Maggie's Farm

The Essential Rolling Stones

Hey you youth out there! Enough of that Jimi Hendrix stuff, and that semi-lame Jim Morrison. If you want to get familiar with the good stuff, the Brit blues guys really got a grip on white rockin blues. Too gritty and menacing to be pop. Despite the wonderful Yardbirds, the Stones take the cake. And they usually mix it up with some sweet ballads. As good as ZZ Top is, what would they be without the Stones?

As a lad, we heard the Stones before we latched onto the Beatles. Maybe it was just chance - we were the trendy bunch that used fake ID's to hit the hot NYC clubs during vacation, and it was our baby sisters who listened to the Beatles. Not that you could hear any of these guys in NY. (Soon, I will need to post my pop music essay.) LOVE The Beatles - everything they did in their very short, brilliant career. The Beatles were highly innovative pop, but the Stones rocked it nasty, which well-bred, mannerly kids got a big kick out of. Like the college kids today liking rap. At the time, we had not heard of Dylan yet - only the wierd granola folk-guitar kids had heard his first album - and we were all in love with Joanie Baez; we heard The Kingston Trio (Charlie on the MTA) and stuff like that as an alternative to the smarmy "greaser-pop" crap of the time (which I very much enjoy hearing now...once in a while..it's a bit one-dimensional). Motown didn't exist yet in our universe - that is another huge story. Still in love with Joanie's voice.

Gotta start with Out of Our Heads. The first Stones recording I heard. As I recall, I heard this before I ever heard Dylan. Man did it sound earthy and hard and real compared to the tripe on the radio, but I had never heard Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf or Robert Johnson. I would soon, and would finally become a Delta Blues fan. But they had studied those guys, and Chuck Berry too. Satisfaction, and The Last Time, and more good stuff.

Advance to 12X5, with the immortal Time is on My Side and It's All Over Now.

Like the Beatles, the Stones began with a lot of borrowed American songs but they used all that history as a foundation for their development and growth. It's still only 1965, but December's Children represents the real beginning of Jagger and Richard's song-writing. Get off Of My Cloud and Blue Turns to Grey. I understand that the Stones weren't fond of this album, but I was/am. It's an almost sentimental collection.

In 1966 came Aftermath, as the musicians took over from the businessmen. The UK version is much better than what I heard in my prep-school dorm in 1966. Think, Flight 505, the wonderful Under My Thumb. "Under my thumb, she's a siamese cat of a girl...."

On Between The Buttons - there are two versions of this album - the Stones came into their own, and began to claim their territory of blues-influenced edgy rock-pop. Ruby Tuesday was Beatle-ish, but Let's Spend the Night Together was fairly straight-forward Jagger & Richards. And it has Complicated, now used for TV ads. Relieved to know these guys aren't starving.

1969's Let It Bleed is my final Stones recommendation. Their masterpiece, with creepy stuff, druggy stuff, country stuff including my favorite Honky Tonk Women. Brian Jones died during this recording - I have no idea how Keith Richards has kept himself alive all these decadent years. Lucky. Same for Mick, I guess.

Since then we have had Jumpin Jack Flash and lots of other stuff, but this fine early stuff is what the Stones stand on today. Not one bit of this is old-fashioned.