No. 3: Rolling Stones, ‘Gimme Shelter’ – Top 100 Classic Rock Songs

by: Dave Swanson 30/4/12

Abkco Records

With an ominous mood set from the first notes, we know for certain that “the storm is threatening” on the Rolling Stones‘ haunting and powerful ‘Gimme Shelter.’ It’s ‘Apocalypse Now,’ in just over four minutes.
The opening track from the band’s 1969 classic album ‘Let It Bleed,’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ snuffs out the candle on the ’60s and the “love generation” right along with it. The driving, mid-tempo groove never lets up from start to finish. Brittle guitars and the very effective use of percussion push the song forward: “Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’ our very street today / Burns like a red coal carpet, mad bull lost its way.”
The Rolling Stones clearly were hitting a creative peak. ‘Let It Bleed’ was an even more powerful statement than their previous masterpiece, ‘Beggars Banquet.’ The album ends with the realism-over-optimism stance of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ the perfect counterpoint to ‘Gimme Shelter.’
Released the day before the infamous Altamont concert (later documented with the film ‘Gimme Shelter’), ‘Let It Bleed’ was also the band’s first album following the mysterious death of founder Brian Jones (who plays on only two tracks) and their final album of the ’60s. The album’s world-weary mood was reflective of the times it was born from. The violence in the streets, the Vietnam War, and the general fatigue universally felt by decade’s end were all taking a mighty toll:
“A storm is threatening my very life today / If I don’t get some shelter, oh, I’m gonna fade away.”
Altamont itself has often been called the flipside to Woodstock’s peace and love glory. The unorganized event was plagued with problems form the start. The seemingly obviously bad choice of having the Hell’s Angels stand in as security led to altercations with musicians (Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane was beaten up) and the stabbing death of 18-year-old concert goer Meredith Hunter.
In his crucial book, ‘Up and Downs with the Rolling Stones,’ Tony Sanchez recalls watching the finished film with the band. “Mick turned to Keith and said ‘Flower power was a load of crap wasn’t it? There was nothing about love, peace and flowers in ‘Jumpin Jack Flash’ was there?’” That attitude captures the general tone of the song and the album. The band were ready to move on and see what the ’70s had in store. They would follow up with two more classics in the form of ‘Sticky Fingers’ and ‘Exile On Main Street’ before their own creative fatigue would set in.
“War, children, it’s just a shot away. It’s just a shot away / Rape, murder! It’s just a shot away, It’s just a shot away.”
Written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, ‘Gimme Shelter’ was the perfect album opener, and though never released as a single, it has long been one of the Stones’ best-loved songs. 43 years after its release, ‘Gimme Shelter’ remains a high water mark in an incredible run of records from one of rock and roll’s most significant bands, clearly worthy of a very high spot on our Top 100 Classic Rock Songs list.

Listen To ‘Gimme Shelter’ by the Rolling Stones

• April 30, 2012

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards on Sunday Times Rich List of U.K. music millionaires

Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards have once again landed on the 2012 Sunday Times Rich List, an annual list that ranks the richest people in the music industry who have residences in the United Kingdom or Ireland, based on their estimated worth of their fortunes. Jagger is  No. 10 on the list, with a fortune worth an estimated £190 million (or $304 million in U.S. dollars). Richards is No. 15 on the list, with a fortune worth £175 million (or $280 million).
Jagger is tied on the list with Spotify founder Daniel Ek and celebrity couple David and Victoria Beckham.
Jagger and Richards make more money than the other members of the Rolling Stones (drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ronnie Wood) because Jagger and Richards are the chief songwriters for the Rolling Stones.
Here are the 2012 Sunday Times Rich List's Top 20 richest people in the music industry who have residences in the U.K.:
1. Clive Calder (music mogul) - £1.35 billion ($2.16 billion)
2. Cameron Mackintosh (musical-theater mogul) - £725 million ($1.16 billion)
3. Paul McCartney (singer/songwriter) - £665 million ($1.06 billion)
4. Andrew Lloyd Webber (musical-theater mogul) - £590 million ($944 million)
5. U2 and U2 manager Paul McGuinness - £514 million ($822 million)
6. Simon Fuller (music/TV mogul) - £375 million ($600 million)
7. Simon Cowell (music/TV mogul) - £225 million ($360 million)
8. Elton John (singer/songwriter) - £220 million ($352 million)
9. Michael Flatley (dancer/choreographer) - £192 million ($307 million)
10. (tie) Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones singer/songwriter) - £190 million ($304 million)
10. (tie) Daniel Ek (founder of Spotify) - £190 million ($304 million)
10. (tie) Victoria and David Beckham (celebrity couple) - £190 million ($304 million)
13. (tie) Olivia and Dhani Harrison (widow and son of George Harrison) - £180 million ($288 million)
13. (tie) Sting (singer/songwriter) - £180 million ($288 million)
15. Keith Richards (Rolling Stones guitarst/songwriter) - £175 million ($280 million)
16. Jamie Palumbo (Ministry of Sound founder) - £170 million ($272 million)
17. Denis and Caroline Desmond (MCD Productions co-founder and his wife) - £165 million ($264 million)
18. Ringo Starr (singer/songwriter) - £160 million ($256 million)
19. Tim Rice (songwriter) - £144 million ($230 million)
20. Tom Jones (singer/songwriter) - £140 million ($224 million)

