This course will survey the music of the Rolling Stones, beginning with the roots and first formation of the band in the early 1960s, and following the group through the release of It's Only Rock 'n' Roll in late 1974.
Early 1967
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來自 University of Rochester 的課程
滚石乐队音乐，1962-1974
111 個評分
從本節課中
The Music Matures
1966, singles, compilations, and the live experience.
與講師見面
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Let's spend just a minute talking about, what happened in the, what was happening
in the career of the Stones in the very tail end of 1966 into early 1967.
And this is really all, just pretty much to set the scene for
a discussion of the album between the buttons.
Which kind of crosses over between,
the years there so, let's say a little bit about that.
Between the Buttons released in January of 67 in the UK going to number three.
And in February of 67 in the United States going to number two.
I don't want to say too much about that album right now.
Because we're going to talk about it in the next video, just to sort of show that,
you know, it was recorded at the tail end of 66 and
then released in the, the front end of 67.
The single that went with it was a single called Let's Spend the Night Together.
It, the B-side on that album was Ruby Tuesday, and
that was released in this country in 1967.
Well, I'll spend some more time talking about Let's Spend the Night Together as a,
as a song in one of the strong close-ups coming up in a,
in a couple of videos here.
But I do want to talk a little bit about the controversy around this song and
what might what might have provoked it or how it came to be.
This song, Let's Spend the Night Together, is a song about a guy pleading with
a women to spend the night together and have sexual relations, let's face it.
And he he makes all kinds of promises about being able to please her and
meet her needs both emotionally and sexually.
And this was seen as just a little bit too much for
many radio stations in the United States to go with.
So much so that Let's Spend the Night Together was a number three hit in the UK,
but only made it to number 55 on the charts in the US.
Disc Jockeys in the US who couldn't play Let's Spend the Night Together,
because it was seen as too risque, instead played the B-side,
Ruby Tuesday which went to number one in the United States.
[LAUGH] So we have the the interesting situation of the A-side of
the record going to number three in the UK and
the B-side of the record going to number one in the US.
Both are songs I'm going to talk about in the song close up coming up.
So here come the Stones to the United States in early January 1967.
They're going to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show.
And we've said before how important this Ed Sullivan Show thing is for
being able to promote your, your act.
The Stones now have got a history with Ed Sullivan going back a couple of years now.
So here they are in 67 and they're going to, they're going to do the show and
they're going to do the song Let's Spend the Night Together.
And the censors that Ed Sullivan Show say no,
no you can't say those lyrics, sorry, you, not possible.
Well, we have to.
Well, if you,
you if you, you're not going to be on the show if you don't change these lyrics.
Well, what do you want us, well, how about you say let's spend some time together
instead of let's spend the night together.
okay. So if you go on to YouTube or
wherever you can find this clip and see Mcjagar on the Ed Sullivan Show,
you will see him singing Let's Spend Some Time Together every time it
comes around and when the camera is on him he's sort of rolling his eyes like
an irritated schoolboy that he had to change his lyrics this kind of thing but
the story went around for a long time that he just sang it anyway.
You know, to heck with Ed Sullivan, we're rebels.
But that didn't work out that way at all.
Because these guy knew on which side their bread was buttered.
So you know, they, they, they went along, and they kind of made the face.
And the song was, for all intents and
purposes, banned on the radio, although they had a hit with Ruby Tuesday.
Did he know this was going to happen?
Did the Rolling Stones have it in their head that they
had to reinforce this image of being bad boys?
Were they trying to say things that they thought would be provocative.
That they thought would provoke a kind of critical response from parents.
That would reinforce their bad boy image.
I tend to think they were.
I tend to think they were looking for opportunities to offend.
Not offend their fans, they want the fan, they wanted to,
they were offending the authorities on behalf of their fans.
They were the voice of all those kids who wanted to speak truth to power, but
who couldn't.
And so the Rolling Stones would do it.
And they would show them up for being the kind of hypocritical,
duplicitous kind of people they were in authority.
Well, this would come back to bite them big time, because, you know,
the authorities didn't think that was such a good idea.
To have these stars so, these rockstars so
flaunting, the, the standards and morals of society.
And so, in just a minute,
we'll talk about what happened to the Rolling Stones in early February that
was really pretty much a way in which the establishment struck back at the Stones.
With more force than the Stones probably had struck out [LAUGH] at the authorities.
We'll see that in just a minute.
But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about what was happening in
late 1966 and early 1967 with other groups and, and other music.
Because we are entering the period as we get into early 66, 67 and
then, through the rest of the year, sort of making our way towards
Their Satanic Majesty's Request, that big album, that, where the stones are growing
increasingly to head into psychedelia and these experimental tendencies.
