The Stones’ thirty studio albums, thirty-three live albums, twenty-nine compilation albums, a hundred and twenty-one singles, three EP singles, thirty-two box sets, forty-eight video albums and seventy-seven music videos, three Grammy Awards and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award are not all mentioned here. For the sake of simplicity, I have confined myself (give or take) to the thirty studio albums and forty best-known single releases … with the odd exception of a significant solo album, live recording or compilation. This book being neither Stones encyclopaedia nor definitive work but my personal take, there were no rules. I compiled this chronology as a simple aide-memoire: to give an overview of the sequence, cause and effect of events and occurrences both global and personal, and of significant tours and recordings that shaped the Stones era and underpin their life and times.
1930s
24 October 1936 Bill Wyman born William George Perks, Lewisham, South London.
18 July 1938 ‘Stu’ born Ian Andrew Robert Stewart, Pittenweem, East Neuk of Fife, Scotland.
1939–45 World War II.
1940s
2 June 1941 Charlie Watts born Charles Robert Watts, Bloomsbury, London.
28 February 1942 Brian Jones born Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
26 July 1943 Mick Jagger born Michael Philip Jagger, Dartford, Kent.
18 December 1943 Keith Richards born, Dartford, Kent.
1 June 1947 Ronnie Wood born Ronald David Wood, Hillingdon, Middlesex.
September 1948 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards enrol at Wentworth Primary School, Dartford. They first get to know each other c. 1950.
17 January 1949 Mick Taylor born Michael Kevin Taylor, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
1950s
1953 Brian Jones proceeds from his private Dean Close Preparatory School, Cheltenham, to Cheltenham Grammar School.
1954 Mick Jagger passes 11-plus exam, proceeds to Dartford Grammar School. Keith Richards enrols at Dartford Technical School, moving on to Sidcup Art College.
1 November 1955 Vietnam War commences, exacerbated by Cold War hostilities between JFK and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Direct American involvement continues for eighteen years, until 1973. The war will eventually end in April 1975.
1 December 1955 Rosa Parks, later known as ‘the mother of the civil rights movement’, is arrested for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1960s
1960–73 The era of the sixties counterculture, erupting in reaction to US military intervention in Vietnam, influences songwriters and recording artists for years to come.
July 1960 Mick and Keith renew their acquaintance on a platform at Dartford railway station.
Summer 1961 Armed with seven O Levels and two A Levels, eighteen-year-old Mick leaves school. He later enrols at the London School of Economics to read finance and accounting. Brian Jones, as Elmo Lewis, debuts as a musician at London’s Ealing Club. Mick, Keith and Brian become flatmates in a squalid property on Edith Grove in London’s Chelsea.
19 March 1962 Bob Dylan releases first, eponymous LP. Initiates anti-war stance, predicting route that contemporary popular music will take.
12 July 1962 Stones’ debut gig, at the Marquee Jazz Club, Oxford Street, London.
16–28 October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the world has come to full-scale nuclear war.
21 October 1962 Mick, Keith, Brian, Jimmy Page, Alexis Korner, Paul Jones and John Mayall attend the only UK show of the First American Folk Blues Festival on that year’s European tour, at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. This was the first major concert in the UK to feature American bluesmen. They see Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Willie Dixon. Dixon says, ‘I left lots of tapes when I was over there in London. I told them anybody who wanted to could go and make a blues song. That’s how the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds got their songs.’
12 December 1962 An early incarnation of the Stones: Mick Jagger Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, Ricky Fenson and Tony Chapman perform at Keith’s alma mater, Sidcup Art College.
12 January 1963 First performance by the classic Stones line-up with Charlie on drums, at the Ealing Club.
2 February 1963 Charlie comes on board as the Stones’ staff drummer, the post he will hold for the rest of his life. The Stones’ acting manager Giorgio Gomelsky lands them Sunday afternoon residency at Crawdaddy Club, Richmond.
22 March 1963 Beatles’ debut LP Please Please Me released.
May 1963 Recommended by the Beatles, nineteen-year-old Andrew Loog Oldham becomes the Stones’ manager. Gomelsky is backstabbed. After initially trying to copy the Beatles’ neat style, Oldham has the brainwave to promote the band as the nasty, dirty antithesis of Liverpool’s finest. They sign, favourably, for Decca, famous for having rejected the Beatles. Keith will be billed as ‘Richard’ on early releases. He later reverts. Stu, an original member of the Stones, is ejected from their line-up at Oldham’s behest. He is retained as road manager and pianist.
June 1963 Debut single ‘Come On’ released.
28 August 1963 Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr leads a peaceful interracial march in Washington DC of more than two hundred thousand people. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, he demands equal justice for all.
29 Sep – 3 Nov 1963 Starter British tour, performing Chicago blues and Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley numbers. They are part of a classic ‘package tour’, this one headlined by the Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley. Little Richard replaces the Everlys along the way. This opportunity to perform alongside some of their earliest idols is priceless. The Stones perform two ten-minute shows at each date. The Pretty Things, an early British R&B group, form at Sidcup Art College. One of its founder members is Dick Taylor, a student at the college and an early Stones bassist.
November 1963 ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ single, a Lennon-McCartney composition gifted to the Stones, released.
22 November 1963 President John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States, assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He is the eighth sitting president to die in office, and the fourth to be assassinated.
1 January 1964 Stones are the first band to play on BBC’s Top of the Pops TV chart show, performing ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’.
6–27 January 1964 First official British concert tour.
February 1964 ‘Not Fade Away’, a cover of Buddy Holly’s Bo Diddley-esque song, released as a single. Oldham, perceiving where the real money lies, directs his boys to write their own songs, which he will produce.
7 February 1964 Beatles touch down in New York for their historic first appearance on CBS TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show watched by half the population of America. The Stones will soon follow suit, but will make a somewhat different first impression.
8 Feb – 7 Mar 1964 Second British tour.
16 April 1964 Debut LP The Rolling Stones released in the UK. The same LP appears in the US as The Rolling Stones (England’s Newest Hit Makers) on 30 May.
June 1964 ‘It’s All Over Now’ released. First UK No. 1 hit. First US tour … in their own words, ‘a disaster’. The 5–20 June outing concludes with two shows at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. The band appear on The Hollywood Palace variety show, and are mocked by the host, crooner Dean Martin (who might have felt threatened by them).