Bill Wyman to Rejoin The Rolling Stones?

by: Dave Lifton 30/4/12

Stuart Wilson, Getty Images

Once again news continues to swirl from the Rolling Stones‘ camp over whether or not they will record again. Last week, Ron Wood retracted his original retraction on the subject, with sources saying he was overheard telling somebody that he, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would be going into the studio very soon. Now, there is talk that bassist Bill Wyman may return to the fold.
Vintage Vinyl News is suggesting that Wyman may be involved with whatever the Stones are planning to do in celebration of their 50th anniversary next year. Back in December, Wyman joined the group in a London studio for the first time since he left the Stones in 1992. Darryl Jones, who has worked with Sting and jazz legend Miles Davis, has played bass in his absence.
Following the session, Richards has been trying to persuade Wyman to come back. “We’re back in touch, which is great, because I hadn’t really spoken to him for years,”  he told Rolling Stone. “I think he’s up for it. We talked about it. I’ll let you know when I can.”
However, there is one catch. Wyman, who is 75 years old, developed a fear of flying during the ‘Steel Wheels’ tour, his last with the band. While he may be involved in any recording the band does, he may not want to go out on tour, which could possibly restrict his involvement in the anniversary celebrations to high-profile shows in England.

Filed Under: Bill Wyman, Rolling Stones Category: News

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• April 28, 2012

Rolling Stones museum operated by married couple opens in Luechow, Germany

An unofficial Rolling Stones museum has opened in Luechow, Germany. The museum, which is not endorsed or authorized by the Rolling Stones, is owned and operated by married couple Ulrich and Birgit Schroeder. The grand opening of the museum took place on April 27, 2012.
According to AFP, the museum has thousands of Rolling Stones collectible items on display, including an original signed pool table the group took on tour, instruments, posters and a Stones pinball machine. One of the most talked-about items in the collection is a urinal in the shape of the Rolling Stones' mouth logo.
Birgit Schroeder told AFP: "People came from far away just to use the toilet."
The Schroeders hope that the members of the Rolling Stones will visit the museum one day.
Birgit Schroeder added: "There's constant contact between us and the Stones. The problem is that it is up to the management to decide, not the band. But we think that if the Rolling Stones are anywhere in the vicinity that they will come to visit us. But we can't expect them to fly over from San Francisco or Ireland just to visit the museum."

The Roots of “Street Fighting Man” How the London Anti-War Protests Helped to Inspire a Rolling Stones Song...

» Anatomy of a Song

The Roots of “Street Fighting Man”

How the London Anti-War Protests Helped to Inspire a Rolling Stones Song

April 2012 by Ed Rampell

 

With Mick Jagger’s to-the-barricades lyrics and Keith Richards’ throbbing beat, Street Fighting Man is to the sizzling ’60s generation of young radicals what La Marseillaise is to the French Revolution or The Internationale is to socialism.
Initially banned by many American and British radio stations, the Rolling Stones song is rock’s revolutionary anthem. But how did this ode to insurrection come about? And who inspired Jagger to pen this raucous rabblerouser?
Street Fighting Man debuted on the Rolling Stones’ most politically-charged album, Beggars Banquet, in 1968, a year of profound global upheaval.
In February 1968, Vietnamese guerrillas launched the bold Tet Offensive in southern Vietnam, brashly storming the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The May French student-worker uprising seized universities and factories in a mass strike that nearly toppled Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s regime. The “Prague Spring” of Czechoslovakia’s “socialism with a human face” movement challenged Stalinist rule until Soviet tanks invaded in August.
Days later, in an America already roiled by Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy’s assassinations, demonstrators fought police during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Already a flower-power icon, Mick Jagger was more than a mere observer of these tumultuous events shaking the world.

