Digital music store 7digital has announced that it's launching a Windows 8-based version -- and you can even shop around on the preview iteration, ahead of the operating system's October launch date. The store will offer up 20 million tracks, with your account still working across the existing platforms, including the recent Windows Phone version. This preview app, which runs on both the desktop and metro versions, also includes 7digital's music discovery service and 30-second previews of all its content. If you've already invested into 7digital's music library, then you can start syncing your collection to your experimental Windows 8 devices starting today. The music-seller also promises "further refinements" ahead of Microsoft's big launch. Show full PR text7digital releases first digital music store on Windows 8 7digital application provides Windows 8 users with access to 20 million high quality music tracks Newest addition to 7digital's mobile offering will capitalise on the millions of anticipated Windows 8 devices coming to market The 7digital music store is available worldwide to anyone currently previewing Windows 8.
London, UK, 24th July 2012 – 7digital, the leading digital media company, today announced the availability of a music application for the Windows 8 operating system, ahead of the full launch in October. The 7digital Music Store application, available from the Windows Store Preview, is an early preview that will be further refined ahead of the Windows 8 release. 7digital is the first digital music store to be made available worldwide on the Windows 8 platform. The application has been developed as part of 7digital's platform agnostic mobile strategy, providing consumers with access to their music collection across all devices. The application has been designed to work on both the desktop and tablet (Metro) versions of Windows 8, and provides users with a single, unified interface for music discovery and purchase across all their Windows 8 devices. Users will have access to 7digital's entire catalogue of 20 million high quality digital music tracks, can search through 7digital's catalogue for favourite artists and tracks, or discover new music based on 7digital's recommendation technology. 30 second previews of all tracks are available before purchase, and purchased music is automatically added to a user's cloud-based 7digital Locker for access on other devices or through a web browser. Existing 7digital users will be able to automatically sync and download all tracks and albums in their 7digital Locker to a Windows 8 device, once the application has been installed. Favourite artists and albums can also be 'pinned' to the Windows 8 UI and shared with friends. Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital comments "The potential of Windows 8 is huge. Microsoft's renewed commitment to the tablet space, and development of the Surface hardware, means there could be millions of devices in the market by the end of next year. We believe this offers us a significant market opportunity as a digital music provider. "The heart of our digital strategy is providing a platform agnostic music store that does not tie users to a single device or operating system; we have apps for Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and iOS already available. Developing the Windows 8 application early means we're ideally placed to become the default digital music store for newly purchased desktops and tablets, and compatible across all other platforms. We're also ensuring our existing customers can access their tracks and albums, and purchase new music, as soon as they buy or upgrade to Windows 8." The 7digital Music Store application is available globally from the Windows Store Preview for users testing the current Windows 8 build. The application is available worldwide, and is compatible with x86, x64 and ARM based devices.
It was some time in my late teens that I found myself in a student house – and even now I hesitate to give the location for fear of reprisals – when someone put on Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones.
I can hear you snicker. I am fully aware of what sophisticated people are supposed to think about those first three siren-jangling chords.
But I could feel myself being transformed from this shy, spotty, swotty nerd who had spent the past hour trying to maintain a conversation with the poor young woman who was sitting next to me.
I won’t say that I leapt to my feet and beat my chest and took the girl by the hand. But I can’t rule it out – frankly, I can’t remember the details – because to this day I have only to hear that opening riff, and that feeling comes back.
That is how it is for billions of human beings. It is one of the hundreds of snatches of rock/pop music that remain on our mental iPods to intensify our experience and provide the soundtracks of our lives.
I would assert without fear of contradiction that rock/pop was the most important popular art form of the 20th century and continues to occupy that rank today.
It is therefore one of the great triumphs of British culture that this music had its most beautiful and psychedelic flowering in London in the 1960s.
London has produced some of the world’s great poets, playwrights, novelists, painters, architects, scientists, libertines, orators and lexicographers. But in the almost 2,000-year history of the city, there aren’t that many moments when we could say Londoners were the acknowledged global leaders in music.