10–11 June 1964 They record at Chess Studios, Chicago, where they meet some of their idols including Muddy Waters. ‘As Tears Go By’, sung by seventeen-year-old Marianne Faithfull, released. Written by Mick, Keith and Andrew Oldham, one of their earliest original compositions. Marianne achieves a No. 9 UK hit with it. The Stones later record the song, and perform it live.
2 July 1964 US president Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To end discrimination based on race, religion, colour and national origin, as proposed by John F. Kennedy in 1963.
1–22 August 1964 Third British tour. They also play one gig in the Netherlands and some concerts in the Channel Islands.
5 Sep – 11 Oct 1964 Fourth British tour.
14 October 1964 Charlie Watts marries girlfriend Shirley Ann Shepherd, a sculpture student at the Royal College of Art. They remain together for nearly fifty-seven years, until his death in 2021.
17 October 1964 Second US LP 12 X 5 released in America only.
25 October 1964 Stones’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the US, following which he bans them. ‘I promise you they’ll never be back on our show,’ declares Sullivan. ‘It took me seventeen years to build this show, and I’m not going to have it destroyed in a matter of weeks.’ The host re-books them to appear the following year.
30 Oct – 15 Nov 1964 Second US tour.
November 1964 ‘Little Red Rooster’ single released.
1965–67 The Stones’ heyday: their singles chart success will have peaked by the end of the decade.
6–8 January 1965 They perform their first Irish dates.
15 January 1965 The Rolling Stones No. 2 LP, recorded at Chess Studios Chicago and RCA Studios LA, released UK.
22 Jan – 16 Feb 1965 Their first Far East tour is a package featuring Roy Orbison, the Newbeats, and Ray Columbus and the Invaders. They visit Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.
February 1965 ‘The Last Time’ single released, second UK No. 1, US No. 9. It is the first Jagger/Richards composition to make it to No. 1 on the UK chart. The songwriting pennies drop.
13 February 1965 The Rolling Stones, Now! LP released US.
5–18 March 1965 British tour.
26 Mar – 2 Apr 1965 Scandinavian tour.
16–18 April 1965 The band play an Easter weekend ‘mini-residency’ at L’Olympia, Paris. Twenty-three-year-old Italian-born German/Swedish/Swiss model Anita Pallenberg is living in the city, attends one of their shows, and meets Brian for the first time when a group of beautiful young hipsters goes partying afterwards. In later life, Anita never references that first encounter, preferring to claim that she and Brian first crossed paths in Munich, five months later.
23 Apr – 29 May 1965 US tour.
2 May 1965 Stones’ second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing ‘The Last Time’: the first time they perform a Jagger/Richards original on the show.
June 1965 ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, recorded during the US tour, released. No. 1 UK, US, Germany, Netherlands, Australia; No. 3 France and Canada. Their first international No. 1 hit and a global commercial success. Andrew Loog Oldham brings American manager Allen Klein on board, to re-negotiate Stones’ contract with Decca. Oldham has a rock superstar drug habit. Klein gradually assumes control.
15–18 June 1965 Scottish dates.
24–29 June 1965 Further Scandinavian dates.
30 July (UK)/24 Sep (US) 1965 Out of Our Heads LP, produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, released.
September 1965 ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ single released.
3–4 September 1965 Second Irish tour.
11–17 September 1965 European tour. At Munich’s Circus Krone Bau, the Stones topping bill featuring the Spencer Davis Group and the Troggs before a riotous audience. Brian officially meets Anita Pallenberg for the first time. The encounter takes place backstage, the model armed with hashish and amyl nitrate.
24 Sep – 17 Oct 1965 British tour.
29 Oct – 5 Dec 1965 American tour.
December 1965 ‘As Tears Go By’ single Stones version released.
4 December 1965 December’s Children (And Everybody’s) LP, produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, released US.
February 1966 ‘19th Nervous Breakdown’ single released.
18 Feb – 1 Mar 1966 Australasian tour.
4 March 1966 Brian, Anita, Mick and Paul McCartney attend the twenty-first birthday party of Irish Guinness heir The Hon. Tara Browne on the family estate at Luggala, County Wicklow.
26 Mar – 5 Apr 1966 European tour.
15 Apr – 2 Jul 1966 Aftermath LP released.
May 1966 ‘Paint It, Black’ single released. No. 1 UK, US, Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia; No. 2 Germany; No. 7 France.
24 Jun – 28 Jul 1966 US tour.
July 1966 ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ and ‘Lady Jane’ singles released. The former is one of the first-ever pop songs to address the problem of prescription medication abuse.
September 1966 ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?’ single released. The first Stones single to feature brass horns. The original American sleeve shows them dressed in drag, eighteen years before Queen caused controversy by dragging up for their single ‘I Want to Break Free’ (1984). ‘Have You Seen Your Mother …’ is supported by one of the first official pop videos (Queen do not have that distinction with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ either), directed by counterculture luminary Peter Lorrimer Whitehead.
23 Sep – 9 Oct 1966 British tour. Opened by Ike & Tina Turner, the Kings of Rhythm Orchestra, the Yardbirds and Peter Jay and the New Jaywalkers.
17 December 1966 Driving his (yellow/turquoise/light blue/white, reports vary) Lotus Elan through South Kensington with his nineteen-year-old girlfriend Suki Potier, father-of-two Tara Browne, who is under the influence, crashes at high speed and is killed. John Lennon commemorates him in the Beatles song ‘A Day In The Life’. He will later deny that the song is specifically about the Guinness heir, saying that Tara was ‘just in his mind’ when he wrote the lyrics.
In October 2021, ahead of publication of his autobiographical two-volume work The Lyrics, Paul McCartney again claims that he wrote the opening lines, not Lennon. Having previously stated that the song was about a politician, he now supports John’s explanation that the lyrics were inspired by Browne. ‘I wrote about him in “A Day In The Life”,’ says Macca. ‘He blew his mind out in a car/He didn’t notice that the lights had changed’. It later emerges that the car was not Browne’s: he worked with Chelsea Lotus dealer Len Street, and the car was one Street had in the garage at the time. Potier escapes unhurt. She will become involved with Brian Jones, moving into his Sussex home, Cotchford Farm. After Brian’s death, she will marry Robert Ho and will live in Hong Kong, only to die in a car crash while on holiday in Portugal, when the couple’s youngest daughter is only two.