Tariq Ali & Actress/Activist Vanessa Redgrave. March 1968 Demonstration; London

Antiwar activist Tariq Ali tells Rock Cellar Magazine “Mick Jagger used to be on our Vietnam marches.” In particular, one fierce London rally against the Indochina war inflamed the Stones’ front man to write Street Fighting Man:

He was on the one demonstration that I led outside the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square in March 1968. It turned violent and we fought back against the mounted police — Tariq Ali

In a March 9, 2008 40th anniversary story about the Grosvenor Square riot in London’s The Independent, documentary filmmaker Leo Burley wrote:

“Michael Philip Jagger, a 24-year-old man of wealth, taste and immaculate timing… strides towards the American Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square on Sunday 17 March 1968…”

“It is a protest against the Vietnam War that those who gather outside the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square are attempting to stage. They have arrived there in their thousands from a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. It swiftly descends into chaos. Mounted police charge the demonstrators, smoke-bombs explode, rocks are thrown and hundreds are arrested.”
The jarring experience deeply affected Jagger. “He was there because he felt angry and rebellious but he had no way of formulating this, of giving it any kind of structure, and in a sense he was looking for anything to rebel against,” says Barry Miles, the journalist and author who met Jagger on the march.

Photo: Michael Cooper; Raj Prem Collection

“I don’t think he had a carefully worked-out policy against Vietnam; I mean, he had a moral outrage against the war and that was about it.”
“He didn’t have a political reading of it,” claims Miles, who interviewed the rocker shortly after the Grosvenor Square events and similar global upheavals ignited Jagger’s aesthetic imagination. “He had a much more artistic reading. This was something that got his adrenalin going, that enabled him to create. To him, it was just perfect, it was a shot of adrenalin and the subject matter for a song.”
Jagger, in a 1995 Rolling Stone interview said about the uprising in Paris:

It was a very strange time in France. But not only in France but also in America, because of the Vietnam War and these endless disruptions. I thought it was a very good thing at the time. There was all this violence going on. It was a direct inspiration, because by contrast, London was very quiet…

After the mounted police attacked protesters at Grosvenor Square, “The British press went berserk sand singled me out as the organizer and leader, though I was not alone in the leadership of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign,” Tariq Ali tells Rock Cellar Magazine.
“For months afterwards I was vilified and attacked. Then May 1968 erupted in France and we were planning a huge new demonstration in October 1968. The press -The Times – said we were planning a revolution.
“It was then that Mick wrote Street Fighting Man. It was banned by the BBC, and his handwritten version of the song arrived with a note. Which was chucked in the bin; we didn’t keep such things in those days! The song we photographed, the handwritten note said something like:

Hi Tariq. For you. The BBC have banned it. Could you put it in the paper? — Mick

Tariq Ali: The paper I edited was The Black Dwarf and we published the song. The cover said ‘Fred Engels** and Mick Jagger on Streetfighting’, and that was that.”
~*~*~*

Which Stone slept with 64 girls in 19 days? Clue: It wasn't Mick. In fact, he'd rather got to bed with a good book

By Christopher Sandford
PUBLISHED: 01:23 GMT, 28 April 2012 | UPDATED: 01:23 GMT, 28 April 2012
The song had been an early hit for the Rolling Stones, topping the UK charts for four weeks in the spring of 1965.
But as Keith Richards ran towards the microphone to join in the first verse during a sell-out concert in America later that year, its title - The Last Time - suddenly seemed horribly prophetic.
For some reason his microphone stand was not earthed properly that night and when he brushed it with his electric guitar, a bolt of blue flame preceded an unearthly screech and the sight of Richards crashing to the floor.

