After 1966, The Rolling Stones developed into a mega-group, cranking out hits in the late 1960s, through the 1970s, and continued to release albums during the 1980s. Their sound sometimes dabbled in trends of the times, such as the flower-power psychedelic tunes of Ruby Tuesday
and She’s a Rainbow,
to their version of disco with Miss You
of 1978, and reggae-disco Emotional Rescue
of 1980. However, due mostly to Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ian Stewart, the band’s bluesy rock and roll sound remained constant from the sixties through the eighties. Catchy lyrics and catchy guitar riffs, such as their 1982 hit Start Me Up,
kept the Stones popular into the eighties.
Over the years, The Rolling Stones added and subtracted musicians to the group. Entering the 1980s, most of the group’s original members remained since the beginning, with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts. The band gave Brian Jones the boot shortly before his death in 1969. His mates considered Jones undependable mostly due to his drug use and artistic differences. Ian Stewart still remained (unofficially) with the band. Guitarist Ronnie Wood, known for his work in the Jeff Beck Group and Faces, joined the band in 1975. Wood quickly became a nice supplement to Keith Richards’s guitar work. Many people, such as Chuck Berry and Tina Turner, often confused Ronnie Wood with Keith Richards, since both were white, skinny, long black-haired British guitarists.
To Keith Richards, anyone who is onstage playing an instrument or singing is a member of The Rolling Stones. However, Mick Jagger developed levels of membership for musicians playing with the band. When Darryl Jones replaced Bill Wyman in 1994 as the band’s bassist, he wasn’t considered to be officially a Rolling Stone. In 1994, Ronnie Wood had been playing with the band for almost twenty years, but the organization considered him a salaried employee.
Richards pointed the finger at Mick Jagger for the levels of Rolling Stones employment, telling a Maclean’s reporter he and Charlie Watts don’t feel that way. He joked to the reporter that Darryl Jones should sue the band.
Whereas Ike Turner had a firm grip on The Ike and Tina Turner Revue, The Stones had a somewhat looser organization than The Revue. By the time Ronnie Wood joined the band, The Rolling Stones were a huge organization with roadies, security, a logo, and administrative staff with a staff newsletter giving everyone direction. Most of the music created came about with Keith Richards creating a guitar riff, and each band member worked their own instrument to contribute to the song. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the lyrics, with either one sometimes coming up with an idea on their own and working together to develop a song they can bring to the band. While he filled in for Charlie Watts during the Stones’s 1985 Dirty Work album recording, drummer Steve Jordan observed that Keith Richards would instruct Mick Jagger on the way he wanted Jagger to sing each song. Pianist Ian Stewart would choose to contribute to recordings if he wished. He’d only do so if the song met his boogie-woogie criteria. Stewart would also manage the shows; no one could go on stage until he gave the green light. Charlie Watts, widely known for being the droll drummer with a simple drum kit in an era of huge drum kits, kept track of up-and-coming artists. In the early 1980s, he suggested the band have Prince, an unknown act at the time, be their opening act. Watts, along with Richards and Wood, also liked reggae, which influenced some of their late 1970s/early 1980s music. Charlie Watts, who ditched a graphic design career to focus on one in music, also worked with Mick Jagger and designers regarding the Stones’s album covers, posters, and concert stage layouts.
Although Mick Jagger is the front man on the stage, some Stones members consider Keith Richards to be the leader. Ronnie Wood wrote in his autobiography that the Stones isn’t all about Mick. Wood claimed that there wouldn’t be a band without Keith Richards. Band members follow Richards lead. Wood stated that Keith Richards prefers to lead in the background. His motive is for the Stones to sound the way he wants them to sound. Richards admitted to a reporter that he’s fine with Mick Jagger being the front man. He and his bandmates are there to back up Jagger. It’s a bit similar to Ike Turner, who didn’t mind having Tina Turner as the center of attention while he led his bandmates, sometimes with his back to the audience, controlling the groove.