In the second half of the 20th century, however, the musical scene was like the 16th-century cyclotron of theatrical talent that produced William Shakespeare. There were at least two flashes seen around the world: the Beatles, the most musically influential group of the last hundred years (okay, they were from Liverpool, but London was where they made their name), and their fractionally more energetic rivals, the Rolling Stones.
Middle-aged Stones fans tend to be either votaries of Mick Jagger (like former prime minister Tony Blair), or they think, as I have since quite a young age, that Keef is the man.
Keith has spent decades shooting and snorting such prodigious quantities of chemicals that he looks like some Inca mummy; and all that while he has produced work of such quantity and originality that he has changed the face of rock music as decisively as he has changed his own.
He has become very rich. Between 1989 and 2003, for instance, he helped the Rolling Stones to earn £1.23 billion. And yet he still fizzes with so much energy – well into his sixties – that Johnny Depp borrowed his camp, be-ringed and bangled style for the blockbusting Pirates of theCaribbean. If he didn’t look so epically raddled, you might be tempted to say that he was an advertisement for the health-giving properties of very pure heroin and cocaine.
In preparing to write about him, I have been all over Keith Richards’ London. I once went to open a riverside park in Twickenham, looked over toward the cottages and houseboats of Eel Pie Island and tried to imagine those magical sixties evenings when the air was full of the yowling of Keith’s guitar.
I have been to the 100 Club in Oxford Street, and even tried to help a campaign to keep it open.
I have nosed around the chewing-gummed alley off Ealing Broadway where Alexis Korner had his famous club and where 50 years ago this week – on July 12, 1962 – Mick and Keith first played with Brian Jones, and the Rolling Stones effectively came into being.
For years I have snuffled on his spoor, but never come across a trace of the man himself; until not long ago, when fate dealt me the most incredible slice of luck.
I was due to attend a ceremony in Covent Garden to make a short speech in honour of the noble and learned Lord Sebastian Coe – athlete, politician and chair of the committee that organized the Olympic Games about to open in London – and to give him a prize.
When I reached the Royal Opera House, the road was jammed with huge limos and, even though it was well after 10 p.m., there were still large crowds of autograph hunters, cheering and yelling at anyone who went through.
“I am sorry I am so late,” I gasped to an impossibly tall, thin, yet curvaceous, hostess.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Stephen Fry spoke for so long that we are running a bit behind.”
BOOK EXCERPT
The origin of rock/pop music, according to Boris Johnson
“Fine,” I said. “When am I on?”
“Not long now. You are speaking after the Writer of the Year, which is going to be Keith Richards. He’s just over there,” she said, in answer to my hoarse exclamation of disbelief.
“Where?” I goggled.
“There – up at the front,” and she pointed toward an unmistakable grey bird’s nest of hair.
For the next few minutes, I fixed my gaze on my prey and ran through the options.
(In my experience, impromptu interviews with an uber celeb are very hard to pull off. I once spent three days tailing Jacques Chirac across France. After repeated disappointments, I put myself in his path as he swept out of a rally. “President Chirac,” I cried, holding out my hand. “Boris Johnson, from London!” He paused for a nanosecond; he beamed; he gripped. “Jacques Chirac, from Paris!” he said, and then was gone.)
I knew I had better boil it down to one single, overwhelming question and thought about what I wanted to know.
I am a keen student of LIFE, the autobiography that earned Keith his award for writing. Reading it, I reckon I have an inkling about how it all happened.
Young, white Londoners could play black music in a way young white Americans might have found embarrassing. They saw nothing ridiculous or disrespectful – it was just a tribute to the music they loved.
So what happened with rock and roll in London was really the supreme example of the import-export process that made the city great. And that, I concluded, as the awards ceremony neared its climax, was the point I needed to put to Keef.
By now the black-tied crowd was getting tired. Then Keef was finally announced, and as he sauntered swayingly on stage – jacket sleeves rolled up to expose his sinewy wrists, head band making him look like an ancient John McEnroe – we were all lifted spontaneously to our feet.
