60 reasons why the Rolling Stones are still the world's greatest rock’n’roll band

The scruffy Stones held a mirror to a generation in the process of convulsive change. After early attempts at a band uniform failed, the Stones became the first notable rock group to dress in their own clothes. The look evolved over the years, as Jagger became flamboyantly glamorous and Richards honed his own brand of outlaw cool, a jet-set gypsy style that remains the image of the archetypal rock star.

A sizzling debut

Released in April 1964, their urgent debut album The Rolling Stones is 33 minutes of raw, hardcore rocking blues that still sounds fierce six decades later.

The British invasion

The Beatles inspired a transatlantic pop power shift and the Stones quickly followed, first touring the US in June 1964. They recorded their first number one, It’s All Over Now, in Chicago’s Chess Studios, where they met their heroes Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon. By bringing the blues back to America, the Stones revived a moribund form.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

The first great Stones song is perhaps the ultimate rock anthem. Richards dreamed up the blaring riff in his sleep, then laid it down with a fuzzbox pedal to emulate the sound of a horn section. Jagger’s lyrics and delivery articulated his frustration with the world. Reaching number one in Britain and America in June 1965, this was the song that raised the Stones to the top of the heap.

Riffology

Richard’s instinct for simple, striking guitar motifs is unparalleled. Once heard, the riffs that drive such staples as Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women, and Richard’s signature song Happy will never be forgotten.

As Tears Go By

The Stones’ first great ballad is a haunting, baroque love song that made a star of 17-year-old folk singer Marianne Faithfull in 1965. Faithfull became one of the band’s female foils, expanding her boyfriend Jagger’s lyrical horizons with classic poetry and literature.

Sex

Jagger’s camp physicality and unisex wardrobe helped turn the Stones into avatars of the 1960s sexual revolution. Although they could veer into crass sexism (notably in 1976’s misjudged Black & Blue bondage ad campaign), the Stones surrounded themselves with smart women (such as Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Marsha Hunt and later Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and L’Wren Scott), who influenced everything from lyrics to fashion styles.

Aftermath (1966)

The first Stones album entirely filled with Jagger/Richards originals, this is R’n’B with a bracingly modern attitude. Jones extends his repertoire to include dulcimer, sitar and marimba. “What a drag it is getting old,” Jagger sneers on opening track Mother’s Little Helper. He was 22.

Paint It Black

The Stones went psychedelic with a vengeance in May 1966. There’s not a hint of peace and love about this brooding, sinister masterpiece.

Ruby Tuesday/Let’s Spend the Night Together

Released in January 1967, this is one of the greatest double A-side singles in pop: a heartsore ballad written by Richards for his ex, Linda Keith, plus a libidinous sexual revolution anthem that trampled on romantic convention.

Drugs

Amid a sea-change in attitudes towards recreational drugs, the Stones became poster boys for rock ’n’ roll decadence. It is hard to argue that this was good for them on a personal level – drugs contributed to the death of Jones, the decade-long heroin addiction of Richards and damage to many band members and associates. Yet such hedonistic behaviour fed into their outlaw image, even as they became super-rich rock royalty.

Drug Bust (1)

Jagger and Richards were arrested after a police raid on a party at Richards’s Sussex home in February 1967. Their subsequent trial for possession of marijuana and amphetamine pills put them at the centre of a pivotal moment of societal upheaval. William Rees-Mogg, then editor of The Times, encapsulated the mood in a famous editorial headlined “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” The pop stars were sentenced to jail but subsequently granted a reprieve, creating the impression that the Stones fought the law… and the Stones won.

Jimmy Miller

The Brooklyn-born producer was drafted in after 1967’s psychedelic farrago Their Satanic Majesties Request, which Jagger later admitted was made with “too much time on our hands, too many drugs, and no producer to tell us ‘Enough’”. A former drummer who had worked with Steve Winwood’s Traffic, Miller coaxed the band to one of the greatest hot streaks in pop history, from 1968-73.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

“I was born in a crossfire hurricane,” Jagger howls over Richard’s thrilling riff. Released in May 1968, the first Miller production plugged the Stones back into the rock ’n’ roll mainline. Another candidate for the greatest rock single ever made.

Beggars Banquet

The Stones’ seventh album – and first masterpiece – contains the epic Sympathy for the Devil and fearsome Street Fighting Man. Richards took the reins, pushing the band into steamy, groovy territory.

Ruthlessness

After Jones had been deemed a wreck, the band kicked their old friend out, confirming a streak of unsentimental pragmatism that ensures the Stones do what they think is right for them.

Open G

Looking for a replacement guitarist, the band dallied with Ry Cooder. The American showed them his “open-G” tuning, which facilitated Richards’s habit of sliding along the guitar neck, digging out riffs from chord transitions with drones and ringing open strings.

