Rolling Stones celebrate 50th anniversary

GlobalPost

Half a century after their first live gig on London's Oxford Street, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the rest of the Rolling Stones will mark the band's 50th anniversary at a photographic exhibition on Thursday.

Here is a look at the group which used the name "Rollin' Stones" for the first time on July 12, 1962, at a performance in the Marquee Club in London to replace Alexis Korner's blues band.

BECOMING ROCK STARS:

-- Michael Philip Jagger - who will be 70 in July 2013 - was an avid fan of American blues artists like Muddy Waters and he formed his first band in his teens. He had won a place at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE) but admitted he didn't take it seriously.

-- At London's Ealing Blues Club, Jagger met Brian Jones who was recruiting for a band he called the Rollin' Stones -- the “g" was to be restored later -- after a Muddy Waters song.

-- The original line-up included Mick Jagger (vocals), Brian Jones (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Keith Richards (guitar, vocals), Ian "Stu" Stewart (piano), Dick Taylor (bass) and various drummers such as Mick Avory (later of The Kinks) and Tony Chapman. Taylor left shortly after to return to art school, and was later to form The Pretty Things. He was replaced by Bill Wyman.

-- By the beginning of 1963, the Stones lineup was Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts. In 1964 Jagger was catapulted to fame amid outrage and controversy about his surliness and the length of the group's hair.

HITS GALORE:

-- There were riots when the band went to America and it was in 1965 that “(I Can't Get No) "Satisfaction" gave them their first U.S. and British hit.

-- Another hit, "“Get Off My Cloud", fully used Jagger's defiant persona. Bad-boy controversy continued with Jagger, Jones and Wyman arrested for urinating at a London petrol station.

-- A stream of hits followed, from "“Under My Thumb", to the anarchic “"19th Nervous Breakdown" and doom-laden "“Paint It Black". Jagger spat out a diatribe of abuse in “"Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing In the Shadow?"

* Jagger's increasing prominence in the group reached crisis point with Jones who left the band in June 1969. He was found dead in his swimming pool the following month.

MYTHICAL STATUS:

-- In 1970 Jagger made a foray into movies appearing in "“Ned Kelly" and the earlier “"Performance" followed by the albums "“Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out" and “"Sticky Fingers".

-- By the late 1970s, Jagger and the Stones were being written off by the British media switched on by the new Punk era but they responded by releasing the impressive "“Some Girls".

-- "A “Steel Wheels" tour in 1989 catapulted the band into the record books earning more than $300 million. This was followed by the equally successful “"Voodoo Lounge" tour. By the turn of the century, they still had not lost their appetite for touring.

-- The Rolling Stones ended the 1990s with their album "Bridges to Babylon" released in 1997 to mixed reviews. However, their Bridges to Babylon Tour was a huge success which crossed Europe, North America and various other destinations.

PRESERVING THE BAND:

-- In 2002, The Rolling Stones released "Forty Licks", a greatest hits album that spanned their career, that contained four new songs. The same year, Q magazine named The Rolling Stones as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die."

-- The group's last major tour was their 2005-07 Bigger Bang Tour which took in over 30 countries and took over $550 million in sales. It has only been beaten by Irish group U2 during their 2011 360 tour.

-- They made their debut in China in 2006 riding roughshod over the censors during their first show in the communist country, serenading the crowd with songs about Satan, sleaze bags and serial killers at the Shanghai Grand Stage.

-- Film director Martin Scorsese's 2008 "Shine a Light" film of two 2006 concerts in New York provides few clues as to when the group would lay down their instruments. The veteran rockers rolled back the years and Jagger put in a performance worthy of a man a third his age.

-- A new official book, "Rolling Stones 50", is published on Thursday and a film will be released in November 2012.

Sources: Reuters/http://www.musicstarx.net/ (Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.