1967 Abortion and homosexuality legalised in the UK. Evolving attitudes lead to various Acts of Parliament. The 1967 Sexual Offences Act, decriminalising homosexual activity between consenting males over twenty-one, and the 1967 Abortion Act, legalising abortion in certain circumstances, will be followed by the 1969 Divorce Reform Act and the 1970 Equal Pay Act. The band’s drug use is becoming excessive. British Sunday newspaper the News of the World is on their case. The first instalment of a special exposé goes for the jugulars of Pete Townshend, the Moody Blues, Donovan and Ginger Baker. The second instalment, published 5 February 1967, focuses on the Stones. But the paper mistakes Brian Jones for Mick in the feature. Mick sues for libel. American Rolling Stone magazine launches, infuriating Mick Jagger, both for stealing his band’s name and for putting the Beatles on the cover three times in one year. Mick threatens to sue, but is placated with ownership of a new British edition. It folds within months, after an interview with Bob Dylan is heralded on the front cover with his name spelled ‘Bob Dillon’.
January 1967 ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ and ‘Ruby Tuesday’ singles released. The latter No. 3 in UK, No. 1 in US.
20 Jan – 11 Feb 1967 Between the Buttons LP released. Andrew Loog Oldham’s final album as Stones’ producer.
9 Feb – 23 Oct 1967 Their Satanic Majesties Request album recorded at Olympic Studios, London. Following the departure of Andrew Loog Oldham, the band self-produces. The recording process is a slapdash, disorganised free-for-all that the band later acknowledges.
12 February 1967 Sussex police raid Keith’s house Redlands. No arrests during the raid. Mick, Keith and art dealer Robert Fraser later charged with drug offences. Andrew Loog Oldham, terrified of his own likely fate, flees to the US and leaves them to it. The raid becomes infamous as ‘The Mars Bar Incident’, and for Mick’s girlfriend Marianne Faithfull being attired in nothing but a fur rug.
March 1967 Mick and Marianne, Keith, Brian and his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and friends travel to Morocco. Brian abuses Anita, who switches allegiance to Keith. Keith and Anita become the danger-couple for the next twelve years.
25 Mar – 17 Apr 1967 European tour: the last Stones tour with Brian Jones, and one of the first times a Western rock band performs in Eastern Europe. On 13 April they perform two shows at the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland, where the fans riot. Visiting Soviet officials are not impressed, and the Stones will not return to the Eastern Bloc for many years. Other destinations on this tour include Greece and Italy.
10 May 1967 Brian’s house raided by police. Brian arrested and charged with cannabis possession. Three of the five Stones are now facing drugs charges. Mick and Keith are both tried at the end of June. Mick sentenced to three months behind bars for possession of amphetamines. Keith found guilty of allowing cannabis to be smoked in his home, and sentenced to one year. Both are incarcerated, only to be released the next day on bail, pending appeal. The Times publishes celebrated piece by editor William Rees-Mogg, headlined ‘Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’, suggesting that the two Stones had been harshly dealt with because of their fame.
Jun – Jul 1967 Monterey International Music Festival, the world’s first official Rockfest, staged over three days in California. The Who and Eric Burdon and the Animals represent the UK. The Beatles and the Stones are conspicuously absent. During the Summer of Love, 100,000 hippies descend on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. The hippie revolution is born.
31 July 1967 Keith’s conviction overturned in court of appeal, and Mick’s sentence reduced to conditional discharge.
November 1967 Brian tried and sentenced to a prison term. During his December appeal, receives a £1,000 fine, placed on probation for three years, and ordered to seek medical help.
December 1967 ‘She’s a Rainbow’ single from Their Satanic Majesties Request released.
8 December 1967 Their Satanic Majesties Request LP released simultaneously in UK and US. It is panned by the critics. The newly-psychedelic Stones are accused of trying to emulate the Beatles and their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Its cover art is by Michael Cooper, who also created the cover for Sgt. Pepper.
1968 Stones create a mobile recording studio in a van, enabling them to record wherever and whenever they want. ‘The mobile’ is also used by other artists, including Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Bavarian aristocrat Prince Rupert Loewenstein (1933–2014) is engaged as the band’s new financial manager, acting for them for nearly forty years until 2007. He would later be credited with transforming the Stones into ‘a global brand and one of the world’s richest bands’. Prince Rupert packs them off into tax exile in the South of France, funnels their earnings through companies in the Netherlands, and persuades them to rehearse in Canada rather than the US to reduce their tax bill. Only in the 1980s will the Stones make ‘proper money’. Jagger will be outraged and distraught when Prince Rupert publishes his autobiography in 2013, in which he reveals highly personal details about the band’s financial affairs. He dies of Parkinson’s disease the following year, aged eighty.
17 Mar – 25 Jul 1968 Beggars Banquet album recorded, at Olympic Studios London and Sunset Sound LA. The first Stones album produced by Jimmy Miller, who will reshape their sound into the early seventies, it is also the last Stones album to be released during Brian Jones’s lifetime. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ is the stand-out.
May 1968 ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ single released. No. 1 UK and Germany and on some US charts; No. 2 Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Australia.
Summer 1968 Mick films controversial crime drama Performance, co-starring James Fox, Anita Pallenberg and teenage French stray Michèle Breton. Anita, now Keith’s girlfriend, performs sex scenes with Mick and a threesome with Breton, which she later admits were consummated. Keith suspects so during filming and is deranged with jealousy, his relationship with Mick suffering as a result. The film’s graphic sexual content and violence render it ‘too shocking for the sixties’, and it is shelved until 1970. It is later claimed that Breton, who is embroiled in a ménage-à-trois with director Cammell and his wife, was under the age of consent during the sex scenes. Anita becomes addicted to heroin during the production. Donald Cammell abandons Breton in Paris. He will shoot himself dead in 1996. Keith never forgives Donald for the betrayal in directing actual sex between Mick and Anita. He will later describe Performance as ‘the best work Cammell ever did, except for shooting himself’.
August 1968 ‘Street Fighting Man’ single released.
Nov 1968 – Nov 1969 Recording of the Let It Bleed album, at Olympic Studios London, Elektra and Sunset Sound LA. Notable for the implosion, collapse and firing of Brian Jones during the album’s creation.
6 December 1968 Beggars Banquet LP released UK & US. Country and blues-inspired, it represents a return to their roots.
11 December 1968 The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus concert show performed and filmed in Wembley, West London, but not released until 1996. A DVD version will appear in 2004.
