The Rolling Stones — 60 Years of Rock & Roll

The Rolling Stones formed in London in 1962 when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — childhood friends from Dartford — reconnected over a shared obsession with American blues. With Brian Jones on guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, and Charlie Watts on drums, they became the dangerous alternative to The Beatles: rougher, louder, and unapologetically rebellious.

The Jagger-Richards songwriting partnership produced some of the most iconic songs in rock history. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction in 1965 turned them from a blues cover band into the biggest rock act on the planet. From there, the hits never stopped — Paint It Black, Sympathy for the Devil, Gimme Shelter, Brown Sugar, Start Me Up.

Each decade brought a new classic.

What makes the Stones unique isn't just longevity — it's that they kept making records that matter. Hackney Diamonds in 2023, their first album in 18 years, debuted at #1 in 20 countries. Mick Jagger was 80 years old.

Keith Richards was 79. The riffs didn't care.

The 1968-1972 run is widely considered the greatest stretch in rock history. Beggars Banquet introduced a rawer, blues-rooted sound. Let It Bleed gave us Gimme Shelter — arguably the greatest opening track ever recorded.

Sticky Fingers was pure perfection from Brown Sugar to Moonlight Mile. And Exile on Main St. — recorded in a sweltering basement in the South of France — remains the ultimate rock & roll double album.

The Stones survived the punk era by absorbing it. Some Girls (1978) is lean, mean, and furious — Miss You borrowed from disco while Beast of Burden proved they could still write devastating ballads. Tattoo You (1981) launched the biggest stadium tour of the decade on the back of Start Me Up, a riff so simple and so perfect that it became the sound of the 1980s.

After Charlie Watts' death in August 2021, many assumed the Stones were finished. Instead, with Steve Jordan on drums, they released Hackney Diamonds — a record that sounds like a band with nothing left to prove and everything left to play. Angry is vintage Stones swagger.

Sweet Sounds of Heaven, featuring Lady Gaga, is the kind of epic the Stones have always done best.

The Rolling Stones are the highest-grossing touring act in history. They've sold over 240 million records. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

But numbers don't capture what the Stones actually are — they're the sound of rock & roll itself. Every garage band that ever plugged in a guitar owes something to Keith Richards' open-G tuning.

Put on Exile on Main St. at a party and watch what happens. Put on Let It Bleed alone at midnight and feel it differently.

That's the Stones' gift — music that works in every context, at every volume, in every decade. Sixty years in, and Satisfaction still hits exactly as hard as it did in 1965.