The Rolling Stones

The English rock band that turned the Chicago blues into the dominant sound of the second half of the twentieth century. Formed in London in 1962 by Brian Jones, named off a Muddy Waters song, and built around the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that followed — the longest-running working band in rock and roll. The first stable lineup of Jagger, Richards, Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts came together in early 1963; pianist Ian Stewart was sidelined as a band member by manager Andrew Loog Oldham but remained on every record they made for the next two decades.

Their early years were a methodical study of American rhythm and blues, recorded with deliberate roughness and marketed as the dirty alternative to the Beatles. By the middle of the decade Jagger–Richards were writing internationally chart-topping originals — (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Get Off of My Cloud, Paint It Black — and the band's reputation as the most important rock and roll group in the world had begun to settle around them. Brian Jones, the band's founder, drowned at his home on July 3, 1969, twenty-five days after he had been asked to leave. Mick Taylor replaced him for five years and four albums; Ronnie Wood replaced Taylor at the end of 1974 and has remained ever since.

The catalogue covers more than sixty years and twenty-six studio albums. Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St., and Some Girls are the records most often cited as the high-water marks. Charlie Watts, the band's drummer for fifty-eight years, died on August 24, 2021. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood released the album Hackney Diamonds in October 2023, more than sixty years after their first recording session, and toured behind it through 2024.