‘Join the accusations, save the bleeding nation, get it off your shoulders, blame it on the Stones,’ urged Kris Kristoffersen in 1970….
…but what exactly should we blame on the Rolling Stones? Satanic grooviness, certainly…
… because Sympathy for the Devil was the song on which the entire ‘Baggy’ pop movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s was founded. Consider for example the Happy Mondays’ Step On, the Stone Roses’ Fool’s Gold and, most obviously, the Charlatans’ wicked little number, Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over…
And we can definitely blame Primal Scream’s Rocks on the Stones. A 1997 survey showed that exactly 100% of listeners assumed it was a Jagger/Richards number they’d somehow missed, and those surveyed included four members of Primal Scream and Keef himself…
And lastly, I suppose we must blame the Stones for this…
Much has been written about the early icons of popular music, long after the for sale notice has been hoisted, we will take for granted the fact that the music, at its best, has the same claim to the title of art as that of classical music.
Access to music as an art form was for the fifties generation, in the gutter. The early rockers, Haley, Holly, Presley and Co pointed out the stars. The Beatles taught us to look at them, the Stones took us to them. They were unique, weird, haunting, In the sixties Route 66 and Ruby Tuesday and the seventies Angie places them among the gods of rock.
It most be said however, the definitive route 66 is Buckwheat Zydeko’s.