Fifty years of the Rolling Stones

The biggest of all the behemoths of course were The Beatles, who were bigger even, as John Lennon joked, than Jesus. Though they were blissfully unaware of it at the time, the four Liverpudlians were revolutionaries, threatening the status quo and sending tremors through every level of society. Musically, too, they were regarded in some quarters as invasive as Napoleon. Because of them, crooners were consigned to clubs which only old fogeys and lounge lizards continued to patronise. How I laughed when my dad played records by Pat Boone or Matt Monroe or – may the Lord forgive me! – Frank Sinatra. The same was true for many jazz or country and western stalwarts. Music's map had been redrawn and the vast swathes of pink indicated, not the extent of the British Empire, but the reach of The Beatles.

The Rolling Stones never figured quite as prominently on my radar as The Beatles. I don't know why. When a new Beatles song was to receive its first play on Radio Luxembourg, all other appointments were cancelled. Thus I know precisely where I was when I first heard Lady Madonna or Penny Lane or Hey Jude. I cannot say the same for (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction or Ruby Tuesday or Brown Sugar. At discos, though, it was the Stones who could get even the most lethargic to their feet, who could produce the most visceral of reactions, who could transport your body to places it had never been. All it took were a few combustible chords from Brian Jones and Keith Richards, a rumble of the drums from Charlie Watts, a deep pluck from Bill Wyman's bass and then in came Mick Jagger, blurting out lyrics with that malleable mouth of his, as if he were chanting slogans on a protest march. It felt raw, angry, confrontational, loud, intoxicating, addictive. It felt felt. This was not a performance or an act but a statement of intent, notification to the powers-that-be that the youth of the world would in future be very difficult to shut up.

I have often wondered what it was like to be middle-aged in the 1960s. How did it feel, for instance, to have fought as a teenager in the war and got married in the 1950s when there was still rationing and not much to do and no money with which to do it? Nobody but the rich and fugitive went abroad. Food was plain and wholesome and quite often inedible. Moreover, institutions still mattered. Anyone in a uniform, be they a parky or a postman or a policeman, was accorded respect. Lots of people still went to church and many of them still believed in God. If politicians didn't want to comment, they didn't. Harold Wilson, who was prime minister for six years in the 1960s, once returned from a conference beyond the Iron Curtain and was asked if he'd like to tell the nation what had been discussed at it. "No," he replied, and puffed his pipe. Nor was he challenged. It was a deferential age. If you were young you were told never to speak out of turn and to wait until you were spoken to before saying anything.

Contrary to its harmonious image, the 1960s was a deeply divisive decade. For some, as the historian Arthur Marwick observed, it was a golden age. For others, he said, it was "a time when the old secure framework of morality, authority and discipline disintegrated. In the eyes of the far left, it is the era when revolution was at hand, only to be betrayed by the feebleness of the faithful and the trickery of the enemy; the radical right, an era of subversion and moral turpitude".

Its heroes, as Marwick acknowledged, were The Beatles, while the Stones occupied a less secure and more complex, edgy niche. In the Stones' early years, the difference between them and The Beatles was often emphasised and exploited. In the book, The Rolling Stones 50, which has been published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the band's first appearance on stage at the Marquee Club in London on July 12, 1962, Jagger says that what distinguished the Stones from their rivals was that they did not dress alike and they were not a rock 'n' roll group, both of which they soon embraced. If The Beatles' formative influences came from the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, the Stones' roots can be traced to the bluesmen of Chicago, such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon, many of whose careers were then in the doldrums.

Their first record was Come On – a cover version of a Chuck Berry song – and their first No.1 was It's All Over Now, followed by Little Red Rooster, The Last Time and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. That they were no one-hit wonders was obvious. When The Beatles vacated the No.1 slot the Stones moved in, releases by each band timed to avoid the other's. They were Sonny Liston to the Fab Four's Muhammad Ali, Richard Nixon to their JFK, the Confederacy to the Union. Their image, studiedly rehearsed, was that of bad boys, of rebels, which they did their best to live up to. In 1964, Jagger told The Daily Mirror: "We are completely unmoved by criticism. We are not worried about the obvious sensationalism of the way we look and dress. I never did like wearing a suit, but maybe I will when I'm about 25. We have our hair trimmed about once every three months."

