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Rolling-Stones-Photos-Biography

Rolling-Stones-Photos-Biography

Rolling Stones Photos Biography

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The Rolling Stones

Background information
Origin London, England
Genres Rock, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, blues
Years active 1962-present
Labels Decca, London, Rolling Stones, Virgin, ABKCO, Interscope, Polydor
Website www.RollingStones.com
Members
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
Ronnie Wood
Charlie Watts
Former members
Brian Jones
Ian Stewart
Dick Taylor
Mick Taylor
Bill Wyman
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in 1962 in London when guitarist and harmonica player Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were joined by vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early lineup. Stewart, deemed unsuitable as a teen idol, was removed from the official lineup in 1963 but continued as the band's road manager and occasional keyboardist until his death in 1985. After signing to Decca Records in 1963, the spelling of their name changed from "the Rollin' Stones" to "the Rolling Stones."

In 1963 Jagger and Richards formed a songwriting partnership and eventually took over leadership of the band as Jones became increasingly troubled and erratic. After recording mainly covers of American blues and R&B songs, every studio record since the 1966 album Aftermath has featured mainly Jagger/Richards songs. Mick Taylor replaced Jones shortly before Jones's death in 1969. Taylor quit in 1974, and was replaced in 1975 by Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood, who has remained with the band ever since. Wyman left the Rolling Stones in 1992, and Darryl Jones, who is not an official band member, has been the primary bassist since 1994.

First popular in the UK, The Rolling Stones toured the US repeatedly during the early 1960s "British Invasion". The Rolling Stones have released 22 studio albums in the UK (24 in the US), eight concert albums (nine in the US) and numerous compilations; and have album sales estimated at more than 200 million worldwide. Sticky Fingers (1971) began a string of eight consecutive studio albums reaching number one in the United States. Their latest album, A Bigger Bang, was released in 2005. In 1989 The Rolling Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2004 they ranked number 4 in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked The Rolling Stones at number ten on "The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists", making them as the second most successful group in the history of Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Contents
1 History
1.1 Early history
1.2 1962-64
1.3 1965-69
1.4 1970-74
1.5 1975-82
1.6 1983-91
1.7 1992-2004
1.8 Since 2005
2 Musical evolution
2.1 Infusion of American blues
2.2 Early songwriting
3 Band members
3.1 Line-ups
4 Discography
5 Concert tours
6 Official videography
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links


==History==
==Early history==
In the early 1950s Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were classmates at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford, Kent. They met again in 1960 while Richards was attending Sidcup Art College. Richards recalled, "I was still going to school, and he was going up to the London School of Economics... So I get on this train one morning, and there's Jagger and under his arm he has four or five albums... He's got Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters". With mutual friend Dick Taylor (later of Pretty Things), they formed the band Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Stones founders Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart were active in the nascent London R&B scene fostered by Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner. Jagger and Richards met Jones while he was playing slide guitar sitting in with Korner's Blues Incorporated. Korner also had hired Jagger periodically and frequently future Stones drummer Charlie Watts. Richards credits Stewart with instigating and finding a space for rehearsals. The early rehearsals included Stewart, Jones, Jagger and Richards, as well as guitarist Geoff Bradford and vocalist Brian Knight. The latter two objected to the Chuck Berry material that Jagger and Richards favoured, and ended their involvement with the as-yet-unnamed band. In June 1962 the lineup was: Jagger, Richards, Stewart, Jones, Taylor, and drummer Tony Chapman. Taylor then left the group. According to Richards, Jones christened the band in a "panic" while phoning Jazz News to place an advertisement. When asked what the band's name was, Jones glanced at a Muddy Waters LP lying on the floor; one of the tracks was "Rollin' Stone".

1962-64
On 12 July 1962 the group played their first formal gig at the Marquee Club, billed as "The Rollin' Stones". The line-up was Jagger, Richards, Jones, Stewart on piano, Taylor on bass and Tony Chapman on drums. Jones and Stewart intended to play primarily Chicago blues, but were agreeable the Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley numbers Jagger and Richards brought to the band. Bassist Bill Wyman joined in December and drummer Charlie Watts the following January to form the band's long-standing rhythm section.

Acting Rolling Stones' manager Giorgio Gomelsky booked them for what became an eight-month Sunday residency at The Crawdaddy Club - named after the bands' 20-minute version of Bo Diddley's "Doin' the Crawdad" which they often closed with. First located at the Station Hotel in Richmond , the Crawdaddy Club moved to the larger Richmond Athletic Association. Gomelsky paired the Rolling Stones' residency at the club with the emergence of The Beatles as key events for "Swinging London" in which the blues enjoyed an international renaissance.

In March 1963 engineer Glyn Johns arranged an agreement with The Rollling Stones and IBC Studios for the band's very first recording session. In exchange for three hours of studio time, Jones signed on the band's behalf a recording contract with IBC. The session produced a four-cut demo featuring two Bo Diddley songs, "Diddley Daddy" and "Road-Runner", as well as Muddy Waters's "I Want to be Loved" and Jimmy Reed's "Honey, What's Wrong?". Later, on the eve of signing to Decca Records, Jones feigned that he was leaving the band and paid 90 pounds cash which he was provided with to buy out the IBC contact.

Tipped off by Record Mirror journalist Peter Jones about the large and fashionable Crawdaddy audiences, former Beatles publicist, Andrew Loog Oldham, became the Rolling Stones manager in April, 1963. Oldham's age of nineteen - besides making him younger than any of the band members - made him ineligible for an agent's license. To make matters legal, in May of 1963 Oldham became co-manager of the band with veteran booker Eric Easton, as Mrs. Oldham signed the agreement for her underage son.  Gomelsky had no written agreement with the band and was not consulted.

Oldham and Easton got the Rolling Stones signed to Decca by AR rep Dick Rowe who, subsequent to becoming known for rejecting the Beatles, courted the Rolling Stones based on Beatle George Harrison's solicited recommendation.  Desperate to bring the Rolling Stones to Decca, Rowe signed the band through Oldham and Eastons' production company Impact Sound, after an attempt to record the band at Decca's West Hampstead studios without Oldham's involvement ended in failure. The three year Impact Sound agreement committed The Rolling Stones to Decca and gave them three times the royalty rate of an average recording act under a tape-lease agreement that gave the band artistic control of their recordings, ownership of the recording masters, which they leased to Decca, and Oldham was also allowed his choice of recording studios. All of these were favourable terms which, at the time, were unusual in England". Despite having almost no recording-studio experience, Oldham made himself the band's producer and booked the band into independent studios such as Olympic, De Lane Lea and Regent Sound.

Besides earning better royalty rates through using independent studios, the band found avoiding any major studio artistically conducive. After finding the stereo four-track facilities of Olympic to be unnerving, in late 1963 and early 1964 Oldham and the Rolling Stones settled on Regent Sound, a relatively primitive and inexpensive monophonic demo facility on Denmark Street, with egg boxes on the ceiling for sound treatment. All tracks for the first album were recorded at Regent, where noted Oldham, "The sound leaked, instrument to instrument, the right way" creating a "wall of noise" in mono that suited the band's sound. Because at Regent the band could record for extended intervals, they could create and experiment without possible interference from Decca A&R.

Recording at independent studios also let Oldham present The Rolling Stones as stars, who, unlike the Beatles, were not "mere motals...sweating in the studio for the man",  as Oldham developed his media strategy to contrast The Rolling Stones as the nasty opposites of the Beatles. How The Rolling Stones were perceived was important to Oldham: he changed the spelling of the band from "the Rollin' Stones" to "the Rolling Stones" and changed the spelling of Richards last name to Richard because it "looked more pop". He also had Stewart, who did not fit Oldham's mold of "pretty, thin, long-haired boys", removed from band photos and live appearances to become the band's road manager and occasional studio pianist.  To exploit the media Oldham learned to take advantage of what the band offered. According to Wyman: "Our reputation and image as the Bad Boys came later, completely accidentally. Andrew never did engineer it. He simply exploited it exhaustively." In fact, before reversing course, Oldham initially tried to make the band more presentable with identical suits, but acquiesced as the band gradually returned to wearing their own clothes for public appearances.


