The Rolling Stones (or simply The Stones) were in the vanguard of the British Invasion of bands that became popular in the US in 1964–65. They were instrumental in making blues a major part of rock and roll, and of changing the international focus of blues culture to the less sophisticated blues typified by Chess Records artists such as Muddy Waters, writer of “Rollin’ Stone”, the song after which the band is named. Their albums Beggars’ Banquet (1968), Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971), and Exile on Main St. (1972) are generally considered the Rolling Stones’ “Golden Age”. Musicologist Robert Palmer attributed the “remarkable endurance” of the Rolling Stones to being “rooted in traditional verities, in rhythm-and-blues and soul music” while “more ephemeral pop fashions have come and gone”. The Rolling Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. Their estimated album sales are above 250 million. In 2012, the band celebrated its 50th anniversary. (More from Wikipedia)
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Brian Wilson was the bandleader and primary songwriter of the Beach Boys; writing for Allmusic, William Ruhlmann says that Brian Wilson “is arguably the greatest American composer of popular music in the rock era”. In the beginning, there were fun songs about surfing and cars and girls, as well as a (more or less) friendly rivalry with Jan & Dean that prefigured the more contentious Beatles vs. Stones debates. It is no secret that Jan Berry – a wunderkind in his own right – wasn’t happy that the Beach Boys copied the surf sounds that Jan & Dean pioneered.
(June 2013/2)
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(January 2015/2)
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There is a post discussing the meaning of “Satisfaction” on the website shmoop.com, and that makes reference to another line that I didn’t really understand at the time either (although I eventually decided that this must be what was meant): “The anti-commercial rant [in the early part of the song] rubbed some folks the wrong way, but [Mick] Jagger’s blunt recapitulation of his failed attempts to ‘make some girl’ was the real problem. Radio stations hesitated to play the song. Funnily enough, they were actually hung up on one of its tamer lines. When the Stones appeared on Shindig, a variety TV show, standards-sensitive execs bleeped ‘And I’m tryin’ to make some girl’. Meanwhile, the reference to a woman being on her period – ‘better come back later next week, ’cause you see I’m on a losing streak’ – made it on air with no problems at all.”
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I found another great Keith Richards quote on SongFacts concerning “The Last Time” – the 45 that was released right before “Satisfaction” – as taken from the 2003 book According to the Rolling Stones: “We didn’t find it difficult to write pop songs, but it was VERY difficult – and I think Mick [Jagger] will agree – to write one for the Stones. It seemed to us it took months and months and in the end we came up with ‘The Last Time’, which was basically re-adapting a traditional Gospel song that had been sung by the Staple Singers, but luckily the song itself goes back into the mists of time. I think I was trying to learn it on the guitar just to get the chords, sitting there playing along with the record, no gigs, nothing else to do. At least we put our own stamp on it, as the Staple Singers had done, and as many other people have before and since: they’re still singing it in churches today. It gave us something to build on to create the first song that we felt we could decently present to the band to play. . . . ‘The Last Time’ was kind of a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it. And once we had done that, we were in the game. There was no mercy, because then we had to come up with the next one. We had entered a race without even knowing it.”
(May 2015)
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