This course will survey the music of the Rolling Stones, beginning with the roots and first formation of the band in the early 1960s, and following the group through the release of It's Only Rock 'n' Roll in late 1974.
Organizing the Biography and Music
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From the course by University of Rochester
The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962-1974
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From the lesson
Introduction and Students of the Blues
Beginnings through the release of the early singles, and album, 1962-64.
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Welcome to The Music of The Rolling Stones, 1962 through 1974.
We're going to start this first video by organizing the biography and
the music of The Rolling Stones, generally.
And really just sort of pulling together some names and
places, and things like that to sort of help give you some background information.
So as we do the subsequent lectures this week you'll already sort of be informed
about some of these names and places and companies, and things like that.
So let's start as we, as we begin this study of
The Rolling Stones' music with some of the band members from the group.
We should start with Brian Jones, born in 1942,
and unfortunately, passing away in 1969.
Brian, in many ways, was the leader of the group from the very beginning, and one of,
and the real catalyst around which the group formed.
Playing guitar, and as we'll find out during the course of
these seven weeks playing a lot of different instruments for the group.
Brian's the kind of guy who seemed to be able to pick up an instrument he'd never
played before and in no time at all,
be able to figure out how to make some music on it.
And so, especially as we get into the psychedelic recordings,
you hear Brian Jones playing a lot of different things in the group's music.
Mick Jagger, born in 1943.
Lead singer of the group.
Keith Richards, 1943 as well.
Mick and Keith, of course are, we'll begin to talk about them almost immediately,
as the most important songwriting force in the The Rolling Stones' music.
Bassist, Bill Wyman, who's somewhat older than the other guys, born in 1936.
Makes him seven years older, than Keith, and Mick.
And so we'll talk a little bit about that in a, a,
just a little bit, about how that affected his relationship with the group.
Drummer Charlie Watts, born 1941.
So about the same age as Brian, Mick and Keith.
And another guy who figures into the story in an interesting kind of way and
an original band member, and that is Ian Stewart on the piano, or
Stew as he was often called by the guys in the group.
Born in 1938, passing away in 1985, Stew was originally in the group.
But when as we'll talk about Andrew Lou Golden in just a minute, when he
took over the group, he wanted Stew out because Stew didn't have the right look.
Stew was a little bit older.
He looked you know,
a little, little straighter, a little less like a kind of a pop star.
And so you know, sort of guy that he was, he didn't take it personally.
He became the kind of band manager or, or equipment manager
sort of roadie kind of guy for the group helping to organize things off stage.
And he ended up playing piano on a bunch of tracks as well.
So we'll consider him kind of an original member here of the group.
So Brian, Mick, Keith, Bill, Charlie and Stew.
When we get to the managers and
producers of of The Rolling Stones, especially in these early years,
we'll do a special feature on manager Andrew Loog Oldham, born in 1944.
So actually, the youngest guy out of all of these band members from
the original crew there acted as manager and producer of the group.
Again, we'll talk some more about that later.
And then, he was partnered with a fella by the name of Eric Easton,
who was a business a music business guy.
And they just thought Er, Eric Easton was so old.
You know, it turns out that when Eric Easton was involved with the group,
he was still not yet 40 years old.
So, I'll bet to a lot of you watching this out there, 40 doesn't seem old.
It probably seems pretty young.
For those who think 40 seems old, don't worry, your time will come, too.
So we've got Andrew Loog Oldham and
Eric Easton managing the group at the very beginning.
Just before them sort of informally managing the group is a guy by
the name of Girogio Gomelsky.
And we'll talk a little bit about him coming up here, born in 1934.
It's also important that we know some of the Blues revivalists who were involved in
this the Blues revival scene out of which the Rolling Stones emerged as
musicians and as a band.
The first and most important of those is Alexis Korner born in 1928,
passing away in 1984.
So, you can see he really was a kind of an older guy about the same age actually as
Eric Easton, and had a kind of a, a paternal you know,
sort of older, older brother kind of relationship with a lot of these guys.
And Cyril Davies,
another important Blues musician working together with Alexis Korner initially.
Born in 1932, passing away in 1964.
We also want to talk about record company people.
For us right now,
the most important record company person to talk about is Dick Rowe.
Dick Rowe, famously, and we'll mention this a little bit later,
was known as the man who turned down The Beatles.
We'll tell that story a little bit later.
But he ends up being the guy who signs the Rolling Stones to Decca Records.
We can also talk about some of the places and
companies that will fit into our story here.
First and foremost among the places,
I suppose, has to be London, the home of the band and its members.
A group that really came up out of the London scene,
the London Blues revival scene.
That's very different from the story we tell of a group say, like The Beatles,
whose origins really have everything to do with Northern England and Liverpool and
came to London as outsiders.