The Rolling Stones in the 1960s. From left: Jagger, Jones, Richards, Wyman and WattsThe Rolling Stones' first single, recorded during an unhappy session at Olympic Studios during contract negotiations as an audition of sorts, was released with the A-side(released 7 June 1963) being a cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On". Though The Rolling Stones appeared on the TV show "Thank Your Luck Stars" playing "Come On",, they disliked the song and refused to play it at live gigs. Decca also did little to promote "Come On". Oldham, aware of how unimpressive "Come On" was, still feared that if the record did poorly, Decca would neglect the band and not allow any other record company to sign them. Oldham's response was to dispatch fan club members to buy copies at record shops specifically chosen because they were polled by the charts. After the release of "Come On" the band began touring, playing their first gig outside greater London at the Outlook Club in Middlesbrough on 13 July. Later in the year Oldham and Easton booked the band on their first big UK concert tour, as a supporting act for American stars including Bo Diddley, Little Richard and The Everly Brothers. The autumn 1963 tour became a "training ground" for the young band's stagecraft.

During this tour the Rolling Stones recorded their second single, a Lennon/McCartney-penned number entitled "I Wanna Be Your Man; it reached number 12 in the UK charts. Their third single featured Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" , released in February of 1964, and reached number 3.

Oldham believed that recording songs written by "middle-aged blacks", besides giving away revenue to artists he did not represent, could also limit the band's appeal to its teenage audience. At Oldham's direction, Jagger and Richards began to co-write songs, the first batch of which he described as "soppy and imitative." Because songwriting developed slowly, songs on the band's first album The Rolling Stones, (issued in the US as England's Newest Hit Makers) were primarily covers, with only one Jagger/Richards original  "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)"  and two numbers credited to Nanker Phelge, the pen name for songs written by the entire group.

The Rolling Stones' first US tour, in June 1964, was, in Bill Wyman's words, "a disaster. When we arrived, we didn't have a hit record  or anything going for us." When the band appeared on Dean Martin's TV variety show The Hollywood Palace, Martin mocked both their hair and their performance. During the tour recorded for two days at Chess Studios in Chicago, meeting many of their most important influences, including Muddy Waters.  These sessions included what would become The Rolling Stones' first number 1 hit in the UK: their cover of Bobby and Shirley Womack's "It's All Over Now".

"The Stones" followed James Brown in the filmed theatrical release of The TAMI Show, which showcased American acts with British Invasion artists. According to Jagger in 2003, "We weren't actually following James Brown because there were hours in between the filming of each section. Nevertheless, he was still very annoyed about it..." On 25 October the band also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan, reacting to the pandemonium the Stones caused, stated he would never book them again, though he later did book them repeatedly. Their second LP  the US-only 12 X 5  was released during this tour; like their first album, it contained mainly cover tunes, augmented by Jagger/Richards and Nanker Phelge tracks.

The Rolling Stones' fifth UK single  a cover of Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster" backed by "Off the Hook" (Nanker Phelge)  was released in November 1964 and became their second number-1 hit in the UK  an unprecedented achievement for a blues number. The band's US distributors (London Records) declined to release "Little Red Rooster" as a single there. In December 1964 London Records released the band's first single with Jagger/Richards originals on both sides: "Heart of Stone" backed with "What a Shame"; "Heart of Stone" went to number 19 in the US.

1965-69
The band's second UK LP - The Rolling Stones No. 2, released in January 1965 - was another number 1 on the album charts; the US version, released in February as The Rolling Stones, Now!, went to number 5. Most of the material had been recorded at Chess Studios in Chicago and RCA Studios in Los Angeles. In January/February 1965 the band also toured Australia and New Zealand for the first time, playing 34 shows for about 100,000 fans.

The first Jagger/Richards composition to reach number 1 on the UK singles charts was "The Last Time" (released in February 1965); it went to number 9 in the US. It was also later identified by Richards as the "the bridge to into thinking about writing for The Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it."  Their first international number-1 hit was "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", recorded in May 1965 during the band's third North American tour. In recording the guitar riff with the fuzzbox that drives the song, Richards had envisoned it as a scratch track to guide a horn section. Disagreeing, Oldham released "Satisfaction" without the planned horn overdubs. Issued in the US in June 1965, it spent four weeks at the top of the charts there, establishing the Stones as a worldwide premier act.

The US version of the LP Out of Our Heads (released in July 1965) also went to number 1; it included seven original songs (three Jagger/Richards numbers and four credited to Nanker Phelge). Their second international number-1 single, "Get Off of My Cloud" was released in the autumn of 1965, followed by another US-only LP: December's Children.

Aftermath (UK number 1; US 2), released in the late spring of 1966, was the first Rolling Stones album to be composed entirely of Jagger/Richards songs. On this album Jones's contributions expanded beyond guitar and harmonica. To the Middle Eastern-influenced "Paint It Black" he added sitar, to the ballad "Lady Jane" he added dulcimer, and to "Under My Thumb" he added marimbas. Aftermath was also notable for the almost 12-minute long "Goin' Home", the first extended jam on a top-selling rock & roll album.

The Stones' success on the British and American singles charts peaked during 1966. "19th Nervous Breakdown" (Feb. 1966, UK number 2, US number 2) was followed by their first trans-Atlantic number-1 hit "Paint It Black" (May 1966). "Mother's Little Helper" (June 1966) was only released as a single in the USA, where it reached number 8; it was one of the first pop songs to address the issue of prescription drug abuse. Notably, Jagger sang the lyric in his natural London accent, rather than his usual affected southern American accent.

The September 1966 single "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?" (UK number 5, US number 9) was notable in several respects: It was the first Stones recording to feature brass horns, the (now-famous) back-cover photo on the original US picture sleeve depicted the group satirically dressed in drag, and the song was accompanied by one of the first purposely-made promotional film clips (music videos), directed by Peter Whitehead.


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January 1967 saw the release of Between the Buttons (UK number 3; US 2); the album was Andrew Oldham's last venture as The Rolling Stones' producer (his role as the band's manager had been taken over by Allen Klein in 1965). The US version included the double A-side single "Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday", which went to number 1 in America and number 3 in the UK. When the band went to New York to perform the numbers on The Ed Sullivan Show, they were ordered to change the lyrics of the refrain to "let's spend some time together".

Jagger, Richards and Jones began to be hounded by authorities over their recreational drug use in early 1967, after News of the World ran a three-part feature entitled "Pop Stars and Drugs: Facts That Will Shock You". The series described alleged LSD parties hosted by The Moody Blues and attended by top stars including The Who's Pete Townshend and Cream's Ginger Baker, and alleged admissions of drug use by leading pop musicians. The first article targeted Donovan (who was raided and charged soon after); the second installment (published on 5 February) targeted the Rolling Stones. A reporter who contributed to the story spent an evening at the exclusive London club Blaise's, where a member of the Stones allegedly took several Benzedrine tablets, displayed a piece of hashish and invited his companions back to his flat for a "smoke". The article claimed that this was Mick Jagger, but it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity the reporter had in fact been eavesdropping on Brian Jones. On the night the article was published Jagger appeared on the Eammon Andrews chat show and announced that he was filing a writ of libel against the paper.

A week later on Sunday 12 February, Sussex police (tipped off by the News of the World) raided a party at Keith Richards's home, Redlands. No arrests were made at the time but Jagger, Richards and their friend Robert Fraser (an art dealer) were subsequently charged with drug offences. Richards said in 2003, "When we got busted at Redlands, it suddenly made us realise that this was a whole different ball game and that was when the fun stopped. Up until then it had been as though London existed in a beautiful space where you could do anything you wanted."