!-- The Modal -->The Rolling Stones have always had the reputation as being substance-abuse poster boys. Brian Jones’s unreliability issues during the later years of his tenure occurred mainly due to his drug abuse issues. Several band members had serious issues beginning in the mid to late 1960s, through the 1970s, and into the 1980s. Due to the reputation they earned during the 1960s, drug dealers flocked to the Stones like moths flocking to a light source. The group’s guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood hung out with dealers, while Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts, for the most part, stayed away from them, with Jagger shying away from trouble after being busted in 1967. Ian Stewart lived a fairly sober life, but didn’t eat well, which lead to his 1985 death. Ronnie Wood claimed that he hated drug needles. When the Stones’s unofficial saxophonist Bobby Keys showed him how to freebase cocaine, eliminating the need to use needles, the drug controlled Wood from 1979 to 1984. Keith Richards had a severe issue, calling himself a junkie in his book Life. Wood wrote in his autobiography that Richards is lucky he hasn’t died from overdose and has lived as long as he has. He also felt Richards had great lawyers who kept him out of jail for possession charges filed against the lead guitarist in Arkansas and Toronto. Wood believed the media has romanticized Keith’s drug use. He wrote that Keith leads the press to take that position, especially the bit about blood transfusions. Richards stated in Life the blood transfusion story came out when he was trying to shake off a reporter tailing him at an airport. He told the reporter he was going have his blood changed. It stuck with him forever.
As a result of the drug epidemic nearly crippling The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger felt he needed to take the lead during the 1970s. Jagger had already started to control business decisions after the band discovered business manager Allen Klein had redirected money made from the Stone’s 1960s success, as well as publishing rights into an American company he controlled. As a result, band members entered the 1970s with hardly any cash on hand to pay the British government back taxes. With Brian Jones gone and Keith Richards becoming undependable due to his heroin habit, Mick Jagger controlled decisions throughout the 1970s, with Rupert Loewenstein providing advice as the band’s new business manager. Keith Richards’s heroin addiction, and Richards’s numerous legal issues arising from them frustrated band members, such as Bill Wyman, who felt Richards was pigeonholing the band from rolling forward. Richards didn’t like Wyman for confronting him about his addiction. Both Wyman and Jagger were also upset by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood putting together a band called the New Barbarians. Jagger and Wyman felt Richards’s actions betrayed the band, yet Richards claimed in his book Life that Mick Jagger didn’t want to tour in 1979, so he joined Ronnie Wood and the New Barbarians’s tour.
As the band recorded their 1979 Emotional Rescue album in Paris, Keith Richards decided he needed to show he had the ability to take charge, and repay Mick Jagger for shouldering the leadership burden during Richards’s junkie phase. Richards’s night owl tendencies irked others. Bandmates were ordered to record when he was awake or they’d find him waking them. Ideological differences between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards also began to affect their relationship. Richards felt Jagger had gotten used to being in charge. When Richards suggested something, he claimed Mick would tell him to shut up if he’s going to suggest stupid ideas. Richards retaliated by telling Jagger that he listened to too many bad albums. With the success of Miss You,
Jagger wanted the band’s music to cater to hip young dance clubbers. Richards wanted to focus on the rock blues sound with guitars dominating songs. The two mixed the album separately and clashed over the final result. The success of the album in the UK and the US surprised Bill Wyman. He felt the tension behind the recording affected the album’s quality.
Mick Jagger wanted to keep the band and himself relevant. The band had great success with their 1981 Tattoo You album, which produced Start Me Up
and Waiting on a Friend.
The tour supporting the album also made fortunes for the band. However, material on that album contained mostly 1970s tunes that weren’t deemed ready during that decade. The band hardly worked together during the album’s creation, with Mick and Keith barely talking. In addition to the Jagger-Richards feud, Charlie Watts, dealing with substance-abuse issues, informed his mates that he wanted to quit. One thing they agreed on was Ronnie Wood’s addiction issues, with the majority feeling he needed to be kicked out. Yet, despite his drug habit, the band heavily depended on Wood to be the middleman between the dueling Jagger and Richards, so he remained in the lineup. How did Tattoo You become a hit? The Rolling Stones’s gifted engineers turned the band’s 1970s table scraps into gold.
Trends were changing in sound around the early 1980s. Disco was out but danceable tunes still remained highly relevant. Synthesizers became a dominant element of pop tunes. Guitars became louder, drowning out other instruments with the guitar solo becoming the climax of popular tunes. When you listen to The Rolling Stones’s 1983 Undercover album, you know there’s a difference between Undercover of the Night
and She was Hot,
two of the album’s tracks that the band made into music videos. Undercover of the Night
is a song that could have been played in a trendy Manhattan club at the time. It sounds pop and a tad cutting edge for the time and for the Rolling Stones. She was Hot
is a song you’ll hear in a Texas dive bar. It’s a typical Rolling Stones tune. That tune is rockabilly, boogie-woogie, with Ian Stewart joining in on piano. You can hear the difference. Overall, Rolling Stones purists dislike Undercover for the album’s lack of concept and the attempt to compete with the hot acts of the 1980s.
