Tag Archives: Keith Richards

Video of the day: The Rolling Stones – Ladies & Gentlemen

The Rolling Stones Ladies & Gentlemen

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones is a concert movie featuring the British rock band The Rolling Stones that was first released in 1974. Directed by Rollin Binzer and produced by Binzer and Marshall Chess, it was filmed in 16mm by Bob Freeze and Steve Gebhardt of Butterfly Films owned by John Lennon during four shows in Fort Worth and Houston, Texas, during the band’s 1972 North American Tour in support of their classic 1972 album Exile on Main St.

This is the BEST Rolling Stones concert video!

The best bootleg concert might be “Brussels Affair” (Brussels, 17 October 1973), now officially released @ stonesarchievestore.com, but the best video is this one.

The Rolling Stones Ladies & Gentlemen2

It was released on Blu-ray in 2010:

Prior to 2010, after initial showings in 1974 the movie was only commercially available in the early 1980s in Australia on VHS by Video Classics, of which bootleg copies had since been circulated. ………  On 16 September 2010, a digital re-mastered version of Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones was shown in select theaters in the United States, presented by Omniverse Vision, Eagle Rock Entertainment and NCM Fathom. Re-mastered in HD digital, the film also features an introduction by Mick Jagger, interviewed in summer 2010 at the London Dorchester Hotel. This segment features Jagger reflecting on memories of the tour during this legendary time, and the status of The Rolling Stones. This film was released at selected Showcase Cinemas in UK the following day, on Friday 17 September 2010. On 12 October 2010, it was issued on DVD and Blu-ray. Supplements to the concert footage includes tour rehearsal footage from the Montreux Jazz Festival, a 1972 Old Grey Whistle Test interview with Mick Jagger, and a 2010 interview with Mick Jagger.

FANTASTIC stuff.. from the BEST band in the world! .. here goes..

Continue reading Video of the day: The Rolling Stones – Ladies & Gentlemen

Today: Charlie Watts is 73

charlie watts

Rock and roll has probably given more than it’s taken.
~Charlie Watts

Usually I can hear the pianos, the saxophone, and usually I can hear Ronnie. But I really need to listen to Keith and Mick. The rest of the band is sort of an embellishment to that.
~Charlie Watts

People say I play real loud. I don’t, actually. I’m recorded loud and a lot of that is because we have good engineers. Mick knows what a good drum sound is as well, so that’s part of the illusion really. I can’t play loud.
~Charlie Watts

Nice tribute from youtube:

Continue reading Today: Charlie Watts is 73

Video of the day: The Rolling Stones Cocksucker Blues


CocksuckerBlues_crop

“Definitely one of the best movies about rock and roll I’ve ever seen.  It makes you think being a rock and roll star is one of the last things you’d ever want to do.”
– Jim Jarmuch

Cocksucker Blues is named after a notorious Stones recording – just piano and singer Mick Jagger, in X-rated lonely-boy agony – that the band submitted as a final fuck-you single to their original, despised British label, Decca. (It was rejected.) The song, heard early in Frank’s movie, is blunt and drab.
– David Fricke (Rolling Stone Magazine)

The tale of Cocksucker Blues is as sordid as its title.

Cocksucker Blues is a  film by photographer Robert Frank on the Rolling Stone’s 1972 American tour. Not released officially by the Stones… the film is chronicling The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972 in support of their album Exile on Main St.

Bootlegs – the only way I was able to encounter a copy – have circulated for years.

cocksuckerblues
Continue reading Video of the day: The Rolling Stones Cocksucker Blues

The Rolling Stones – RCA Studios, Hollywood – 6-9 March 1966

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4 of the most important days in history of The Rolling Stones .. 48 years ago.

  • These recording sessions landed most of the masters for the forthcoming album “Aftermath” (UK number 1; US 2)
  • “Aftermath” was the first Stones album to include material composed entirely of Jagger/Richards
  • Brian Jones was “on fire” during these sessions… trying out lots of different instruments
  • On “Sean Egan’s” list of “50 Great Stones Songs” (from “The Rough Guide To The Rolling Stones”), he picks 5 songs recorded March 6-9, 1966

rolling stones aftermath

Continue reading The Rolling Stones – RCA Studios, Hollywood – 6-9 March 1966

Today: Happy Birthday Chuck Berry

chuck berry

 “Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

Keith Richards Inducts Chuck Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986):

“Chuck was my man. He was the one who made me say ‘I want to play guitar, Jesus Christ!’…Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do.”
~Keith Richards (1992)

“..if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.”
~John Lennon

“Well, now, Chuck Berry was a rock & roll songwriter. So I never tried to write rock &
roll songs, ‘cause I figured he had just done it.”
~Bob Dylan (to Kurt Loder October 1987)


Rock and Roll Music – Toronto, Canada – 1969 (full concert):

chuck berry toronto 1969

From Wikipedia:

Birth name Charles Edward Anderson Berry
Born October 18, 1926 (age 87)
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Genres Rock and roll, blues,rhythm and blues
Occupations Musician, songwriter
Instruments Guitar, vocals
Years active 1955–present
Labels Chess, Mercury, Atco
Website www.chuckberry.com

Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as “Maybellene” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Rock and Roll Music” (1957) and “Johnny B. Goode” (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

 

Of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. Quite simply, without him there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor a myriad others. There would be no standard “Chuck Berry guitar intro,” the instrument’s clarion call to get the joint rockin’ in any setting. The clippety-clop rhythms of rockabilly would not have been mainstreamed into the now standard 4/4 rock & roll beat. There would be no obsessive wordplay by modern-day tunesmiths; in fact, the whole history (and artistic level) of rock & roll songwriting would have been much poorer without him.

  “he wrote all of the great songs and came up with all the rock & roll beats.”
~Brian Wilson

Those who do not claim him as a seminal influence or profess a liking for his music and showmanship show their ignorance of rock’s development as well as his place as the music’s first great creator. Elvis may have fueled rock & roll’s imagery, but Chuck Berry was its heartbeat and original mindset.
~Cub Koda (allmusic.com)


Johnny B Goode:

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country & western guitar licks onto a rhythm & blues chassis in his very first single, “Maybellene.”
-Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

Legacy:

  • Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984
  • Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he “laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.”
  • The Kennedy Center Honors in 2000
  • being named seventh on Time magazine’s 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all-time
  • On May 14, 2002, Chuck Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard.
  • Berry is included in several Rolling Stone “Greatest of All Time” lists. In September 2003, the magazine named him number 6 in their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.
  • This was followed in November of the same year by his compilation album The Great Twenty-Eight being ranked 21st in the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
  • The following year, in March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth out of “The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.
  • In December 2004, six of his songs were included in the “Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”, namely “Johnny B. Goode” (#7), “Maybellene” (#18), “Roll Over Beethoven” (#97), “Rock and Roll Music” (#128), “Sweet Little Sixteen” (#272) and “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” (#374).
  • In June 2008, his song “Johnny B. Goode” ranked first place in the “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time”.
  • Berry’s recording of “Johnny B. Goode” was included on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft as representing rock and roll, one of four American songs included among many cultural achievements of humanity.
  • Berry was honored alongside Leonard Cohen as the recipients of the first annual Pen Awards for songwriting excellence at the JFK Presidential Library, Boston, Mass. on February 26, 2012
  • Today, at the age of 86, Berry continues to play live.

ultimate chuck berry

Album of the day – The Ultimate Chuck Berry (2007)

 

Other October 18:

Continue reading Today: Happy Birthday Chuck Berry