In March, while awaiting the consequences of the police raid, Jagger, Richards and Jones took a short trip to Morocco, accompanied by Marianne Faithfull, Jones's girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and other friends. During this trip the stormy relations between Jones and Pallenberg deteriorated to the point that Pallenberg left Morocco with Richards. Richards said later: "That was the final nail in the coffin with me and Brian. He'd never forgive me for that and I don't blame him, but hell, shit happens." Richards and Pallenberg would remain a couple for twelve years. Despite these complications, The Rolling Stones toured Europe in March and April 1967. The tour included the band's first performances in Poland, Greece and Italy.

On 10 May 1967 the same day Jagger, Richards and Fraser were arraigned in connection with the Redlands charges Brian Jones's house was raided by police and he was arrested and charged with possession of cannabis. Three out of five Rolling Stones now faced criminal charges. Jagger and Richards were tried at the end of June. On 29 June Jagger was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for possession of four amphetamine tablets; Richards was found guilty of allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property and sentenced to one year in prison. Both Jagger and Richards were imprisoned at that point, but were released on bail the next day pending appeal. The Times ran the famous editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?" in which editor William Rees-Mogg was strongly critical of the sentencing, pointing out that Jagger had been treated far more harshly for a minor first offence than "any purely anonymous young man".

While awaiting the appeal hearings, the band recorded a new single, "We Love You", as a thank-you for the loyalty shown by their fans. It began with the sound of prison doors closing, and the accompanying music video included allusions to the trial of Oscar Wilde. On 31 July, the appeals court overturned Richards's conviction, and Jagger's sentence was reduced to a conditional discharge. Brian Jones's trial took place in November 1967; in December, after appealing the original prison sentence, Jones was fined £1000, put on three years' probation and ordered to seek professional help.

December 1967 also saw the release of Their Satanic Majesties Request (UK number 3; US 2), released shortly after The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Satanic Majesties had been recorded in difficult circumstances while Jagger, Richards and Jones were dealing with their court cases. The band parted ways with producer Andrew Oldham during the sessions. The split was amicable, at least publicly, but in 2003 Jagger said: "The reason Andrew left was because he thought that we weren't concentrating and that we were being childish. It was not a great moment really - and I would have thought it wasn't a great moment for Andrew either. There were a lot of distractions and you always need someone to focus you at that point, that was Andrew's job."

Satanic Majesties thus became the first album The Rolling Stones produced on their own. It was also the first of their albums released in identical versions on both sides of the Atlantic. Its psychedelic sound was complemented by the cover art, which featured a 3D photo by Michael Cooper, who had also photographed the cover of Sgt. Pepper. Bill Wyman wrote and sang a track on the album: "In Another Land", which was also released as a single, the first on which Jagger did not sing lead vocal.

The band spent the first few months of 1968 working on material for their next album. Those sessions resulted in the song "Jumpin' Jack Flash", released as a single in May. The song and the subsequent album, Beggars Banquet (UK number 3; US 5), an eclectic mix of country and blues-inspired tunes, marked the band's return to their roots, and the beginning of their collaboration with producer Jimmy Miller. Featuring the lead single "Street Fighting Man" (which addressed the political upheavals of May 1968) and the opening track "Sympathy for the Devil", Beggars Banquet was hailed as an achievement for the Stones at the time of release. On the musical evolution between albums, Richards said, "There is a change between material on Satanic Majesties and Beggars Banquet. I'd grown sick to death of the whole Maharishi guru shit and the beads and bells. Who knows where these things come from, but I guess was a reaction to what we'd done in our time off and also that severe dose of reality. A spell in prison... will certainly give you room for thought... I was fucking pissed with being busted. So it was, 'Right we'll go and strip this thing down.' There's a lot of anger in the music from that period." Richards started using open tunings for rhythm parts (often in conjunction with a capo), most prominently an open-E or open-D tuning in 1968. Beginning in 1969, he often used 5-string open-G tuning (with the lower 6th string removed), as heard on the 1969 single "Honky Tonk Women", "Brown Sugar" (Sticky Fingers, 1971), "Tumbling Dice"(capo IV), "Happy"(capo IV) (Exile on Main St., 1972), and "Start Me Up" (Tattoo You, 1981).

The end of 1968 saw the filming of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. It featured John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Dirty Mac, The Who, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull and Taj Mahal. The footage was shelved for twenty-eight years but was finally released officially in 1996.

By the release of Beggars Banquet, Brian Jones was increasingly troubled and was only sporadically contributing to the band. Jagger said that Jones was "not psychologically suited to this way of life". His drug use had become a hindrance, and he was unable to obtain a US visa. Richards reported that, in a June meeting with Jagger, Richards, and Watts at Jones's house, Jones admitted that he was unable to "go on the road again". According to Richards, all agreed to let Jones "...say I've left, and if I want to I can come back". His replacement was the 20-year-old guitarist Mick Taylor, of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, who started recording with the band immediately. On 3 July 1969, less than a month later, Jones drowned in the swimming pool at his Cotchford Farm home in Sussex.

1970-74

Richards on stage in 1972The Rolling Stones were scheduled to play at a free concert in London's Hyde Park two days after Brian Jones's death; they decided to proceed with the show as a tribute to Jones. The concert, their first with Mick Taylor, was performed in front of an estimated 250,000 fans. The performance was filmed by a Granada Television production team, and was shown on British television as Stones in the Park. Jagger read an excerpt from Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy Adonais and released thousands of butterflies in memory of Jones. The show included the concert debut of "Honky Tonk Women", which the band had just released. Their stage manager Sam Cutler introduced them as "the greatest rock & roll band in the world" - a description he repeated throughout their 1969 US tour, and which has stuck to this day.


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The release of Let It Bleed (UK number 1; US 3) came in December. Their last album of the sixties, Let It Bleed featured "Gimmie Shelter" (with backing vocals by female vocalist Merry Clayton), "You Can't Always Get What You Want", "Midnight Rambler", as well as a cover of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain". Jones and Taylor are featured on two tracks each. Many of these numbers were played during the band's US tour in November 1969, their first in three years. Just after the tour the band performed at the Altamont Free Concert at the Altamont Speedway, about 60 km east of San Francisco. The biker gang Hells Angels provided security, and a fan, Meredith Hunter, was stabbed and beaten to death by the Angels. Part of the tour and the Altamont concert were documented in Albert and David Maysles' film Gimme Shelter. As a response to the growing popularity of bootleg recordings, the album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! (UK 1; US 6) was released in 1970; it was declared by critic Lester Bangs to be the best live album ever.

At the turn of the decade the band appeared on the BBC's highly rated review of the sixties music scene Pop Go The Sixties, performing Gimme Shelter on the show, which was broadcast live on 1 January 1970. Later in 1970 the band's contracts with both Allen Klein and Decca Records ended, and amid contractual disputes with Klein, they formed their own record company, Rolling Stones Records. Sticky Fingers (UK number 1; US 1), released in March 1971, the band's first album on their own label, featured an elaborate cover design by Andy Warhol. The album contains one of their best known hits, "Brown Sugar", and the country-influenced "Wild Horses". Both were recorded at Alabama's Muscle Shoals Sound Studio during the 1969 American tour. The album continued the band's immersion into heavily blues-influenced compositions. The album is noted for its "loose, ramshackle ambience" and marked Mick Taylor's first full release with the band.


Mick Taylor, playing slide guitar on his Les Paul guitar with the Stones, 1972Following the release of Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones left England on the advice of financial advisors. The band moved to the South of France, where Richards rented the Villa Nellcôte and sublet rooms to band members and entourage. Using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, they held recording sessions in the basement; they completed the resulting tracks, along with material dating as far back as 1969, at Sunset Studios in Los Angeles. The resulting double album, Exile on Main St. (UK number 1; US 1), was released in May 1972. Given an A+ grade by critic Robert Christgau and disparaged by Lester Bangs who reversed his opinion within months -- Exile is now accepted as one of the Stones' best albums. The films Cocksucker Blues (never officially released) and Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones (released in 1974) document the subsequent highly publicised 1972 North American ("STP") Tour, with its retinue of jet-set hangers-on, including writer Terry Southern.

