Vintage Rock Presents: The Rolling Stones – The Complete Albums Guide

In June 1965, set against one of the most celebrated and influential riffs in rock and pop history – which Keith Richards had purportedly come up with in the middle of the night and hurriedly set to tape, with no memory of having done so the following morning – Mick Jagger sullenly bemoaned the fact that ‘a man’ had come on his television to tell him how white his shirts could be. Whoever this man was and whatever shirt-whitening concern he was promoting, this was presumably in some way ‘different’ to The Rolling Stones not only contributing a raucous harmonica-wailing ode to the joys of breakfast cereals that snap, crackle and pop – with a noticeable rawer sound than anything that they had committed to an actual pop disc by that point – to a Juke Box Jury-pastiching advert for Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. We can only assume that this was considered artistically acceptable on the basis that Keith scoffed a bowl of elf-endorsed crisped rice shortly before discovering that mysterious overnight tape.

In fact The Rolling Stones were all over television throughout the sixties, often in spectacularly unlikely places, and you can find a feature by me looking at their assorted small-screen outings in the black and white era in Vintage Rock Presents: The Rolling Stones – The Complete Albums Guide, taking in their own takeover of Juke Box Jury as well as that notorious appearance on Sunday Night At The London Palladium, Mick Jagger’s World In Action interview, Top Of The Pops, Ready Steady Go!, Thank Your Lucky Stars and all manner of regional ITV variety shows that now essentially only exist as names in uninformative schedule listings, not to mention a certain cereal-plugging advert. If that’s still not enough of The Stones on the screen, I’ve also contributed a suitably mind-frazzling look at the story behind Performance, a 1970 – although it was made in 1968 – post-psychedelic thriller starring Mick Jagger in a tale of reality, identity and even gender breaking down that so unnerved Warner Bros. that they tried to avoid releasing it at all. What’s more, I’ve also reappraised several of their albums, including a daring attempt to find anything worth revisiting in 1986’s universally avoided Dirty Work. Did I manage to? You’ll need to read Vintage Rock Presents: The Rolling Stones – The Complete Albums Guide to find out. Although you might want to invest in a 660g box of Rice Krispies first.

You can get Vintage Rock Presents: The Rolling Stones – The Complete Albums Guide in all good newsagents or directly from Anthem Publishing here, and remember – hear them talking krisp, Rice Krispies! Regardless of how white your shirt is.