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.
The Early Stones
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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
We now turn our consideration to the early stones, the formation of the group,
the first gigs, how things really got started.
The last video I was saying they really came out of this London,
british blues scene.
And the british scene was like a lot of other scenes, stifol, and trajazz.
That, country blues, in the UK that really glorified and
really revered, highly revered, American folk and, and vernacular styles.
Things that seem really direct,
really honest, really free in a certain kind of way.
So the Stones come out of all of that.
The band, the, the first gig, for
The Rolling Stones is at The Marquee Club on July 12, 1962.
They shared the, they shared the bill with a band put together by Long John Baldry.
It was supposed to be that night a Blues Incorporated night.
But Blues Incorporated got an opportunity to perform on the BBC.
And so you'd think,
well they would just take that night off and come back the following Thursday.
But as the story goes,
there was a little bit of concern that if they let the gig go, on that Thursday,
somebody else might come in, and get the gig, and they'd lose it.
And they didn't want to do that.
So Alexis Korner figured out a way to get some of his his people from his circle,
Long John Baldry and Mick and Keith.
To have their band fill in that evening on Thursday so he could have,
the gig back for the following Thursday, and, and, and, and those hence.
And so out come the,
the Rolling Stones featuring Brian Jones going under
the name of Elmo Lewis I think [LAUGH] on that that first gig, that stage name.
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ian Stewart on piano, Dick Taylor on the bass.
Bill Wyman still not in the group.
And Mick Avory, I think it's been determined, on the drums.
That's the first line up that actually, does this very first gig.
Now, by December of 1962, Bill Wyman had had joined the group.
And Charlie Watts ends up joining the group in January of 1963.
Interesting thing about Wyman, as we said before, is he's a few years older than
the rest of the guys so he'd been doing lotsa gigs around town for years.
The Rolling Stones were newbies at this time, you know, nine,
Ke, Mick and Keith, 19 years old, hadn't done many gigs.
Had really lousy equipment and gear and
stuff, you know, like beginning bands often do.
Especially if you haven't got a lot of money to spend,
you haven't got rich parents that can buy expensive amplifiers.
But Wyman was a few years older, and he had been playing around.
He'd accumulated some equipment.
So he comes to the first first rehearsal, a tryout.
And he's got, you know, his bass amp plus an extra guitar amp or two, you know.
And the other Rolling Stones thought that, they say, wow, this guys great.
Look at all the gear.
And Bill Wyman was a great bass player but part, I think, what got him in the group
initially was they really loved the gear, I mean, he had a Vox AC30 guitar.
And so he comes in with all the gear and, anyway, so, he was in, December, 1962.
Charlie Watts as I mentioned before had played around town with a lot of
different kind of groups.
Really, you know,
Charlie was more interested in jazz, than, than, than rock and roll.
But he figured himself not to be a very good drummer.
That he was g, he was, went, went back to college, could see that
Blues Incorporated was moving on so he said your he, was, was developing.
And he said, you know,
you really pro drummer, you know, I'm going to go back to college.
But he was somehow convinced to join the Rolling Stones in January of 1963, so
by the beginning of 1963, we have the classic lineup.
Still including Ian Stewart,
because Andrew Lou Goldem isn't in the picture yet.
Well they play a bunch of gigs around town, a,
whatever they can, whatever they can grab.
You know, going from place to place, this kind of thing.
They begin their residency at The Crawdaddy Club,
remember this is a place owned by Georgio Gomelsky out in Richmond.
That happens in late February 1963.
Boy this is a fast time scale when you think about it.
The first gig, the summer of 1962.
By Christmas time or so Bill Wyman is in the group.
January Charlie Watts is in the group.
February they're playing the Crawdaddy Club.
It's all happening sort of very quickly, but
they've got nothing else to do they're basically doing the band all day everyday.
These shows at the Crawdaddy Club become increasingly popular and
they're noted for the high energy of the performances.
It's often said that the Stones on stage would do similar things to
what the Yard Birds would do with rave up.
Or a so called rave up section, where they'd get you know,
to the end of the tune and they would just kind of you know,
play over the, the maybe a repeating chord progression.
There'd be a lotta slow and the thing would just get excited and
the dancers would get excited but you know, the, the, the way sometimes teenage.
eh, evenings out, can be, with lots of, lots of people sort of, especially as
the crowds start to get bigger sort of packed together into a close, space.