In November 1972, the band began sessions in Kingston, Jamaica, for their follow-up to Exile, Goats Head Soup (UK 1; US 1) (1973). The album spawned the worldwide hit "Angie", but proved the first in a string of commercially successful but tepidly received studio albums. The sessions for Goats Head Soup led to a number of outtakes, most notably an early version of the popular ballad "Waiting on a Friend", not released until Tattoo You eight years later.

The making of the record was interrupted by another legal battle over drugs, dating back to their stay in France; a warrant for Richards's arrest had been issued, and the other band members had to return briefly to France for questioning. This, along with Jagger's convictions on drug charges (in 1967 and 1970), complicated the band's plans for their Pacific tour in early 1973: they were denied permission to play in Japan and almost banned from Australia. This was followed by a European tour (bypassing France) in September/October 1973 - prior to which Richards had been arrested once more on drug charges, this time in England.

The band went to Musicland studios in Munich to record their next album, 1974's It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (UK 2; US 1), but Jimmy Miller, who had drug abuse issues, was no longer producer. Instead, Jagger and Richards assumed production duties and were credited as "the Glimmer Twins". Both the album and the single of the same name were hits.

Near the end of 1974, Taylor began to lose patience. The band's situation made normal functioning complicated, with band members living in different countries and legal barriers restricting where they could tour. In addition, drug use was affecting Richards's creativity and productivity, and Taylor felt some of his own creative contributions were going unrecognized. At the end of 1974, with a recording session already booked in Munich to record another album, Taylor quit The Rolling Stones. Taylor said in 1980, "I was getting a bit fed up. I wanted to broaden my scope as a guitarist and do something else... I wasn't really composing songs or writing at that time. I was just beginning to write, and that influenced my decision... There are some people who can just ride along from crest to crest; they can ride along somebody else's success. And there are some people for whom that's not enough. It really wasn't enough for me."

1975-82

Ronnie Wood (left) and Mick Jagger (right), during the 1975 Tour of the AmericasThe Stones used the recording sessions in Munich to audition replacements for Taylor. Guitarists as stylistically disparate as Humble Pie lead Peter Frampton and ex-Yardbirds virtuoso Jeff Beck were auditioned. Rory Gallagher and Shuggie Otis also dropped by the Munich sessions. American session players Wayne Perkins and Harvey Mandel also appeared on much of the next album, Black and Blue (UK 2; US 1) (1976). Yet Richards and Jagger also wanted the Stones to remain purely a British band. When Ronnie Wood auditioned, everyone agreed that he was the right choice. Wood had already recorded and played live with Richards, and had contributed to the recording and writing of the track "It's Only Rock 'n Roll". Though he had earlier declined Jagger's offer to join the Stones, because of his ties to the The Faces, Wood committed to the Stones in 1975 for their upcoming Tour of the Americas. He officially joined the band the following year, as the Faces dissolved. Unlike the other band members, however, Wood was a salaried employee and remained so until Wyman's departure nearly two decades later, when Wood finally became a full member of the Rolling Stones' partnership.

The 1975 Tour of the Americas kicked off in New York City with the band performing on a flatbed trailer being pulled down Broadway. The tour featured stage props including a giant phallus and a rope on which Jagger swung out over the audience.


Toronto's El Mocambo Club where part of Love You Live was recorded.Jagger had booked live recording sessions at the El Mocambo club in Toronto to balance a long-overdue live album, 1977's Love You Live (UK 3; US 5), the first Stones live album since 1970's Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!. Richards's addiction to heroin delayed his arrival in Toronto; the other members had already assembled, awaiting Richards, and sent him a telegram asking him where he was. On 24 February 1977, when Richards and his family flew in from London, they were temporarily detained by Canada Customs after Richards was found in possession of a burnt spoon and hash residue. Three days later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, armed with an arrest warrant for Pallenberg, discovered "22 grams of heroin" in Richards's room. Richards was charged with importing narcotics into Canada, an offense that carried a minimum seven-year sentence. Later the Crown prosecutor conceded that Richards had procured the drugs after arrival. Despite the arrest, the band played two shows in Toronto, only to raise more controversy when Margaret Trudeau, then-wife of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was seen partying with the band after one show. The band's two shows were not advertised to the public. Instead, the El Mocambo had been booked for the entire week by April Wine for a recording session. 1050 CHUM, a local radio station, ran a contest for free tickets to see April Wine. Contest winners who selected tickets for Friday or Saturday night were surprised to find that the Stones were playing.

On 4 March, Richards's partner Anita Pallenberg pled guilty to drug possession and incurred a fine in connection with the original airport incident. The drug case against Richards dragged on for over a year. Ultimately, Richards received a suspended sentence and was ordered to play two free concerts for the CNIB in Oshawa; both shows featured the Rolling Stones and The New Barbarians, a group that Wood had put together to promote his latest solo album, and which Richards also joined. This episode strengthened Richards's resolve to stop using heroin. It also contributed to the end of his relationship with Pallenberg, which had become strained since the death of their third child (an infant son named Tara). In addition, Pallenberg was unable to curb her heroin addiction while Keith struggled to get clean. While Richards was settling his legal and personal problems, Jagger continued his jet-set lifestyle. He was a regular at New York's Studio 54 disco club, often in the company of model Jerry Hall. His marriage to Bianca Jagger ended in 1978, although they had long been estranged.

Although The Rolling Stones remained popular through the first half of the 1970s, music critics had grown increasingly dismissive of the band's output, and record sales failed to meet expectations. By the late 70s, after punk rock became influential, many criticised the Stones as decadent, aging millionaires and their music as stagnant or irrelevant. This changed in 1978, after the band released Some Girls (UK #2; US #1), which included the hit single "Miss You", the country ballad "Far Away Eyes", "Beast of Burden", and "Shattered". In part as a response to punk, many songs were fast, basic, guitar-driven rock and roll, and the album's success re-established the Rolling Stones' immense popularity among young people. Following the US Tour 1978, the band guested on the first show of the fourth season of the TV series "Saturday Night Live". The group did not tour Europe the following year, breaking the routine of touring Europe every three years that the band had followed since 1967.

Following the success of Some Girls, the band released their next album Emotional Rescue (UK 1; US 1) in mid-1980. The recording of the album was reportedly plagued by turmoil, with Jagger and Richards' relationship reaching a new low. Richards, though still using heroin according to keyboardist Ian Mclagan, began to assert more control in the studio  more than Jagger had become used to  and a struggle ensued as Richards felt he was fighting for "his half of the Glimmer Twins." Emotional Rescue hit the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and the title track reached #3 in the US.

In early 1981, the group reconvened and decided to tour the US that year, leaving little time to write and record a new album, as well as rehearse for the tour. That year's resulting album, Tattoo You (UK 2; US 1) featured a number of outtakes, including lead single "Start Me Up", which reached #2 in the US and ranked #22 on Billboard's Hot 100 year-end chart. Two songs ("Waiting on a Friend" (US #13) and "Tops") featured Mick Taylor's guitar playing, while jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins played on "Slave" and dubbed a part on "Waiting on a Friend". The Rolling Stones scored one more Top Twenty hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, the #20 hit "Hang Fire". The Stones' American Tour 1981 was their biggest, longest and most colourful production to date, with the band playing from 25 September through 19 December. It was the highest grossing tour of that year. Some shows were recorded, resulting in the 1982 live album Still Life (American Concert 1981) (UK 4; US 5), and the 1983 Hal Ashby concert film Let's Spend the Night Together, which was filmed at Sun Devil Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona and the Brendan Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands, New Jersey.

