How, in the 1970s, did a generation whose motto was “never trust anyone over thirty” come to grips with an iconic 1960s rock band whose members were entering their mid-thirties? On the whole, not very well. Mick Jagger, in an unguarded moment, wistfully observed: “I’m afraid rock and roll has no future … It’s only recycled past.”1 The mid-1970s was a time of considerable turmoil and transition for the Stones, and for rock music in general.2 The music industry was still sorting itself out after the breakup of the Beatles at the very beginning of the 1970s. Historically, the spread of the bucolic culture envisioned by Woodstock already seemed in rot. The 1970s were riven with crises – Vietnam, Watergate, labor strife in Britain, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, global concerns about pollution and overpopulation, the energy crisis, planned obsolescence, the Munich Olympic massacre, the Biafran War, the India-Pakistan War, and the Yom Kippur War, are only a few of the most important calamities that mark the decade. Amidst this turbulence – often simplistically chronicled in rock history by contrasting the Stones’ dystopian concert at Altamont with the utopian ideals of Woodstock – the Rolling Stones faced a novel predicament: how to remain at the forefront of rock while entering a stage of life more traditionally associated with conventional adulthood.

Traditional analyses of music often overlook sonic elements that are difficult to notate. This is especially true of the way many fundamental aspects of sound, such as timbre, resonance, ambience, stereo placement, and countless other sonic qualities are manipulated during the recording process, but largely ignored in popular music criticism. Yet these elements, so central to recordings of popular music, are as important in conveying expression and meaning as melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics. They are an integral part of the music – primary colors in the recording artist’s sonic palette.2

Fashioning identity has always been at the heart of the Rolling Stones’ music and mystique. From their origins as white English teenagers delving as deeply into black American rhythm and blues as any band in Britain (or the States, for that matter) at the time, to their post-sixties forays into glam rock, reggae, disco, and other diversions, they rode into the twenty-first century as a self-defining “classic,” parlaying their status as one of the most accomplished and longest-lasting bands of the rock era into a self-sustaining mega act. Through it all, the initial connection to the blues remains the stylistic marker to which they are most often associated, an influence that has come full circle with their recent Grammy Award-winning album of blues covers, Blue and Lonesome of 2016. As they came to public attention, the overtly African-American implications of the blues provided the Stones with an edgy cultural distinction. To be sure, other British invaders built their sound on a foundation of blues artists from the 1930s through the early 1960s, but as the Stones rose to prominence among such acts, they were drawn into a binary relationship with the Beatles, whose style was more obviously eclectic and whose identity was driven by the commercial agenda of their manager Brian Epstein. This proved especially true in the States when each group arrived for tours in 1964. It is no surprise, for example, that when the Beatles had a few days off on their initial visit to the USA in February, 1964, they remained in Miami (where they made their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show) to take in nightclub acts at the Deauville Hotel or fishing and riding speed boats around Miami harbor, whereas the Stones took advantage of a five-day gap in their eight-city, cross-country tour to fly to Chicago to record new songs at Chess Studios – to them, a virtual R&B Valhalla. And while they jammed there with heroes like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Ray Charles, the Beatles’ only close contact with a black cultural figure came in a light-hearted photo-op with Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay), who was in Miami training for a title fight.

The French philosophies of Gilles Deleuze (1925–95), in particular his theory of assemblage (introduced in his 1980 book with Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux), provide a useful approach towards understanding the musical and overall aesthetic contributions of Brian Jones. In this chapter, I will apply Deleuzean philosophical concepts to the life and world music interests of Jones as a means of highlighting his creative work as a “breath of fresh air” (un courant d’air) within the prevailing blues and rock standards and influences that have more consistently represented the Rolling Stones. In particular, I will explore the assemblage of life and musical events that make up the broad stylistic mixture we now associate with Jones, concentrating on his founding role and decade-long connection with the Rolling Stones.