Honky Tonk Women

In July 1969, the Stones went country. Cooder may grumble about Richards stealing his tuning, but he never wrote a song this raunchy.

Mick Taylor

Welwyn Garden City’s Taylor made his debut as a Stones guitarist in a concert at Hyde Park on July 5 1969. His silvery playing offered a nuanced foil to Richards’s riffing, expanding the band’s two-guitar dynamic, and arguably completing their finest line-up. He raised the Stones to new heights before drugs and disillusionment led him to quit in 1974.

Let It Bleed

This December 1969 masterpiece includes the fearsome Gimme Shelter, creepy Midnight Rambler and epic You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Delia Smith baked the cake for the album cover.

Altamont

The West Coast answer to Woodstock went grotesquely wrong in December 1969 when Hells Angels ran riot and a man was stabbed to death while the Stones were on stage. The symbolic end of the 1960s utopian dream, the fiasco sealed the Stones’ reputation as the devil’s favourite band.

Gram Parsons

A pivotal figure in the development of country rock, the tragic singer-songwriter became Richards’s drug buddy, hanging out in the studio and on tour before his death in 1973, aged 26. He never played on a Stones record, but his influence on Richards’s mastery of country stylings was profound.

Sticky Fingers

Another raw, raunchy masterpiece, this one from April 1971, spanning the burning groove of Bitch, the sleazy rock of Brown Sugar and tender blues and country ballads Wild Horses, Sway and Dead Flowers. All that and one of the greatest covers in history, a zip-up crotch designed by Andy Warhol.

Art

Richards and Watts both attended art college, and Stones covers boast some of rock’s boldest designs, from a 3D lenticular photo on Their Satanic Majesties to the cut-out faces for Some Girls. “There’s more to it than just music,” said Jagger. “We worked that out pretty fast.”

Tongue and lips logo

Created for the inner sleeve of Sticky Fingers, art student John Pasche’s design was a response to Jagger’s call for “an image that could work on its own, like the Shell Petroleum logo”. Based on the Hindu deity Kali, it became the most famous logo in music, as the Stones pioneered the concept of rock band as lifestyle brand.

Prince Rupert Loewenstein

Between 1968 and 2007, the aristocratic merchant banker helped extricate the Stones from the grip of notorious business manager Alan Klein, and transformed their parlous finances. Loewenstein sent the band into tax exile, copyrighted their logo, sealed tour sponsorship deals with companies including General Electric and licensed classic hits for advertising. He never warmed to their music, though, and they all fell out in the end.

Exile on Main Street

A cacophony of ragged R’n’B, country, soul and gospel recorded in the basement of a château in the south of France by a band on the run from the taxman, Exile – released in 1972 – is a supreme act of musical voodoo. Richards was strung out, Jagger was newly wed, but magic was afoot. From Tumbling Dice to Ventilator Blues, this is the greatest rock ’n’ roll album ever made (fact). Robert Frank’s freak photo-montage sleeve perfectly captured the mood.

Nicky Hopkins

A gifted English pianist, Hopkins left school at 16 and played with the Beatles, the Who and the Kinks before the Stones virtually co-opted him as their own. He plays on all their classic albums from 1967 to 1981 and made a huge contribution to Exile. Fan favourite Loving Cup is Hopkins’s showcase, a rocking piano ballad that blends country, soul, gospel and classical piano into four minutes of flowing groove.

The sidemen (and women)

The Stones have always embraced the input of gifted musicians, including organists Billy Preston and Chuck Leavell, saxophonist Bobby Keys, trumpeter Jim Price, backing vocalists Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler, bassist Daryl Jones (who effectively replaced Wyman in 1993) and drummer Steve Jordan (currently sitting in for Watts). Even their road manager, Ian Stewart, would regularly jump on stage for a burst of rock ’n’ roll piano until his death in 1985.

Ladies and Gentlemen

This concert film, shot over four nights on their 1972 North American tour, suffers from poor continuity, terrible lighting and grainy, often out-of-focus 16mm stock. But what takes place on stage blows all equivocation away: a lean, mean ensemble playing the tightest, funkiest, dirtiest rock ’n’ roll ever heard.

Angie

A soulful mix of electric piano, strings and Jagger’s pleading vocal, this desperately sad ballad was number one all over the world in August 1973, and the standout track on undercooked album Goats Head Soup. As Richards’s and Taylor’s drug problems grew worse, the Stones had arguably passed their musical peak, but even in decline, there was a burnt-out, melancholic majesty at work.

Kingston, Jamaica

The city became a home from home in the mid-1970s for the Stones, with Richards a particularly enthusiastic fan of the local “herb”, bringing reggae into the band’s musical canvas.