New Stones: 20-year-old Mick Taylor (centre), previously a guitarist in John Mayalls legendary Bluesbreakers, was recruited to replace Brain Jones

A ghastly burning smell pervaded the unfortunately named Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento, California. There were a few screams, then deathly silence as police and medical attendants began swarming all around the prostrate rocker.
Richards was down so long, seven minutes in most estimates, that there seemed little chance of him surviving. But then, just as everyone had given up hope, he suddenly opened his eyes and absent-mindedly scratched his chin.
‘What do I do for an encore?’ he asked and the set resumed again soon afterwards.
Such resilience, not to mention his weathering of years of heroin and alcohol abuse, has earned Richards the nickname ‘the man death forgot’ - but he is far from the only Rolling Stone with a knack for survival.
This summer sees the 50th anniversary of the Stones’ debut performance at London’s Marquee Club in the summer of 1962, a milestone they are rumoured to be marking with plans for yet another money-spinning tour.
Their longevity is all the more extraordinary given the unbridled personal and professional tensions between them. In the early days, their feuding centred around guitarist Brian Jones.
He was always something of an outsider, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards having known each other since they were pupils at the same primary school in Dartford, Kent.
Like Jones, a former choirboy from Cheltenham, they were unlikely anti-establishment heroes.
Jagger, a first year student at the London School of Economics, was the son of a teacher and a hairdresser and raised in a smart pebble-dashed house complete with garden gnomes and a doorbell that played Greensleeves.

'The man death forgot': The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was electrocuted on stage in the spring of 1965

As for art student Keith Richards, an electrician’s son who grew up in a flat above a grocer’s shop, he was expelled from Dartford Tech for poor attendance — but his credibility as a rebel was rather undermined by years as a Boy Scout and a stint in a children’s choir which sang in a concert to mark the Queen’s Coronation.
Their shared love of rock ’n’ roll and blues led them in April 1962 to a West London jazz club where they first met Brian Jones, also 19, and suggested forming a band with him.
It was Jones’s idea that they name themselves after the Muddy Waters’ record Rollin’ Stone, and he clearly saw himself as the star attraction.
‘Our band can be summed up in two words - Brian Jones,’ he told the magazine Jazz News.
When they signed their first contract with manager Andrew Loog Oldham in April 1963 he secretly negotiated himself five pounds a week more than the others, who by then included guitarist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts.
He kept this quiet even after he, Jagger and Richards started sharing a squalid bedsit in Fulham where they handled the washing up by throwing dirty dishes out of the kitchen window and into the communal garden below.

There they were occasionally joined by Pat Andrews, Jones’s on-off girlfriend and the third of the young women he had impregnated before arriving in London.
She had given birth to their son Julian in October 1961, but he had somehow neglected his promise to marry her. One night, she and Jagger ended up in bed together.
This resulted in a certain coolness towards him on Jones’s part, which was soon reciprocated as Jagger and the other band members found out about his covert deal with Andrew Loog Oldham.
This must have been particularly galling for Jagger, who was famed for his meanness even after the band was making serious money.

Singer Diana Ross, with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones (both pictured left), in 1968. In the early days, the band's feuding centred around guitarist Brian Jones, with Keith Richards, (right), and Mick Jagger (far right)

Among those who witnessed his parsimony was the photographer David Bailey, who once had dinner with him and Keith Richards at a fashionable restaurant in Chelsea.
‘Mick put a ten-bob tip on the plate but as we were putting our coats on I noticed his hand slip out and pop the ten shillings back in his pocket,’ he recalled.
Jagger was later said to have written the 1969 hit You Can’t Always Get What You Want in response to a producer’s demand for a pay rise. In the end, though, it was Richards who gave vent to the group’s anger over the secret deal.
Before one show in Southend he spent a few minutes in a side room with a groupie before returning to the dressing room to discover that Jones had helped himself to his takeaway chicken dinner, leaving only skin and bones.
'As we’re heading for the stage, Brian passes me and I say, “You ate me chicken!” and bopped him in the eye,’ he remembered. ‘As we’re playing Brian’s face starts to swell up and change colours.’
And there was soon far more than food at stake. If the Stones were using drugs at all at this stage, it was mainly to keep themselves going during long days on the road or in the studio.
But Jones began taking substances such as LSD on a recreational basis and it affected his performances.
‘He got drunk, took drugs when they were new, hung out too much, stayed up too late’, Mick Jagger recalled. ‘He started to let his  talent slide.’
When a mysterious buzzing noise halted one recording session, studio engineers traced it to Jones, who had fallen asleep in a  corner with his guitar propped up against a live amplifier.
It was not just drugs that kept him up at all hours. Bill Wyman, who kept a tally of such things, claimed that Jagger, Richards and he had 30, six and 278 women respectively in the two years after fame struck.
But on their second U.S. tour, in the autumn of 1964, even he was eclipsed by Jones, who told a reporter that he’d slept with 64 girls in the 19 days they were in the States.

