I was born in 1968 so i haven't experience the born of The Rolling Stones. While i was reading Life i was wandering if the Stones were some kind of a boyband in their time - the sixties. Like maybe Take That in the nineties. (Sorry: i don't mean the musicstyle but just a group of musicians / musicperformers). And now after almost 50 years they still exist. Would or could some kind of modern (boy-)band equalize this?

I don't think so because as I see it "boybands" are not bands at all-just singing groups. Dont they just sing(lip-synch maybe?) and dance. Thats not r n r. Now we had singing groups in the 60s-The Temptations,The Miracles and loads of others. They were great too but they were "singing GROUPS" not Rock n Roll Bands! There is a difference, don't you think? Oh, and I had to compare to groups like Back St Boys and such(my kids listened to that or I would not have known) I have to admit I dont even know who Take That is.

Maybe i just mean the whole entourage around the RS in sixties: screaming girls, chaos whenever the appear in public, etc. And i not only mean RnR-bands but any kind of bands / singing groups.

>>Were the RS some kind of boyband back in the sixties<<

You tell me, skyhawk:

Well, if you are talking about the "mania" of the fans especially teenage girls I'm sure you have a valid point.Seems like it repeats itself for every generation. Frank Sinatra in the 40s, Elvis in the 50s, Beatles and all in the 60s, after that I guess you guys will have to tell me!

With those modern bands now i always have the feeling that they will have succes for a couple of years and then they are gone. Wasn't this feeling with the RS in the beginning of the sixties, lets say from 1962 till 1965? Could anyone imagine that this would last for half a century?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-11-27 21:49 by skyhawk.

I believe the Stones thought they were only going to last a couple of more years well into the '70s.

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scottkeef
Well, if you are talking about the "mania" of the fans especially teenage girls I'm sure you have a valid point.Seems like it repeats itself for every generation. Frank Sinatra in the 40s, Elvis in the 50s, Beatles and all in the 60s, after that I guess you guys will have to tell me!

In the '70s we had David Cassidy & the Partridge Family (his stage name was Keith Partridge!), his half-brother Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, the Osmonds (who couldn't remember Donny and Marie?), and countless others.

Then in the '80s, there were such acts like New Kids on the Block and New Edition (the latter group was the launchpad for such singers as Bobby Brown and Johnny Gill, an offshoot New Jack Swing group called Bell Biv DeVoe, and also inspired the name of a popular '90s R&B singing group: Boyz II Men). Some of the female acts of this period were also gaining notoriety, such as Tiffany Darwish and Debbie Gibson.

As I see it now, many of these past "boy bands" and their disciples do not wish to be tagged as such. Some even go so far as to stay out of the spotlight in a period dominated by such acts as Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Ke$ha.

~Ben

the poster evidently has absolutely no knowledge of the rolling stones whatsoever...

Thanks,BrianJones69! Of course I remember those from the 70s now that you mention them. all of us "real rockers" made fun of them then but I have to admit now I catch myself listening to "I Think I Love You" when its played on the oldies station! THe 80s ones I recall too now. The main thing I remember about Debbie Gibson tho' is being the subject of Mojo Nixon's song " Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child" !

In the sixties almost all bands were 'boybands', at least in Europe: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Small Faces, the Golden Earrings, Them etc. etc. In fact the whole 'pop scene' was dominated by men: it was first and foremost men's territory. It's only something of the last decades that we see girls dominating the popular music scene.

that would be the beetels

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mickscarey
that would be the beetels

Oh, for fvck's sake. Get off your "beetels" schtick already. We're all tired of it.

Very difficult question...><

Yes... and definitively no.

I think the true godfathers of 'modern' boybands were people like Pat Boonne, Bobby Vie and other mostly Italuian-born 'bobbies', Cliff Richard - all those white, good-looking boys who were doing their soft pop versions of rock and roll, and who were picked up by record companies and who mostly dominated the'rock' genre before the entrence of The Beatles. And thanks to them, rock and roll has a kind of cheap pop music status by the times The Stones started their career. That's why the cool jazz people hated the "rock and roll", and I think partly due to that the black elemnt of the rhythmn'n'blues was so much emphasized by teh British blues circles. "Rock and roll" was cheap commerciality. Just "pop".

Partly, The Beatles took the bite and transformed themselves to suit to the pop music outlook. Their look - no matter the long hair that was cute actually - has most of it to do with the concept of the day, but what was different was their originality and, of course, revolutioanry music. And their popularity was revolutionary as well, and that took the whole business into a new level. The Stones and the others followed them, and got their part of teen hysteria. For while it looked like they were repeating one more teenager girl hysteria movement - maximum 2 years in business - but I guess to surprise to anyone involved, it lead to something else.

Namely, these performers actually lead the 60's popular music revolution and for a while - maybe ten yaers or something - these 'serious' musicians - who started playing in their own garages and art schools and who believed to their own musical intuitions - seemed to the best commercial article the pop music has to offer. Well, there were The Monkees kind of 'artificial' products but basically the business was lead by these "independent" artists. Easy time for record companies to make money: just to pick up an artist suiting to the trend - the artist would take care of all the music from Donovan to Slade. I would say it would take until the 70's when the big record companies started again taking part of creating the product a certain audience in their mind - like they did with pre-Beatles pop music - then we have the Osmonds, Cassidy, Jackson Five, Bay City Rollers, etc. They were created in some easily manipulated hysteric teenager audience in their mind. During the 80's/early 90's, when everything was finally put under the microscope of potental gross of record companies, and the whole pop business finally throughout professionalized, the born of actual "boy bands" was a natural move. New Kids, Backstreet Boys, etc.