In his book Life, Keith Richards criticizes Mick Jagger for wanting to do what David Bowie and Michael Jackson were doing during the early to mid 1980s with their pop hits. He also chastised Jagger for possessing LVS: Lead Vocalists Syndrome. Richards felt outsiders swelled Jagger’s head, saying yes
to Jagger all the time and making him feel like he should call the shots. Other bandmates, besides Richards, disliked Jagger’s attitude. They didn’t like that Jagger ignored low-level assistants and road crew whenever they greeted him, believing he’s too eminent to acknowledge them. During a 1984 stop in Amsterdam or in New York (Keith Richards claims Amsterdam; Bill Wyman claims New York), Mick Jagger, after a night of drinking, came back to his hotel room, phoned Charlie Watts early in the morning, demanding to know where is my drummer?
According to Keith Richards, who claims he was in the room with Jagger during the call, Watts got sharply dressed to the T, came to Jagger’s room, and punched Mick, telling him never to refer to him as your drummer.
Other variations of the story state that Watts was in the room when Jagger introduced him to some visiting celebrities as my drummer,
which infuriated Watts and punched Jagger. The differences in ideology and Jagger’s rudeness put stress on the band.
In 1983 CBS records signed the Stones to a huge record deal that included solo albums for Mick Jagger. The solo album deal wasn’t revealed to other band members until later. Keith Richards reported in his autobiography Life that CBS President Walter Yentikoff thought Jagger could be bigger than Michael Jackson. Mick Jagger claimed that CBS encouraged him to create solo albums. Jagger wanted to remain relevant in the pop music world. He didn’t want to be regarded as a nostalgia act with the Stones, so he decided to not only create a solo album, but he also teamed up with 1980s megastars. He sang a duet in 1984 with Michael Jackson and the Jackson brothers titled State of Shock,
a decision that Rolling Stone’s bassist Bill Wyman found bizarre. With Jackson’s Thriller album riding high at this time, the single hit number 3 on the Billboard Top 100. She’s the Boss, Jagger’s 1985 debut solo album that Keith Richards thought appropriately described Mick Jagger, sold two million albums but wasn’t a mega-hit. The album has a very mid-1980s popish, electro sound with loud guitars, but not possessing the quality level of Richards and Wood. Just Another Night
and Lucky in Love
received airplay on FM radio and MTV. Hard Woman
is one of the first computer animated music videos created. However, MTV audiences preferred a similar animated video titled Money for Nothing
by Dire Straits that aired at the same time. During this time, Jagger and David Bowie did a remake of Martha and the Vandellas Dancing in the Streets,
a cover popular at the time, but the music video now looks dated and amateur.
Mick Jagger wasn’t the first member of the Stones to put out solo material. Bill Wyman had two solo albums by 1980. Wyman cut a few singles and composed a soundtrack in the early 1980s. Wyman didn’t feel his stuff would make it on Stones’s records so he did his own thing while remaining a Stone. Ronnie Wood made his own albums, and dabbled in art. Charlie Watts had his own projects, one of which, titled Rocket 88, included Ian Stewart. As previously mentioned, even Keith Richards strayed from the band when he joined Wood on a New Barbarians tour in 1979. Yet Mick Jagger’s decision to seek a solo album deal with CBS and immediately act on it infuriated Richards, who wanted to prioritize the first Stones’s album with CBS. A little break between the two may have been a good remedy for the band. However, Richards couldn’t put aside his bad feelings. In the words of Ronnie Wood, Richards has a tendency to grudgingly stick to his guns, even if he knows he’s wrong. Wood himself didn’t seem bothered by Mick Jagger’s solo record deal, only mentioning in his autobiography that it upset Richards. Bill Wyman held the opinion that Keith Richards tends to disregard the work other Rolling Stones members do outside of the band. Richards acknowledged that if Jagger’s She’s the Boss album focused on Frank Sinatra covers or Irish folk tunes, there wouldn’t be an issue. Because the content of the album focused on commercial rock, Richards had an issue with Jagger’s solo work, especially when it affects the band’s schedule. The tension bored into The Rolling Stones, threatening to crumble their existence.
©2023 Tim Sheehan