A Blues Baptism: The two records that brought Mick Jagger and Keith Richards together
The Rolling Stones converged for the first time in 1962. The first stable line-up consisted of five members spanning eight years of age, bound crucially by a shared passion for rhythm and blues. The rhythm section comprised Bill Wyman, the eldest of the group by several years, and Charlie Watts, a versatile percussionist whose musical tastes also bled into jazz realms. Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who dreamt of bringing the blues to the top of the UK charts, led the group together for its first few years.
Impressively, the Stones accomplished their early mission by Christmas 1964, when their cover of Willie Dixon’s ‘Little Red Rooster’ reached the top of the UK Singles Chart. As far as Jones was concerned, the band had achieved its primary objective. Although he had little interest in creating original pop songs, Jagger and Richards were only just getting started on their loftier ambitions of rivalling The Beatles’ pop chart dominion throughout the remainder of the decade.
As Jagger and Richards developed their songwriting skills, they struck notable successes with the 1965 singles ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ reaching number one. Over the next two years, The Rolling Stones followed The Beatles into contemporary psychedelic territory with albums like Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request. However, they soon realised that such colourful and convoluted rock music was a poor fit for the band.
Meanwhile, Jones had become withdrawn, lamenting the band’s embrace of pop music amid drug addiction woes. Ultimately, he was ousted from the band in June 1969, just a month before his tragic death. Subsequently, the Stones conquered the rock ‘n’ roll world, first with Mick Taylor and later Ronnie Wood. Jones would undoubtedly have been dissatisfied with their direction, but Jagger and Richards always remained faithful to a grounding in the blues, even in the disco-infused 1978 release, Some Girls.
Remarkably, Jagger and Richards still tour with The Rolling Stones today, more than six decades after the band’s formation. This pair have come a hell of a long way since their first gig with the Stones and even further since the first time they exchanged glances at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford in the late 1940s.
At age five, the pair’s taste for the blues and rock ‘n’ roll was yet to arrive. Though an old school photograph shows the pair standing close to one another as children, they were never close friends at school before Jagger passed his eleven-plus exam to attend Dartford Grammar School. Meanwhile, Richards enrolled at Dartford Technical High School for Boys, from which he was expelled in 1959 for truancy. It seems the youngster had ambitions outside of academia.
In a pivotal moment that rivals Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s first fateful meeting at a Church fete in Woolton in 1957, Jagger and Richards’ paths crossed again on October 17th, 1961, on platform two of Dartford Railway Station. This time, it was a pair of blues records that brought the pair together. Richards saw some familiar sleeve designs under Jagger’s arm and struck up a friendly conversation as they entered the same carriage.
The guitarist remembered this pivotal moment in a 2023 interview with NPR. “We got into the same carriage together, and I looked at what he was carrying, which was two albums: One was The Best of Muddy Waters, and the other was Rockin’ at the Hops by Chuck Berry. I had never seen anybody possessing such treasures in my life — because these were, you know, Chess Records out of Chicago.”
During the train journey, the pair bonded over their shared passion for Muddy Waters’ electric blues and Chuck Berry’s innovative rock ‘n’ roll. Within a year, they joined Jones’ band, The Rolling Stones, which he had named after the classic Muddy Waters song ‘Rollin’ Stone’. In a letter Richards sent to his aunt later in 1961, he wrote, “Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic, and I don’t mean maybe.”
