The Rolling Stones are one of the most influential rock ‘n roll bands ever to take a stage or record an album. Perhaps that influence is outsized because of the normie desire to take anything a critic says and throw it back in their face, which wouldn’t be so funny if at least the most influential writers of all days fawn over them. Perception can be hard to overcome, and when the Stones’ peers started throwing, well, stones at their reputation, it’s hard to look back at the working class support the band got in the eternal struggle against their peers, the Beatles, and feel like they were a proxy for “real” music, not the highfalutin mamby-pamby that they did along with Pink Floyd or the Velvet Underground.
I was always a Stones hater, at least as far back as I can remember. I found the songs they played on the radio outside of a handful, like “Paint It, Black” and “Gimme Shelter,” to be rote and lifeless. I don’t know what mood I was in or what I really appreciated back then. It was such a pervasive musical bad mood that I just sorta threw them out as a band that I had no real desire to listen to. Everyone has their own tastes and quirks, but as years went on, the dissonance in my brain grew over it. How could a band so revered by a large number of acts that I adored be so toxic to me? One just cannot handwave the Stones’ influence away and attribute it to Led Zeppelin or The Who or Black Sabbath. Those are all bands that have some similarity, but they’re nowhere near the one-to-one comparison that someone in denial might want to think they are.
Granted, you can like the bands that came now and think their influences are boring. Human nature works in mysterious ways. I can see someone being really into Nirvana and not digging the Pixies, but Nirvana didn’t crib their entire shtick from them. Kurt Cobain drew influences from old bluesmen and ‘70s cock-rockers like Zeppelin and Aerosmith. The Stones, however, they’re a universal influence playing the most widely accessible kind of rock ‘n roll. Even their harshest critics, being peers like Paul McCartney and Roger Daltrey, make that the heart of their feedback.
Over the years, my walls crumbled. I didn’t have the enmity for them over the years, perhaps out of repetition, perhaps out of greater villains coming out of the woodwork musically. Hearing other artists that I respected greatly wax about how the Stones inspired them was a huge factor in this, obviously. Dinosaur, Jr. actually had a big effect in shaking the foundations of that wall around appreciation of the band with “I Met the Stones” off their latest album, Sweep It Into Space. It was such a well-crafted, heartfelt song with inspired guitar work and sublime emotion. Dinosaur, Jr. has become a band I’ve been really getting into over the years. If J. Mascis got that overwhelmed meeting them, they had to be worth something, right?
The tables turned right after the band’s longtime drummer, Charlie Watts, died. Radio stations were doing their tribute to the band, as they should, and the song “Bitch” came on.
I had heard the song before, but listening to it in that moment, I was struck by how tight the rhythm section was, Watts deftly keeping pace while Ronnie Wood drove the pace underneath the horns and almost in antipode with Mick Jagger’s sex-soaked lyrical belting. It was revelatory, an epiphany even. It was at that moment, when the song was at crescendo that I got The Rolling Stones on a deeper level. I felt in my bones why so many of my favorite bands heard them on their radios or record players or whatever and decided that they wanted to be rockstars too.
Last Tuesday, I decided I was going to do a deep dive on the Stones on Spotify. All their records were on the streaming service. I say this because Neil Young, another artist I did a deep dive on earlier in the year (I was always a fan of his, just hadn’t had the depth I’d have liked on his discography), took a moral stand against the platform giving oodles of money to Joe Rogan to spew lies about, among other things, COVID-19. Now I can’t listen to Young on Spotify anymore, which stinks because I already pay them ten bucks a month and I’m too lazy to switch up streaming services. But I digress.
Generally, when I do a deep dive on an artist, I go from the beginning, like I did yesterday with Bruce Springsteen or back when I dove into other bands like Dinosaur, Jr. or the Drive-By Truckers. With the Stones, I wanted their essence. Like their peers, their beginnings were a lot different than what they’d evolve into as a final form. I started off with their most acclaimed albums, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. I jumped backwards and forwards after that to fold in the rest of the band’s oeuvre in. There was at least one outlier that was hilarious to listen to, even if it was a good album in Their Satanic Majesties Request. It was a transparent attempt to make their version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but it still had charm.
What I found though was that the Stones did not hit emotional peaks as often as the Beatles or Zeppelin did. Their floor, however, was surprisingly high. For example, The Who, one of the bands that I would hold above the Stones as paragons of “hard” rock influences, had more than a few stinkers in their catalogue. The worst songs I listened to during the peak years of the Stones were, at worst, decent background music for the bar. To me, that’s a high floor. That’s a good band. I’m not saying The Who is a bad band at all. You don’t make Tommy and Who’s Next and deserve to be shit on, obviously. I am saying that Roger Daltrey should probably not throw stones from his glass house.
What’s your favorite Stones’ track? Album? Sound off in the comments!
What really stuck out to me was the musicianship. The biggest critiques from their peers were that the Stones were vibes and weren’t serious about their art. That’s bullshit. They could write songs. Listen to “Bitch,” obviously, but “Under My Thumb” and “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” or even the trickling riff into the booming rhythm section on “Gimme Shelter.” There’s talent in that song crafting. You can debate your mother on who was best among the bands at creating artful tunes, but to discount the Stones as a bar band writing those songs and more? Pure lunacy.
Obviously, the lesson here isn’t to defend the honor of the most famous still-active rock ‘n roll band in the world because as much as I love it when Jagger panders to his audiences at live shows or how much everyone who’s gone to a Stones show loves it, he doesn’t need me to defend him or his output. What I am saying is that it’s good to give music or a movie or a video game you dismissed a second look. I’m not saying it’s mandatory. Like, if you want to shut something out for reasons that are personal to you, go ahead. Life is too short to be militaristic over unimportant things like the stuff you consume in your free time. But if you want to reconsider something for whatever reason, go ahead and do it. You might find something that’s new to you to enjoy. You might find other people who share in that, who have always shared in it, and will welcome you into their community with open arms. It’s never too late to appreciate something for the first time. That’s one of the finer aspects of life here on Earth.
"Dead Flowers" is probably my favorite Stones song, but I also kinda prefer the version of it done by Townes Van Zandt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VgdtTRZhag