February 1969 ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ single released.
22 Mar 1969 – 31 Oct 1970 Sticky Fingers album recorded in Muscle Shoals Sound Studios Alabama, Olympic Studios and Trident Studios, London, and Stargroves, Mick’s mansion, Newbury, Berkshire. Produced by Jimmy Miller.
June 1969 Brian is melting from the band. His drug use is destroying him. He cannot get a US visa. Mick and Keith visit him at his home to inform him that they want him to leave the band. Brian agrees to leave the Rolling Stones.
28 June 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City denote dawn of modern gay rights movement.
July 1969 ‘Honky Tonk Women’ single released. No. 1 UK, US, Switzerland, Australia; No. 2 Germany.
3 July 1969 Brian drowns in his pool in mysterious circumstances at Cotchford Farm, East Sussex, aged twenty-seven. Conspiracy theories rage to this day, about what was probably not murder but a tragic accident.
5 July 1969 The Stones in the Park free outdoor festival in Hyde Park, London, before an audience of ‘between a quarter and half a million’. The pre-planned show is now billed as a tribute to Brian. Guitarist Mick Taylor makes his live debut as Brian’s replacement. The Stones are introduced for the first time as ‘The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the World’.
20 July 1969 NASA astronaut Commander Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 space mission.
15–18 August 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair, Bethel, New York. The Stones are not available.
30–31 August 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, starring Bob Dylan. Beatles John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr attend, along with Keith Richards and Eric Clapton.
7 Nov – 6 Dec 1969 US tour, supported by Ike & Tina Turner, Terry Reid and B.B. King, substituted by Chuck Berry on some of the dates. Later described as ‘history’s first mythic rock’n’roll tour’.
5 December 1969 Let It Bleed LP released UK and US. Their last album of the sixties and the first of five consecutive No. 1 albums in the UK. ‘Gimme Shelter’, ‘Midnight Rambler’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ feature, with choral intro by the London Bach Choir.
6 December 1969 Altamont Speedway Free Festival, Altamont, N. California, marking ‘the end of the sixties’. The Stones perform here at the conclusion of their US tour. Black fan Meredith Hunter is murdered, and several other fans die. It will be described as ‘the most shameful episode in rock history’. Allen Klein is fired.
1970s
1970 The Stones launch their own company. A legal settlement later grants Klein the rights to most of the band’s songs recorded prior to 1971.
30 Aug – 9 Oct 1970 European tour.
4 September 1970 Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!: The Rolling Stones in Concert album released. Widely considered to be the greatest live album of all time.
18 September 1970 Jimi Hendrix dies in London apartment hotel, aged twenty-seven.
4 October 1970 Janis Joplin dies in Los Angeles Landmark Motor Hotel, aged twenty-seven.
4–26 March 1971 UK tour.
April 1971 The Stones relocate to the South of France as tax exiles, all departing before 5 April, the end of the British tax year. There ensues a six-month house party at Keith’s rented mansion Villa Nellcôte, the original hazy summer of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. With the help of their mobile studio, Keith’s home from home becomes their recording base. The result will be Exile on Main St., arguably their greatest album. How they got it together to record it at all remains a mystery. The band have been tax exiles ever since. The UK is no longer their primary residence. Their holding company Promogroup maintains offices in the Netherlands and the Caribbean. It is reported that they have paid a mere 1.6% tax on their total earnings of £242 million over the past twenty years.
April 1971 ‘Brown Sugar’ single from Sticky Fingers released. No. 1 US, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada; No. 2 UK.
23 April 1971 Sticky Fingers LP released. First album on their own Rolling Stones label. First public outing of the lip and tongue logo: one of the most recognisable logos (not just pop logos) in history, used on everything they have produced (reworked a little) ever since. The first of eight consecutive No. 1 studio albums in the US. Andy Warhol designs the cover, which features a suggestive working zip.
12 May 1971 Mick Jagger marries pregnant Nicaraguan actress Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías in Saint-Tropez, France, in a star-studded bunfight of a wedding that will later prompt the bride to reflect that her marriage ended on her wedding day. In 1978, after seven years, Mrs Jagger files for divorce on grounds of adultery.
June 1971 ‘Wild Horses’ single released.
3 July 1971 On second anniversary of Brian Jones’s death, The Doors frontman Jim Morrison found dead in his bath in Paris. He was twenty-seven.
April 1972 ‘Tumbling Dice’ single from Exile on Main St. released.
12 May 1972 Exile on Main St. album released, on Mick’s first wedding anniversary.
Jun – Jul 1972 US and Canada tour: a huge US tour to promote the new album, which becomes known as the ‘American STP’ (Stones Touring Party). The outing is captured in two films, the never-officially-released Cocksucker Blues, and Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones (released 1974).
July 1972 ‘Rocks Off’ single released.
November 1972 The band begin recording at Dynamic Sound Studios, Kingston, Jamaica, for the album Goats Head Soup and material for what will become the It’s Only Rock ’n Roll album: also recorded at Musicland Studios, Munich, West Germany (November 1973, February–March 1974), and the Wick (Ronnie’s house), Richmond, Surrey (December 1973). Produced by Jagger and Richards, aka the Glimmer Twins.
18 Jan – 27 Feb 1973 Pacific tour, which is really an extension of the STP. Thanks to drug convictions, the Stones are refused permission to perform in Japan, and are almost banned from Australia.
April 1973 ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ single from Let It Bleed released.
August 1973 ‘Angie’ single from Goats Head Soup released. No. 1 US, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Australia, Canada; No. 5 UK and Germany.
31 August 1973 Goats Head Soup album released.
1 September – 19 October 1973 European tour.
February 1974 ‘Star Star’ single released.
July 1974 ‘It’s Only Rock ’n Roll (But I Like It)’ single released.
18 October 1974 It’s Only Rock ’n Roll album released. Produced by Jagger and Richards, as the Glimmer Twins. No. 2 UK; No. 1 US.
December 1974 Mick Taylor quits the Stones acrimoniously, to pursue a solo career.
5 Dec 1974 – 4 Apr 1975 The band record their next album Black and Blue at Musicland Munich, in their mobile studio in Rotterdam, and at Mountain Studios in Montreux. Various guitarists contribute, including Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Robert A. Johnson, Wayne Perkins, Rory Gallagher and Shuggie Otis. Some do not realise that they are being auditioned. Ronnie Wood does, and gets the job, joining the Stones as a salaried employee until the early 1990s, when he is welcomed into their business partnership.
