideman rather than a full member, he would continue as the Stones’ touring
bassist for the next dozen years as well as doing the lion’s share of the bass
work on their future recordings.
Whatever its fl aws, Voodoo Lounge sold in higher quantities than its predecessor,
and its accompanying tour was even more successful than the Steel
Wheels extravaganza. Voodoo Lounge also won the Stones their fi rst-ever
Grammy award, in the Best Rock Album category.
Following the Voodoo Lounge tour, the Rolling Stones jumped on the
“unplugged” bandwagon by releasing Stripped in the fall of 1995. Recorded
during rehearsals and low-key club gigs in Amsterdam and Paris, the album
recast an assortment of Stones classics, fan favorites, and blues covers—plus
a punning but not altogether inappropriate reading of Bob Dylan’s “Like a
Rolling Stone”—with spare, largely acoustic arrangements. The concept had grown out of the acoustic sets that the band had introduced during the Voodoo
Lounge tour. As promising as the concept was, the performances were
unremarkable, adding little to the familiar material.
A much bigger windfall for the Stones in 1995 was the band’s licensing of
“Start Me Up” to Microsoft to advertise the company’s Windows 95 operating
system for the tidy sum of $14 million. The Microsoft campaign marked
the fi rst time the group had allowed its music to be used in a commercial.
According to legend, Microsoft boss Bill Gates had asked Jagger how much
he’d want for the rights to use the song. Rather than refuse, the singer facetiously
named the $14 million fi gure—which he considered to be ridiculously
high—and Gates readily agreed. Four years later, Apple Computers would use
the Their Satanic Majesties Request tune “She’s a Rainbow” to promote the
introduction of multicolored iMacs.
The Stones worked with Don Was again on 1997’s Bridges to Babylon . But
while Voodoo Lounge attempted to reclaim the band’s classic style, Bridges to
Babylon made a concerted—and somewhat forced—effort to update their
sound. With trendy alt-hitmakers the Dust Brothers and Danny Saber producing
individual tracks, it augmented the band’s familiar sound with samples
and drum loops. Despite the postmodern gimmicks, the album—which featured
a higher than usual vocal presence by Richards, who sang lead on three
standout tracks—didn’t sound all that different from Voodoo Lounge , with
its solid execution compensating for the forgettable material.
Although ex–Sugarhill Gang/Living Colour vet Doug Wimbish played most
of the album’s bass parts, Wimbish reportedly turned down the offer of
becoming the Stones’ touring bassist, and Darryl Jones was back for the epic
Bridges to Babylon world tour. This time, the shows included a segment during
which a metal bridge unfolded from the stage, from which the musicians
walked to a smaller stage set up in the middle of the audience to play a
stripped-down mini-set. Not surprisingly, the tour spawned yet another live
album, No Security , whose main selling point was that none of its songs had
appeared on any of the band’s six previous live releases.
In 2001 Jagger took another crack at his solo career with Goddess in the
Doorway , whose sprawling roster of guest stars—including Pete Townshend,
Bono, Joe Perry, Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliot, Wyclef Jean, and Matchbox
20 singer Rob Thomas—smacked of commercial desperation rather than
sound aesthetic judgment. Jagger also continued to take occasional acting
assignments, earning positive notices for his roles in 1997’s Bent and 2001’s
The Man from Elysian Fields .
In 2002, Allen Klein’s label ABKCO, which controlled the Rolling Stones’
pre– Sticky Fingers catalog, fi nally released upgraded, remastered editions of
all of those albums, including separate versions of their U.S. and U.K. variants.
The refurbished discs were welcomed by fans, who for years had had to
make do with the inferior versions that ABKCO had issued early in the CD
era. The remastered editions were initially released in the high-tech SACD format, but were re-pressed as conventional CDs after the SACD format failed
to catch on with consumers.
The belated reclamation of the Rolling Stones’ best recorded work coincided
with the band’s rebirth as a performing unit. A 2002 tour—in conjunction
with the career-spanning compilation Forty Licks rather than a new
studio release—found the band playing with renewed fi re and a heightened
sense of purpose. This time around, the de rigueur concert album, Live Licks ,
was a worthy addition to the Stones’ catalog.
On July 30, 2003, the Stones headlined a benefi t concert in Toronto, in
front of an audience estimated at 490,000, to help the city—which the band
regularly used as a base for pre-tour rehearsals—recover from the effects of
the recent SARS epidemic. On November 9, 2003, the Stones played their
fi rst-ever Hong Kong concert, a show staged as part of that city’s post-SARS
recovery effort.
The same month, the band released the four-DVD set Four Flicks , recorded
on their most recent tour. In the United States, the package was distributed
exclusively to the Best Buy retail chain, leading several other music retail
chains to retaliate by temporarily removing all Rolling Stones merchandise
from their shelves.