School photo with Mick Jagger (labelled one) and Keith Richards (labelled three) when they attended Wentworth Primary School, Dartford

This left little time for Jones’s songwriting ambitions, so he was furious with envy when, on their next trip to America the following April, Keith Richards went to bed early one night and woke up at dawn with a new tune in his head. This eventually became (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.
It soon topped the U.S. and British charts, and decades later would be voted the ‘greatest song ever’ by a poll of music-business insiders. But Jones resented its popularity, and the fact that he hadn’t written it.  He sometimes played the Popeye The Sailor Man theme over it during shows.
This led to renewed mutterings about sacking him, but these dissipated as Satisfaction catapulted the Stones into a world of country estates, young women volunteering to pleasure them in the backs of Rolls-Royces, and plentiful supplies of drugs.
Bob Harris, presenter of the BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test, recalled Keith Richards producing a large bag of cocaine over dinner at Mr Chow’s restaurant in Knightsbridge, a favourite celebrity haunt.
‘There it sat in full view for the next two hours, with Keith alternately snorting it up and graciously offering it round the table,’ he said. ‘With every course, there was another application. To him, it was just another condiment.’
Into this high-octane world came Anita Pallenberg, the traffic-stopping beauty who took the conflict between the three leading Stones to a new level. A sometime actress and model, she met Jones at a party in New York towards the end of 1965.
They began an intense, drug-fuelled relationship which variously involved him parading around in her flimsy blouses and begging her to make him up like a girl, in between disturbing bouts of violence.
Their friend Dave Thomson once stayed at their flat in London and recalled Jones using his fists on Anita - and her reciprocating with apparent relish. ‘I actually saw her going into their room with a bloody great whip,’ he says. ‘I could hear her whipping him.’
Other visitors to their home included pop ingenue Marianne Faithfull who, true to the Stones’ form for bedding each other’s women, dallied first with Brian Jones and then Keith Richards, describing the latter experience as ‘the best night of my life’.

Linda Eastman (pictured right), American society girl, whose name was romantically linked with the Stones and Beatles, and Joni Mitchell (pictured left)

When Jagger also became smitten by this voluptuous but seemingly virginal figure, Richards unselfishly paved the way. ‘Mick’s really stuck on you,’ he told her. ‘Go on luv, give him a bell.’
Given the eagerness with which Jagger accumulated new conquests, it seems debatable that he needed any such encouragement. During a European tour in March 1966, Brigitte Bardot appeared backstage and offered him a part in one of her films.
According to keyboard player Ian Stewart he declined, but gave her a ‘consolation s**g’ in a broom cupboard near their dressing room. That summer, following a press conference aboard a yacht cruising around New York Harbour, he was also rumoured to have bedded photographer Linda Eastman, the future Linda McCartney.
A few months later, it was Tina Turner’s turn, when she and her husband Ike shared a bill with the Stones during a tour of Britain.  She recalled Jagger ‘wanting to learn a dance I did with my girls’ and, according to the Stones’ minder Tom Keylock, she gave him a personal tutorial immediately before a show in Bristol.
‘I tripped over them with their gear round their ankles backstage,’ said Keylock. Just a few hours after that encounter, Jagger and Marianne Faithfull finally got together at his hotel.
Their relationship lasted four years, despite her subsequent — and somewhat surprising — complaints about his libido. ‘I always felt that whatever sexual drive Mick had, he used it up on stage and there was little left over for his personal life,’ she said.
‘Even when we climbed in to our draped, four-poster bed, Mick was only interested in reading a book.’ She also claimed that ‘the whole time I was with Mick, I fancied Keith’.

