One of the talking points heading into the No Filter Tour is that you better get tickets, 'cause this could be the last time.
This is a line we've heard before: If you're 30 and you're going to a show this tour, know that they were saying this about The Rolling Stones before you were even born. Because rock 'n' roll bands weren't designed to last this long. They were formulated with the passion, exhilaration and hormonal drive of youth. The Beatles, the prototype for the modern rock 'n' roll band, only made it 11 years.
The Stones have almost single-handedly rewritten the playbook, forging on now for seven decades, and the way Mick Jagger is carrying on at 78, who knows how long this goes.
2022 will mark the 60th anniversary of the Stones, so "if the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise," don't be surprised to see them 'round and about for that.
When the band's first tour in five years opened Sunday in St. Louis, the Stones consisted of core members Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, with longtime bassist Darryl Jones, longtime keyboardist Chuck Leavell, backing vocalists Sasha Allen and Bernard Fowler, saxophonists Karl Denson and Tim Ries, multi-instrumentalist Matt Clifford and, receiving the extra scrutiny, Steve Jordan in the unenviable role of replacing the late Charlie Watts, who died in August.
With their tour now underway, here are the 10 most important moments in the Rolling Stones' history.
1. Mick meets Keith
Jagger and Richards knew each other as early as 1950, when they were 7, having lived just a few doors away in Dartford, Kent, and going to school together. But they didn't see each other after the Richards family moved to "the other side of the tracks" to Temple Hill ... until that fateful day in October 1961 on a platform at the Dartford railway station.
Richards took note of Jagger carrying "Rockin' at the Hops" by Chuck Berry and "The Best of Muddy Waters," curious as to how he was acquiring those Chess records. The 17-year-old Richards played guitar and the 18-year-old Jagger was singing in an R&B band, so they started hanging out together.
By April 1962, the Blues Boys, as they called themselves, were merging with Blues Incorporated, an outfit featuring slide guitarist Brian Jones and drummer Watts. Taking their new name from a Muddy song, in July, they played their first gig all together as the Rollin' Stones.
2. The first U.S. tour
While the Beatles' maiden tour of the United States, in the fall of 1964, was a full-on British Invasion, the Stones just kinda washed up on the shores here. Upon arriving in June '64, their only hit here was a cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," which peaked at No. 48. Two days after being ridiculed by Dean Martin for their long hair on the TV show "The Hollywood Palace," they played their first show in San Bernardino, California.
During the tour, they spent two days at Chess Studios in Chicago, where they recorded 14 tracks, including their first No. 1 U.K. hit, a cover of Bobby and Shirley Womack's "It's All Over Now," and where they met Muddy, who, Richards claims, was in overalls painting the ceiling. On their return trip in October, they were filmed along with James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Berry and others for "The T.A.M.I. Show" and made their "Ed Sullivan Show" debut, playing "Time is On My Side" and Berry's "Around and Around" to a crowd that screamed over their chat with the host.
3. 'Satisfaction'!
Newsweek called them the "five notes that shook the world." Having been encouraged by manager Andrew Oldham in 1963 to write their own songs, Jagger and Richards demonstrated they could do it, with a little inspiration from The Staple Singers, on "The Last Time."
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," however, was next level. The riff came to Richards in the middle of the night, and if he hadn't gotten on up to put it on a Philips cassette player, it may have been gone. Jagger wrote the lyrics by the pool of the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, and the band recorded it four days later at Chess in Chicago. In June 1965, the anthem of teen sexual frustration and American commercialism came snarling out of the speakers, making everything around it seem tame.
"It left the Beatles in the dust," Diamond Reo/Silencers singer Frank Czuri told the Post-Gazette. "I couldn't even believe it was a guitar!" said Crack the Sky guitarist Rick Witkowski. It went to No. 1 while creating Rolling Stones fans for life.
4. Redlands drug bust
By January 1967, when Sullivan was making them sing "Let's Spend Some Time Together" instead of "Let's Spend the Night Together," the Stones were superstars with nine Top 10 U.S. hits and multiple arena tours. They were set up for a fall, and it happened on Feb. 12, 1967, less than two weeks after News of the World ran a three-part expose titled "Pop Stars: The Truth That Will Shock You." In its vivid portrayal of rock star debauchery and drug use, it mistook Jones for Jagger, who decided to sue the publication.
During that process, police raided a party at Richards' Redlands estate and later arrested Jagger and Richards on drug charges. They were able to avoid prison sentences, but the incident shined a spotlight on drugs in rock 'n' roll and created a rift between Jagger and Jones, who was subsequently arrested in a May raid.
As 1967 came to a close, the Stones were embracing the rainbow of psychedelia on eighth album "Their Satanic Majesties Request." It all marked the beginning of a romance between the Stones and drugs.
5 'Beggars Banquet' and the death of Brian Jones
"Please allow me to introduce myself..." The provocative come-on opened "Beggars Banquet," the December 1968 album that launched the Stones into a new musical stratosphere and became the first entry of what is arguably the greatest four-album run by any band ever.
