The Rolling Stones began calling themselves the  "World’s Greatest Rock &  Roll Band" in the late Sixties, and few disputed the claim. The Stones’ music, based on Chicago blues, has continued to sound  vital through the decades, and the Stones’ attitude of  flippant defiance has come to seem as important as their music.
 
    In the 1964 British Invasion, they were promoted as bad boys, but what began as a gimmick has stuck as an indelible image, and not just because of incidents like Brian Jones’ mysterious death in 1969 and a violent murder during their set at Altamont later that year. In their music, the Stones pioneered  British rock’s tone of ironic detachment and wrote about offhand brutality, sex as power, and other  taboos. Mick Jagger was branded a "Lucifer" figure, thanks to songs like "Sympathy for the Devil." In the Eighties the Stones lost their dangerous aura while still seeming "bad" -- they’ve become icons of an elegantly debauched, world-weary decadence. But  Jagger remains the most self-consciously assured
 appropriator of black performers’ up-front sexuality; Keith Richards’ Chuck Berry-derived riffing defines  rock rhythm guitar (not to mention rock guitar  rhythm); the stalwart rhythm section, anchored by Charlie Watts, holds its own with any band’s; and Jagger and Richards continue to write telling songs.

        Jagger and Richards first met at Dartford Maypole County Primary School. When they ran into each  other ten years later in 1960, they were both avid fans of blues and American R&B, and they found  they had a mutual friend in guitarist Dick Taylor, a  fellow student of Richards’ at Sidcup Art School. Jagger was attending the London School of Economics and playing in Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with Taylor. Richards joined the band as  second  guitarist; soon afterward, he was expelled  from Dartford Technical College for truancy.

        Jones, Jagger, and Richards began to share a tiny, cheap London apartment, and with drummer Tony Chapman they cut a demo tape, which was rejected by EMI. Taylor left to attend the Royal College of  Art; he eventually formed the Pretty Things. Ian Stewart’s job with a chemical company kept the rest of the group from starving. By the time Taylor left, they had begun to call themselves the Rolling Stones, after a Muddy Waters song.

          On July 12, 1962, the Rolling Stones -- Jagger, Richards, Jones, a returned Dick Taylor on bass, and Mick Avory, later of the Kinks, on drums -- played their first show at the Marquee. Avory and Taylor were replaced by Tony Chapman and Bill Wyman, from the Cliftons. Chapman didn’t work out, and the band spent months recruiting a cautious  Charlie Watts, who worked for an advertising agency  and had left Blues, Inc., when its schedule got too busy. In January 1963 Watts completed the band.

      In June 1963 the Stones released their first single, Chuck Berry’s "Come On." After the band played on the British TV rock show Thank Your Lucky Stars,
its producer reportedly told Oldham to get rid of "that  vile-looking singer with the tire-tread lips." The single reached #21 on the British chart. The Stones also
 appeared at the first annual National Jazz and Blues  Festival in London’s borough of Richmond and in September were part of a package tour with the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard. In December 1963 the Stones’ second single, "I Wanna Be Your Man" (written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney), made the British Top Fifteen. In  January 1964 the Stones did their first headlining  British tour, with the Ronettes, and released a version of Buddy Holly’s "Not Fade Away," which made #3.

         Jagger and Richards had now begun composing their own tunes (at first using the "Nanker Phelge" pseudonym for group compositions). Their "Tell Me  (You’re Coming Back)" was the group’s first U.S. Top Forty hit, in August. The followup, a nonoriginal, "Time Is on My Side," made #6 in November. From that point on, all but a handful of Stones hits were  Jagger-Richards compositions.

          Aftermath, the first Stones LP of all-original material, came out in 1966, though its impact was minimized  by the simultaneous release of the Beatles’ Revolver and Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. The Eastern-tinged "Paint It Black" (1966) and "Ruby Tuesday" (1967), a ballad, were both U.S. #1 hits.

