This year marks 50 years since the formation of The Rolling Stones and, to begin a short series of posts in their honour, we are pleased to welcome renowned novelist – and almost equally renowned Stones fan – Ian Rankin back to The Spectator Arts Blog.
When I first heard the Rolling Stones, I hated them. The album was Let It Bleed. It belonged to my sister’s boyfriend. He had paid one pound-nineteen-and-eleven for it at a record shop in Kirkcaldy. It came with a poster, and the sleeve was interesting. I’d no idea who Delia Smith was, but she’d done a good job of that cake. I was a bit of a poster fanatic – my tiny bedroom was plastered with them, including the ceiling. I got them from the weekly music paper Sounds. There was a free colour poster in the middle pages of every issue. I didn’t know who half the bands were, but the posters went on the wall. Not the Let It Bleed poster though – that was already adorning my sister’s boyfriend’s bedroom.
I put my T Rex singles to one side and tried the album. Dear me, no. Not catchy enough by half. And what were those lyrics about – Monkey Men and Midnight Ramblers and Boston Stranglers? ‘You can come all over me,’ the singer rasped. Thanks but no thanks. I was eleven and just not interested in these comings and goings. But even then I could tell there was something sleazy, pungent and transgressive about the songs. They were messages from a world apparently free of taboos as well as basic hygiene.
By the time I was 13 I had moved from Bolan to prog. I bought Goat’s
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