The Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett

Author:Charlie Gillett [Gillett, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780285640245
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2011-04-25T21:00:00+00:00

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Although the members of the rhythm and blues groups did not all have exactly the same background, there were common threads. The most conspicuous shared experience was art school. The traditional British pop singers and musicians had left school at the earliest possible moment, and saw pop as a way out of the routine jobs that were the most likely future for them; the popular British press often featured “where-are-they-now” reports on briefly-famous pop singers who had gone back to jobs on the milk round or the factory floor. But in the early sixties, an increasing number of school-leavers looked for ways to delay the decision of what job to take, and many opted for art school courses in printing, graphics, commercial design and photography – as well as the traditional painting and sculpture courses. Kids who had been regarded at school as eccentrics in their musical taste found kindred spirits at art colleges who shared a devotion for Ray Charles, Howlin’ Wolf and other still-obscure black Americans, and ad-hoc bands formed out of casual jam sessions.

The archetypal band with this kind of background was the Rolling Stones, although lead singer Mick Jagger was actually at a conventional university college (the London School of Economics) when he got together with guitarist Keith Richard.

Throughout their career, the Rolling Stones were a conspicuous (and often deliberate) contrast to the Beatles, going against the grain of conventional behaviour expected both within the music industry and outside in the world at large. And as the world reacted with outrage and alarm to the long hair and surly derision of the Stones, the group learned the truth of the show business adage, “any publicity is good publicity”. The more the establishment expressed its disapproval, the larger became the army of the group’s ardent supporters. Of all the British groups who had reason to thank the Beatles for opening up the world as a market, the Rolling Stones made the most of the opportunities; step-by-step, blow-by-blow, they followed each move of the Beatles with a complementary response: hard, heavy, and dark, where the Beatles were soft and light. The Rolling Stones gave a savage twist to the blues and soul music that provided their musical inspiration. Selfish, spiteful, and sexually threatening, they stirred subliminal feelings that popular music normally preferred to leave alone, but which in black music had always been closer to the surface.

By the time Decca released the first single by the Rolling Stones, their version of Chuck Berry’s “Come On” in June 1963, EMI was already dominating the charts with the new “Mersey Sound” of the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the rest, and it was not immediately obvious that the Rolling Stones would be a serious rival. Like most of the rhythm and blues groups, they were determined to be faithful both to the “pure” character of their material, and to the “authentic” sound of their own live performances on stage. Virtually all of the art college rhythm and blues groups

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