1 Jun – 8 Aug 1975 Tour of the Americas. The production features a gigantic phallus, and Mick swinging out over the audience on the end of a rope. Their first tour with new guitarist Ronnie Wood.
April 1976 ‘Fool to Cry’ single released.
23 April 1976 Black and Blue album released.
28 Apr – 23 Jun 1976 European tour, including two dates in Yugoslavia: their second visit to a communist country after 1967. One of the band’s most challenging tours to date: in Paris, a boyfriend with an axe to grind runs at Mick with a gun. In Munich, the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group threaten to blow up the Olympiahalle where the Stones are playing; backstage in London, HM the Queen’s sister is papped, fuelling rumours of an affair between Mick and Princess Margaret; Keith is on bail for drug possession after crashing his car on the M1 motorway at 100mph. Bets are taken that Richards won’t survive beyond Knebworth.
6 June 1976 Keith’s third child Tara Jo Jo Gunne dies aged ten weeks. In show-must-go-on denial, Keith performs live on stage with the Stones that night, as scheduled.
21 August 1976 The band play before two hundred thousand fans at Knebworth, a Tudor stately home in Hertfordshire that stages rock concerts. Their gig concludes at 7am the following day.
1977 Mick begins an extramarital affair with American supermodel Jerry Hall, the girlfriend of his rock star friend Bryan Ferry. Mick and Jerry will marry in a Hindu ceremony in Bali in 1990. When Jerry, who has given Mick four children, attempts to divorce him for adultery on discovering that he has fathered a son by Brazilian model Luciana Gimenez Morad, the marriage is declared invalid under British and Indonesian law.
24 February 1977 Keith and family arrive in Toronto to join recording sessions for live album Love You Live; detained by customs when drugs paraphernalia is found; Anita later arrested; heroin found in Keith’s room. Charged with importation of narcotics, he faces a prison sentence of seven years to life. The prosecution later accept that he had not imported the drugs, but had purchased them locally. The band perform two gigs in Toronto. Scandal erupts when First Lady Margaret Trudeau, wife of the Canadian Prime Minister, is caught partying with the boys into the night. Anita is fined for possession. Keith’s case lingers for a year, concluding in a suspended sentence and an order to give two free concerts for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. It proves a turning point for Keith, who finally resolves to relinquish his heroin habit. It is another nail in the coffin of his relationship with Anita. Ronnie gets together with Jo.
16 August 1977 Elvis Presley dies at his home in Memphis, Tennessee, aged forty-two. Mick is living the high life, becoming a fixture at New York City’s legendary nightclub Studio 54. With the rise of punk, the Stones are beginning to be seen as passé dinosaurs.
1978 The tables turn with their new album Some Girls, winning the Stones a new young audience.
May 1978 ‘Miss You’ single from Some Girls released. No. 1 US, France, Canada; No. 3 UK.
9 June 1978 Some Girls album released, No. 1 in US; No. 2 UK.
10 Jun – 26 Jul 1978 US tour, a back-to-basics tour featuring classic Stones and songs co-written with Ronnie Wood. Billed as the ‘Farewell Tour’, as it was intended to be. Guests and openers include reggae star Peter Tosh, Linda Ronstadt, Patti Smith, Foreigner, Etta James and the Doobie Brothers.
September 1978 ‘Beast of Burden’ single from Some Girls released.
22 Jan – 19 Oct 1979 Recording of the next album Emotional Rescue, at Compass Point Studios, Nassau, Bahamas, Pathé Marconi, Paris, and Electric Lady, New York City. Produced by the Glimmer Twins (Mick’n’Keef). Recording sessions expose a deep rift between them.
20 July 1979 Seventeen-year-old Scott Cantrell shoots himself dead in Anita Pallenberg’s bed in an apparent game of Russian roulette, with a gun owned by Keith, at the South Salem, New York home of the couple. It marks the end of Keith’s relationship with Anita, who is unable to quit heroin.
1980s
June 1980 ‘Emotional Rescue’ single released. No. 1 Canada.
20 June 1980 Emotional Rescue album released, tops the charts in six countries including US, UK and Canada.
September 1980 ‘She’s So Cold’ single released.
8 December 1980 John Lennon assassinated in New York, aged forty.
August 1981 ‘Start Me Up’ single from Tattoo You released.
24 August 1981 Tattoo You album released, reaching No. 1 in US; No. 2 in UK. This and Some Girls become their best-selling albums. The former has been a long time in the making, consisting primarily of outtakes from studio recordings dating back to 1972.
25 Sep – 19 Dec 1981 US stadium and arena tour, their longest, biggest and wildest ever, and the highest-grossing tour that year, earning $50 million in ticket sales. Two million fans attend. The show on 5 December in New Orleans sets the indoor concert attendance record that holds for thirty-three years.
26 May – 25 Jul 1982 European tour: their last for seven years. During the West Berlin gig on 8 June, thousands of balloons are released, prompting Nena guitarist Carlo Karges to write the song ‘99 Luftballons’/‘99 Red Balloons’.
12 July 1982 The Stones’ twentieth anniversary. By the end of the year, they will have left Atlantic Records for a $50 million, four-album deal with CBS Records: at the time, the biggest record deal in history. Mick and Keith fall out bitterly over Mick’s separate solo deal, also with CBS.
Nov 1982 – Aug 1983 Recording sessions for the album Undercover, at Pathé Marconi, Paris, Compass Point, Nassau, and the Hit Factory, New York City. Mick and Keith, aka the Glimmers, are at odds creatively. Chris Kimsey produces, which is just as well. He has long experience of the Stones, having been an engineer on Sticky Fingers, Some Girls and Emotional Rescue, and having assisted Mick on Tattoo You. Many guest artists are drawn into the mix. This will be their first release of all new recordings in the 1980s.
November 1983 ‘Undercover of the Night’ single released.
7 November 1983 Undercover album released: the final album on Rolling Stones Records to be distributed by Atlantic.
18 December 1983 On his fortieth birthday, Keith marries American model Patti Hansen. The couple will have two daughters.
21 February 1984 Bill Wyman meets thirteen-year-old schoolgirl Mandy Smith at the Daily Mirror-sponsored Rock and Pop Awards at the Lyceum on the Strand, London. They become an item.
