page_title: The Rolling Stones
section_title: Musical development
hierarchical_section_title: The Rolling Stones / Musical development
caption_attribution_description: Fender Guitar Factory museum 4. Keith Richards Telecaster
context_page_description: The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. As a diverging act to the popular pop rock of the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, heavier-driven sound that came to define hard rock. The band's first stable line-up consisted of bandleader Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, and Ian Stewart, the last of whom was removed from the official line-up in 1963, but continued to work with the band as a contracted musician until his death in 1985. The band's primary songwriters, the partnership of Jagger and Richards, assumed leadership after Andrew Loog Oldham became the group's manager. Jones left the band less than a month before his death in 1969, having already been replaced by Mick Taylor, who in turn left in 1974 and was replaced in 1975 by Ronnie Wood, who has since remained. Since Wyman's departure in 1993, Darryl Jones has served as bassist. The Stones have not had an official keyboardist since Stewart's departure in 1963, but have employed several musicians in that role, including Jack Nitzsche, Nicky Hopkins, Billy Preston, Ian McLagan, and Chuck Leavell.
context_section_description: The Rolling Stones have assimilated various musical genres into their own collective sound. Throughout the band's career, their musical contributions have been marked by a continual reference and reliance on musical styles including blues, psychedelia, R&B, country, folk, reggae, dance, and world music, exemplified by Jones' collaboration with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, as well as traditional English styles that use stringed instruments like harps. Brian Jones experimented with the use of non-traditional instruments such as the sitar and slide guitar in their early days. The group started out covering early rock 'n' roll and blues songs, and have never stopped playing live or recording cover songs.
  Jagger and Richards had a shared admiration of Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. Little Walter influenced Brian Jones. Richards recalls, "He was more into T-Bone Walker and jazz blues stuff. We'd turn him onto Chuck Berry and say, 'Look, it's all the same shit, man, and you can do it.'" Charlie Watts, a traditional jazz drummer,  was also introduced to the blues through his association with the pair. "Keith and Brian turned me on to Jimmy Reed and people like that. I learned that Earl Phillips was playing on those records like a jazz drummer, playing swing, with a straight four." Jagger, recalling when he first heard the likes of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino, and other major American R&B artists, said it "seemed the most real thing" he had heard up to that point. Similarly, Keith Richards, describing the first time he listened to Muddy Waters, said it was the "most powerful music [he had] ever heard ... the most expressive". He also recalled, "when you think of some dopey, spotty seventeen year old from Dartford, who wants to be Muddy Waters—and there were a lot of us—in a way, very pathetic, but in another way, [it was] very ... heartwarming".
  Despite the Rolling Stones' predilection for blues and R&B numbers on their early live set lists, the first original compositions by the band reflected a more wide-ranging interest. Critic Richie Unterberger described the first Jagger/Richards single, "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)", as a "pop rock ballad ... When [Jagger and Richards] began to write songs, they were usually not derived from the blues, but were often surprisingly fey, slow, Mersey-type pop numbers". "As Tears Go By", the ballad originally written for Marianne Faithfull, was one of the first songs written by Jagger and Richards and one of many written by the duo for other artists. Jagger said of the song, "It's a relatively mature song considering the rest of the output at the time. And we didn't think of [recording] it, because the Rolling Stones were a butch blues group." The Rolling Stones did later record a version which became a top five hit in the US.
  Of their early writing experience, Richards said,
  The amazing thing is that although Mick and I thought these songs were really puerile and kindergarten-time, every one that got put out made a decent showing in the charts. That gave us extraordinary confidence to carry on, because at the beginning songwriting was something we were going to do in order to say to Andrew [Loog Oldham], 'Well, at least we gave it a try ...'
  Jagger said,
  We were very pop-orientated. We didn't sit around listening to Muddy Waters; we listened to everything. In some ways it's easy to write to order  ... Keith and I got into the groove of writing those kind of tunes; they were done in ten minutes. I think we thought it was a bit of a laugh, and it turned out to be something of an apprenticeship for us.
  The writing of "The Last Time", the Rolling Stones' first major single, proved a turning point. Richards called it "a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it." The song was based on a traditional gospel song popularised by the Staple Singers, but the Rolling Stones' number features a distinctive guitar riff, played by Brian Jones. Prior to the emergence of Jagger/Richards as the Stones' s
caption: A copy of "Micawber", Keith Richards' signature Telecaster model, in the Fender Guitar Factory Museum
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot SX200 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery14.0.8081.709", "Image DateTime": "2011:11:17 14:33:59", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3494", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6259", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF FNumber": "17/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:11:09 16:19:50", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:11:09 16:19:50", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "157/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "113/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "113/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4000", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "4000", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "3000", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "3320", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1000000/61", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1000000/61", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "68"}