        In January 1967 the Stones caused another sensation when they performed "Let’s Spend the Night Together" ("Ruby Tuesday"’s B side) on The Ed Sullivan Show. Jagger mumbled the title lines after threats of censorship (some claimed that the line was censored; others that Jagger actually sang  "Let’s spend some time together"; Jagger later said  "When it came to that line, I sang mumble"). In February Jagger and Richards were arrested on drug possession charges in Britain; in May Brian Jones,  too, was arrested. The heavy jail sentences they received were eventually suspended on appeal. The Stones temporarily  with- drew from public  appearances; Jagger and his girlfriend, singer  Marianne Faithfull, went to India with the Beatles [see entry] to meet the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Their next single release didn’t appear until the fall: the #14  "Dandelion." Its B side, "We Love You" (#50), on which John Lennon and Paul McCartney sang backup vocals, was intended as a thank-you to fans.

         In December came Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones’ psychedelic answer record to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper -- and an ambitious mess. By the time the album’s lone single, "She’s a  Rainbow" had become a #25 hit, Allen Klein was the group’s manager.

         May 1968 saw the release of "Jumpin’ Jack Flash," a #3 hit, and a return to basic rock & roll. After five months of delay provoked by controversial album sleeve photos, the eclectic Beggars Banquet was released and was hailed by critics as the band’s finest achievement. On June 9, 1969, Brian  Jones, the Stones’ most musically adventurous  member, who had lent sitar, dulcimer, and, on "Under My Thumb," marimba to the band’s sound,  and who had been in Morocco recording nomadic  Joujouka musicians, left the band with the explanation that "I no longer see eye-to-eye with the others over the discs we are cutting." Within a week he was replaced by ex-John Mayall guitarist Mick Taylor. Jones announced that he would form his own band, but on July 3, 1969, he was found dead in his swimming pool; the coroner’s report cited "death by misadventure." Jones, beset by drug problems -- and the realization that the band now belonged squarely to Jagger and Richards -- had barely participated inthe Beggar’s Banquet sessions.

       At an outdoor concert in London’s Hyde Park a few days after Jones’ death, Jagger read an excerpt from  the poet Shelley and released thousands ofbutterflies over the park. On July 11, the day after  Jones was buried, the Stones released "Honky Tonk  Women," another #1, and another Stones classic.

         By this time, every Stones album went gold in short order, and Let It Bleed (a sardonic reply to the Beatles’ soon-to-be-released Let It Be) was no exception. "Gimme Shelter" received constant airplay. Jones appeared on most of the album’s tracks, though Taylor also made his first on-disc appearances.

       After going to Australia to star in the film Ned Kelly, Jagger rejoined the band for the start of its hugely successful 1969 American tour, the band’s first U.S.trip in three years. But the Stones’ satanic image came to haunt them at a free thank-you-America concert at California’s Altamont Speedway. In thedarkness just in front of the stage, Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, whom the  Stones -- on advice of the Grateful Dead -- had hired as security for the event. The incident was captured on film by the Maysles brothers in their  feature-length documentary Gimme Shelter. Public outcry that "Sympathy for the Devil" (which they had performed earlier in the show; they were playing  "Under My Thumb" when the murder occurred) had  in some way incited the violence led the Stones to drop the tune from their stage shows for the next six years.

         After another spell of inactivity, the Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! live album was released in fall 1970 and eventually went platinum. That same year the Stones formed their own Rolling Stones Records, an Atlantic subsidiary. The band’s first album for its own label, Sticky Fingers (#1, 1971) -- which introduced their Andy Warhol-designed lips-and-lolling- tongue logo -- yielded hits in "Brown Sugar" (#1, 1971) and "Wild Horses" (#28, 1971). Jagger, who had starred in Nicolas Roeg’s 1970 performance (the soundtrack of which contained  "Memo from Turner"), married Nicaraguan fashion  model Bianca Perez Morena de Macias, and the pair  became international jet-set favorites. Though many  interpreted Jagger’s acceptance into high society as  yet another sign that rock was dead, or that at least  the Stones had lost their spark, Exile on Main Street  (#1, 1972), a double album, was another critically acclaimed hit, yielding "Tumbling Dice" (#7) and "Happy" (#22). By this time the Stones were touring  the U.S. once every three years; their 1972 extravaganza, like those in 1975, 1978, and 1981,was a sold-out affair.