2 January 1985 Ronnie Wood marries long-time partner Jo Karslake.
February 1985 She’s the Boss, Mick’s solo debut, released, heralded by the single ‘Just Another Night’. Both single and album are global hits. Keith later compares the album to Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, 1925): ‘Everybody has a copy, but nobody listened to it.’ The 1987 follow-up, Primitive Cool, will disappoint.
Apr – Aug 1985 Recording for the Dirty Work album at Pathé Marconi Studios, Paris, and RPM and Right Track New York. Steve Lillywhite produces. Mick is often absent from sessions, and the boys are still feuding. Tom Waits, Bobby Womack and Jimmy Page contribute.
Mid-1980s Charlie suffers mid-life crisis. While his bandmates have largely overcome their addictions and are now clean-living, Charlie succumbs and goes off the rails with drink and drugs, leading to heroin addiction. His wife Shirley battles alcoholism simultaneously.
13 July 1985 Live Aid global jukebox concert, London and Philadelphia. Mick and David Bowie record and perform for video ‘Dancing in the Street’, a cover of the Martha and the Vandellas’ 1964 hit. Jagger’s and Bowie’s rendition of this much-covered song soars to No. 1 in the UK and No. 7 in the US. Keith and Ronnie play acoustic guitar for Bob Dylan’s set. The world knows that Mick and Keith have fallen out.
12 December 1985 Stu dies of heart attack aged forty-seven, London.
February 1986 ‘Harlem Shuffle’ single released.
24 March 1986 Dirty Work album released. With Jagger and Richards barely speaking, Mick refuses to tour to promote the album, and goes out on his own solo tour instead. He inflames the situation further by performing Rolling Stones songs. The Stones remain so in name.
24 October 1986 Bill Wyman turns fifty.
July 1987 For their twenty-fifth anniversary, 25 X 5: The Continuing Adventures Of the Rolling Stones documentary features archive footage and original interviews with band members. It is broadcast on the BBC’s Arena documentary series.
October 1988 Keith releases debut solo album Talk is Cheap, arising from jam sessions with a non-band band of musicians who will later acquire the moniker ‘X-Pensive Winos’. Rave-reviewed by critics and adored by fans, it performs steadily, going gold in the US, and will be re-issued in 2019 for its thirtieth anniversary.
1989 The Rolling Stones, including Mick Taylor, Ronnie Wood, Ian Stewart and Brian Jones, are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Following which, Mick and Keith settle their differences and get to work on a new Stones album, Steel Wheels, featuring ‘Mixed Emotions’ and ‘Rock and a Hard Place’.
29 Mar – 5 May 1989 Recording sessions for the Steel Wheels album, at AIR Montserrat, mixing at Olympic, London and in Morocco. Chris Kimsey produces with the Glimmers.
2 June 1989 Fifty-two-year-old Bill Wyman marries eighteen-year-old Mandy Smith. The couple separate two years later, their divorce finalised in 1993.
29 August 1989 Steel Wheels album released. The eagerly anticipated ‘comeback album’ reaches No. 2 UK; No. 3 US; and launches biggest tour to date. It is their last to feature Bill Wyman.
Aug 1989 – Aug 1990 Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour: the Stones’ return to live touring after seven years with their debut ‘named’ world tour. But it’s not like the bad old days. This is their biggest ever stage production – and Bill Wyman’s final Stones tour. By 2007, they will have scored four of the top five highest-grossing concert tours of all time (since surpassed by Ed Sheeran, U2 and Guns N’ Roses). The band then take an extended break. Charlie Watts releases two jazz albums. Ronnie Wood releases fifth solo album, his first for eleven years, Slide on This. Bill Wyman releases his fourth solo album.
1990s
1991 Fifty-five-year-old Bill Wyman leaves the Stones early in ’91; Stones will not announce his departure until 1993. He is not replaced in the line-up, but Darryl Jones, brought in by Charlie Watts, will play bass with the band as contracted session player for the next quarter-century.
2 June 1991 Charlie turns fifty.
November 1991 The Stones reclaim their ‘rock’s highest-paid band status by signing an estimated 45 million contract with UK’s Virgin Music Group, for three new studio albums commencing 1993. Virgin are also to remaster and repackage their entire back catalogue of seventeen albums, with the exception of three live albums.
1992 EMI acquire Virgin Records, and the Stones become an EMI act.
October 1992 Keith releases second solo album, Main Offender, and tours to promote it, including Spain and Argentina. Album is well received, but fails to make much commercial impact. Keith will not release another solo album for twenty-three years.
February 1993 Mick releases third solo album, Wandering Spirit, featuring Lenny Kravitz and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers. Performing favourably, it makes No. 12 UK; No. 11 US.
April 1993 Bill Wyman marries Suzanne Accosta. The couple will have three daughters.
26 July 1993 Mick turns fifty.
Sep 1993 and Nov – Dec 1993 Voodoo Lounge album: rehearsals and initial recordings at Ronnie Wood’s house in Ireland, then recorded at Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin. Don Was co-produces with Mick and Keith.
18 December 1993 Keith turns fifty.
July 1994 ‘Love is Strong’ single released.
11 July 1994 Voodoo Lounge album released: a worldwide No. 1 (No. 2 US). In the UK, their first chart-topper for fourteen years, since 1980’s Emotional Rescue. It will win Best Rock Album at the 1995 Grammy Awards.
Aug 1994 – Aug 1995 Voodoo Lounge tour: at $320 million, the highest-grossing tour of all time.
8 September 1994 The Stones perform their new song ‘Love is Strong’ and ‘Start Me Up’ at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards, Radio City Music Hall, New York. They receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the ceremony.
18 November 1994 They become the first major recording artists to broadcast a concert via the internet.
24 October 1996 Bill Wyman turns sixty.
January 1997 Writing and recording sojourn in Barbados.
Mar – Jul 1997 Recording sessions at LA’s Ocean Way Recording for the new Bridges to Babylon album. They work with a variety of producers including Don Was, Rob Fraboni and the Dust Brothers: E.Z. Mike and King Gizmo. Mick and Keith have fallen out again. They avoid studio sessions together and record their parts separately. By the time they reconvene to tour the album, they have kissed and made up. Attracting mixed reviews but great sales, the album features a global Top 40 single, ‘Anybody Seen My Baby?’ It leans closely towards k.d. lang’s ‘Constant Craving’. Heading a lawsuit off at the pass, the Stones credit co-writer Ben Mink on the song. The video for the single stars twenty-two-year-old Angelina Jolie.