In mid-1982, to commemorate their 20th anniversary, the Stones took their American stage show to Europe. The European Tour 1982 was their first European tour in six years. The tour was essentially a carbon copy of the 1981 American tour. For the tour, the band were joined by former Allman Brothers Band piano player Chuck Leavell, who continues to play and record with the Stones. By the end of the year, the band had signed a new four-album, 28 million dollar recording deal with a new label, CBS Records.

1983-91
Before leaving Atlantic, the Stones released Undercover (UK 3; US 4) in late 1983. Despite good reviews and the Top Ten peak position of the title track, the record sold below expectations and there was no tour to support it. Subsequently the Stones' new marketer/distributor CBS Records took over distributing the Stones' Atlantic catalogue.

By this time, the Jagger/Richards split was growing. Much to the consternation of Richards, Jagger had signed a solo deal with CBS Records, and he spent much of 1984 writing songs for this first solo effort. He has also stated that he was feeling stultified within the framework of the Rolling Stones. By 1985, Jagger was spending more time on solo recordings, and much of the material on 1986's Dirty Work (UK #4; US #4) was generated by Keith Richards, with more contributions by Ron Wood than on previous Rolling Stones albums. Rumours surfaced that Jagger and Richards were rarely, if ever, in the studio at the same time, leaving Richards to keep the recording sessions moving forward.

In December 1985, the band's co-founder, pianist, road manager and long-time friend Ian Stewart died of a heart attack. The Rolling Stones played a private tribute concert for him at London's 100 Club in February 1986, two days before they were presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dirty Work was released in March 1986 to mixed reviews despite the presence of the US Top Five hit "Harlem Shuffle"; Jagger refused to tour to promote the album, stating later that several band members were in no condition to tour. Richards was infuriated when Jagger instead undertook his own solo tour which included Rolling Stones songs. He has referred to this period in his relations with Jagger as "World War III". Jagger's solo records, She's The Boss (UK 6; US 13) (1985) and Primitive Cool (UK 26; US 41) (1987), met with moderate success, although Richards disparaged both. Many believed the group would disband. In 1988, with the Rolling Stones inactive, Richards released his first solo album, Talk Is Cheap (UK 37; US 24). It was well received by fans and critics, going gold in the US.

In early 1989, the Rolling Stones, including Mick Taylor, Ronnie Wood and Ian Stewart (posthumously), were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Jagger and Richards set aside animosities and went to work on a new Rolling Stones album that would be called Steel Wheels (UK 2; US 3). Heralded as a return to form, it included the singles "Mixed Emotions" (US #5), "Rock and a Hard Place" (US #23) and "Almost Hear You Sigh". It also included "Continental Drift", which was recorded in Tangier in 1989 with The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar.

The subsequent Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tours, encompassing North America, Japan and Europe, saw the Rolling Stones touring for the first time in seven years (since Europe 1982), and it was their biggest stage production to date. Opening acts included Living Colour and Guns N' Roses; the onstage personnel included a horn section and backup singers Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler, both of whom continue to tour regularly with the Rolling Stones. Recordings from the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tours produced the 1991 concert album Flashpoint (UK 6; US 16), which also included two studio tracks recorded in 1991: the single "Highwire" and "Sex Drive".

These were the last Rolling Stones tours for Bill Wyman, who left the band after years of deliberation, although his retirement was not made official until December 1992. He then published Stone Alone, an autobiography based on scrapbooks and diaries he had been keeping since the band's early days. A few years later he formed Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings and began recording and touring again.

1992-2004
After the successes of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tours, the band took a break. Charlie Watts released two jazz albums; Ronnie Wood made his fifth solo album, the first in 11 years, called Slide On This; Keith Richards released his second solo album in late 1992, Main Offender (UK 45; US 99), and did a small tour including big concerts in Spain and Argentina. Mick Jagger got good reviews and sales with his third solo album, Wandering Spirit (UK 12; US 11). The album sold more than two million copies worldwide, going gold in the US.

After Wyman's departure, the Rolling Stones' new distributor/record label, Virgin Records, remastered and repackaged the band's back catalogue from Sticky Fingers to Steel Wheels, except for the three live albums, and issued another hits compilation in 1993 entitled Jump Back (UK 16; US 30). By 1993 the Stones set upon their next studio album. Darryl Jones, former sideman of Miles Davis and Sting, was chosen by Charlie Watts as Wyman's replacement for 1994's Voodoo Lounge (UK 1; US 2). The album met strong reviews and sales, going double platinum in the US. Reviewers took note of the album's "traditionalist" sounds, which were credited to the Rolling Stones' new producer Don Was. It would go on to win the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album.

1994 also brought the accompanying Voodoo Lounge Tour, which lasted into 1995. Numbers from various concerts and rehearsals (mostly acoustic) made up Stripped (UK 9; US 9), which featured a cover of Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone", as well as infrequently played songs like "Shine a Light", "Sweet Virginia" and "The Spider and the Fly".


Keith Richards in Hannover, 2006, during the A Bigger Bang TourThe Rolling Stones ended the 1990s with the album Bridges To Babylon (UK 6; US 3), released in 1997 to mixed reviews. The video of the single "Anybody Seen My Baby?" featured Angelina Jolie as guest and met steady rotation on both MTV and VH1. Sales were reasonably equivalent to those of previous records (about 1.2 million copies sold in the US), and the subsequent Bridges to Babylon Tour, which crossed Europe, North America and other destinations, proved the band to be a strong live attraction. Once again, a live album was culled from the tour, No Security (UK 67; US 34), only this time all but two songs ("Live With Me" and "The Last Time") were previously unreleased on live albums. In 1999, the Stones staged the No Security Tour in the US and continued the Bridges to Babylon tour in Europe. The No Security Tour offered a stripped-down production in contrast to the pyrotechnics and mammoth stages of other recent tours.

In late 2001, Mick Jagger released his fourth solo album, Goddess in the Doorway (UK 44; US 39) which met with mixed reviews. Jagger and Richards took part in "The Concert for New York City", performing "Salt of the Earth" and "Miss You" with a backing band.

In 2002, the band released Forty Licks (UK 2; US 2), a greatest hits double album, to mark their forty years as a band. The collection contained four new songs recorded with the latter-day core band of Jagger, Richards, Watts, Wood, Leavell and Jones. The album has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide. The same year, Q magazine named The Rolling Stones as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die", and the 2002-2003 Licks Tour gave people that chance. The tour included shows in small theatres, arenas and stadiums. The band headlined the Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto concert in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to help the city  which they have used for rehearsals since the Steel Wheels tour  recover from the 2003 SARS epidemic. The concert was attended by an estimated 490,000 people.

On 9 November 2003, the band played their first concert in Hong Kong as part of the Harbour Fest celebration, also in support of the SARS-affected economy. In November 2003, the band exclusively licensed the right to sell their new four-DVD boxed set, Four Flicks, recorded on the band's most recent world tour, to the US Best Buy chain of stores. In response, some Canadian and US music retail chains (including HMV Canada and Circuit City) pulled Rolling Stones CDs and related merchandise from their shelves and replaced them with signs explaining the situation. In 2004, a double live album of the Licks Tour, Live Licks (UK 38; US 50), was released, going gold in the US.

Since 2005

Wood and Jagger onstage with the Rolling Stones in Vienna, 2006On 26 July 2005, Jagger's birthday, the band announced the name of their new album, A Bigger Bang (UK 2; US 3), their first album in almost eight years. A Bigger Bang was released on 6 September to strong reviews, including a glowing write-up in Rolling Stone magazine. The single "Streets of Love" reached the Top 15 in UK and Europe.

The album included the most controversial song from the Stones in years, "Sweet Neo Con", a criticism of American Neoconservatism from Jagger. The song was reportedly almost dropped from the album because of objections from Richards. When asked if he was afraid of political backlash such as the Dixie Chicks had endured for criticism of American involvement in the war in Iraq, Richards responded that the album came first, and that, "I don't want to be sidetracked by some little political 'storm in a teacup'."