For many of their fans, Jagger was the Stones, which is a distortion of history. In the beginning at least it was Jones who pulled the strings, arranging the gigs, choosing the songs, collecting the cash and paying the bills. He it was who in May 1962 placed an advertisement in Jazz News looking for like-minded musicians to join his new band. The first to apply was Ian Stewart from Pittenweem, who was an accomplished pianist, and who soon fell by the wayside, though he remained part of the band's entourage. Then came Jagger, Richards and Dick Taylor, whose participation was also short-lived.

The Stones as I knew them were Mick and Brian, Keith and Bill and Charlie. Of them, Jones was the most enigmatic. With a bowl of blonde hair, he stood on stage often looking as if he'd rather be in Belgium. He found touring irksome and tiring and was often ill and elsewhere. Gradually, he and the other band members grew apart. Sometimes the Stones' manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, would switch off Jones's microphone when he was singing. As the decade advanced he was twice convicted for drug possession, which meant he couldn't get an American work permit. He had become a burden and was offloaded. In White Heat: A History Of Britain In The Swinging Sixties, Dominic Sandbrook notes that: "In the circumstances it was more of a mercy killing than an execution." The Stones, in particular Jagger and Richards, knew Jones was in trouble but there was nothing they could offer by way of help. In July 1969, he was found dead in the pool on his Sussex estate, which had formerly been owned by AA Milne, author of Winnie The Pooh.

In The Rolling Stones 50, Jones's death is mentioned only en passant, in reference to a concert at Hyde Park at which his replacement, Mick Taylor, was introduced to the crowd. "It was a challenge to go out and play for all these people," says Jagger, "I think we were pleased to get out and play with somebody else, because we'd been like a horse with three legs. The bad part was that Brian wasn't there any more, which was really sad." What is not mentioned is that in front of a crowd of 250,000, Jagger read from Shelley: "Peace, peace, he is not dead, he doth not sleep, he hath but awakened from the dream of life." Whereupon 1000 white butterflies were released into the sky.

But 1969, it transpired, was to become the Stones' annus horribilis. By now the band was a rock conglomerate and had gained a reputation for money-grabbing. They were still making music to make your heart pump and your feet jump – it was the year, after all, of Let It Bleed, of Midnight Rambler, Gimme Shelter, Love In Vain and Brown Sugar – but some of the joy and innocence had evaporated. Stadiums had replaced clubs, excess was the order of the day and egos were rampant. Meanwhile, the music struggled to be heard amid the din and hype. Towards the end of the year the Stones toured the States. "We were like a phoenix," says Richards, "and the 1969 tour was our first resurrection."

In December, in the afterglow of the Woodstock festival, where everyone wore flowers in their hair and peace and love drifted on the breeze like pollen, the Stones decided to give a free concert at Altamont near San Francisco. What happened there, remarks Charlie Watts, with unconscious narcissism, "was not what we played music for. We had, yet again, got into another fine mess".

What actually happened there, of which no mention is made in The Rolling Stones 50, has a hallowed place in rock 'n' roll infamy. Hells Angels were hired to keep law and order. As darkness began to fall, and Jagger launched into Jumping Jack Flash, Hells Angels waded into the crowd, clubbing anyone in the path with sawed-off pool cues loaded with lead. Rolling Stone, the magazine, covered Altamont as if it were an incident in the Second World War. Four people died and many, many more were badly injured. As the Stones played Under My Thumb, an 18-year-old black man was stabbed dozens of times and kicked into a pulp, his name, Meredith Hunter, not even, it seems, worthy of mention in a footnote in the 350-page story of a band that is so eager – in Watts's words – to "respect our history, our heritage and our tradition". n

The Rolling Stones 50 by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood is published by Thames and Hudson, priced £29.95.