         Black and Blue was the Stones’ fifth consecutive LP of new material to top the album chart, though it contained only one hit single, the #10 "Fool to Cry." Wyman, who had released a 1974 solo album,  Monkey Grip (the first Stone to do so), recorded  another, Stone Alone. Jagger guested on "I Can Feel the Fire" on Wood’s solo first LP, I’ve Got My Own Album to Do. Wood has since recorded several  more albums, and while none were commercial hits (Gimme Some Neck peaked at #45 in 1979), his work is generally well received.

      The ethnic-stereotype lyrics of the title song from Some Girls (#1, 1978) provoked public protest (the last outcry had been in 1976 over Black and Blue’sbattered-woman advertising campaign). Aside from the disco crossover "Miss You" (#1), the music was bare-bones rock & roll -- in response, some speculated, to the punk movement’s claims that the band was too old and too affluent to rock anymore.

                 In 1981 Tattoo You was #1 for nine weeks (1980’s Emotional Rescue also went to #1) and produced the hits "Start Me Up" (#2,1981) and "Waiting on aFriend" (#13, 1981), the latter featuring jazz great Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone. Nineteen eighty-one’s tour spawned an album, Still Life and a movie, Let’s Spend the Night Together (directed by Hal Ashby).

         Jagger and Richards grew estranged from each other, and the band would not record for three years. Jagger released his first solo album, the platinum She’s the Boss, in 1984. His second, 1987’s Primitive Cool, didn’t even break the Top Forty. Richards, who’d long declared he would never  undertake a solo album (and who resented Jagger’s making music outside the band), countered in 1988 with the gold Talk Is Cheap, backed up by the  X-Pensive Winos: guitarist Waddy Wachtel and the rhythm section of Steve Jordan and Charley Drayton.

             The two Stones sniped at each other in the press and in song: Richards’ album track "You Don’t Move  Me" was directed at his longtime partner. Nevertheless, shortly before the Rolling Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in January 1989 the two traveled to Barbados to begin writing songs for a new Stones album. Steel Wheels  (#3, 1989) showed the group spinning its wheels musically, and were it not for the band’s first  American tour in eight years, it is unlikely the LP would have sold anywhere near its two million copies. But the 50-date tour, which reportedly  grossed $140 million, was an artistic triumph. As the  group’s fifth live album, Flashpoint (#16, 1991), demonstrated, never had the Stones sounded so cohesive onstage.

              The early Nineties were a time for solo albums from Richards -- Live at the Hollywood Palladium and Main Offender (#99, 1992) -- and Jagger’s
Wandering Spirit (#11, 1993). Neither sold  spectacularly; apparently fans are most interested in Jagger and Richards when they work together. Wood released Slide on This, his first solo album in over a decade, and Watts pursued his real love,  jazz, with the Charlie Watts Quintet.

        In 1994 Jagger, Richards, Watts, and Wood, along with bassist Darryl Jones (whose former credits  include working with Miles Davis and Sting) releasedthe critically well received Voodoo Lounge (#2, 1994) and embarked on a major tour that proved one of the highest-grossing of the year. Voodoo Lounge wasalso the group’s first release under its new multimillion-dollar, three-album deal with Virgin Records, which included granting Virgin the rights to some choice albums from the Stones’ back catalogue, including Exile on Main Street, StickyFingers, and Some Girls. Voodoo Lounge brought the Stones their first competitive Grammy, 1994’s Best Rock Album.