The subsequent A Bigger Bang Tour began in August 2005, and visited North America, South America and East Asia. In February 2006, the group played the half-time show of Super Bowl XL in Detroit, Michigan. By the end of 2005, the Bigger Bang tour set a record of $162 million in gross receipts, breaking the North American mark also set by the Stones in 1994. On 18 February 2006 the band played a free concert with a claimed 1.5 million attendance at the Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro.

After performances in Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand in March/April 2006, the Rolling Stones tour took a scheduled break before proceeding to Europe; during this break Keith Richards was hospitalized in New Zealand for cranial surgery after a fall from a tree on Fiji, where he had been on holiday. The incident led to a six-week delay in launching the European leg of the tour. In June 2006 it was reported that Ronnie Wood was continuing his programme of rehabilitation for alcohol abuse, but this did not affect the rearranged European tour schedule. Two out of the 21 shows scheduled for July-September 2006 were later cancelled due to Mick Jagger's throat problems.

The Stones returned to North America for concerts in September 2006, and returned to Europe on 5 June 2007. By November 2006, the Bigger Bang tour had been declared the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning $437 million. The North American leg brought in the third-highest receipts ever ($138.5 million), trailing their own 2005 tour ($162 million) and the U2 tour of that same year ($138.9 million).

On 29 October and 1 November 2006, director Martin Scorsese filmed the Rolling Stones performing at New York City's Beacon Theatre, in front of an audience that included Bill and Hillary Clinton, released as the 2008 film Shine a Light; the film also features guest appearances by Buddy Guy, Jack White and Christina Aguilera. An accompanying soundtrack, also titled Shine a Light (UK 2; US 11), was released in April 2008. The album's debut at number 2 in the UK charts was the highest position for a Rolling Stones concert album since Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! in 1970.

On 24 March 2007, the band announced a tour of Europe called the "Bigger Bang 2007" tour. 12 June 2007 saw the release of the band's second four-disc DVD set: The Biggest Bang, a seven-hour document featuring their shows in Austin, Rio de Janeiro, Saitama, Shanghai and Buenos Aires, along with extras. On 10 June 2007, the band performed their first gig at a festival in 30 years, at the Isle of Wight Festival, to a crowd of 65,000. On 26 August 2007, they played their last concert of the A Bigger Bang Tour at the O2 Arena in London, England. On 26 September 2007, it was announced The Rolling Stones had made $437 million on the A Bigger Bang Tour to list them in the latest edition of Guinness World Records.


Charlie Watts in Hannover, 2006Mick Jagger released a compilation of his solo work called The Very Best of Mick Jagger (UK 57; US 77), including three unreleased songs, on 2 October 2007. On 12 November 2007, ABKCO released Rolled Gold+: The Very Best of the Rolling Stones, a double-CD remake of the 1975 compilation Rolled Gold; the reissue went to number 26 in the UK charts.

In a 2007 interview with Mick Jagger after nearly two years of touring, Jagger refused to say when the band is going to retire: "I'm sure the Rolling Stones will do more things, more records and more tours, we've got no plans to stop any of that really. As far as I'm concerned, I'm sure we'll continue." In March 2008 Keith Richards sparked rumours that a new Rolling Stones studio album may be forthcoming, saying during an interview following the premiere of Shine a Light, "I think we might make another album. Once we get over doing promotion on this film". Drummer Charlie Watts remarked that he got ill whenever he stopped working. In July 2008 it was announced that the Rolling Stones were leaving EMI and signing with Vivendi's Universal Music, taking with them their catalogue stretching back to Sticky Fingers. New music released by the band while under this contract will be issued through Universal's Polydor label. Universal Records will hold the US rights to the pre-1994 material, while the post-1994 material will be handled by Interscope Records (once a subsidiary of Atlantic). Coincidentally, Universal Music is also the distributor for ABKCO, owners of the band's pre-Sticky Fingers releases.

In late November 2009 rumours circulated that the Rolling Stones are planning to tour in 2010.

==Musical evolution==
The Rolling Stones are notable in modern popular music for assimilating various musical genres into their recording and performance, ultimately making the styles their very own. The band's career is marked by a continual reference and reliance on musical styles like American blues, country, folk, reggae, dance; world music exemplified by the Master Musicians of Jajouka; as well as traditional English styles that use stringed instrumentation like harps. The band cut their musical teeth by covering early rock and roll and blues songs, and have never stopped playing live or recording cover songs.

==Infusion of American blues==
Jagger and Richards shared an admiration of Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters and Little Walter, and their interest influenced Brian Jones, of whom Richards says, "He was more into T-Bone Walker and jazz-blues stuff. We'd turn him onto Chuck Berry and say, 'Look, it's all the same shit, man, and you can do it.'" Charlie Watts, a traditional jazz drummer, was also turned onto the blues after his introduction to the Stones. "Keith and Brian turned me on to Jimmy Reed and people like that. I learned that Earl Phillips was playing on those records like a jazz drummer, playing swing, with a straight four..."

Jagger, recalling when he first heard the likes of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino and other major American R&B artists, said it "seemed the most real thing" he had heard up to that point. Similarly, Keith Richards, describing the first time he listened to Muddy Waters, said it was the "most powerful music ever heard...the most expressive."

== Early songwriting==
Despite the Rolling Stones' predilection for blues and R&B numbers on their early live setlists, the first original compositions by the band reflected a more wide-ranging interest. The first Jagger/Richards single, "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)," is called by critic Richie Unterberger a "pop/rock ballad... When began to write songs, they were usually not derived from the blues, but were often surprisingly fey, slow, Mersey-type pop numbers." "As Tears Go By," the ballad originally written for Marianne Faithfull, was one of the first songs written by Jagger and Richards and also one of many written by the duo for other artists. Jagger said of the song, "It's a relatively mature song considering the rest of the output at the time. And we didn't think of it, because the Rolling Stones were a butch blues group." The Stones did later record a version which became a top five hit in the US.

On the early experience, Richards said, "The amazing thing is that although Mick and I thought these songs were really puerile and kindergarten-time, every one that got put out made a decent showing in the charts. That gave us extraordinary confidence to carry on, because at the beginning songwriting was something we were going to do in order to say to Andrew , 'Well, at least we gave it a try...'" Jagger said, "We were very pop-orientated. We didn't sit around listening to Muddy Waters; we listened to everything. In some ways it's easy to write to order... Keith and I got into the groove of writing those kind of tunes; they were done in ten minutes. I think we thought it was a bit of a laugh, and it turned out to be something of an apprenticeship for us."

The writing of the single "The Last Time," The Rolling Stones' first major single, proved a turning point. Richards called it "a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it." The song was based on a traditional gospel song popularised by The Staples Singers, but the Rolling Stones' number features a distinctive guitar riff (played on stage by Brian Jones).