That we've been seeing in aftermath and that we'll talk about in
Between the Buttons are going to get going to get amplified more and more and
there's going to be more of that kind of thing going on.
So just to give the, the little bit of a, a picture of what else was happening and
means that they were part of, The Rolling Stones were part of a movement by a lot of
musicians to take their musician more, to take their music more seriously.
To act more like artists than as craftsman.
You know, the thing about a craftsman is a craftsman doesn't worry
about producing the same quality of product over and over and over again.
It's not a weakness, it's a strength.
But an artist who produces the same work over and
over and over again is seen as derivative.
Or recomposing the same symphony, or repainting the same painting, or
recomposing the same poem, that's considered a weakness.
So you always want try to do something new to push the boundaries of art.
This is the artist mentality.
We see this plenty in music of a lot of other groups.
We've mentioned The Beach Boys we've mentioned The Beatles.
And we certainly see this happening in the release.
So let's just sort of get a little bit of a timeline of what else was going on.
The Beatles had released Revolver at the end of the summer in 1966 and
early 1967 they released a double A-side, Penny Lane and
Strawberry Fields and those really are the kind of first indications of
what's going to be happening with Strawberry Fields.
Both of those tracks or what's going to be happening with Sgt.
Pepper, both of those tracks would have been on Sargent Peppers had it not been
for the fact that they had to get some singles out and they couldn't wait for
the album to be finished so they, they put those out as a double A-side.
Paul's Penny Lane and John's Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane going to
number one in the U.S., number two in the U.K. Strawberry Fields to
number eight in the U.S. number two in the U.K. of February of 1967.
We also have the Beach Boys.
Getting in even before the Beatles in October of 1966 with the track,
Good Vibrations, which went to number one in both the US and the UK and
was easily the most experimental pop single.
You know, effort to have that kind of success, number one on both sides of
the Atlantic and the whole second half of it is basically kind of cut and
paste kind of almost modern music in a certain kind of sense.
So that to set the bar.
For people like the Rolling Stones who would,
who wanted to play in that game as well.
Right, so when we start to look at this music as we get in to 1967,
we've got to realize that the Beatles and the Beach Boys were, were both really kind
of pushing things as, as in terms of making their music more artistic and more.
More serious minded, right?
So let's just keep that in mind.
To, to finish out this video though, let me say a little bit about why I'm choosing
February of 67 to end this week and, and pick up again next week.
The first thing is because we
want to get into the discussion of Between the buttons as our second album this week.
But also, there is a big change that happens.
On, on February the 12th, 1967, there's a drug bust at Keith's house.
We'll talk more about that drug bust and the effects of it when we
get into next week's discussion of the recording that went on in 67.
The fact that they were on trial took up a lot of their energy and
a lot of their attention that,
that really had an effect on their ability to find time to focus in the studio.
The story, as it goes, is that there was a party going on.
There was some acid being dropped some pot being smoked and they got tipped,
the police got tipped off by a local tabloid newspaper that that was happening.
Apparently the story goes that George Harrison had just left
the party before the police arrived.
Some people will suspect that, that the police knew George Harrison was there and
waited for him to leave before they, they acted on this bust.
And Brian Jones was not there,
because Brian Jones was busy working on a soundtrack that he was working on and
couldn't get there in time for the party, and when he called the next morning to
see if he should still come out, said Keith Richards told him on the phone,
don't bother, the cops are here, we're busted.
Well, this whole drug thing really changed things for the stones in a lot of ways.
First, for
the next couple of months, things were kind of confused in their lives.
And they, the, the way forward wasn't really clear for them.
The second time is not, the second thing is theres a sense in which The Stones were
picked on because they were the bad boys that they projected themselves.
To be or they,
because of they way they project those they were made an example of.
Right?
And so when the, the trial actually happens in mid 1967 and
they get a relatively severe sentence for the charges.
I don't want to spoil the story too much for next week but there's a lot of
uproar and a lot of people even within the establishment feel like now you've
gone too far, making these poor kids examples like this, it's just not right.
But it did embitter the stones toward the authorities, and
if during this period we're talking about 65, 66.
They were imaged as bad boys.
That experience starting in February of 1967, turned them into real bad boys.
It turned them into real outlaws.
And there was no more pretending, this is what they were.
so, this is, is one reason why this coming to, coming to February 67 really kind
of marks a, a, convenient end point for us and so, so that's the way we'll do it.
All right, well lets move on to the next video to a discussion of
the album Between the Buttons.