His speech was short, droll, modest and, as soon as he had gyrated back to his seat, I knew that this was my moment.
Quickly, I did my own turn on stage, introducing Seb Coe, and then with some pushfulness I persuaded Keith’s agent to let me station myself by his side. “Just five minutes,” I pleaded.
(I was later informed that Keith’s people had somehow rebuffed Stephen Fry – in the mistaken belief that he was Prime Minister David Cameron.)
After decades of hoping, I found myself sitting inches from the kohl-eyed demigod, and I noticed that, though his face was as lined as Auden’s, his teeth were American in their whiteness.
We began with some small talk. But the crowd around us was jostling and jabbering ever more insistently, and I knew that I must blurt it out.
“Er, Keith,” I stumbled.
“Mr. Ma-yor,” he said, in his courtly way.
‘I’ve got this theory that, er …’ and I gasped out the story, as told by Joe Walsh, the god-gifted guitarist of the Eagles, that he had never even heard of Muddy Waters until he went to hear a Stones concert.
“That’s right,” Keith said, nodding.
And so, I went on, you could argue that the Stones were critical in the history of rock and roll – by now I was half-shouting – because they gave back the blues to America.
“I’ll go with that,” he said, with infinite affability.
And I’ll go with it, too, Keith. As 19th-century London took in sugar and oranges and sold them back to the world as marmalade, so 20th-century London imported the American blues and re-exported them as rock/pop. It was a great trade.
Now it was time for Keith Richards to leave and as his entourage climbed into some vast limo, I thought how much London had changed since he hit the scene.
The old counterculture has been adopted and expanded and has permeated society in a way that is good both for London and its economy.
Where once we had Mary Quant hacking away with her scissors in a bedsit, we now have a London fashion industry worth £21-billion and employing 80,000 people. We have young artists charging quite fantastic sums for diamond-studded skulls.
The Colony Room is still going, but it is now supplemented by the Groucho Club and dozens of other posh-washroomed venues occupied by people with some sort of creative talent – London is one of the world’s most important centres for the “creative, culture and media” industries.
But one art form more than any other helps to make a city cool – and that is music. Excerpted from Johnson’s Life of London: The People Who Made The City That Made The World (2012) written by Boris Johnson and published courtesy of Harper Collins Canada.
In the old days, the benchmark of success for musicians launching their careers was to get their first radio hit. Now there’s a new benchmark: their first ad hit. More and more independent artists are looking to commercials on TV and online as allies in the fight to have their music heard. Where the soundtrack of advertising used to be custom-written jingles, the average commercial break now sounds more like a college radio station. Traditional jingles, such as that classic Canadian earworm “ Fabricland, Fab-ric-land,” are in the minority.
AUDIO CLIP Susan Krashinsky talks to Emilie Mover about the perks of having her songs used in ads
CLIP Listen to Emilie Mover sing her song 'Ordinary Day'
While brands have used indie songs in their ads for a while now, the industry’s music supervisors say the trend – which began picking up speed seven or eight years ago – has grown exponentially in the past year or so. “Definitely I receive more e-mails now from [music] licensing houses saying, ‘Hey, we have more artists available if you want to use it in a commercial,’” said Judy John, chief executive officer and chief creative officer of Leo Burnett Canada, which regularly uses indie music in its commercials for clients such as IKEA.
Part of what’s behind this growth is the air of authenticity the right indie song can lend to an advertisement. Marketers want their brands to seem fresh, contemporary, and culturally savvy. Given all the ways that people today can find the music they love, there’s real value for an advertiser in bringing a new song to the public’s ears.
“Indie bands are about discovery. When you find a great indie track and it creates a beautiful emotion, people say, ‘Is that a real track?’ And they’ll reach out to us or to the client to try and buy it. It creates a halo effect around the ad itself,” Ms. John said.
Mattel’s Fisher-Price felt that halo effect last year, when it used a song by Canadian artist Emilie Mover for a newglobal campaign.