Brigitte Bardot (left) appeared backstage and offered Jagger a part in one of her films while Jones decided to get revenge on Richards by dating Linda Keith

She would eventually get a re-match with Richards, but only after a disastrous love triangle involving him, Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg had played itself out.
Its unlikely roots lay in the Stones’ appearance on the much-loved television variety show Sunday Night At The London Palladium in January 1967. Tradition demanded that at the climax of proceedings the entire cast mount a revolving stage to blow kisses and bid cheery farewells to those watching, but this was too much for the Stones.
No way, they hastily agreed among themselves. They wouldn’t rotate. After a row in which Jagger told the producer to ‘f*** off’, the Stones got their way, but this provoked a wave of public irritation at their arrogance, which is thought to have emboldened the authorities to crack down on their drug-taking.
During a party at Redlands, Keith Richards’ country estate in Sussex, in February 1967, one very stoned guest saw what he thought was a ‘dwarf dressed in blue’ outside one of the windows.
In fact it was one of 19 policemen about to launch a drugs raid which became legendary because of rumours, later dismissed by Richards, that the officers involved discovered Marianne Faithfull in a compromising position with Jagger and a Mars Bar.
Richards and Jagger were both arrested for possession of cannabis and amphetamine, charges for which they would later be jailed but acquitted on appeal.
Ahead of their trial they decided to leave the country until the headlines had played themselves out.
Keith, Brian and Anita went first to Paris and then on to Morocco in Keith’s blue Bentley, chauffeured by the band’s minder Tom Keylock.
En route, Brian Jones fell ill and checked into a clinic near Toulouse, where he spent his 25th birthday alone while Pallenberg and Richards carried on to Tangiers. For the next 24 hours, Keylock faced the distraction of seeing them making love in his rear-view mirror.
So began a serious relationship between the two which was rather ill-timed given that the Stones were about to be thrown into close proximity on a European tour.
When Jones found out what was going on, he retaliated by immediately dating Richards’ ex Linda Keith, and photographs from that tour show the two men routinely standing at opposite ends of the stage, each straining at his guitar lead, for maximum separation.
Jones also stayed in separate hotels to Richards and, according to Bill Wyman, ‘leaned increasingly on drink, LSD and marijuana to help him through this. He was obviously shattered’.
Back in London, Jagger reminded the band that they stood to lose their entire advance from their record company Decca if they split up, unaware that the next scandal to threaten the band would involve him and Anita.
In the summer of 1968, they both appeared in the Nicolas Roeg film Performance, starring Jagger as an androgynous sex-mad rock god holed up with a couple of sexually ambiguous girlfriends, one played by Pallenberg.
The verdict is still out on whether they actually had an affair during filming, but such was the zeal of their sex scenes that one ten-minute snippet won an award in a Dutch blue-movie festival — and Keith Richards certainly had his suspicions.
He later revealed that he got his revenge by again ‘knocking Marianne’, and was forced to exit rapidly through an upstairs window at their home one night when Jagger returned from filming unexpectedly early. But ultimately it was Pallenberg he wanted.
‘I love the b***h and I’m not letting her go,’ he told Tom Keylock, and soon ‘normal’ relations were resumed between them, with the strange twist that Pallenberg had acquired for them the Regency bed on which she had filmed her sex scenes with Jagger.
By the summer of 1969, Brian Jones was existing on a diet of brandy, animal tranquillisers and LSD, his inability to ‘stay clean’ jeopardising the Stones’ chances of getting back into the U.S. for future tours.
That June, he was fired from the band.
Within a month he was found dead in his swimming pool after taking a ate-night dip while stoned and drunk.
Without Brian Jones around to unite them in their anger and frustration, it soon became clear that Jagger and Richards would turn on each other instead.
As we shall see on Monday, the sparks emanating from Richards’ guitar on that night he was electrocuted were nothing compared to the fireworks between the Stones’ two front-men in the years to come.
Extracted from The Rolling Stones: Fifty Years by Christopher Sandford, published by Simon & Schuster @ £20. © 2012 Christopher Sandford. To order a copy for £15.99 (incl p&p) call 0843 382 0000.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2136405/Rolling-Stones-members-sex-lives-Which-slept-64-girls-19-days-Clue-It-wasnt-Mick-In-fact-hed-got-bed-good-book.html#ixzz1tMnza4gv

