INTRODUCTION: THE ROLLING STONES

You don't grow up with the Rolling Stones. If you’re like me, they’re just there, as always, working on the new album, maybe planning a summer tour. Sometimes you think about them, sometimes you don’t. And maybe that’s what makes them so important: you can’t throw away a part of your life.

Everybody’s got their own stories. I'm 27. When I was 11,1 traded my copy of “Your Nose Is Gonna Grow” for “Time Is On My Side.” Crumbled up the picture sleeve and stuck the 45 in my record box, too. Later, when I was old enough, my mother handed me $2.99 in a department store and told me I could buy any album I wanted. Came back with a copy of Got Live If You Want It, it had all the hits. “Oh David," said mom, “not these people!”

And on it goes. Wherever anyone went, the Rolling Stones went, too. Jagger didn’t sing, he scowled. You couldn’t understand the words. You sang along anyway.

Stories? Say you’re a 15-year-old brat and you hang out with your friends. You’ve made a deal: let’s all get fucked before we’re 16. And you’re still 15, at a rock festival in Florida, and one of your friends runs to find you in the crowd. Says follow him, there’s a van full of hippies and some girl is drugged up and doing it with everybody. Everybody, come on! And you say no, and he laughs and runs back there, and you feel funny but you’re there to watch the Rolling Stones and it’s late and cold as hell and you have to take a leak and you end up peeing on your feet while the Stones run through “Carol” and later they call you a jerk for missing out but you don’t think you really have.

And so what do the Rolling Stones mean? It depends. Maybe you thought “Under My Thumb” and “Stupid Girl” were great songs, funny putdowns, maybe you applied them to your life. And maybe you grew older, thought “Bitch” was stretching it too far, thought a Black And Blue ad wasn’t funny at all. Maybe you changed and other people didn’t. Maybe.

But the Stones have always been there, in every aspect of youf life. Me? When my parents told me they were getting divorced, I sulked for months and listened to Their Satanic Majesties Request. And though I’m the only human to ever admit it, it’s my favorite Stones album. That’s the way things work: you’ve got your own album to do. Maybe Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers— maybe that part of your life finished with Aftermath. It doesn’t matter. There are people out there who think it all began with Some Girls, arid that, ultimately, is where the magic lies.

In this Special Edition of CREEM, some people talk with the Rolling Stones while others talk about them. It began in 1964, when England’s Newest Hitmakers provided the only real alternative to the Beatles, and it continues now. Seventeen years later. There’s so much to say about this band, volumes that have already been written, volumes that will be written later. For now, though, here it is, and though you’ll like it or you won’t like it, remember: they said it was “only” rock ’n’ roll. But you never really knew if they meant it.