The Rolling Stones

Where the rest of the British Invasion wanted to hold your hand, the Rolling Stones wanted to know what you were doing after the show. They came together in London in 1962 around a shared obsession with the blues, with Brian Jones as the early ringleader, Mick Jagger up front, Keith Richards on guitar, Bill Wyman on bass and, from 1963, Charlie Watts on drums. Ian Stewart, the pianist their manager Andrew Loog Oldham pushed out of the official lineup, stayed on anyway as road manager and keyboard player until his death in 1985, which tells you something about the loyalty inside this outfit.

Oldham pushed them to write their own songs, and once Jagger and Richards got the hang of it the hits came with teeth: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Get Off of My Cloud", "Paint It Black". Aftermath, in 1966, was the first album made up entirely of their own material. After a woozy psychedelic detour on Their Satanic Majesties Request, they went back to the dirt with "Jumpin' Jack Flash", Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, records that sound like the late '60s curdling in real time: "Sympathy for the Devil" with its hypnotic shuffle, "Gimme Shelter" with its air of dread, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" with its weary shrug.

Jones left in 1969 and died weeks later. Mick Taylor stepped in, and by then the band was being introduced on stage as "the greatest rock and roll band in the world". They launched Rolling Stones Records and its tongue-and-lips logo in 1970, and Sticky Fingers started a run of 8 straight number-one studio albums in America. Ronnie Wood replaced Taylor at the end of 1974, and the Stones just kept rolling, through Some Girls, Tattoo You and a stadium-touring machine that broke the record for the highest-grossing tour 3 times over. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in 1989, and rock radio's countdowns still can't get enough of "Sympathy for the Devil", "Paint It Black" and "Angie".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.