I like the Stones, fwiw
I had heard that most of the early stuff the Stones did was basically copped from ol' black blues musicians of the Delta that never copyrighted their stuff and could barely speak or read English.
The Rolling Stones: Under Review 1962-1966: An Independent Critical Analysis
DVD review by Ris? Keller
**The Rolling Stones: Under Review 1962-1966: An Independent Critical Analysis is not quite as dreary as its title insists it is. This film will be consigned by its title and black-and-white performance footage to be shown in college classrooms as cobwebbed ?history.? This trip back in time to the hitmaking machine of the early 1960s in England gives us a glimpse of the band?s early years, showing the Stones? earliest influences and how they gained their first toeholds in England?s and America?s music scenes, across the first dozen or so hits that launched them into becoming the superstars they are today.
People complain about the record industry today, but it?s more for pouring all of their resources into promoting a few mediocre people and barely supporting a larger fistful of good ones. Back in the Stones? early days, they tried again and again to build hits almost the way they ran Detroit?s now-legendary assembly lines. They signed new or hot talent to record, and adapted or rewrote versions of existing hit songs. And it often worked. The Rolling Stones? first original hit song, according to the filmmakers, was ?derivative of a gospel tune popularized by the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi called ?This Could Be The Last Time.?
Time Is on My Side
The DVD features early TV appearances and dubbed videos alternating with talking heads: critics, staff, or friends of the band (and a few of the heads fit more than one category). All the talk is by these people; there are no band interviews. It?s often hard to find the groove in the band?s energetic early performances because of the awkward show formats, dubbing and synching issues, and the director?s decision to cut between interviews and the music during the songs.
Yet in this early hit parade, we do get an inkling of how The Rolling Stones? ascendance marked a turning point in rock history. In the brittle TV show hosts? manners toward this band of English longhairs you perceive how uncomfortable the establishment was that this sexy new white group was going directly to black music. The Stones borrowed most from what sounded good at the time, which to them was the blues. I don?t believe it?s an exaggeration to say that the Stones were truly among the forces that contributed to a revolution in racial and political thinking. By the late 1960s, many more inspired new bands (think Cream, the Small Faces, the Yardbirds, Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Who) were borrowing freely from the blues and running in step with the popular English lads.