The Rolling Stones
Out Of Our Head

THE REVIEW

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Brian Jones, and Charlie Watts, known as The Rolling Stones, remarkably bounce to the top of the hit parade thanks to a bold and lethal album, fierce and irresistible, cruel and playful.

The album is "Out of Our Heads" and it stands out, especially for "(I can't get no) Satisfaction", perhaps the band's most famous and beloved track. It is 1965 and rock, after years of 'Be Bop a Lula' and 'Tutti Frutti' has decided, almost mechanically, to change course and shock the conformists.

We are in the midst of the Sixties, harmless and tender beat music is sailing smoothly, the Beatles are all the rage with "Love Me Do" and Alberto Sordi is about to escape to England in search of a bit of "Fumo di Londra." However, something is about to change. The first signals arrive in 1964 when the Rolling Stones release their debut album, "The Rolling Stones" in which they devilishly twist famous black music and country-blues tracks. The debut is electrifying: in half an hour the Stones sweep away any shadow of doubt, leave no room for calculated vulgarity, and burst onto the scene with a force and determination never seen or heard before. The Decca, a historic Anglo-Saxon production house, immediately decides to sign them. The second album is "The Rolling Stones No. 2", a sort of self-remake of the previous record (this time, even blues, rock, and rock & billy songs are revamped). However, the great success will come only with the third and most exciting rock album: "Out of Our Heads."

"Out of Our Heads" is a complex and meticulous work. The Stones unleash with high-level American covers ("Mercy Mercy", "That's How Strong My Love Is", "Cry to Me") and then, almost mathematically, load the gun and hit the target: "Satisfaction" is an acoustic and vocal masterpiece, perhaps the highest example of how the Stones were able to disrupt the rules of rock and, without using particular hyperboles, how they were able to create, almost from nothing, a series of musical genres that later became famous (hard rock, disco, punk). "Satisfaction" is obsessive, spasmodic, gritty, combative: the guitar always plays those four chords, the drums 'bang' to exhaustion, and the bass pumps in an almost infernal manner. From this very simple musical concept (playing the same note until it becomes almost unbearable), soon emerged the great musical genres that are often, a bit superficially, praised as creative and original (Velvet Underground, Deep Purple, Beastie Boys).

"Satisfaction" is a timeless masterpiece that owes all its strength and effectiveness to the artistic genius of Keith Richards (excellent in creating a simple yet extremely difficult melody) capable, in a few minutes, of overturning and shocking an entire music-loving and rebellious generation. "Out of Our Heads" was the turning point Decca had been waiting for at least two years. The Stones became legendary and the beautiful "Heart of Stone" (today unjustly underestimated) was sung, for almost a decade, by at least one generation of impulsive and shaggy youths. "Out of Our Heads" is still today a sort of farsighted musical masterpiece (effective, besides the guitar, are the drums and bass), undoubtedly effective on a vocal level, perhaps a bit dated in terms of writing (the lyrics, "Satisfaction" aside, aren't particularly impressive), yet, these five British bad boys seem anything but human.

The cover is curious: the Rolling Stones appear in the foreground (very young and clean-shaven) with a haircut very similar to that of the fabulous four from Liverpool. It is, in fact, a clever commercial operation: not yet certain of a definitive success, the Stones try to emulate, at least in hairstyle, the already famous Beatles. The operation was, naturally, very successful.