==Band members==
 This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2009)

== Line-ups==
1962 Mick Jagger  lead vocals, harmonica, percussion
Brian Jones  guitars, backing vocals, harmonica, percussion
Keith Richards  guitars, backing vocals
Ian Stewart  piano, percussion
with

Mick Avory  drums
Tony Chapman  drums
Ricky Fenson  bass
Carlo Little  drums
Dick Taylor  bass
Bill Wyman  bass

January April 1963 Mick Jagger  lead vocals, harmonica, percussion
Brian Jones  guitars, backing vocals, harmonica, percussion
Keith Richards  guitars, backing vocals
Ian Stewart  piano, percussion
Charlie Watts  drums
Bill Wyman  bass, backing vocals

May 1963  May 1969 Mick Jagger  lead vocals, harmonica, percussion
Brian Jones  guitars, backing vocals, harmonica, percussion, tamboura, sitar, dulcimer, keyboards, autoharp, brass, woodwinds, theremin
Keith Richards  guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards, percussion
Charlie Watts  drums, percussion
Bill Wyman  bass, vocals, percussion, keyboards

May 1969  December 1974 Mick Jagger  lead vocals, harmonica, keyboards, percussion, guitar
Keith Richards  guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards
Mick Taylor  guitars, bass, synthesizer, percussion, backing vocals
Charlie Watts  drums, percussion
Bill Wyman  bass, synthesizer

December 1974  May 1975 Mick Jagger - lead vocals, harmonica, keyboards, percussion, guitar
Keith Richards  guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards
Charlie Watts  drums, percussion
Bill Wyman  bass, synthesizer

May 1975  December 1992 Mick Jagger  lead vocals, harmonica, keyboards, guitar
Keith Richards  guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards, percussion
Charlie Watts  drums, percussion
Ronnie Wood  guitars, backing vocals, bass, drums, percussion
Bill Wyman  bass, synthesizer

1993–present Mick Jagger  lead vocals, harmonica, percussion, guitar, bass, keyboards
Keith Richards  guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards
Charlie Watts  drums, percussion
Ronnie Wood  guitars, backing vocals, bass
with

Darryl Jones  bass


==Discography==
Further information: The Rolling Stones discography
In a career that has spanned nearly half a century, the band has released over 90 singles, more than two dozen studio albums, and numerous compilation and live albums. Ten of their studio albums are among Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, with their 1972 double album Exile on Main St. placing seventh.

==Concert tours==
Further information: Rolling Stones concerts
== Official videography==
Officially released films featuring the Rolling Stones are listed with their original release dates. (The formats mentioned are the most recent versions officially available, not necessarily the original release formats.)

1966: Charlie Is My Darling, directed by Peter Whitehead) (released on DVD in 2009 without the Rolling Stones' music)
1968: One Plus One (also titled Sympathy for the Devil), directed by Jean-Luc Godard (DVD)
1969: Stones in the Park (DVD)
1970: Gimme Shelter, directed by Albert and David Maysles (DVD/Blu-ray Disc)
1974: Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones, directed by Rolin Binzer
1982: Rocks Off and Let's Spend the Night Together, both directed by Hal Ashby (DVD)
1984: Video Rewind (VHS)
1989: 25x5 - The Continuing Adventures of the Rolling Stones (VHS)
1992: Stones at the Max, directed by Julien Temple (DVD)
1995: The Rolling Stones: Voodoo Lounge Live (DVD)
1996: The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (filmed in 1968) (DVD)
1998: Bridges to Babylon Tour '97-98 (DVD)
2003: Four Flicks (DVD)
2007: The Biggest Bang (DVD/Blu-ray Disc)
2008: Shine a Light, directed by Martin Scorsese, released to theaters in standard and IMAX presentations (DVD/Blu-ray Disc)
2009: Stones at the Max Remastered Edition, directed by Julien Temple (DVD/Blu-ray Disc)

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mp3-music

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ALL ABOUT MP3
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 Filename extension .mp3
Internet media type audio/mpeg, audio/MPA, audio/mpa-robust
Type of format Audio
Standard(s) ISO/IEC 11172-3, ISO/IEC 13818-3
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players.

MP3 is an audio-specific format that was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group as part of its MPEG-1 standard. The group was formed by several teams of engineers at Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen, Germany, AT&T-Bell Labs (now a division of Alcatel-Lucent) in Murray Hill, NJ, USA, Thomson-Brandt, and CCETT as well as others. It was approved as an ISO/IEC standard in 1991.

The use in MP3 of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners. An MP3 file that is created using the setting of 128 kbit/s will result in a file that is about 1/11th the size of the CD file created from the original audio source. An MP3 file can also be constructed at higher or lower bit rates, with higher or lower resulting quality.

The compression works by reducing accuracy of certain parts of sound that are deemed beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people. This method is commonly referred to as perceptual coding. It internally provides a representation of sound within a short-term time/frequency analysis window, by using psychoacoustic models to discard or reduce precision of components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner.

This technique is often presented as relatively conceptually similar to the principles used by JPEG, an image compression format. The specific algorithms, however, are rather different: JPEG uses a built-in vision model that is very widely tuned (as is necessary for images), while MP3 uses a complex, precise masking model that is much more signal dependent.


==History==

==Development==
The MP3 lossy audio data compression algorithm takes advantage of a perceptual limitation of human hearing called auditory masking. In 1894, Alfred Marshall Mayer reported that a tone could be rendered inaudible by another tone of lower frequency. In 1959, Richard Ehmer described a complete set of auditory curves regarding this phenomenon. Ernst Terhardt et al. created an algorithm describing auditory masking with high accuracy. This work added on a variety of reports from authors dating back to Fletcher, and to the work that initially determined critical ratios and critical bandwidths.

The psychoacoustic masking codec was first proposed in 1979, apparently independently, by Manfred R. Schroeder, et al. from AT&T-Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, and M. A. Krasner both in the United States. Krasner was the first to publish and to produce hardware for speech, not usable as music bit compression, but the publication of his results as a relatively obscure Lincoln Laboratory Technical Report did not immediately influence the mainstream of psychoacoustic codec development. Manfred Schroeder was already a well-known and revered figure in the worldwide community of acoustical and electrical engineers, and his paper had influence in acoustic and source-coding (audio data compression) research. Both Krasner and Schroeder built upon the work performed by Eberhard F. Zwicker in the areas of tuning and masking of critical bands, that in turn built on the fundamental research in the area from Bell Labs of Harvey Fletcher and his collaborators. A wide variety of (mostly perceptual) audio compression algorithms were reported in IEEE's refereed Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. That journal reported in February 1988 on a wide range of established, working audio bit compression technologies, some of them using auditory masking as part of their fundamental design, and several showing real-time hardware implementations.

The immediate predecessors of MP3 were "Optimum Coding in the Frequency Domain" (OCF), and Perceptual Transform Coding (PXFM). These two codecs, along with block-switching contributions from Thomson-Brandt, were merged into a codec called ASPEC, which was submitted to MPEG, and which won the quality competition, but that was mistakenly rejected as too complex to implement. The first practical implementation of an audio perceptual coder (OCF) in hardware (Krasner's hardware was too cumbersome and slow for practical use), was an implementation of a psychoacoustic transform coder based on Motorola 56000 DSP chips.

MP3 is directly descended from OCF and PXFM. MP3 represents the outcome of the collaboration of Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, working as a postdoc at AT&T-Bell Labs with Mr. James D. Johnston of AT&T-Bell Labs, collaborating with the Fraunhofer Society for Integrated Circuits, Erlangen, with relatively minor contributions from the MP2 branch of psychoacoustic sub-band coders.

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2 encoding began as the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) project managed by Egon Meier-Engelen of the Deutsche Forschungs- und Versuchsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt (later on called Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, German Aerospace Center) in Germany. The European Community financed this project, commonly known as EU-147, from 1987 to 1994 as a part of the EUREKA research program.

As a doctoral student at Germany's University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Karlheinz Brandenburg began working on digital music compression in the early 1980s, focusing on how people perceive music. He completed his doctoral work in 1989 and became an assistant professor at Erlangen-Nuremberg. While there, he continued to work on music compression with scientists at the Fraunhofer Society (in 1993 he joined the staff of the Fraunhofer Institute).

In 1991 there were two proposals available: Musicam and ASPEC (Adaptive Spectral Perceptual Entropy Coding). The Musicam technique, as proposed by Philips (The Netherlands), CCETT (France) and Institut für Rundfunktechnik (Germany) was chosen due to its simplicity and error robustness, as well as its low computational power associated with the encoding of high quality compressed audio. The Musicam format, based on sub-band coding, was the basis of the MPEG Audio compression format (sampling rates, structure of frames, headers, number of samples per frame).