1 June 1997 Ronnie Wood turns fifty.
Sep 1997 – Sep 1998 Bridges to Babylon tour kicks off in Toronto. Grosses £274 million, the second highest-grossing tour at that time (behind their own Voodoo Lounge tour, 1994–95). It features a ‘web vote’, allowing ticket-holders to vote for the song they want to hear performed. Any song selected four shows in a row becomes a permanent fixture on the set list.
29 September 1997 Bridges to Babylon album released. No. 6 UK; No. 3 US.
Jan – Jun 1999 The Bridges to Babylon tour is followed by the down-scaled No Security tour: fewer dates and destinations, much smaller venues. The No Security album is the live album of that tour.
2000s
2 June 2001 Charlie turns sixty.
20 October 2001 Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001, Mick and Keith plus a backing band perform in the Concert for New York City benefit at Madison Square Garden.
19 November 2001 Mick releases his fourth solo album, Goddess in the Doorway, immortalised by Keith as ‘Dogshit in the Doorway’. With cover photography by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and backing vocals by two of his daughters, Elizabeth (then sixteen) and Georgia May (eight) on the concluding track, ‘Brand New Set of Rules’, his best solo offering hardly troubles the charts. Apart from The Very Best of Jagger (2007), it is his last solo release to date.
Sep 2002 – Nov 2003 Licks tour, in support of the Forty Licks album. Sponsored by the E-Trade Financial Corporation, it grosses over $300 million, claiming the second highest-grossing tour slot (behind Voodoo Lounge). An additional Live Licks album will be released in 2004, a live recording of the tour.
30 September 2002 Commemorating the band’s fortieth anniversary, Forty Licks double compilation greatest hits album released: along with Queen’s Greatest Hits and ABBA’s Gold, the one that ‘most people’ own today. The album includes four new songs. No. 2 UK and US. To date, it has sold seven million copies worldwide.
26 July 2003 Mick turns sixty.
9 November 2003 The band play their first concert in Hong Kong, for the Harbour Fest Celebration and in support of the SARS-blighted economy.
12 December 2003 Having been honoured for services to popular music in Her Majesty the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2002, Mick Jagger receives his gong from HRH The Prince of Wales. But Mick is not seen as deserving, and the award is much criticised. Keith Richards is apoplectic, regarding Mick’s acceptance of it as a betrayal of everything the Stones have ever stood for. ‘Mick got his knighthood for services to Mick Jagger,’ quipped former Stones PR Keith Altham. Whatever: arise, Sir Shagger.
18 December 2003 Keith turns sixty.
November 2004 The Stones inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame.
Nov 2004 / Mar 2005 / Jun 2005 A Bigger Bang album recorded, at Pocé sur Cisse and La Fourchette (Mick’s château home) in France; Ocean Way Recording, and The Village Recorder in LA. Charlie diagnosed with throat cancer. Mick and Keith consider delaying the album, but Mick steps in to lay down the drum parts, most of which Charlie re-records later. Don Was co-produces with Mick and Keith.
August 2005 ‘Streets of Love’ single released.
Aug 2005 – Aug 2007 The A Bigger Bang tour, a massive sell-out. A hundred and forty-seven shows will be seen by close to 5 million people.
5 September 2005 A Bigger Bang album released: a good back-to-basics hard rock offering that scores No. 2 in UK; No. 3 in US. Their first new album in about eight years, it features ‘Streets of Love’ and the strongly political ‘Sweet Neo Con’.
February 2006 The band play the prestigious half-time show of Super Bowl XL in Detroit, Michigan.
18 February 2006 They play a free concert to more than 1 million people at once on Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: one of rock’s largest concerts ever.
April 2006 On holiday with Ronnie Wood and their families on a private island off the coast of Fiji, Keith falls from the low-hanging branch of a tree, sustaining injuries that force the band to postpone further tour dates. A fractured skull and intracranial haemorrhage lead to acute subdural haematoma. Keith makes an emergency flight to New Zealand for treatment. The European leg of the A Bigger Bang tour is delayed by six weeks.
June 2006 Ronnie submits to treatment for alcohol abuse.
Jul – Sep 2006 Mick suffers throat problems. Two shows cancelled.
24 October 2006 Bill Wyman turns seventy.
29 Oct and 1 Nov 2006 Martin Scorsese films the band at the Beacon Theatre, New York City, for his documentary Shine a Light, released 2008. At the first show, Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun trips and falls, hitting his head on a concrete floor. He remains in a coma in hospital and dies on 14 December, aged eighty-three.
November 2006 A Bigger Bang declared the highest-grossing tour of all time.
1 June 2007 Ronnie turns sixty.
10 June 2007 The band perform their first festival gig for thirty years before sixty-five thousand fans at the Isle of Wight Festival. They perform Robert Johnson’s ‘Love in Vain’ with twenty-year-old Paolo Nutini, having rehearsed in a Travelodge hotel room. They are also joined on stage by Amy Winehouse. She will be found dead in her apartment four years later, aged twenty-seven.
26 August 2007 They play the final concert of the A Bigger Bang tour at London’s O2 Arena. The tour grosses a record $558 million, and achieves the Guinness World Record.
April 2008 The Shine a Light soundtrack album of Scorsese’s film is released as an album, No. 2 in UK, No. 11 in US.
July 2008 Ronnie enters rehab for treatment for alcoholism. Meets twenty-one-year-old Russian waitress Ekaterina Ivanova in Churchill’s Bar, London. Sets up home with his forty-years-younger girlfriend. The Stones leave EMI to sign with Universal Music, taking their catalogue back to Sticky Fingers with them. New music will be released by Universal’s Polydor label. In the US, post-1994 recordings are handled by Interscope, formerly a subsidiary of Atlantic.
4 July 2009 Allen Klein dies.
2009 Ronnie and Jo divorce. Ronnie arrested on suspicion of assault after he and Ekaterina have a vicious public scrap. The couple separate in March.
