The English rock band The Rolling Stones more than any other group represents the characteristics critics of pop music find repulsive. Since its beginning in 1962 it has cultivated an image of outrageousness, vulgarity, rebellion, arrogance, and sensuality. Although many parents actually enjoy the music of the Beatles, few of them can tolerate The Rolling Stones. The Beatles were the fun-loving, mop-topped entertainers, but the Stones are everything parents least want their children to emulate. As the “bad boys of rock n’ roll” the Stones attracted the attention of millions of young people who identified with that image and that music and who felt that the group sang what they felt inside. A newspaper account reported that “The Stones are perverted, outrageous, violent, repulsive, ugly, tasteless, incoherent. A travesty. That’s what’s so good about them.” In a generation seeking to break with the past into an era of personal freedom the Stones provided the stance and the music to fuel the effort. The group’s influence on rock music has been far-reaching. Today’s “punk rock” movement is little more than the Stones carried to extreme. It rejects society by mocking its standards.
Stylistically the Stones are an extension of black rhythm and blues music. Lead singer Mick Jagger, who with guitarist Keith Richard writes nearly all of the songs, gives the group an explosive, energetic, almost frantic sound. Stones concerts work the fans into a frenzied, ecstatic capitulation to the music. The driving beat and the stage antics of Jagger result in a communal release of frustration and energy. As one of the songs says; “We gotta vent our frustration, before we blow a 50 amp fuse.”
Some people see the 1960s as a reactionary period when the restrictive and inhibiting factors of society were exploded and when unlimited personal freedom became the watchword. Seen from this perspective, the music of that era helped publicize this attitude. A Stones’ song, “Jumping Jack Flash” describes how teen-agers felt when they rejected the restrictions with which they had grown up. Jagger and Richard always portray family life as unhealthy. Mother cannot face the pressures of daily existence and is forced to go “running for the shelter” of her tranquilizers (“Mother’s Little Helper”). Life borders on the edge of mental illness as people seem headed for their “19th Nervous Breakdown.” Father is the misunderstood, ignored breadwinner (“2000 Man”). The whole family is confused and disjointed, no one communicates, and love is absent (“Family”). The song that most clearly illustrates the philosophy of the group is “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” This song became an anthem of the mid-60s; self-gratification was the goal, drugs and sex the means. The group that disdained “Mother’s Little Helper” glorified its use of drugs, even though it presented grave dangers (“Sister Morphine”). An endless stream of sex partners were to be used and then cast aside like “Yesterday’s Paper.” This elevation of personal satisfaction over any authority, law, or concern for others has become the basic outlook of many young people in the 70s. The Stones have kept its older fans, and the group has gained a new audience of teenagers who reject constraints and strive for personal gratification. An observer of Jagger has concluded that “the protest he leads appeals to the young because it is a protest against growing up into a world seen as cynical, uncaring and unaffectionate. He offers to an army of emotional children the unlimited excitement and license that adulthood invariably curtails.”
The music and the stage presentations of The Rolling Stones have always exuded sexuality. The tight-fitting pants, gestures, and deliberate sexual references support the group’s message that casual sexual relationships are acceptable. “Let’s Spend the Night Together” urged young people to do what they want without giving morality a second thought. Many of the Stones’s songs are decidedly male-oriented; women are just sex objects. Some people say that the group is misogynistic. An early song, “Under My Thumb,” is particularly graphic in putting women in a subordinate position. “Star Star,” “Brown Sugar,” “Honky Tonk Women,” and other songs demean women. The advertising campaign promoting their latest studio album. Black and Blue, focused on this side of their image.
The group views man as evil, subject more to biological than to intellectual or spiritual motivations. This acceptance of man’s evil nature is clearly described in “Paint It Black”: “I see the girls walk by/In their summer clothes/I have to turn my head/Until my darkness goes.” The song adds that “I look inside myself and see my heart is black.” Early schooling gives no moral grounding, according to “Sitting on a Fence.” In a moral vacuum sensual urgings can control behavior.
The darkest side of The Rolling Stones has been their toying with satanic and demonic notions. Mick Jagger has consciously taken an anti-Christ position, causing the label “Satan’s Jesters” to be applied to the group. In the late 60s era of flower power and love children the Stones released an album entitled Their Satanic Majesties Request that, by its art work, appeared to be dedicated to Satan. On a later album, “Sympathy for the Devil” called for another look at the evil power behind earthly activities. The Devil is depicted as a “man of wealth and taste” who has presided over world history. He was there when Jesus had his “moment of doubt and faith” and made sure that Pilate “washed his hands to seal his fate.” He was on the scene when the Tsar was toppled in the Russian Revolution and rode with Hitler’s tanks through Europe. The song asks that those people who meet Satan treat him with respect and sympathy or else have their souls “laid to waste.” Written in the first person and sung by Mick Jagger, the words and music take on an eerie, evil mood. It was during this particular song that a man was killed at one of their concerts; Jagger said that something funny always happens when the group sings that song. For a couple of years it was left out of the Stones’s concerts. This evil imagery is picked up again in “Sway” where a “demon life” has people in its sway. “Dancing With Mr. D.” describes a graveyard meeting with the Devil that, though toying with satanic worship, requests that the Lord keep his hand on the situation. “All Down the Line” also seeks a righteous or rescuing presence to be on hand: “I need a sanctified girl/With a sanctified mind to help me now,/I need a shot of salvation,/Baby, once in a while.” This acceptance of evil as the permanent nature of man coupled with satanism adds to the image of The Rolling Stones as vulgar, coarse, and perverted.
Their references to Christianity are few. In “Prodigal Son” the Bible story is twisted. When the wayward son returns it is the father who falls down to beg forgiveness. A recent song, “Crazy Mama,” belittles Christianity: “Well your old time religion is just superstition.” Clearly Christianity has been rejected by the group. And no group in rock music today has so consistently cultivated a more adolescent anti-Christian image than The Rolling Stones. How long can they survive into middle age?
Daniel J. Evearitt is a graduate student at Drew University.