Lots of loud music and
dancing, fast, uptempo kind of thing and, and, it can be an awful lot of fun.
And so this is what's happening at the Crawdaddy Club.
By the time Andrew Loog Oldham sees the band in late April, these Crawdaddy Club
gates have turned into one of the most happening things going for young people.
And so, when Andrew Loog Oldham sees them,
they are really they've really, the Rolling Stones have really got the crowd.
They're exciting, they're dynamic.
And as we'll, we'll talk about Oldham in the next video.
Oldham sees an opportunity to be a rock a pop music manager, pop music producer.
He wants in on this thing,
he wants this to be the group that he helps shape for stardom.
So he's, he's totally knocked out by these guys.
The problem is that Andrew Loog Oldham.
Is actually not old enough at that point, 18, 19 years old,
to hold a license as a theatrical manager, you know, in England at the time.
So he needed somebody who had a license and an office and
that kind of thing, to, to kind of be his partner.
And so he goes to Eric Easton.
Who is as I, as we said before, a few years older and
an established music business type in London.
So he brings next week, brings Easton out to see them.
He thinks they're dynamic and exciting too.
And so they get a management deal struck by May of 1963.
It isn't even a year since their first performance.
They've only been playing The Crawdaddy Club since late February 1963.
Already, they've got a management deal.
And once the management's deal is set, then Andrew Loog Oldham and
Eric Easton set about getting the group signed to a record label.
They get them signed to Decca Records just a couple weeks later.
Still in May of 1963, if you can believe it.
Dick Rowe, famous in the music industry as being the guy who passed on The Beatles.
The, the Beatles had done a, a, audition at Decca.
And Dick Rowe's people had heard the tap and decided they didn't want The Beatles.
Of course, that tape is ultimately what ended up getting The Beatles their.
Their contract with Parlophone and George Martin and EMI.
So, when that happened and the Beatles started to blow up, and
at that point in 1963 the Beatles had already had their big hit with
their second single, Please Please Me.
Love Me Do had been a kind of medium hit.
And then Please Please Me had been a big hit at the early 1963.
So to have passed on the Beatles and
the sensation that was becoming the Beetles, not such a good thing.
So when the opportunity for
the Rolling Stones came up, Dick Rowe sort of jumped on them.
But it's interesting that the deal that they signed with Decca, Lou Golden did,
is the way they did it is the Stones signed with Lou Golden and Eric Easton.
And then that group, those two signed with Decca, they signed a licensing agreement.
Which meant that Lou Goldem and
the band, Easton, would encumber all the costs of making their recordings.
And the finished recordings would be licensed to Decca for a period of time.
Which meant that after that contract expired.
They still own their own masters.
This is advice that Golden had gotten from Phil Specter, who said always,
always control, always own your own masters.
And so this makes for
a very different kind if situation in the Rolling Stones story than the one,
for example in the Beatles story where the Beatles were signed to Parlophone.
And so they did most of their recording with very few exceptions at
the Abbey Road Studios because those were the studios that were owned by
their label.
The Rolling Stones doing their arm recordings,
would go to various independent studios to make the recordings and
then license them to the record labels.
So they had more control that way.
Maybe, ultimately less resources, because typically the studio, at least in
London at the time, the record labels tended to have the better studios, anyway.
It's a very different very different deal there.
Their first single, Come On was released in the UK only in June of 1963,
but the band was still playing clubs and small rooms.
So June of 63, they have their first single released comparing it
to the Beatles the Beatles at this time.
Had released Love Me Do, Please,
Please Me, From Me To You, and so the Beatles were already big deals at
playing big sort, of you know, sort of concert shows and tours and
that kind of thing.` The Stones were still sort of playing clubs and small rooms, so.
It was we compared the songs with the Beatles,
was that the Stone's success is about a year behind the Beatles' success.
Once we start to get into '67, '68, '69,
you know, there's, things level out considerably.
But at the beginning, the Stones were kind of the junior partner in all of this.
Well this covers the very early days of the Rolling Stones and
their emergence in the London scene out of the British blues-based scene.
Let's move on now to take a look at Andrew Loog Oldham who I think is a very,
very important figure in the success of the early Rolling Stones.
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