2010s
19 May 2010 Exile on Main St. remastered and deluxe-reissued. Documentary Stones in Exile premieres at Cannes Film Festival on 23 May. The reissued album reaches No. 1 on UK chart almost thirty-eight years to the week since the first time they had a No. 1 with it. The Stones are the first act to see a classic album return to No. 1 decades after its first release. In America, it re-enters the chart at No. 2. Prince Rupert Loewenstein recommends that they wind down touring and recording and start selling off their assets. The Stones refuse and they part company. Lawyer Joyce Smyth, long a member of the band’s entourage, assumes the position of manager in 2010.
2 June 2011 Charlie turns seventy.
21 June 2011 Maroon 5 with Christina Aguilera release the single ‘Moves Like Jagger’, a disco/electropop-flavoured number. That band’s second No. 1 single (and her fifth), it becomes one of the best-selling singles of all time.
12 July 2012 Fiftieth anniversary of the Stones’ first official gig, at London’s Marquee Jazz Club, Oxford Street. Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie gather at the venue’s original site for a photo shoot, their first together since 2008. They release a book, The Rolling Stones:50, and an updated version of their lip-and-tongue logo by American graphic designer Frank Shepard Fairey. Crossfire Hurricane, a documentary directed by American Brett Morgen, is released in October. GRRR! compilation album released 12 November. It includes two new tracks, ‘Doom and Gloom’ and ‘One More Shot’. The album sells more than 2 million copies worldwide.
Nov 2012 – Jul 2013 The 50 & Counting tour, commemorating fifty years of the Stones, with Mick Taylor as a guest artist throughout the tour. They kick off at London’s O2 Arena with special guest Jeff Beck. The second show features Eric Clapton and Florence Welch. During spring 2013 they perform nineteen shows in US.
21 December 2012 Ronnie marries actress and producer Sally Humphreys, thirty years his junior. In 2016, when Ronnie is pushing seventy, the couple are blessed (cursed?) with twins.
29 June 2013 Stones perform for the first time ever at the Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, Somerset. Attended by Prince Harry, their two-hour, twenty-song set is hailed by festival organiser Michael Eavis as ‘the high spot of forty-three years’. They extend the world-famous Pyramid Stage with three catwalks. Their special guest, long rumoured to be Adele or Bruce Springsteen, is their old faithful Mick Taylor.
6 July 2013 Almost forty-four years to the day since their first iconic performance they play Hyde Park, the first of two massive gigs there. This time, it’s not free.
26 July 2013 Mick turns seventy.
8 December 2013 Keith turns seventy.
15 December 2013 Bruce Springsteen and the Black Keys join the band on stage for the tour’s finale.
Feb – Nov 2014 On Fire tour, again featuring Mick Taylor. Dates announced in Australia, New Zealand, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, Singapore and other territories.
17 March 2014 Mick’s long-time girlfriend fashion designer L’Wren Scott dies suddenly in New York City. Suspected suicide. All Australasian dates postponed.
4 June 2014 Historic first performance in Israel.
24 May – 15 Jul 2015 Zip Code tour of US, in celebration of Sticky Fingers, re-released in 2015.
18 September 2015 Keith releases third solo album Crosseyed Heart. Great reviews, and the record performs well.
Feb – Mar 2016 América Latina Olé tour, including a historic concert in Havana, Cuba, on 25 March attended by five 500,000 fans – the first time a rock band has played such a huge gig there. A film of the concert, Havana Moon, will be released on 11 November, followed by a tour of Latin America, their first in ten years.
14 February 2016 Vinyl, a series about the 1970s rock scene and starring Mick’s and Jerry’s son James Jagger as Kip Stevens, singer of a pre-punk band called Nasty Bits, makes its debut on the HBO channel. Created by Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese, Rich Cohen and Terence Winter, it runs for ten episodes and concludes 17 April 2016. A second series is announced, then cancelled.
2 June 2016 Charlie turns seventy-five.
24 October 2016 Bill Wyman turns eighty.
2 December 2016 Blue & Lonesome album of covers of blues songs by their earliest inspirations – Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed, etc. – released. Featuring Eric Clapton on two tracks, it makes No. 1 in UK and debuts at No. 4 on the US Billboard 200.
1 June 2017 Ronnie turns seventy.
13 June 2017 Anita Pallenberg dies aged seventy-five, of complications from hepatitis C. Survived by her two children and five grandchildren.
Sep 2017 – Nov 2021 No Filter tour of UK and Europe – the band’s first UK tour since 2006.
18 November 2017 They announce plans to take the tour around US stadiums in 2019.
26 July 2018 Mick turns seventy-five.
18 December 2018 Keith turns seventy-five.
March 2019 Mick submits to heart valve replacement surgery. The North American leg of the tour is postponed.
30 August 2019 Charlie Watts performs live with the Stones for the last time, at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.
2020s
March 2020 No Filter tour shows postponed again, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.
18 April 2020 Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie, each performing from home, are among the headlining acts for Global Citizens’ One World: Together at Home on-screen and online concert in support of the World Health Organization and front-line healthcare workers.
23 April 2020 ‘Living in a Ghost Town’ single released. Their first original song since 2012. No. 1 Australia and Germany.
4 September 2020 1973’s Goats Head Soup album reissued with previously unreleased outtakes, including ‘Scarlet’ featuring Jimmy Page. On 11 September the album tops the UK chart, making the Rolling Stones the first band to top the chart in six different decades.
April 2021 Four years after his lung cancer diagnosis, Ronnie Wood announces diagnosis of rare, aggressive small-cell cancer. He also says that his doctors have given him the all-clear.
2 June 2021 Charlie turns eighty.
August 2021 Charlie withdraws from the resuming No Filter tour to submit for an unspecified medical procedure. He chooses session drummer Steve Jordan to replace him.
19 August 2021 ‘Living in the Heart of Love’ single released, from the forthcoming anniversary edition of Tattoo You.
24 August 2021 Charlie dies in London. No official cause of death is given.
September 2021 Band resumes No Filter North American tour in St Louis, Missouri.
22 October 2021 Fortieth anniversary re-issue of Tattoo You released, featuring nine previously unreleased tracks and a live album recorded at Wembley Stadium in 1982.
23 November 2021 No Filter tour concludes at the Hard Rock Live Amphitheater, Hollywood, Florida.
6 December 2021 Family, friends, bandmates and colleagues pay tribute to the late Charlie Watts at a private gig at his favourite jazz club, Ronnie Scott’s Soho, London.
12 July 2022 Sixtieth anniversary of the Stones’ first official gig, at London’s Marquee Jazz Club.