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The Greatest Bands of All Time: The Rolling Stones – Essay by Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt on the Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones are my life. If it weren’t for them, I would have actually become a “Soprano.” The first time I saw her was on TV. That was 1964. The Stones were strange and exciting too, but with them the message was: “Maybe you can do it too.”
The hair was sloppier. The harmonies are a bit off. And I don’t think they smiled at all. They acted like R&B traditionalists: “We’re not in show business. We don’t make pop music.”
And the sex in Mick Jagger’s voice was adult. This wasn’t pop sex – holding hands, playing spin the bottle. That was the real thing. Jagger had that casual I-tell-you-something that characterizes R&B singers and bluesmen, half-singing, half-talking, not quite holding the notes. When pop radio began to accept Jagger’s voice, it was a turning point in rock ‘n’ roll. He opened the door for everyone else. Suddenly people like Eric Burdon and Van Morrison didn’t seem so strange anymore. Not even Bob Dylan.
This was something completely new: a white man acting like a black man on stage. What we associate with black performers goes back to the church – surrendering to the spirit and being moved by it, throwing all socially dictated inhibitions and embarrassments overboard. Allowing yourself to no longer be in control. That’s what Mick Jagger brought across.
But Keith Richards is also taken for granted. The eternal rhythm slave. He plays great solos: “Heart Of Stone”, “It’s All Over Now”. And then the riffs: “Satisfaction,” of course, and “The Last Time,” which the Stones themselves thought was their first really good song. “Honky Tonk Women” is just a single chord. Then he started tuning his guitar differently: for example with the G tuning and the five-string version of it. There are chord progressions that fit these moods – let’s call it the “gimme shelter” effect – where you add a single note and everything becomes more melodic and rhythmic at the same time.
Today there are entire generations of young people who only know the Rolling Stones as icons
In the E Street Band I play Richards-style rhythm guitar all the time. Anyone who plays rock guitar does this. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts knew how to swing better than any other bass/drum team in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not cool these days, but back then rock’n’roll was something you danced to. You can imagine what fun it must have been, in London, at the Station Hotel, in 1962 or 63: the audience was totally over the moon, the Stones ditto, everything like in a blues club on the Southside in Chicago. You hear that in the music.
Today there are entire generations of young people who only know the Stones as icons and no longer have any connection to their music. I would send them the first four albums, in the American version: “England’s Newest Hitmakers”, “12×5”, “Now!” and “Out Of Our Heads.” The next lesson would be the second big phase: “Beggars Banquet”, “Let It Bleed”, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile On Main Street”.