Rolling Stones Recording Rumors Again Raised by Ron Wood

by: Ken Kelley 2 hours ago 27/4/12

MJ Kim, Getty Images

So are the Rolling Stones making a new record or are they not? You may recall approximately three weeks ago, Stones guitarist Ron Wood went on the record as saying that he and his fellow Stones were going to be meeting up in the studio to “throw some ideas around” and “get the feel again.”
A short time later, Wood retracted his statement about the band heading back to the studio, saying he was misquoted. Feeling some heat from the one and only Mick Jagger, Wood told Billboard Magazine that “I heard fromJagger; he’s going, ‘What the hell?! We don’t know anything yet!’” Wood told Billboard. “And I said, ‘You know what [the media] are like. I just expressed my personal view. I would love to go into the studio.’ Then they took it all wrong. So I have to make a personal apology to the rest of the band. I didn’t mean to say things out of line.”
So Wood will have to forgive the skepticism that might be greeting the news that the group is, once again, headed back to the studio. Wood was recently overheard making the comments that he, Jagger and Keith Richards would be “playing around with some ideas in the studio next week”.
This time around at least, Wood isn’t the only source fueling rumors of a new record. Last month, Richards divulged that the band has in fact been practicing together and might start soon recording some new songs.
Richards told British newspaper the Mirror that “We’ll just get the boys back together again then and maybe cut a side. We’re planning to get things going… again.”
So while this all remains just talk at this point, it might not be long before we hear some new music from the Rolling Stones after all. The group has not released a new studio album since 2005′s ‘A Bigger Bang’.

Filed Under: Rolling Stones Category: News

School of Rock: Never-before-seen pictures of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at primary school together

By Lyle Brennan
PUBLISHED:  | 27 April 2012

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have been photographed together on countless occasions.
But this class picture from January 9, 1951, is probably the very first.
With their pudding basin haircuts, the pair, then aged seven, took their place among the rows of new boys and girls at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford.
Now, released 50 years after the formation of the Rolling Stones, this never-before-seen photo captures the moment Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met for the first time - at primary school.

Legends in the making: A class photograph shows Mick Jagger (circled left) and Keith Richards (circled right) when they attended Wentworth Primary School, in Dartford, Kent

Present! A school register shows entries for Mick Jagger and Keith Richards when the two future Rolling Stones attended Wentworth Primary

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135632/School-Rock-Never-seen-pictures-Mick-Jagger-Keith-Richards-primary-school-together.html#ixzz1tFZcaZM3

50 years of the Rolling Stones: How designers of stunning new commemorative book created amazing front cover Behind-the-scenes with designers of Rolling Stones' amazing new book.!

Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones Heading Back To Studio

26 April 2012 10:00:09 AM

The Rolling Stones Heading Back To Studio

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The Rolling Stones' Sir Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are heading back to the studio next week.

The Rolling Stones are heading back to the studio next week.
Guitarist Ronnie Wood has confirmed plans to start new sessions, ahead of the legendary '(I Can't get No) Satisfaction' bands 50th anniversary celebrations.
A source told the New York Post newspaper Ronnie was overheard in New York on Tuesday (24.04.12), saying singer Sir Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards are going to ''play around with some ideas in the studio next week.''
Mick and Keith ended their feud - started when Keith made claims his bandmate had a small penis in his autobiography - earlier this year, in time for them to tour next year.
Keith has also previously confirmed plans for new studio sessions with Keith, Ronnie and drummer Charlie Watts which could also include fifth member and original bass player Bill Wyman.
Keith, 68, said: ''We're back in touch, which is great, because I hadn't really spoken to him for years.''
When asked if Bill would rejoin the band, he added: ''I think he's up for it. We talked about it. I'll let you know when I can.''
Bill sat in on practices between the group held in London last December, his first since leaving the group in 1992, which Keith admits he set up to entice Mick back to the group.
He added: ''On the third day, Mick turned up, which was a real joy. Because I set it up really as a magnet, you know.''