It’s Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)

This raucous celebration of the band’s raison d’etre was conceived by Jagger during a late-night jam with Ronnie Wood (then with the Faces) and David Bowie. It was the lead single of ragged 1974 album It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll, Taylor’s swan song.

Ronnie Wood

Candidates to replace Taylor included Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher and Mick Ronson, but Wood got the gig. Well, he already had the haircut. He made his official debut on 1976’s ropey Black and Blue, quickly establishing a synchronous two-guitar rapport with Richards in what the latter calls “the ancient art of weaving”.

The Tired Grandfather

The Stones’ nickname for a giant inflatable phallus they took on their 1975 US Tour (because it frequently deflated onstage). Along with a confetti-puffing dragon and a trapeze, it marked a spectacular new approach to live music that would transform stadium entertainment.

Drug Bust (2)

In Toronto in 1977 for the now legendary El Mocambo club gigs (recordings of which were recently released after 45 years in the vaults), Richards was arrested with an ounce of heroin by the Canadian Mounted Police. It could have been the end for the Stones but for a lenient judge who ordered him to play a charity concert. It did however mark the beginning of the end of Richards’s half-life as “a human chemical laboratory, almost trying to commit suicide without any intention to do it”.

Some Girls

Responding to the threat of punk, in 1978 the Stones turned in their dirtiest album in years, including the fierce Shattered, country drawl Far Away Eyes and swampy Beast of Burden.

Start Me Up

This belting stop-start rocker from 1981 with a Richards open-G riff may be the last all-time classic Stones single.

Surviving the 1980s

It was a decade too far for many once-great bands, with its bad haircuts, loud clothes and strenuously overproduced music. Jagger and Richards were increasingly estranged and Stones recordings of the era fell far short of their best, yet they still managed a fistful of fine singles (Waiting on a Friend, Undercover of the Night, Harlem Shuffle, Rock and a Hard Place) and ended with the spectacular Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle world tour, playing to more than six million fans.

Road Warrior Constitutions

The Stones have been in the top 10 live acts every decade since the 1960s. They have the fourth and fifth highest grossing tours of all time. They were the most popular live act of the 1990s and the 2000s (and still top 10 in the 2020s). Even Covid couldn’t stop them scoring the biggest tour of 2021.

A Bigger Bang

This rough and rowdy return to the studio in 2005 showed there was still life in the old troupers and spawned the then highest grossing tour in pop history, pulling in $558,255,524 over 147 shows. “There were lots of hacks out there who said we couldn’t do it anymore,” sniffed Jagger. “Once we’re onstage, the question is answered.”

Nostalgia

 A 2010 reissue of Exile on Main Street gave the band another UK number one, 38 years after its original release. As rock culture has become ever more fixated on its own past, the Rolling Stones have made commercial capital from their 40th (compilation Forty Licks), 50th (the return of Mick Taylor for the 50 and Counting tour) and now 60th anniversaries, with the 60 Tour hitting Hyde Park today.

Diplomacy

The Stones’ 50th anniversary was touch and go, following Richards’s indiscreet comments about Jagger in his 2010 autobiography Life. Yet whenever the two principals drift apart, they find a way to reunite. “I love Mick 99 per cent of the time,” said a penitent Keith, in a public apology. He also admitted: “I’d say anything to get the band together. I’d lie to my mother.”

Blue & Lonesome

Gathered at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove studios, in 2016 the Stones played an old blues cover to warm up then just kept going, knocking out an album’s worth of deft blues favourites in three days with Eric Clapton dropping by to show them what might have been. Now if they could only get round to finishing the original record they’ve been promising for 10 years…

Loyalty

The Stones were the original rock ’n’ roll gang, and 60 years on they still comport themselves with the tight-knit loyalty of old friends who you can always count on when the chips are down. “There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, but we still feel that camaraderie,” says Jagger. “The bond is still there. It would be really rough if we didn’t have that. I think it would be impossible to be honest.”

Patience

In 1986, Watts famously suggested you needed a high tolerance for boredom to play in the Stones, joking, “I’ve worked five years and spent 20 years hanging around.” By the time he played his last gig at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on August 30 2019, the hanging around in studios, hotels, tour buses and backstage might have added up to half a lifetime. Hopefully, the music made it worthwhile.

Love

The Rolling Stones are old and filthy rich. They don’t play music because they have to, they play music because they want to. And that is love.

Never saying die

Pallenberg once said Richards would die onstage. “I can think of worse places to croak,” he replied. In the meantime, the Stones keep rolling on. “I’m blessed to work with some of the best players ever,” Richards said in 2018. “That never gets old.” And as for the inevitable end? “I never think about it. Never. I know loads of other people worry about it. Me, I’ll wait for it to happen.”

The Rolling Stones play Hyde Park, London W2 (bst-hydepark.com) June 25 and July 3