So, to an extent The Stones were once a part of "boy band" ideology, that is, a pop artist who is mosly picked up, and controlled by the record company. But being as independent, and taking solely care of their own musical inventions, set them seriously apart from that concept. But they were able to do that since that was the concept of selling product big time for a while.

But as far as the hysteria goes, (well apart from Charlie), they all sounded like enjoying very much of that. I guess that does good for a young adult male ego...

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-11-28 11:32 by Doxa.

The effect was similar to modern boy-bands (hysteria, screaming, silly fan-magazines, pin-ups on the walls of a million teenage girls' bedrooms...)

But the causes, both Stones and Beatles (pleez lern to spel, mickscarey!) were very different. Not chosen for their looks by crafty media moguls from ambitious wannabees who'd never met each other before the interviews. Not able to have any musical deficiencies corrected by technology. Not provided with million-pound advertising budgets and airbrushed photoshoots. All that stuff is an attempt to produce artificially what happened naturally in the early 60s.

We were incredibly lucky. We actually got to scream and swoon at real musicians. And some of us at least fell in love with the music as well as the boys. And are still listening.

Green Lady (14-year-old teenager in 1963).

The Stones were never a boyband as far as the modern term of the word implies. The Stones may have had all male members, but that's about it.

The Stones may have had all male members,

No need to wonder .... It's a safe bet that they sure did....



ROCKMAN

they still are

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skyhawk
I was born in 1968 so i haven't experience the born of The Rolling Stones. While i was reading Life i was wandering if the Stones were some kind of a boyband in their time - the sixties. Like maybe Take That in the nineties. (Sorry: i don't mean the musicstyle but just a group of musicians / musicperformers). And now after almost 50 years they still exist. Would or could some kind of modern (boy-)band equalize this?

Listen to what Keith has to say on the subject in the BBC2 Culture Show interview with Andrew Graham Dixon. THEY (the Stones) saw themselves as exponents of the kind of music they were passionate about, the largely teenage female audience, it suffices to say, saw them essentially as a boy band ... precisely what they were playing was essentially entirely irrelevant. There was so much screaming going on that not only could the audience not hear the band, the band couldn't hear the band !!!

So if that kind of phenomenon is high on your list of criteria, then yes ... I suppose they WERE a boyband of their time, one of many in that particular era.

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

Boy band to me screams 'no experience of working the clubs, having professional songwriters pen songs for you, and not being in control of your image or your artistic direction'.
While Andy Loog Oldham certainly steered the Stones to being the UK's first anti-hero pop band the Stones were never music industry puppets.

Definitely no boy band - although there was never any doubt about their sex - an all male band.
Boy bands - the way I define them - is more or less linked up to a management that puts good looking young men together in a group. Not necessarily because of their musical talents. Then they teach them how to sing (some more or less successfull attempts have been done!), dance and based on market research - find the type of music that will be the new BIG thing. Boy bands only have one goal: Fame, fortune and to get laid. They're not passionate about music. They don't write music (not very successfully, anyway)
If someone thinks this applies to the Stones, then they were a boy band. But seriously... (And I can't see where in his book that Keith has defined the Stones as a boy band, or said anything that could lead one's thoughts in that direction. And Now I've read the book in three languages!)
If there was ever a boy band in the 60s, I can come up with one band that fits all the above mentiond criteria. The Monkees. They were all about selling a TV-show and merch in the beginning. Didn't play the instruments themselves in the beginning and didn't write the songs. But BOY, that Davy Jones was cute.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-11-28 14:24 by Addicted.

Never mind The Stones, but was Village People a 'boy band'? (I think they easily meet the criteria Addicted made.)





- Doxa

Yes, targeted at the growing gay community in the disco era. They also had some appeal to the non gay market, because they had catchy songs, a great sense of humour and were definitely something very different and new. However - they didn't last long. (Are they still alive? I think I heard something about some of them being hiv positive? Could be wrong, though.)

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Addicted
they had catchy songs, a great sense of humour and were definitely something very different and new. However - they didn't last long.

There is a current version of Village People still around.
I'll be saving my money for the next Stones tour, though.

[www.officialvillagepeople.com]

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Addicted
Yes, targeted at the growing gay community in the disco era. They also had some appeal to the non gay market, because they had catchy songs, a great sense of humour and were definitely something very different and new. However - they didn't last long. (Are they still alive? I think I heard something about some of them being hiv positive? Could be wrong, though.)

They surely did! Young Doxa's (9-10 years) first affection before the rock culture took over. But after educatated by stuff like this, nothing Jagger did wasn't really surprising... (well, actually I have never this video before, and seemingly band's roles haven' yet all decided, and the members aren't the same as in the clip above. But jezus hell, they really were... a particular kind of boy band...:





- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-11-28 15:07 by Doxa.

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Edith Grove

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Addicted
they had catchy songs, a great sense of humour and were definitely something very different and new. However - they didn't last long.

There is a current version of Village People still around.
I'll be saving my money for the next Stones tour, though.

[www.officialvillagepeople.com]

Bloody hell! Didn't know that! And seemingly they still have three "original members" - just like some other boy band... ><

The last time I heard about them was in the mid-80's - they tried to cope with the 80's trends but seemingly failed - like Jagger or Dylan - quite bad. Hard times for true artists:

Now look, no more any guts in them in '85 - so lame:





- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-11-28 15:16 by Doxa.