Moving on from the psych-rock indulgence of "Satanic Majesties," the Stones delved back into their blues roots, took their first step into country ("Dear Doctor"), and unveiled a pair of classic-rock masterpieces with "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man." Jones, on his last full album with the band, played a big role, coloring it slide, sitar, tambura and mellotron.
In June 1969, Jones was dismissed from the Stones due in part to his drug issues, and on July 3, he was found in his swimming pool, a victim of what the coroner called "death by misadventure." Two days later, the Stones played their first show with the band's most talented guitarist, Mick Taylor, who would go on to work his magic for the next five albums.
6. Tragedy at Altamont
Part of the Stones' legend was ushering out the peace and love movement of the 1960s. It happened on Dec. 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival in Northern California in what was billed as "Woodstock West."
It may not have been band's idea to hire the Hell's Angels as security — they were recording "Sticky Fingers" at Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama during the planning — but it was their headlining show, and they were on stage when Meredith Hunter, an 18-year-old wielding a pistol, was stabbed to death by one of the Angels. It was captured on film in 1970's "Gimme Shelter," considered to be one of the best, if not the best, rock documentary of all time.
Writing in Esquire, Ralph Gleason declared, "If the name 'Woodstock' has come to denote the flowering of one phase of the youth culture, 'Altamont' has come to mean the end of it."
7. The art of 'Sticky Fingers'
"Sticky Fingers" is not only the greatest Stones album, in this writer's humble opinion, but also the band's most monumental album packaging. For the cover, they commissioned Andy Warhol for the famous jeans shot complete with an actual zipper. In 2003, VH1 named it the greatest album cover of all time. But that's not even the most important part.
In the left corner of the back cover, the Stones introduced the tongue-and-lips logo designed by John Pasche in 1970 based on the Hindu goddess Kali. The most iconic band logo — it doesn't even require the band's name — it will still be worn on T-shirts when robots are ruling the planet.
8. 'Some Girls' and one boy: Ronnie Wood
Most bands would be delighted to put out albums as good as "Goats Head Soup," "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" and "Black and Blue," but by the Stones' standards, those three mid-'70s albums were a mere hangover after "Exile on Main Street," leaving people to wonder if the band's best days were behind them.
Actually, they were, but the Stones did become relevant and "respectable" again with 1978's "Some Girls," the first to fully feature Ronnie Wood, The Faces guitarist who had signed on for the 1975 tour. The Stones pumped out a disco club hit with "Miss You," took a stab at punk with "Shattered," made waves with the offensive title track and created an enduring ballad with "Beast of Burden." Sixteen albums in, the Stones had a U.S. chart-topper and the best-selling U.S. album of their career.
To this day, you'll hear people say, "They haven't made a great album since 'Some Girls.'"
9. Reinventing the (Steel) Wheels
Despite beginning the decade with "Start Me Up," the Stones practically ground to a halt in the '80s. After the success with 1981's "Tattoo You," the band phoned it in on "Undercover," an album that Jagger chose not to tour behind. Instead, he ventured into a solo career with two albums that may have ended the Stones had they been as good as Rolling Stone magazine said they were. To the horror of the fans, The Glimmer Twins were in divorce mode. Richards even released his own solo album in 1988.
Seeing the mess they'd made, in 1989, the year of their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, the Stones assembled in the spring to record the largely forgettable "Steel Wheels" album. It was merely merch for the biggest, most extravagant stadium tour to date, with giant inflatables and the band's first time using backup vocalists. It was the first Stones tour in seven years (their longest absence).
Two of the favorite media narratives at the time: Was Jagger, then a mere 46, too old to be prancing about the stage and — dun-dun-dun! — "Will this be the last time?" The former was a definitive no, and the latter only applied to bassist Bill Wyman, who retired from the band after the tour. A "Simpsons" gag in 1995 predicted a 2010 Steel Wheelchair Tour. They've now exceeded that by 11 years!
10. The death of Charlie Watts
Without naming names, two of the other major British Invasion bands had lovable goofball drummers. Charlie Watts was anything but. The engine of the Stones was also the gentleman of the group. The visual artist and jazz sophisticate. "I loved playing with Keith and the band — I still do — but I wasn't interested in being a pop idol sitting there with girls screaming,' he said in the 2003 book "According to the Rolling Stones." "It's not the world I come from. It's not what I wanted to be, and I still think it's silly."
Watts was a proud Rolling Stone for 58 years — one of three members, along with Jagger and Richards, to play on every Stones album. Because of his medical condition, he had decided to sit this tour out. On Aug. 24, he died at 80.
"Everybody thinks Mick and Keith are the Rolling Stones," Richards once said. "If Charlie wasn't doing what he's doing on drums, that wouldn't be true at all. You'd find out Charlie Watts is the Stones."