Ms. Mover’s song Made for Each Other was featured in a series ofcommercials for Fisher-Price toys, and it has become the theme song for the brand. (The commercials were directed by Bob Giraldi, the director behind Michael Jackson’s Beat It video.) The response was very positive: Fans praised the tune on social media, writing that they sang along to the ads with their children. On its Facebook page, Fisher-Price promotedMade for Each Other with a link for a free download at the time the ads started running.
“It’s playing on people’s curiosity about music,” Ms. Mover said. “It’s ear-catching when it’s a real song, and if a person’s ear is caught by the music, they’ll look at the screen and they’ll see what the product is.” Ms. Mover says advertising has affected her songwriting as well; she writes more pop-sounding, upbeat tunes in the (often justified) hope that they will appeal to marketers, while the music she writes for her albums tends toward the introspective, and a slightly more mellow or even darker sound. It’s worked: she says licensing deals for her songs in TV, films and especially advertising now make up the bulk of her income. Made for Each Other has also been used in an ad for Fancy Feastcat food, for example; her tune No Hill Too High has been used in a Telusad; and Ordinary Day was in a Bounce commercial.
And it’s not just about music being used for marketing. It also helps to market the music. Ms. Mover says songs that get exposure in ads consistently have the most hits on YouTube, and she always sees a spike in visits to her website after an ad airs. That increases her potential fan base. The revenue from those deals (a couple of thousand dollars for an ad that runs nationally in Canada, and substantially more for a global campaign such as the Fisher-Price one) funds small tours and the cost of recording albums. “When I first started doing it, there was still sort of an element of, ‘Oh, it’s selling out,’ a bit. I think that’s pretty much gone now,” she said. “Bands take the money and run.”
The business has been fuelled by the growth in music licensing houses. Marco DiFelice, who works with Ms. Mover, launched his licensing business Indie Joe as a division of Toronto-based audio production company Silent Joe eight years ago. Major ad agencies such as Taxi, Leo Burnett and MacLaren McCann, send him a campaign brief – the document explaining the ad’s goals, its target audience, and its composition – and he searches his roster of musicians to offer them the sound they are looking for.
“It’s raised the bar for the quality of music in ads,” Mr. DiFelice says of the indie trend. Among other tracks, he has placed the music in many of the zoologically themed Telus ads. Those include Ms. Mover’s song, and a cover of The Beatles’ From Me to You, performed by Canadian indie band Walk Off the Earth. (That’s the group that scored Internet fame and an appearance on Ellen earlier this year for their cover of a hit song by Gotye.) He also works with U.S. bands such as Louisiana-based group Royal Teeth, whose song Wild he placed in an ad for GM’s Buick Verano.
Mr. DiFelice says he has to be careful to fit the tone of the song to the ad, but he will jettison a song if the lyrics are too close to the brand message. He’ll never pitch a song with lyrics such as “Let’s talk” for Telus, for example. Brands are so resistant to the jingle sound there is a fear that using the music that way will veer into parody.
TV shows such as The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy, and Gossip Girl began using indie songs years ago, and advertisers saw how much audiences reacted to that, said Sanne Hagelsten, the founder of L.A. and New York-based licensing house Zync Music Group, which also counts Canadian singer Ms. Mover on its artist roster.
“That initially made the cool brands more open to using emerging indie music, and got them excited to try and find the next big thing,” she said.
It’s not always licensing houses that are responsible for matching an artist with a brand, however: Often, editors within production houses will lay down an indie track they like as a placeholder until the choice of music is decided. Clients will sometimes hear that song and keep it. Within ad agencies, people are trolling music blogs to keep in mind ideas for future spots as well, said Matt Litzinger, co-chief creative officer at
In the old days, the benchmark of success for musicians launching their careers was to get their first radio hit. Now there’s a new benchmark: their first ad hit.
More and more independent artists are looking to commercials on TV and online as allies in the fight to have their music heard. Where the soundtrack of advertising used to be custom-written jingles, the average commercial break now sounds more like a college radio station. Traditional jingles, such as that classic Canadian earworm “ Fabricland, Fab-ric-land,” are in the minority.