Songs by the Rolling Stones are used in the soundtracks of so many contemporary film and television productions that any attempt to count them would be a fool’s errand. The group’s role as the stars or principal subjects of documentary films concerned with popular music and culture is far easier to chronicle, however, but no less instructive in terms of demonstrating the central influence of the Stones within the world of motion pictures. It is not an exaggeration to suggest the Rolling Stones represent the most documented musical group in the history of cinema. It is explained, in part, as the result of their unrivalled longevity, but equally for the timing of their emergence on the scene and the ease with which they both invited and adapted to the presence of cameras in their professional lives. Looking at Dominique Tarlé’s still-photography (1971) captured during the band’s exile in France and the recording of Exile on Main Street at Villa Nellcôte, alongside home footage from the period (now available within the Stones in Exile DVD, Stephen Kijak, USA, 2010), it becomes clear that the band was surrounded by motion picture cameras – those of professionals as well as their own – to an ubiquitous degree. Over the course of their career, the Rolling Stones embraced documentary film-making and the opportunities made available through increasingly sophisticated, progressively mobile, synchronized sound film technology in a manner rivalled by few, if any, of their contemporaries. Early on, they understood the power of the moving image and the degree to which it could both secure and perpetuate the mythology of the band, collaborating with a range of innovative filmmakers and artists whose approaches would facilitate such a project of self-creation. However, after public controversies, personal turmoil, and diminishing financial returns, the Rolling Stones would begin to exert an increasing amount of control over their cinematic representation, which results in work through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s that rarely, if ever, demonstrates the innovation and intimacy for which the first decade of their documentary appearances is so celebrated.1

The lyrics range from scriptural verses about Lucifer and the Prodigal Son to stories of beggars, sinners, prowlers, addicts, transients, outcasts, Black militants, groupies, and road-weary troubadours; the web of musical influences is spun with multi-colored threads of urban and rural blues, country, calypso, R&B, rock and roll, folk, gospel, and even the English choral tradition. The four albums released by the Rolling Stones between 1968 and 1972 – Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street – constitute for critics, fans, and historians the core identity of the group and the lasting, canonical repertory that has defined the Stones’ musical, historical, and cultural legacy.1 As Jack Hamilton has written in a recent study of the group, the band’s years from 1968 to Exile amount to “one of the great sustained creative peaks in all of popular music.”2 An insider’s perspective on the moment when the Rolling Stones were guaranteed a place of distinction in the history of music is offered by Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner.

1989 marked the end of one career and the beginning of another for the Rolling Stones. The year capped almost a decade of disharmony and uneven musical production – “Giants Enter a Deep Sleep” is how Elliott describes this period1 – and witnesses the most acrimonious chapter in the venerable Jagger/Richards partnership, one of the most creative collaborative musical relationships in popular music history. Although the decade began with a successful tour in 1981–82 to promote the album Tattoo You, memorialized in the pastel-heavy Hal Ashby-produced film Let’s Spend the Night Together, the animosity within the entire band continued into the mid-1980s. With Richards’ addictions and resultant legal troubles reaching a critical stage, control of the group tilted decisively (and understandably) in the direction of Jagger, who remained resolutely in charge.

Fifty-seven years together is a remarkable achievement for any combination of humans – in marriage; siblings; a company; not least an artistic collaboration with a core of three men, together from the fresh optimism of their twenties to the deep-lined wisdom of their seventies. It is only natural to divide such an eon into more manageable eras and chapters in order to discuss the results of such a collective. This is the organization I adopted in my most recent book about the Rolling Stones, Rocks Off: 50 Tracks that Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones (New York, 2013), in which discussions of the songs are grouped into three large sections corresponding to the band’s three guitar players who served as Keith Richards’ counterpoints over the band’s history: Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, and finally, Ron Wood. Each of these guitarists had a significant impact on the sound of the Stones, and most longtime fans view the history of the group as divided along these lines. Though there have been many other people contributing to over a half-century of Stones recordings and tours, I will be concentrating here on the musicians who made indelible impacts on Stones records, especially those who were with the band for multiple years and albums.

