The Rolling Stones – The History Of Punk
It’s a fair comment that the Rolling Stones (named after a Muddy Waters song) were the Anti Christ’s to The Beatles and thank god for that. R&B riffs, dirty blues and Jagger’s mock American vocals made them dead certs for success in Uncle Sam land. They got up everyone’s noses and the kids loved them. Beatles or Stones? Compare their version of I Wanna Be Your Lover complete with blues slide guitar. Pisses all over The Beatles. The Beatles were pop. The Stones were R&B. Early songs showed their influences of Chuck Berry, Willy Dixon, gospel and country.
While the Beatles were loveable mop tops, the Rolling Stones looked like Neanderthals and they played it to the hilt. They portrayed themselves as vulgar, arrogant and aggressive causing parental and establishment disapproval with their attitude including peeing against garage walls and allegedly snacking on confectionary from the hairy cup. ‘Satisfaction’ their theme toon railed against advertising while hinting at unrequited sex and the nihilism of youth. The authorities hated them as Punks with money, women and prestige. Their contribution to punk has never been truly acknowledged probably because of what they became. From the nihilism of Paint It Black thru the garage punk of I Wanna Be Your Lover, Satisfaction and Jumping Jack Flash. Where would the New York Dolls have been without Richards’s hairstyle and Jagger’s lips and unusual dress sense? The link between The Blues, Rock ‘n’ Roll and garage.
We can even laugh at their ludicrous attempts to mimic the Beatles with their dreadful Satanic Majesties Request album. But all power to them they came back with Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet ( the original cover was going to be a manky graffitied urinal!)… two near-perfect albums and as spiky as ever. Like the Beatles with Charles Manson though, reality intervened at Altamont when instead of being Lucifer, Jagger and his cohorts were just jumped up rock stars out of their depth in the reality of a violent death in front of their very eyes.
Unfortunately, that was it. As America, drugs and money beckoned they progressed to become a drug-addled super group going thru the motions and embodying the worst excesses and name-checked in The Clash’s song 1977 as “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones.” That’s not to say there haven’t been flashes of old down the years, but for a golden period, they were the bollocks.
Urban myth says Jagger once walked into Seditionaries to look at and buy clothes and was told to get out by McLaren.
He must have got this one by mail order or got a mate to buy one!
Now a corporate monster and freak show to despise. A living steadily decreasing waxworks.
The Stones go New Wavish in 1978 with Respectable