While brands have used indie songs in their ads for a while now, the industry’s music supervisors say the trend – which began picking up speed seven or eight years ago – has grown exponentially in the past year or so.
“Definitely I receive more e-mails now from [music] licensing houses saying, ‘Hey, we have more artists available if you want to use it in a commercial,’” said Judy John, chief executive officer and chief creative officer of Leo Burnett Canada, which regularly uses indie music in its commercials for clients such as IKEA.
Part of what’s behind this growth is the air of authenticity the right indie song can lend to an advertisement. Marketers want their brands to seem fresh, contemporary, and culturally savvy. Given all the ways that people today can find the music they love, there’s real value for an advertiser in bringing a new song to the public’s ears.
“Indie bands are about discovery. When you find a great indie track and it creates a beautiful emotion, people say, ‘Is that a real track?’ And they’ll reach out to us or to the client to try and buy it. It creates a halo effect around the ad itself,” Ms. John said.
Mattel’s Fisher-Price felt that halo effect last year, when it used a song by Canadian artist Emilie Mover for a new global campaign.
Ms. Mover’s song Made for Each Other was featured in a series of commercials for Fisher-Price toys, and it has become the theme song for the brand. (The commercials were directed by Bob Giraldi, the director behind Michael Jackson’s Beat It video.) The response was very positive: Fans praised the tune on social media, writing that they sang along to the ads with their children. On its Facebook page, Fisher-Price promoted Made for Each Other with a link for a free download at the time the ads started running.
“It’s playing on people’s curiosity about music,” Ms. Mover said. “It’s ear-catching when it’s a real song, and if a person’s ear is caught by the music, they’ll look at the screen and they’ll see what the product is.”
Ms. Mover says advertising has affected her songwriting as well; she writes more pop-sounding, upbeat tunes in the (often justified) hope that they will appeal to marketers, while the music she writes for her albums tends toward the introspective, and a slightly more mellow or even darker sound. It’s worked: she says licensing deals for her songs in TV, films and especially advertising now make up the bulk of her income. Made for Each Other has also been used in an ad for Fancy Feast cat food, for example; her tune No Hill Too High has been used in a Telus ad; and Ordinary Day was in a Bounce commercial.
And it’s not just about music being used for marketing. It also helps to market the music. Ms. Mover says songs that get exposure in ads consistently have the most hits on YouTube, and she always sees a spike in visits to her website after an ad airs. That increases her potential fan base. The revenue from those deals (a couple of thousand dollars for an ad that runs nationally in Canada, and substantially more for a global campaign such as the Fisher-Price one) funds small tours and the cost of recording albums.
“When I first started doing it, there was still sort of an element of, ‘Oh, it’s selling out,’ a bit. I think that’s pretty much gone now,” she said. “Bands take the money and run.”
The business has been fuelled by the growth in music licensing houses. Marco DiFelice, who works with Ms. Mover, launched his licensing business Indie Joe as a division of Toronto-based audio production company Silent Joe eight years ago. Major ad agencies such as Taxi, Leo Burnett and MacLaren McCann, send him a campaign brief – the document explaining the ad’s goals, its target audience, and its composition – and he searches his roster of musicians to offer them the sound they are looking for.
“It’s raised the bar for the quality of music in ads,” Mr. DiFelice says of the indie trend. Among other tracks, he has placed the music in many of the zoologically themed Telus ads. Those include Ms. Mover’s song, and a cover of The Beatles’ From Me to You, performed by Canadian indie band Walk Off the Earth. (That’s the group that scored Internet fame and an appearance on Ellen earlier this year for their cover of a hit song by Gotye.) He also works with U.S. bands such as Louisiana-based group Royal Teeth, whose song Wild he placed in an ad for GM’s Buick Verano.
Mr. DiFelice says he has to be careful to fit the tone of the song to the ad, but he will jettison a song if the lyrics are too close to the brand message. He’ll never pitch a song with lyrics such as “Let’s talk” for Telus, for example. Brands are so resistant to the jingle sound there is a fear that using the music that way will veer into parody.
