The Rolling Stones (1964)

To understand how the Rolling Stones, who recently kicked off their golden anniversary concert tour, have managed to last fifty years (and outlast just about everyone else since), you only need to go a little less far back than 1962 - specifically, to 1964, and listen to their homonymously titled debut album. The Rolling Stones is much like the Beatles' debut, Please Please Me, in capturing the spirit of a band fueled by a deep, uncompromising love for the music they play.  And unlike the Beatles, the Stones loved to play the blues, a musical form that has an advantage over straight rock and roll.  Rock and roll is a young person's music, full of the fun and vitality associated with youth, and many rock and roll performers have lost their edge in advanced age.  The blues are a more mature pop form, and its practitioners have historically improved with age and experience.  And even when the Stones rock out, they're still playing the blues, that mature, manly music of their heroes - Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and others.

That only makes The Rolling Stones much more fascinating.  Here was a band of young white men from, of all places, England - its leaders, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, from comfortable, middle-class Kent - with a complete mastery of the black American R&B experience.  The guitars of Richards and Brian Jones bite and claw throughout, and the crisp rhythm section of bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts add extra grit, but it's Jagger who - as he would continue to do later and  still does today - commands all the attention with his seasoned vocals.  The songs are practically all covers here, with the band offering up everything from a soul shuffle on Bobby Troup's "Route 66," which opens the LP, to a raw, stinging interpretation of Chuck Berry's "Carol" and more than proving their chops.  Jagger's salacious vocal on Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee," backed by some of the most menacing music the Stones committed to tape in their early years, only hints at that lust and danger the Stones would entertain in the years to come.  Less encouraging are the few originals on this record, including the intriguing but somewhat pedestrian "Tell Me."  It would take Jagger and Richards a little while longer to find their voices as songwriters, but the brooding rhythms of this early effort were certainly a promising start.   The Stones's take here on Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get A Witness," though, solidify them as masterful white-soul artists without debate.  (Phil Spector and Gene Pitney contributed piano and percussion, respectively, on "Little By Little," a tune Spector helped the group write; the song itself  is a bright number that adds a nice icing to the cake.)

Consider yourself lucky, though, if you have the original British release, like I do.  The American edition of The Rolling Stones - subtitled "England's Newest Hit Makers" - kicks off with the Stones' cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and omits their take on Bo Diddley's "Mona (I Need You Baby)," so when you get the U.S. release, you're not getting the real thing.  The original British edition is hard to find on disc these days, though it is available on iTunes.  The substitution of a pop-oriented Buddy Holly song in place of a heavy number from one of the most innovative musicians to ever play the blues - the Stones take on the Bo Diddley beat with aplomb - compromises the group's vision somewhat.  It's the vision of five young men set to commit themselves to the blues for the long haul.  "I hope people don't think we're a rock and roll outfit," Jagger said when the Rolling Stones first formed.  And half a century later, these old British bluesmen are still trying to get satisfaction.