Back in 1964 the Stones embarked on their first U.S. tour, in support of their self-titled debut record. Sixty years later they are, astoundingly, back it at. Will the 2024 U.S. tour be the last for band that has brought satisfaction —and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction“—to so many? It certainly could be, although at this it seems unwise to ever question the longevity of a band that has been carrying on this long.

Of course, as the photos in this collection show, the band has changed over the years. In early photos from Walter Daran and LIFE staff photographer John Loengard, the band’s lineup includes Brian Jones, a founding member who would dismissed from the band in 1969 and later drown in a swimming pool. Also shown in photos across the band’s eras is Charlie Watts, the elegant drummer who was there from the beginning and died in 2021.

But all these decades later, frontmen Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are still at it, despite both being 80 years old. Their longevity is a rock and roll miracle, when you think about it, surviving as they have in a business that has a way of chewing people up.

In 2024 the Stones released a new album, their first since 2005 and their 31st studio effort overall, called Hackney Diamonds. What else would they do but get out on the road to support it?

The Rolling Stones performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1965.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Rolling Stones perform on a chandelier-filled set on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show,’ May 2, 1965. From left, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, singer Mick Jagger, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Drummer Charlie Watts during a Rolling Stones performance at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, 1966.

Walter Daran/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Jones during a Rolling Stones performance at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, 1966.

Walter Daran/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mick Jagger performed during a 1966 Rolling Stones concert.

Walter Daran/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones performed at Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, 1985.

DMI

Mick Jagger and Tina Turner performed together at Live Aid in Philadelphia, 1985.

DMI

The Rolling Stones in concert: Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman.

DMI

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones performed in 1989.

DMI

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

DMI

Mick Jagger during the Rolling Stones’ ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour, 1994.

DMI

Mick Jagger performed during The Rolling Stones’ 1994 “Voodoo Lounge” tour.

DMI

Keith Richards took center stage during the Rolling Stones’ ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour, 1994.

DMI

Keith Richards during the 1994 “Voodoo Lounge” tour, 1994.

DMI

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones during band’s ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour, 1994.

DMI

The post The Ageless Rolling Stones, Through the Ages appeared first on LIFE.

Of the many things that Mick Jagger has said in public—aside, that is, from the lyrical improvisations and the onstage declarations he has made across more than 2,000 live performances over 59 years—among the more enduring is this bit of bravura from 1975: “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 45,” he told People magazine. Jagger was 31, and he and the Rolling Stones had recorded the game changer 10 years before, in the early stages of a decade in which the band reframed the blues, the British Invasion and rock ’n’ roll itself.

The hubris of Mick’s comment, the implication that there were other worlds to be conquered and, more ominously, that the Stones might leave behind the world they had forged, struck the metaphorical chord. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was the band’s axe-grinding soul: Keith Richards came up with the hook and the title while drifting to sleep one night and recorded it, bare bones, on a cassette player by his bed. Jagger later wrote the lyrics poolside at a Tampa hotel while the band was on tour. Add drums. Add bass. Book it at 3:45. When the song landed in America in June of ’65, it went to No. 1 and stayed there. 

Jagger certainly was singing “Satisfaction” at age 45 (actually he’d just turned 46), snapping it out as a set-closer on the Stones’ bristling Steel Wheels tour in 1989. He was singing it onstage in 2015 as well, as a guest of Taylor Swift, who was born in 1989. Over the many years, Jagger’s “I’d rather be dead” pronouncement evolved away from arrogance and toward happy irony. In 2018, when Jagger and Richards both turned 75 and the Stones began a tour with dates in the U.K., there was “Satisfaction” on the set list—the predetermined final encore, the classic and quintessential rock ’n’ roll song.

Despite the portentous demise of guitarist Brian Jones in 1969 and the band’s historical fondness for hard drugs, despite the departure of backbone bassist Bill Wyman in the early ’90s, and despite the Keith-vs.-Mick feuds that have long dotted the landscape, time has remained improbably on the Rolling Stones’ side. Up until the moment of drummer Charlie Watts’s death, at 80, on Aug. 24, 2021, the band was not only still intact, it was still more or less doing what it had always done. Their 2016 album Blue & Lonesome, by way of example, is made up of covers of songs written by the same folks the Stones were covering 50-some years earlier—blues colossi like Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf.

And of the 19 songs that anchored that 2018 tour, 17 of them were Jagger/Richards numbers composed during the 1960s and early 1970s, soul-lifters off of one monumental album after another (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers . . .) Another song on the list was 1981’s “Start Me Up,” which, along with “Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” hinges upon one of the Richards riffs that have burrowed unstoppably into auditory history. Keith, in 2018, was still out there on his Fender, after the sound. Mick remained glorious: preening and plaintive. Charlie Watts still drove the action, cool and swinging on his simple kit. And there was Ronnie Wood playing the tasty guitar. Ladies and gentlemen: the Rolling Stones.

They had aged by then, to be sure, and some fans grumbled about those U.K. shows. A ticket at 250 quid? Reviewers allowed that there were some imprecisions in the gigs, the occasional softened edge. Yet by and by the crowd and the critics could not help themselves. They’d been elevated. And they were acutely aware, as the old Stones ripped through the songs that will never die—“Sugar,” “Shelter,” “Sympathy”—that even now you could see and hear straight into their beating hearts. Straight into, yes, that’s right, wait for it, the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world.

LIFE’s special issue The Rolling Stones: Their Rock ‘N’ Roll Life is available online:

© Stefan M. Prager/Vanit.de/Retna Ltd.

The Rolling Stones performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1965.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Rolling Stones performed on The ‘Ed Sullivan Show, 1965; from left, From left, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, singer Mick Jagger, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts.

John Loengard/Life Pictures/Getty Images

The Rolling Stones, 1966

courtesy Art Kane Archive

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