| November 23rd, 2005 05:30 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Stones on a five-decade roll
By Dan Nailen
The Salt Lake Tribune
The Rolling Stones and the Beatles will be forever linked in history as the prime movers in rock 'n' roll's invasion of mainstream popular culture.
When the Stones arrived, they looked a lot like the already popular Fab Four, from the dapper suits to the stylish haircuts. Quickly realizing there were too many bands on the Beatles bandwagon, the Stones and their management made the historic-in-retrospect decision to become, image-wise, the anti-Beatles.
While the Beatles were cute and cuddly, the Stones adopted an increasingly menacing look and rebellious stance. While the Beatles pushed the boundaries of pop, the Stones dug further into the American rhythm-and-blues roots of rock 'n' roll. And while the Beatles quit touring and broke up in 1970, the Stones kept going, rarely pausing through 40 years of recording and touring, including a stop in Salt Lake City tonight.
Susan Cottler is a Westminster College history professor and expert on the early years of rock 'n' roll. This spring, she delivered a paper titled "Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: History Professors Extraordinaire" at the Popular Culture Association annual meeting. And when she uses rock music as a teaching tool about the '60s, she skips the Beatles and heads straight for the Stones.
"In my view, the music of the Rolling Stones is far more evocative of the period than the music of the Beatles," Cottler said. "The most fundamental aspect of rock 'n' roll is that these people sing what you want to say but can't, and it's especially true when they sing it to you live. When a band stops touring, it abandons its fans, and that's what the Beatles did."
The Beatles played the kind of pop-rock music her mother could listen to, Cottler said, while the Stones offered the dangerous, sexually charged themes that fit an era marked by the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the sexual revolution and political assassinations of leaders like John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
"So much of great rock music reflects the values of those who listen to it," Cottler said. "[The Stones] are taking aim at the human condition, just like [Bob]) Dylan does. They are taking aim at how foolish we are, and they are taking aim at the institutions that are even more foolish than we are."
John Costa, a University of Utah music professor who teaches a history of rock 'n' roll class each semester, uses the Stones to illustrate the '60s era of British bands obsessed with American blues. He said the Stones also changed the rock band model set forth by the Beatles a few years earlier.
"When the Beatles came to America in '64, they ushered in a new paradigm, a model of the self-contained, four-piece rock quartet," Costa said. "The Rolling Stones gave a different model, the frontman as lead singer. A five-piece band, in other words.
"The Beatles were these clean-cut, happy guys, and the Rolling Stones were an alternative to that. They were the first with that 'bad boy' image."
Cottler and Costa agree that while their students might know a little about the Rolling Stones when a semester starts, they doubt today's college kids know much about the band's significance. Cottler goes so far as to say, much to her chagrin, that her Utah-raised students seem to more Beatles fans than Stones fans, thanks to their parents.
No doubt some of those students change their minds after Cottler is through with them.
"Historically, with the exception of Dylan, there's nobody in rock music like the Stones," Cottler said. "You either celebrate authenticity or you don't, and they're as authentic as it gets."
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Contact Dan Nailen at [email protected] or via his blog "Urban Spelunker" at www.sltrib.com/blogs. His phone number is 801-257-8613. Send comments about this story/review to [email protected].
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| November 23rd, 2005 07:44 AM |
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| Doxa |
Those two professors got it right! I didn't know they teach stuff like that nowadays...
Dylan and the Stones. The true originals.
- Doxa |
| November 23rd, 2005 08:55 AM |
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| gimmekeef |
With a huge assist from Howlin Wolf/Robert Johnson/Muddy Waters/Chuck Berry/Hank Williams/Johnny Cash/BB King and a host of others.... |
| November 23rd, 2005 09:53 AM |
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| corgi37 |
Thats education! |
| November 23rd, 2005 06:14 PM |
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| Soldatti |
Great reading. |
| November 24th, 2005 04:39 PM |
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| Zanck*Zanck*Zanck |
..The four R's.....
'Readin
'Riting
'Rithmetic
'Rolling Stones |
| November 25th, 2005 04:03 AM |
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| texile |
blah, blah, blah...
i never understood this debate between the merits of the stones vs the beatles......
its stupid when people diminish the beatles to prop up the stones...
why not acknowledge that both were two versions of genius?
the stones' epic for me is richer - but that's personal preference; lennon/macca changed the way music was listened to, the way songs were written, and the way chord progressions were invented; by missing the beatles' impact, mrs professor-pants is as musically ignorant as she thinks her students are. |
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