THE ROLLING STONES – 50+ YEARS AND COUNTING

Rock ‘n’ roll was but a baby when a budding band called The Rolling Stones began to get gigs around London in 1962. Many saw it as merely the latest teenage fad – few thought it would last five years, let alone fifty. It’s safe to say The Rolling Stones played a huge part in proving them wrong.

The original line-up of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, Dick Taylor and Tony Chapman couldn’t have fathomed the journey they on which they were about to embark – one that endures over 50 years later. 

I didn’t expect to last until fifty myself, let alone with the Stones.

Keith Richards

“I didn’t expect to last until fifty myself, let alone with the Stones,” Keith Richards says on the band’s website.

“You have to put yourself back into that time,” adds Mick Jagger. “Popular music wasn’t talked about on any kind of intellectual level. There was no such term as ‘popular culture.’ None of those things existed.”

Suddenly popular music became bigger than it had ever been before. It became an important, perhaps the most important, art form of the period, after not at all being regarded as an art form before.

Mick Jagger

Yet times were changing and The Rolling Stones were about to be part of a transformation that would define the decades to follow. In fact, it’s safe to say that the band has played an absolutely essential role in rock ‘n’ roll history. 

“Suddenly popular music became bigger than it had ever been before,” says Jagger. “It became an important, perhaps the most important, art form of the period, after not at all being regarded as an art form before.”

There was an amazing energy going on with people our age then. It’s transformed the way the Seventies would have been or the Eighties or the Nineties or now.

Keith Richards

In January 1964, The Rolling Stones appeared on the first-ever broadcast of British TV’s Top of the Pops. Three months later, on April 17, 1964, the band released their first album, The Rolling Stones, in the UK, which topped the charts for 12 weeks. Less than a year after that, the single The Last Time was released, becoming the band’s third single to reach number one – and the band went on a tour down under, performing first-ever concerts in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. 

The Rolling Stones had not only become a household name, they had also become a public part of the Sixties phenomenon – seen as youthful and rebellious members of the counterculture. On the front lines of the “British Invasion” of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the UK became popular in the United States, the band influence spread around the world.

Not to sound cliché, but the rest really is history – rock ‘n’ roll history: 66 albums, 107 singles, 240 million records sold and 1,666 concerts. More people have seen The Rolling Stones live than any other band in history. In February 2006, the band played one of the largest concerts ever performed in terms of estimated attendance: a free show to 1.5 million fans at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Just last week Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie played arguably their most historic show ever – a free concert to 1.2 million in Cuba, becoming the first-ever major international rock act to perform on the island, where Western rock music was forbidden under the communist government.

It’s still too early for me to talk about the Stones’ legacy. We haven’t finished yet. There’s one thing that we haven’t yet achieved, and that’s to really find out how long you can do this. It’s still such a joy to play with this band that you can’t really let go of it. So we’ve got to find out, you know?

Keith Richards

Fans still yearn to go see and hear The Rolling Stones, who are still going strong, if the 2-hr, 18-song set in Havana is any indication. And it seems there will be more opportunities for fans to be a part of history – to see one of the greatest bands ever live on stage.

“It’s still too early for me to talk about the Stones’ legacy,” says Richards. “We haven’t finished yet. There’s one thing that we haven’t yet achieved, and that’s to really find out how long you can do this. It’s still such a joy to play with this band that you can’t really let go of it. So we’ve got to find out, you know?”

Exhibitionism – The Rolling Stones, delivered by DHL
Before Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie take the stage again, fans have a unique opportunity to take a walk through the band’s history and get a first-hand look at some of the artwork, costumes and other artifacts that have been part of The Rolling Stones journey and will always be a part of the band’s legacy.

‘Exhibitionism – The Rolling Stones, delivered by DHL’ opened on April 5 at the Saatchi Gallery, London. In fact, the exhibition takes over all of Saatchi’s nine gallery spaces – an immersive experience that shows how The Rolling Stones changed how we experience rock ‘n’ roll.

DHL is immensely proud to be the Presenting and Official Logistics Partner of this historic exhibition.

Join the journey on the Rolling Stones' stream right here in DHL InMotion, and follow the band on Facebook and Twitter.