The Rolling Stones really sort of grew up out of the London scene.
So it's going to be really important for us in the next video to talk about what
the London scene was that they emerged out of.
Sum it up, other places we need to think about,
The Ealing Club, which was the first home of Blues Incorporated.
That's the group put together by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies who played
a very important role in fostering an Electric Blues scene in, in London.
They started playing The Ealing Club in March of 1962.
And Mick and Keith and Brian,
people like that out there at that club to hear Blues Incorporated all the time.
But we're getting ahead of the story a little bit.
It was, the, the story,
The Ealing Club itself was just off the Ealing Broadway tube stop.
And they were able to get Sunday nights, Sunday being a very slow night, so
they could get that for their blues nights.
Another club that that these that the Blues team grew up in is The Marquee Club
in London, An important venue for Blues Incorporated in SoHo.
They would get Thursday nights and that started in May of 1962.
The reason whey they got Thursday nights, Thursday was also a slow night,
as the story goes.
And the reason why Thursday was a slow night is that everybody got paid on
Friday, so by Thursday night you had no money left to go out to a club.
So it was kind of a dead night.
Friday everybody gets paid.
Friday night is hopping.
Of course, Sunday talking about The Ealing Club, was a bad night,
because Monday was a workday.
So anyway, the Blues guys get in the slow nights to sort of work on their,
on their Blues thing.
The Crawdaddy Club is also an important Blues club run by
Giorgio Gomelsky out in Richmond.
And that's an important one because it's the first really big
regular gig that The Rolling Stones got.
It was the place where they, one of the,
one of the places they were really associated with in the early days.
Giorgio Gomelsky, a kind of an entrepreneur around town sort of
establishing this club and helping to promote The Rolling Stones.
And then when The Stones went with, Andrew Loog Oldham and
Eric Easton, Giorgio Gomelsky put The Yardbirds into his club.
And so The Yardbirds sort of replaced The Stones in his life.
Decca Records.
We already talked about Dick Rowe.
That's the label that signed the band.
Although the terms of this, the signing we should talk about it,
and, and, and will, coming up.
Because it wasn't a typical record deal.
Not like the one, for example, The Beatles had with Parlophone/EMI.
When we think about radio, I think it's probably important for
us to know that the BBC was about the only game in town in England.
For American listeners, or for listeners today who are used to being able to
find music anywhere on the internet, you gotta imagine a world in which there's not
much Rock and Roll on the radio, and hardly any Blues of any kind at all.
There was also Radio Luxembourg that would, that would broadcast into the UK.
But besides that, there wasn't a lot of radio that was playing Rock and
Roll, R&B, and, and certainly not Chicago Electric Blues.
So that gives us a sense of some of the people and places and
companies in our story, at least for the first couple of weeks.
Let me say just a little bit more about how we are going to track the releases.
One of the important things we want to keep in mind is,
there's a very big difference, well I don't know if it's a very big difference,
but it's an important and
notable difference between what's released in the UK and what's released in the U.S..
And so, especially in the case of The Stones, they have an enormous amount of
success early in the UK, without a lot of success in the U.S.
at the time when the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan and A Hard Day's Night and all
that stuff is happening in 64, The Stones are not really yet a big name in the U.S..
Lots of other British bands like the Beatles are, but not so much The Stones.
So when you look at what was released in the UK and
the U.S., it's important to see the difference between those.
We're going to follow the release of singles and albums, and for
the first couple of weeks also EPs, or extended play singles.
This was, this is a format that was not so
big in the United States, but was very big in Britain.
And that was the idea that you would have a single that instead of
having one song on each side, would have two songs on each side.
So it was called an extended play.
So you had a single with one song on each side, and
extended play with maybe two songs on each side, and
an album that could have as many as six songs on each side.
So we have to keep an eye on those EPs.
I'm going to give a slight preference to the U.S.
release sequence, just because it simplifies things in, in many ways.
You're going to have to choose one way of releasing them and following the releases.
And, one thing that's that is apparent as you sort of get into the story of
The Rolling Stones, is how important success in the United States was for them.
So in many ways, how they presented themselves in the United States
really was maybe the biggest part of how their career unfolded.
They were very very successful in the UK, and very concerned about that for
different kinds of reasons, which we'll get into in just a minute.
But following the UK releases, I mean the U.S. releases, as we go at least gives us
a way of kind of simplifying, and then we can amplify on those U.S.
releases, the differences that we see in the UK releases.
Some things that were released in the UK, but not in the U.S..
Some things that were released in the U.S.
but not the UK, and back and forth like that.
So we'll give a slight preference to the U.S. release sequence.
All right, well having gone through that, the organized that little bit,
the biography and
the music, let's talk in the next video about the rise of British Blues.
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