• April 24, 2012
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Mick Jagger and L'Wren Scott's Paris apartment featured in Vogue magazine

Roling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger and his longtime live-in girlfriend, fashion designer L'Wren Scott, have opened up their Paris apartment to Vogue magazine, which has the home featured in a photo spread in Vogue's May 2012 issue.
The article includes an interview with Scott, who talked about decorating the apartment: "I took nine months choosing paint, seeing what looked good on bright days, wintry days, in summer, at night ... I buy gradually. In Paris, you can either trawl the flea market — when you’re young, you have a lot more flea-market time on your hands — or once you’ve been here, you get to know there’s this U-shaped trail of antiques places to look at along the Rue de Beaune, up the Rue de Lille and the Rue des Saints-Pères. And then there are catalogs.”
Jagger and Scott have been a couple since 2001. They have kept details of their relationship private by not making it a big issue in the media.
Scott has a policy of not talking about Jagger when she does interviews. It's a big contrast from Jerry Hall (the mother of four of Jagger's children), who still talks to the media about Jagger, several years after their 1999 breakup.
Jagger rarely mentions Scott in interviews. In a December 2010 interview with the New York Times' T magazine, Jagger said that he and Scott are very supportive of each other's careers: "I try and help L’Wren. You always try and help whoever you’re kind of dating. I always help them out in one way or another. When I was living with Jerry Hall, I used to help her pick her model pictures, or if she was doing a stage thing, I’d read her plays with her. I mean, that’s what you do, and vice versa, they do the same for you."

• April 24, 2012
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Rolling Stones 'Exile on Main Street' movie to be produced by Richard Branson

The Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street" period in the early 1970s is being made into a movie drama. According to the Daily Telegraph, Richard Branson's Virgin Produced company has purchased the rights to Robert Greenfield's 2006 book "Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell," which chronicled the making of the Rolling Stones' 1972 album "Exile on Main Street."
"Exile on Main Street" is considered by many critics and fans to be the Rolling Stones' best album. The album's biggest hits are "Tumbling Dice" and "Happy."
The making of "Exile on Main Street" was the subject of the documentary "Stones in Exile," which premiered at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival and was released on DVD and Blu-ray later that year. A remastered version of the "Exile in Main Street" album (with previously unreleased tracks) was also released in 2010.
In 2012, "Exile on Main Street" was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the "Exile on Main Street" movie is being written by Brandon Murphy and Phil Murphy, who are also writing the screenplay for a Steve McQueen biopic for Sony Pictures Entertainment. (Oscar-nominated actor Jeremy Renner is attached to play McQueen in the movie.)
Jason Felts is one of the producers of the "Exile on Main Street" movie, which has not yet begun casting. At this point, it is too early to know if or when this movie will ever be made.

Ronnie Wood ~ Oo La La ~ Atlantic City, NJ ~ April 21, 2012

Ronnie Wood & Freinds ~ Black Limo ~ Atlantic City, NJ ~ April 21, 2012

THE FILM will follow the singer and the guitarist through the volatile period in which they made 1972 double album, 'Exile on Main Street', in France...

New Rolling Stones Biopic In Production

A new biopic will focus on the tumultuous relationship between Sir Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as they recorded The Rolling Stones' 1972 double album, 'Exile on Main Street'.

A new movie will focus on the tumultuous relationship between The Rolling Stones' Sir Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
The film will follow the singer and the guitarist through the volatile period in which they made 1972 double album, 'Exile on Main Street', in France.
The movie will be made by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Produced, and be based on Robert Greenfield's 2008 book 'Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell'.
Speaking previously about making the record, Keith said: ''It wasn't a great environment for, like, breathing. It was very Hitleresque - the last days of Berlin sort of thing.''
Brandon and Phil Murphy - who are currently working on a Steve McQueen project for Sony - will write the screenplay while Jason Felts will serve as producer. Casting has not yet begun on the film.
It has previously been revealed The Rolling Stones will celebrate their 50th anniversary with an authorised documentary which will trace their history from their formation in 1962 to the current day.
Director Brett Morgen said in a statement: ''For anyone who wants to experience the band, this is the film that will defy convention and create a sonic tapestry to transport viewers into the world of the Rolling Stones.
''The film will deliver the original, bold, sexy and dangerous flavour of the iconic rock band.''

(PHOTOS) Ronnie Wood, Rolling Stones guitarist goes solo at Golden Nugget one night only...

Sunday, April 22, 2012.

Ronnie Wood played to a standing room only crowd at Golden Nugget Atlantic City Saturday night.
But this was not just an ordinary concert by a legendary two time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. This was Ronnie Woods first solo concert in the US, according to philly.com columnist Chuck Darrow. and our cameras were there.