![\"Keith](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Keith-Richards-Charlie-Watts-Mick-Jagger-Bill-Wyman-Mick-Taylor-1974-Rolling-Stones-Far-Out-Magazine.jpeg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sun 25 May 2025 22:00, UK <\/p>\n
Lou Reed once said, \u201cI don\u2019t think the British should play rock \u2018n\u2019 roll<\/a>.\u201d Suspecting this quip was at least partly ironic, Bill Boggs, who was interviewing him, followed up by asking him what they should play. \u201cI don\u2019t think they should play anything,\u201d was his curt reply. While \u2018anything\u2019 is a little extreme, perhaps he was right on the former point. <\/p>\n What is British rock \u2018n\u2019 roll? The phrase itself feels like an oxymoron. Swagger, attitude and pumped-up blues are not facets we excel at, favouring beige, politeness and the abject acceptance of failure instead. While America was channelling the liberation of the 1950s into the visceral pandemonium of Elvis Presley, the Brits were going cockahoop about a bucktooth clown from Wigan called George Formby, singing about how he\u2019d just seen a pair of tits during his lowly cleaning windows duties. <\/p>\n However, the one thing we are good at, as our unfortunate colonial past proves, is theft and assimilation. Two things demonstrate that better than anything: the fact that tea, the ultimate British drink, is not from Britain, and The Rolling Stones, the ultimate American rock band, are from Britain.<\/p>\n When the Stones were just starting out, their only aim was to become the best blues cover band in London. According to Paul McCartney<\/a>, it was only their size that really changed. \u201cI\u2019m not sure I should say it,\u201d he told The New Yorker, \u201cBut they\u2019re a blues cover band, that\u2019s sort of what the Stones are. I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.\u201d Pick the barbs from his comment, and you\u2019re left with a grain of truth.<\/p>\n The Rolling Stones have always been rooted in the blues. Rock \u2018n\u2019 roll itself is merely an electrified permutation of the blues, so it makes sense. Most British bands couldn\u2019t avoid throwing in a bit of Blighty\u2019s brass band sound (see \u2018Penny Lane\u2019), literary preoccupation with paradoxically pleasant melancholia (see \u2018Waterloo Sunset\u2019), or a bit of working class lunacy (see \u2018My Generation\u2019). But the Stones took a sincere approach to honouring the stateliness of the blues.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody said, \u2018Don\u2019t do it, because you\u2019ll destroy your career\u2019,\u201d Bill Wyman recalls of the anti-blues feedback that they constantly received from those apparently \u2018in the know\u2019. However, Brian Jones was propelled by a vision, and he was determined to bring this dream to fruition. \u201cHe created the band,\u201d bassist Wyman affirms, \u201cit was his idea to play blues when blues was unheard of in England.\u201d<\/p>\n Granted, it most certainly wasn\u2019t unheard of in England. It was, in fact, so resoundingly celebrated that it transformed our culture, as the British Invasion would soon prove. However, very few artists dared to simply replicate it. But the Stones wanted to be as true to it as any young, middle-class English obsessives could be.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/The-Rolling-Stones-Mick-Jagger-Keith-Richards-Mick-Taylor-Bill-Wyman-Charlie-Watts-Far-Out-Magazine-.jpeg\")
<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n