![]() Then there was “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Where the pop artist (and future collaborator) Andy Warhol argued that liking and buying were viable forms of self-expression, the Stones took a more athletic stance: They wanted stuff-fast cars, white shirts, game girls-but were embarrassed to admit it they liked buying, but didn’t want to be sold. The Stones were still covering blues and soul-Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike,” Sam Cooke’s “Good Times,” Solomon Burke’s “Cry to Me”-but they were also discovering their own identity, folding in hints of country (“The Spider and the Fly”), English folk (“Play With Fire”), and rockabilly (“The Last Time”). Released in July 1965-and recorded at Chess starting in November the previous year- Out of Our Heads was a pivot point. Getting them to realize Waters, Wolf, and Dixon were still alive and trying to make a living-at a time when Black America was aching from the struggle for civil rights-would’ve been even better. Getting people interested in guys like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon-that would’ve been nice. Waters had toured Europe a year earlier as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, a package that presented blues not as a living, breathing art form, but as a fixed cultural export, the kind of thing you might see in a museum. The band’s project had always been, in part, reparational: They wanted the Black musicians they loved to get the money and recognition the band felt they deserved. When The Rolling Stones came to Chess Studios in Chicago in the summer of 1964, they were met by a middle-aged Black man standing on a ladder painting the ceiling: Muddy Waters-a figure so important in the band’s origin story they named themselves after one of his songs.
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