The Rolling Stones

Another style failure.

Kill Your Idols: The Rolling Stones

Mick Jagger can't sing.

 

neither can Dylan or Springsteen but they are 3 Faces on the Mt Rushmore of rock and roll

 

The Beatles are the greatest rock act/ artists ever.

The Stones are among the 3-4 contenders for No. 2.


Little they've done since 1980 stands up with the best stuff from their prime, but that's true of every group with a tenure of more than a decade.

Virtually every rock group of multi-decade tenure has a 5-7 year prime period which cements their fame -- the rest is usually something between shit, background noise and moderately interesting minor work.

The Stones, the Who, U2, REM, Dylan, Springsteen, Clapton, Pearl Jam -- virtually all of them have a readily identifiable 5-7 year-stretch of their "prime," and then they all churned on for decades longer.

Maybe the Beatles had some kind of artistic premonition of how things were going to work and decided to simply disappear before they entered the long slope to mediocrity.

It's certainly easy to 'Imagine' the Beatles, if the other 3 had decided to fire Allen Klein sometime in 1969, working out a bumpy and uneasy truce (much as the Stones did in the 80s/90s) and continuing to churn out records every 3-5 years or so for the next 30 years (presuming Lennon isn't coming home from the Record Plant that night in 1980).

Led Zeppelin had a similar career evolution, although their decision to end it was less voluntary than the Beatles.

 

Probably the only person who has downloaded 14 different covers of "Emotional Rescue". It works for me.

That being said, Exile - and I've tried to get into it - doesn't do much for me, either. For Rolling Stones, I like either the late 60's "Hot Rocks" era or the disco-era of "Miss You" and "Emotional Rescue".

From the 80's, "She Was Hot" and "Almost Hear You Sigh" are in a heavy rotation but, after 1980, I don't think much of their work.

 

The disco stuff is good, though Mick Jagger didn't have the voice for that genre.

 

Yes. I always thought he sounds like Grover (the muppet) on those disco songs.

That's where I fall off the Stones bandwagon. But their 1960s and early 1970s stuff is very strong.

Among their 1960s stuff, "Paint it Black" is my favorite, with "19th Nervous Breakdown" and (obviously) "Satisfaction" all-time classics, too.

A song that got ruined by an overwhelmingly lame ad campaign: "You Can't Always Get What You Want." I change the radio station when I hear it now.

 

Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
Tumbling Dice
Loving Cup
Let It Bleed
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Dead Flowers
She's a Rainbow

60s and (especially) 70s Stones is unimpeachable. If I could only listen to one group's discography for the rest of my life, I'd probably take the Stones. They could play blues, they could get funky, they were really damn good at country, but underpinning it all was the groove. Nobody could groove like the Stones.

The Beatles were incredible. There's never been a better songwriting pair than Lennon and McCartney. But they just didn't have the way with rhythm that the Stones had, and it comes from Keith Richards and Charlie Watts.

Also: Scott Sizemore, most recently of the A's, used Can't You Hear Me Knockin' as his his walk-up music when he played at VCU. One of the most random cool things I've seen an athlete do.

 

GOAT? Every heard of a little outfit called The Beatles?

 

Or Rush?

 

What set The Stones apart from other bands is that they were among the first to write catchy, popular songs about the "dark side" of rock n' roll. Lots of bands --- The Beatles included --- wrote songs about drugs, but mostly the glorification thereof.

Just about every great Stones song from 1966 to 1972 was about heroin, cocaine, pills or alcohol ... and usually not in a good way.

But yeah, their great mistake was not breaking up after "Tattoo You."

Also, they had a magazine named after them.

 

I agree. But in the 50 years since they broke out, pop music (in the broad sense) has become much more cynical. So those trailblazing themes aren't unique, leaving only the music. And to my ears, it's hit and miss.