The Rolling Stones are one of the most critically and commercially successful acts in rock music history. The band first rose to prominence during the mid-1960s in the UK, and in the USA as part of what Americans call the “British Invasion” – an explosion of British pop ignited by the UK success of the Beatles in 1963 and their storming of the American shores and charts in early 1964 (see Figure 1.1). The Beatles and the Stones were part of a fab new cohort of mop-topped combos that also included the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Yardbirds, the Zombies, the Kinks, the Who, the Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, and even Freddie and the Dreamers. However much comparisons between the Beatles and the Stones may irritate the faithful of both groups, the similarities and differences can nevertheless be useful. Place of origin matters: The Beatles were not the first pop act from Liverpool to hit it big in London, but they were perhaps the first not to hide their northern roots. Although Brian Jones was from Cheltenham (Gloucestershire), the Stones as a band were, by contrast, from London. Songwriting factors in: John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing together even before the Beatles were a band, while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards did not start writing until after the Stones had already begun their careers together. Commercial success is also worth noting: The first Beatles No. 1 hit single in the UK was “Please Please Me,” released in March 1963; the first Stones UK No. 1 was “It’s All Over Now,” released in August 1964. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” topped the American charts in late January and February 1964; the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” hit the top of the US charts in the summer of 1965. The most important distinction between the two bands – and the one that probably tells us the most about the stylistic distance between them – has to do with early influences. The Beatles were very much a “song band,” focused mostly on pop songs and their vocal delivery. And while Jagger and Richards were fans of the 1950s rock and roll of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, they were also students (along with Brian Jones) of American blues. As a result, the Stones’ music is often more “rootsy,” at times placing more emphasis on expression than on polish.

Traditional analyses of music often overlook sonic elements that are difficult to notate. This is especially true of the way many fundamental aspects of sound, such as timbre, resonance, ambience, stereo placement, and countless other sonic qualities are manipulated during the recording process, but largely ignored in popular music criticism. Yet these elements, so central to recordings of popular music, are as important in conveying expression and meaning as melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics. They are an integral part of the music – primary colors in the recording artist’s sonic palette.2

Recorded in March of 1968 and released in May, the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” quickly rose to the top of the charts in the USA and UK. Its driving guitar riff and straight-ahead rock feel seemed to signal to many that the band had emerged from the psychedelic meanderings of late 1967’s Their Satanic Majesties Request, and the release of Beggars Banquet in December 1968 – the album “Jumpin’ Jack” was originally intended for – served to reinforce the idea that the Stones had made a strong return to their musical roots. Brian Jones was reportedly so excited about the track that “as soon as the session finished he contacted a friend, Ronny Money – wife of musician Zoot Money – and told her that ‘the Stones had returned to rock and roll with this thing called “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” it’s a gas.’”1 Many writers have emphasized the band’s seemingly new sound in 1968. Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon, for instance write that “the music … represents a radical departure from Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request,” and Steve Appleford declares that “The Rolling Stones found their moment of absolute clarity in 1968, after a season of drug busts, bad press, and that swirl of forced experimentation called Their Satanic Majesties Request. Confusion was replaced by a new sense of purpose, where passing psychedelic fashion was cast aside in favour of the blues and rock roots that had first inspired them.”2

I put the phone down, dress up in nothing too special and call up a taxi. Then I look at the time. It’s six in the morning. Bertrand just called me from his cell phone at the Champs-Élysées. I jump in the cab heading for the Virgin Megastore. I’m en route to wait in line for hours to get a pass for the ultimate joy. Tonight, with a little patience and a little luck, once again I’ll see the Rolling Stones – for the thirtieth time in my life. On to the Trabendo. Not far now. Sinking into the soft leather of the Mercedes, I breathe a sigh of happiness. I am sixty years old.