The Rolling Stones have been one of the biggest rock bands in the world almost since the moment they formed in 1962. They have never stopped making music, with new albums climbing and often topping the charts in every decade since their formation, from 1962’s The Rolling Stones to 2023’s Hackney Diamonds. In total, they have sold over 200 million albums. They also continue to tour, with a Hackney Diamonds Tour on the horizon for 2024. The core of their songwriting team consists of singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, both of whom were born in 1943 in Dartford, Kent, England. The pair have written hundreds of songs together, many of which have earned a permanent place in our cultural consciousness. To start down a Rolling Stones rabbit hole, check out Wikipedia, their official website, Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (they were inducted in 1989), and Billboard.
Patrick Roszell arranged The Rolling Stones on Tour in 2013. It uses three of their early chart-topping songs: “Paint It Black” (1966), “Ruby Tuesday” (1967), and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (1965). Here is the medley with a read-along score:
“Paint It Black” is an up-tempo song about grief that prominently features the sitar. This is the studio version overlaid with some live performance footage from 1966:
“Ruby Tuesday” is a ballad of lost love that originally included a Baroque recorder. Here is a live performance from 1991, 24 years after its release:
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was the Rolling Stones’s first chart-topping single in the US. Here is a live performance from 2006, displaying their longevity:
Just to prove they’re still at it, here they are in a live performance of “Shattered” (1978) from 2023: