I agree with the OP; I love the Stones and know a lot of other people who do, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who claimed them as their absolute favorite band ever, and I have no particular idea why that is.
I would have them in the bottom half of the top 10 (if you care: Grateful Dead, Dylan, Zappa, and then in no particular order: Stones, Clash, Bob Marley, Motorhead, Arlo Guthrie, Beatles, George Clinton). When Motorhead go on tour with Arlo Guthrie, I will be one happy fish.
I purchased “Belgian” not long ago, and it certainly rocks. (Also, it was nice to see Taylor playing with them a bit last year). I’ll always have a soft spot for “Ya-Yas,” though (bought it used from a street fair in New York City with my Dad when I was nine – I remember, a few months later in November, noticing that exactly ten years had passed since it was recorded, a few blocks away – and a year after that, Dad passed away).
Me, personally, no, but I’m a Heinz Holliger fan. Put him to work on a bit of Telemann, and I’m in heaven.
If you had asked me what my favorite band was when I was 14 years old, in 1990, I would have said the Rolling Stones for sure. Today, I doubt they would even make my top 20. I still like them just as much as I always have but there have simply been too many other bands in the last couple of decades that I like even more.
Also, 1966-1971 were by far their best years, and Between The Buttons was their best album.
No. Except one great song (Angie), and a handful that are good enough for the MP3 player, they never did much for me. Got to admire their stamina though.
Agreed. Among other things, I love how the Rolling Stones sound from 1972 to…well, to now (!)…is contained in one little song on that recorded-in-late-1966 album: “Miss Amanda Jones.” It’s not even close to the album’s best song, but it’s freaky how well it presages their Exile-and-after sound (which I never much liked, and felt played out by 1978’s Some Girls – maybe having Ron Wood around, great guy that he is, contributed to the dissipation of their creative mojo. Or just having to take care of families and hang out on Caribbean beaches is what did it.)
Number one favorite band? Well what day is it? How do I feel today? Is it 4:20? Or cocktail hour? Or almost bedtime? Or maybe I’m having morning coffee and if so, whats on today’s agenda?
Just looking across the room I see several hundred CDs on the shelves and I liked something on each and every one when I bought it. This week “Far Away Eyes” is the best song I ever heard but next week I might say the same about Renee Olstead’s cover of “Someone To Watch Over Me”.
One of the things about listening to radio these days, AM, FM or satellite is the limited play lists. It doesn’t take long to get your fill of what’s on it and start to dislike or even hate certain acts. These days I nearly kill myself to turn off The Who, U2, The Police or Rush.
In the end I think anyone that proclaims any one band or artist as THE favorite is cheating themselves.
By the way I really like the Stones. But also Captain Beyond, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Vanilla Fudge and The String Cheese Incident.
I’d give up everything the Rolling Stones have ever done or will do for a single page of a Beethoven string quartet.
So, no.
There are at least 500 bands I like better, so no.
Yes, yes, always yes. Greatest rock and roll band of all time. And they’ve sucked for the better part of 35 years. Excepting this little gem, from some aged gentlemen. What a surprise!
Every time I have a road trip, Exile goes in the CD player and I listen to it all the way through.The Stones were my favourite band in the early-mid 70s when I was still catching up with their 1968-1972 Beggars Banquet/Sticky Fingers/Let itBleed/Exile on Main Street peak. By 1975, I’d realised they were never going to produce anything in remotely that class again, so I moved on.
If the Stones had called it a day straight after Exile, I think people many people would still rate them as their favourite band ever. Unlike The Beatles, though they’ve spent the past 40 years cheapening their own legacy, which explains why so few people give them the top spot today.
Just for the record, I think my favourite bands over the years have gone: T. Tex / Deep Purple / Rolling Stones / The Clash / The Pogues / Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds / no longer interested in the notion of a favourite band.
Question - do you (all folks taking enough interest to read and post to this thread) really think that the Stones have squandered their rep over the past 40 years, and that’s why they aren’t as popular as The Beatles?
I really don’t see it that way. To me, the attributes that have made the Stones popular simply haven’t led to as many “soundtrack of our lives songs” as The Beatles - and that hasn’t changed given the passage of time, other than fewer and fewer songs are going to be remembered by the mainstream public as time passes, and so the sheer number of Beatles songs hanging out towards the top stands out.
With the Stones, you have Satisfaction, JJ Flash, Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, maybe Start Me Up from a commercial standpoint. The songs that would be used on the soundtrack of the era. With the Beatles, you have a good many more songs, and many of them speak to Love and the psychedelic stuff that marked the late Flower Power era…
Just thinking out loud here…again, interesting idea for a thread. While the Stones and Beatles were the two contrasts at the top of the heap during the era, it turns out that over time, the Beatles are pulling away as the icons of the era, near as I can tell…
Well, I’m young enough that the Stones (and the Beatles and the Who) have always been my parents music. And I don’t mean that in a bad way; just that they were listening to those bands at their height in high school and college. But for me it has always been classic rock on the radio or listening to one of my parents CDs or otherwise the nostalgia of the Boomers. I’ve basically had all the catalogs available my whole life, so there’s never been any sense of waiting for a new album to discover because instead I’ve always had the equivalent of (or actual) Greatest Hits albums.
In order, I’d rank them Who, Beatles, Stones for what I actually like to listen to. I’d easily drop the Stones for a number of other bands if I had to due to space limitations. If pressed, I’d also drop the Beatles.
My take on it is that, with hindsight, the battle between the two was artificial. The Beatles were icons from the moment they broke through. The Stones were a band. And like any band they had a heyday and then trailed off because they were no longer the perfect representation of their time. The 60s needed a dark counterpoint to the Beatles’ light. That was easy in the 60s; no one had seen it before in pop. When everybody started doing it, the Stones looked silly trying to continually take it over the top of their earlier over the top.
What if the Stones had broken up the same time as the Beatles? They would have gone out with Let It Bleed, a superb album that knocked Abbey Road out of the UK number one slot. My feeling is that would have enhanced their stature, left us wanting more. It wouldn’t matter what the individuals did after. The individual Beatles lived out their lives trying as hard as they could to not be Beatles. The Stones’ solo albums have mostly been not-Stones. But they just as easily could have faded without their continual tours to remind us they’re still alive. Stuff happens to bands that aren’t icons.
Here’s an interesting parallel. Bob Dylan is an icon; Paul Simon is a songwriter. You could argue that Simon’s post-S&G music is better than Dylan’s post accident music but it’s never mattered - except to Simon who has always been bitter that he isn’t seen as Dylan’s equal. But you can’t be equal to an icon. Icons are above comparison. You can’t even compare Dylan to the Beatles (or to Elvis). Their axes don’t intersect.
Nice take on that, Exapno. Using Dylan and Simon in comparison is interesting, too. And of course the Beatles-Stones thing was manufactured - early Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham consciously sought it out to give the Stones a chance to get some reflected glare off the Fabs.
ETA: Bottom line - a Master up against a Legend. I am sure deciding who is who would make for interesting debates across categories.
Question - do you (all folks taking enough interest to read and post to this thread) really think that the Stones have squandered their rep over the past 40 years, and that’s why they aren’t as popular as The Beatles?
Yes. The difference is that Beatlesband had the good sense to die (by breaking up) while Stonesband has had the misfortune to carry on living. Beatlesband is a dead rock star - a Jim Morrison, a Jimi Hendrix or a Kurt Cobain if you like - which popped off before it had a chance to get fat, old and embarrassing: before it had a chance to start letting us down.
Stonesband, on the other hand, has the misfortune to be a living rock star, with all the inevitable compromises, disappointments and dwindling artistic ambition which that brings. That’s why Beatlesband has been granted an iconic stature which Stonesband has not.
None of this is to say that The Beatles are/were better than The Stones - year for year throughout The Beatles’ lifetime, I’d take The Stones’ records every time. You asked about the two bands’ relative status as icons, and that’s what I’m trying to address here.
PS) An alternative answer to this question would begin with the words “what do you mean by popular? And popular with whom?”
The Stones have always had a scuzzy, rebel image countering The Beatles’ early image as loveable, harmless popstars. The two bands’ respective music showed a similar divide, with The Stones letting their blues roots show through much more clearly, and projecting a sense of sexual threat which many 1960s parents found disturbing. Paul McCartney wanted to fuck their teenage daughter too, but at least he didn’t rub that fact in their face like Mick Jagger did.
In the late 1960s, The Beatles began making much more ambitious music than they previously had, and their drugs-and-maharishi period began to alienate more conventional people at about the same time. But by then, The Stones were into much darker territory. Just look at the subject matter covered on Beggars’ Banquet - Satanism, violent street protest, underage groupies - and that album’s raw sexual charge.
The extra “edge” this conferred on The Stones gave them an added appeal for rock fans, but left them lagging far behind The Beatles in mass market appeal. That’s another reason The Beatles are more popular across the board and, I suspect, always will be.
These guys are my favorite band ever. Part of it’s just pure longevity, and part of it’s quality.
My drummer would probably list the Stones as his favorite band. He’s asserted that he thinks they’ve done no wrong. I think they’ve done plenty of wrong, sometimes to their own songs, but I know how to play more of their songs than most bands from the '60s*.
My take on the difference between them and the Beatles - is that the Stones, for a multitude of reasons, come across as people. Conversely the Beatles weren’t allowed to be anything but icons by the time I was born. Part of this is due to their songwriting styles - the Stones simply wrote more songs that were transparently autobiographical. Even if their songwriting quality hadn’t declined after the early '70s, it’s hard for someone who won’t go away to become legendary. You have to do loony, unbelievable things. Other than existing, the Stones haven’t done much of that in a long time.
*I probably know how to play more Cream songs, but I’m not going to go tally them up.
Keith still being alive is pretty unbelievable. 