The “World’s Greatest Rock & Roll Band”
was Exiled on Main Street
Rock & Roll: To begin with, Rock is a very diverse genre that gathers many different styles. Bass guitar and the drums provided the base structure, and the electric guitar was its forefront. In 1950s, Rock & Roll originated in the southern United States where it described Rhythm & Blues at a faster tempo sang by black musicians. After a while, Rock & Roll continued rising through white musicians like Elvis Presley within the mainstream industry. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, bands like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles helped growing the popularity of the genre. Musicians started to be improvisational, they used diverse instrumentation, distorting and wide range of guitar effects. Later, Rock was divided into many more genres such as Hard Rock, Garage Rock, that led to the evolving of Heavy Metal and Punk Rock.
the Rolling Stones: The “World’s Greatest Rock & Roll Band” - this is how The Rolling Stones called themselves, some people would dispute it, and some people would agree with it. But for sure, they were the part of the British Invasion. They started with covering Black American blues, R&B and Rock & Roll acts, however the frontman Mick Jagger and the main guitarist Keith Richards were soon writing their own songs. Today, they can be still found on the road, even though they had been exiled, not only once.
Exile on Main Street: Leaving behind all the traumas and financial hardships, The Rolling Stones exiled themselves from the United Kingdom and decided to move to France. They set up a mobile recording studio in the French Countryside. They continued to have a more carefree lifestyle. The environment, their habits and the heroin consumption did not help with the album recording, but somehow, they have managed to move forward with it. For some reasons, they moved to the United States and due to the productive workflow, they finished the album. With Jagger’s words it is “a sprawling, gutsy work”, it sounds like a road trip. At the beginning, critics judged it harshly, but by the end of the decade it was categorized as one of the bests if not the greatest Rock & Roll album.
Panna Ingula. (n.d.). rock&roll [Pinterest Board]. Pinterest. https://pin.it/2HdEfxLmw
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