TV shows such as The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy, and Gossip Girl began using indie songs years ago, and advertisers saw how much audiences reacted to that, said Sanne Hagelsten, the founder of L.A. and New York-based licensing house Zync Music Group, which also counts Canadian singer Ms. Mover on its artist roster.
“That initially made the cool brands more open to using emerging indie music, and got them excited to try and find the next big thing,” she said.
It’s not always licensing houses that are responsible for matching an artist with a brand, however: Often, editors within production houses will lay down an indie track they like as a placeholder until the choice of music is decided. Clients will sometimes hear that song and keep it. Within ad agencies, people are trolling music blogs to keep in mind ideas for future spots as well, said Matt Litzinger, co-chief creative officer at Cossette Toronto.
“As soon as it gets on air, there's a bunch of Internet chatter – ‘What's that song?’ ‘What's the name of it?’ We love that because it's making your ad part of the conversation,” he said, pointing to the song Big Black Car by Colorado singer Gregory Alan Isakov, which he and co-chief David Daga used in a McDonald’s Christmas spot last year. They’ve used Canadian musicians David Jalbert and the band Pepper Rabbit in other ads for the chain, as well.
Ms. Mover believes more artists than ever are willing to lend a ditty out for commercial purposes. For musicians struggling to build a career, the benefit is clear.
“It’s a hell of a lot better than working as a waitress,” she said.
SLIDESHOW
What's that song? Eight hot indie tracks with prime time TV spots
Ikea's It's Under Warranty
Agency: Leo Burnett Toronto
Artist: Adrianne Serna
Song: "Cozy"
General Motors’ Buick Verano
Agency: MacLaren McCann
Artist: Royal Teeth
Song: "Wild"
Chevrolet Volt's Farther
Agency: MacLaren McCann
Artist: Saidah Baba Talibah
Song: "Revolution"
Bounce
Artist: Emilie Mover
Song: "Ordinary Day"
Fisher Price
Agency: Young & Rubicam
Artist: Emilie Mover
Song: "Made For Each Other"
Proctor & Gamble's Cheer detergent
Agency: Leo Burnett Toronto
Artist: Strange Talk
Song: "Climbing Walls"
The agency actually turned the band’s music video into an ad itself. It made the video and used a social media campaign to give away colourful items featured in it.
After 28 years of living with KISS singer Gene Simmons, it seems like Shannon Tweed -- former model and mother of his two children -- might have finally had enough. During the couple's appearance on The Joy Behar Show, the rocker made a comment that seemed to seriously irk his lady. At that point, it appears Tweed decided she couldn't stand her longtime partner another moment, so she got up and left the studio.
[Video courtesy "The Joy Behar Show"]
And while speaking to Kathie Lee and Hoda on "Today," Tweed mercilessly skewered the Kiss bassist every chance she had. And when asked specifically about their future, Tweed said, "It's not looking great."
Their palpable tension seemingly stems from an incident depicted on the last episode of "Gene Simmons Family Jewels" where Tweed confronts her longtime lover with a photo of two ladies hanging on his arms that was posted on TMZ. Of course, it's wasn't just the one photo that did it: Simmons has claimed to have slept with literally thousands of women. Tweed, in her own words on the reality series, is "sick of hearing it, sick of seeing it and sick of living with it."
For his part, Simmons claims he had never met the women in the TMZ photo before and that they were only involved in a business dinner, a claim Tweed dismissed with a curt "oh, please" on "Today."
Yikes. It sounds pretty serious, but for now the former model/actress and the rocker aren't laying their cards on the table: When directly asked about the status of their relationship, Tweed wouldn't give a definitive answer; the two of them do have a TV show to promote, after all, and you can't very well spoil the outcome if you want people to tune in, right?
Simmons himself has been uncharacteristically quiet, even tongue-tied, during these interviews, denying the photo is indicative of any philandering on his part, but clearly also unhappy with the way things are going.
As for Tweed, she didn't mince words when she described their relationship: "It's pretty much unraveled," she bluntly stated. They might have 28 years of history, but according to Tweed, "those last two [years] were a b----."
