It was 57 years ago today that rock ‘n’ roll legends The Rolling Stones played their first ever concert. Here’s a list of essential reading, listening and watching to get to know the band better
Mick Jagger (left) and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, who released their last album, Blue & Lonesome, in 2016. Pic/Facebook
Read
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Once, in the 1960s, when The Rolling Stones guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones were living in a flat together in London, a British Army drop-out became so enamoured of Jones that he would do his every bidding, including foregoing his overcoat on a freezing winter night. Jones used to treat him like dirt, till things came to a head one day. The musician returned home to find the Army guy asleep on his bed. The room had guitar cables lying all around, and Jones got so angry that he picked one up, woke his sleeping guest up, and told him, “This end is plugged in, baby, and I’m comin’ after ya.” The petrified fellow ran out of the room and into the snow in his underpants, screaming, “They’re electrocuting me, they’re electrocuting me.” He left the next day, to never come back again. Those are the glorious insights into the band’s life that you will glean from The Mammoth Book of The Rolling Stones [Robinson], an anthology of articles published on the outfit.
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The cover of The Mammoth Book of The Rolling Stones
Listen
You’ve heard Can’t get no satisfaction. You’ve most probably also heard Paint it black and Brown sugar. But the one Stones song that we will recommend isn’t, strictly speaking, a Stones song. Vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards recorded Play with fire on the fly with Phil Spector in 1965. It’s a biting track that tells a girl that she shouldn’t mess with the lead singer despite her wealth and good looks. The chorus gives her fair warning, because it goes, “But don’t play with me, ’cause you’re playing with fire.”
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Watch
There are numerous documentaries made on The Stones, including one by the great Martin Scorsese, called Shine a Light. But that was a concert film shot in 2008. Gimme Shelter, on the other hand, was made in 1970, when the band was at the height of its fame. It gives an insight into how wild those days were, encapsulated best by an attorney when he calls the band “a pain in the a**”.
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