Welcome to the first of our special features here on the music of
the Rolling Stones, 1962 to 1974.
In this feature, we'll try to roll out these features one per week.
So, if this one goes with week one of the course and.
I want to start by talking about the books that you may find helpful.
And some of the ones that I've used in my own research preparing material for
the course and through the years.
I first want to welcome you to the Institute for
Popular Music here at the University of Rochester.
I'm in a, a room that is one of our, our classrooms here in
the college music department here so, if you happen to hear some music coming in or
bleeding through some symphonic music, that's because there are other
classes going on here at the same time as we're taping this.
All right. Let's get to,
right to some of the books that are the,
the most useful, will be the most useful to you as you.
Do your own work on the music of The Rolling Stones.
The two books that I have used primarily to pull together the information about
Stones' releases, and recordings, and
all of that kind of thing are these two right here.
The book by Martin Elliot.
This has, this has been through a couple of editions.
This one marked as the 50th anniversary edition,
The Rolling Stones Complete Recording Sessions 1962 to, to 2012.
What Martin has done is, is pulled together all of the songs,
you look them and whatever song you want to know about,
you look up in the index and then he is giving you the chronological.
A recording of when that, when that song was recorded chronologically,
based on when the recording was begun.
So sometimes something that was begun early, say like in 1963,
but not finished for
months later, will appear chronologically at the point where it was begun.
Very very interesting, because he always, he al,
he tends to give stories about some of the circumstances that some of
the musicians who are performing on which track and that kind of thing, so it's a,
it's a, a, a great reference I, I use this one an awful lot.
A second one that's also fantastic is this one by James and Carol Bernson
called It's Only Rock and Roll, the ultimate guide to the Rolling Stones.
This one approaches the recordings in a different way.
In this one he gives you a, what he calls a sessionography.
So in other words, he organizes it according to the various sessions that
the Stones did and then lists the songs that were recorded at the time.
So that's great for getting a sense of when they were in the recording studio.
A lot of the songs that you find in Martinelli it's books, sort of
clumped together into some of the sessions that are listed in the Con book and
Burnsen books, so it's fantastic.
Not only that, but he gives you a list of television appearances, and tours and
dates and this kinds of things.
So you can really see what was going on in the stones.
A career in addition to recording,
sao between the two of these, a fantastic reference books.
In terms of the Stones telling the story in their own words this boo,u h,
which you can see has a sticker on it because it was it's kind of a remainder,
sort of coffee table.
A book, I've got a couple of these hanging around the house.
This one is called According to The Rolling Stones, it's probably the closest
thing to, if you know, The Beatles Anthology, where there's lots of talking
to The Stones about their careers and that kind of thing and lot's of great pictures.
So, that's a wonderful kind of account of the history of the group.
Although as you can see, it's a big book.
So, if you decide to get into this book, plan to have a,
a very comfortable chair as you do.
Another book that deals with the history of the,
of the group in the great kind of way is the Andy Babiuk and Greg Prevost book
called Rolling Stones Gear, All the Stones' Instruments from Stage to Studio.
Andy Babiuk, as it turns out, is another guy who lives here in Rochester and
so I know Andy, we've had him in here in this at a couple of times.
This happens to be an autographed copy because the local book store here
Andy did a book signing not too long ago when this book was released.
Here we get the story of the Rolling Stones but
told almost in parallel with the gear they were using and me,
being such a gear hound, you know, with guitars and amps and this kind of thing.
That's endlessly fascinating.
And so there are great pictures of, of, pictures of of the, sometimes the actual
instruments or instruments that are very close to the ones the Stones played.
So, from that point of view very, very interesting.