Although the whole thing could be a stint to drum up interest in their reality series, it sure doesn't sound like the future is looking bright for the long-time couple.
[Photo: Alexandra Wyman/WireImage]
"It is quite amazing when you think about it," Mick Jagger recently told Rolling Stone, reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones first show on July 12th, 1962 at London's Marquee Jazz Club. "But it was so long ago. Some of us are still here, but it's a very different group than the one that played 50 years ago."
On that summer night in 1962, the Rollin' Stones were Jagger on vocals, guitarists Brian Jones and Keith Richards, pianist Ian Stewart and bassist Dick Taylor. The drummer is up for debate; some fans contend it was their frequent early drummer, Tony Chapman, but Richards insisted in his 2012 memoir Life that it was friend Mick Avory. The Stones got the gig when Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated – the club's Thursday night regulars fronted by Jagger – were invited to play a BBC live broadcast. Jagger didn't take part in the broadcast, and Jones persuaded Marquee club owner Harold Pendleton to let their new group fill in. When Jones called local listings paper Jazz News to advertise the gig, the famous story goes, he was asked what the band was called. His eyes went straight to the first song on the nearby LP The Best of Muddy Waters: "Rollin' Stone."
The band borrowed money from Jagger's dad to rent equipment for the gig. In Life, Richards recalled playing songs like "Dust My Broom," "Confessin' the Blues" and "Got My Mojo Working." "You're sitting with some guys, and you're playing and you go, 'Ooh yeah!' That feeling is worth more than anything," he wrote. "There's a certain moment when you realize that you've actually left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you … it's flying without a license."
The band continued to play around London clubs that summer. In August, Jagger, Richards and Jones moved into a grimy second-floor apartment at 102 Edith Grove in Fulham, living amongst dirty dishes, two beds and no furniture. Soon, Charlie Watts moved in. "The Rolling Stones spent the first year of their life hanging places, stealing food and rehearsing," Richards remembered. "We were paying to be the Rolling Stones."
Today, Jagger admits feeling uneasy about celebrating the milestone. "One part of me goes, 'We're slightly cheating,'" he says. "Because it's not the same band, you know. Still the same name. It's only Keith and myself that are the same people, I think. I've tried to find out when Charlie's first gig was, and none of us can really remember and no one really knows. But it's an amazing achievement, and I think it's fantastic and you know I'm very proud of it."
Richards is less reflective. "Man, I don't count!" he says with a laugh. "The Stones always really consider '63 to be 50 years, because Charlie didn't actually join until January. So we look upon 2012 as sort of the year of conception. But the birth is next year."
On Wednesday, the Stones met at the Marquee Club to shoot an anniversary photo. And while they might look a little worse for wear and tear than they did 50 years ago, they haven't lost any cool. After more than 400 songs, over two-dozen studio albums, ten mega-tours, turmoil and countless public squabbles, they look dangerous and commanding as ever, still capable of giving crowds more satisfaction than any band 50 years their junior.
Richards says the band will discuss recording new material during their London stay, and the band is strongly considering at least one gig this year, while a tour is more likely next year. Here's hoping it all happens. As Pete Townshend told the band while inducting them in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, "Guys, whatever you do, don't grow old gracefully. It wouldn't suit you."
Here is what the Stones played on that night in 1962, according to meticulous, setlist-documenting Stones fansite It's Only Rock and Roll – though the setlist differs slightly from Richards' memory of the show described in Life.
1. "Kansas City" 2. "Baby What's Wrong" 3. "Confessin' the Blues" 4. "Bright Lights, Big City" 5. "Dust My Broom" 6. "Down the Road Apiece" 7. "I'm a Love You" 8. "Bad Boy" 9. "I Ain't Got You" 10. "Hush-Hush" 11. "Ride 'Em on Down" 12. "Back in the U.S.A." 13. "Kind of Lonesome" 14. "Blues Before Sunrise" 15. "Big Boss Man" 16. "Don't Stay Out All Night" 17. "Tell Me You Love Me" 18. "Happy Home"