Much of its technology and ideas were incorporated into the definition of ISO MPEG Audio Layer I and Layer II and the filter bank alone into Layer III (MP3) format as part of the computationally inefficient hybrid filter bank. Under the chairmanship of Professor Musmann (University of Hannover) the editing of the standard was made under the responsibilities of Leon van de Kerkhof (Layer I) and Gerhard Stoll (Layer II).

A working group consisting of Leon van de Kerkhof (The Netherlands), Gerhard Stoll (Germany), Leonardo Chiariglione (Italy), Yves-François Dehery (France), Karlheinz Brandenburg (Germany) and James D. Johnston (USA) took ideas from ASPEC, integrated the filter bank from Layer 2, added some of their own ideas and created MP3, which was designed to achieve the same quality at 128 kbit/s as MP2 at 192 kbit/s.

All algorithms were approved in 1991 and finalized in 1992 as part of MPEG-1, the first standard suite by MPEG, which resulted in the international standard ISO/IEC 11172-3, published in 1993. Further work on MPEG audio was finalized in 1994 as part of the second suite of MPEG standards, MPEG-2, more formally known as international standard ISO/IEC 13818-3, originally published in 1995. There is also MPEG-2.5 audio, a proprietary unofficial extension developed by Fraunhofer IIS. It enables MP3 to work satisfactorily at very low bitrates and added lower sampling frequencies.

Compression efficiency of encoders is typically defined by the bit rate, because compression ratio depends on the bit depth and sampling rate of the input signal. Nevertheless, compression ratios are often published. They may use the Compact Disc (CD) parameters as references (44.1 kHz, 2 channels at 16 bits per channel or 2×16 bit), or sometimes the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) SP parameters (48 kHz, 2×16 bit). Compression ratios with this latter reference are higher, which demonstrates the problem with use of the term compression ratio for lossy encoders.

Karlheinz Brandenburg used a CD recording of Suzanne Vega's song "Tom's Diner" to assess and refine the MP3 compression algorithm. This song was chosen because of its nearly monophonic nature and wide spectral content, making it easier to hear imperfections in the compression format during playbacks. Some jokingly refer to Suzanne Vega as "The mother of MP3". Some more critical audio excerpts (glockenspiel, triangle, accordion, etc.) were taken from the EBU V3/SQAM reference compact disc and have been used by professional sound engineers to assess the subjective quality of the MPEG Audio formats. This particular track has an interesting property in that the two channels are almost, but not completely, the same, leading to a case where Binaural Masking Level Depression causes spatial unmasking of noise artifacts unless the encoder properly recognizes the situation and applies corrections similar to those detailed in the MPEG-2 AAC psychoacoustic model.

==Going public==
A reference simulation software implementation, written in the C language and known as ISO 11172-5, was developed by the members of the ISO MPEG Audio committee in order to produce bit compliant MPEG Audio files (Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3). Working in non-real time on a number of operating systems, it was able to demonstrate the first real time hardware decoding (DSP based) of compressed audio. Some other real time implementation of MPEG Audio encoders were available for the purpose of digital broadcasting (radio DAB, television DVB) towards consumer receivers and set top boxes.

Later, on July 7, 1994, the Fraunhofer Society released the first software MP3 encoder called l3enc. The filename extension .mp3 was chosen by the Fraunhofer team on July 14, 1995 (previously, the files had been named .bit). With the first real-time software MP3 player Winplay3 (released September 9, 1995) many people were able to encode and play back MP3 files on their PCs. Because of the relatively small hard drives back in that time (~ 500 MB) lossy compression was essential to store non-instrument based (see tracker and MIDI) music for playback on computer.

==Internet==
From the first half of 1994 through the late 1990s, MP3 files began to spread on the Internet. The popularity of MP3s began to rise rapidly with the advent of Nullsoft's audio player Winamp (released in 1997), and the Unix audio player mpg123. In 1998, the Rio PMP300, one of the first portable MP3 players was released, despite legal suppression efforts by the RIAA.

In November 1997, the website mp3.com was offering thousands of MP3s created by independent artists for free. The small size of MP3 files enabled widespread peer-to-peer file sharing of music ripped from CDs, which would have previously been nearly impossible. The first large peer-to-peer filesharing network, Napster, was launched in 1999.

The ease of creating and sharing MP3s resulted in widespread copyright infringement. Major record companies argue that this free sharing of music reduces sales, and call it "music piracy". They reacted by pursuing lawsuits against Napster (which was eventually shut down and later sold) and against individual users who engaged in file sharing.

Despite the popularity of the MP3 format, online music retailers often use other proprietary formats that are encrypted or obfuscated in order to make it difficult to use purchased music files in ways not specifically authorized by the record companies. Attempting to control the use of files in this way is known as Digital Rights Management. Record companies argue that this is necessary to prevent the files from being made available on peer-to-peer file sharing networks. This has other side effects, though, such as preventing users from playing back their purchased music on different types of devices. However, the audio content of these files can usually be converted into an unencrypted format. For instance, users are often allowed to burn files to audio CD, which requires conversion to an unencrypted audio format.

Unauthorized MP3 file sharing continues on next-generation peer-to-peer networks. Some authorized services, such as Beatport, Bleep, Juno Records, eMusic, Zune Marketplace, Walmart.com, and Amazon.com sell unrestricted music in the MP3 format.

==Encoding audio==
The MPEG-1 standard does not include a precise specification for an MP3 encoder, but does provide example psychoacoustic models, rate loop, and the like in the non-normative part of the original standard. At the present, these suggested implementations are quite dated. Implementers of the standard were supposed to devise their own algorithms suitable for removing parts of the information from the audio input. As a result, there are many different MP3 encoders available, each producing files of differing quality. Comparisons are widely available, so it is easy for a prospective user of an encoder to research the best choice. It must be kept in mind that an encoder that is proficient at encoding at higher bit rates (such as LAME) is not necessarily as good at lower bit rates.

During encoding, 576 time-domain samples are taken and are transformed to 576 frequency-domain samples. If there is a transient, 192 samples are taken instead of 576. This is done to limit the temporal spread of quantization noise accompanying the transient. (See psychoacoustics.)

==Decoding audio==
Decoding, on the other hand, is carefully defined in the standard. Most decoders are "bitstream compliant", which means that the decompressed output - that they produce from a given MP3 file - will be the same, within a specified degree of rounding tolerance, as the output specified mathematically in the ISO/IEC standard document (ISO/IEC 11172-3). Therefore, comparison of decoders is usually based on how computationally efficient they are (i.e., how much memory or CPU time they use in the decoding process).

==Audio quality==
When performing lossy audio encoding, such as creating an MP3 file, there is a trade-off between the amount of space used and the sound quality of the result. Typically, the creator is allowed to set a bit rate, which specifies how many kilobits the file may use per second of audio. Using a lower bit rate provides a relatively lower audio quality and produces a smaller file size. Likewise, using a higher bit rate outputs a higher quality audio, but also results in a larger file.

Files encoded with a lower bit rate will generally play back at a lower quality. With too low a bit rate, compression artifacts (i.e. sounds that were not present in the original recording) may be audible in the reproduction. Some audio is hard to compress because of its randomness and sharp attacks. When this type of audio is compressed, artifacts such as ringing or pre-echo are usually heard. A sample of applause compressed with a relatively low bit rate provides a good example of compression artifacts.

Besides the bit rate of an encoded piece of audio, the quality of MP3 files also depends on the quality of the encoder itself, and the difficulty of the signal being encoded. As the MP3 standard allows quite a bit of freedom with encoding algorithms, different encoders may feature quite different quality, even with identical bit rates. As an example, in a public listening test featuring two different MP3 encoders at about 128 kbit/s, one scored 3.66 on a 1–5 scale, while the other scored only 2.22.

Quality is dependent on the choice of encoder and encoding parameters. However, in 1998, MP3 at 128 kbit/s was providing quality only equivalent to AAC at 64 kbit/s and MP2 at 192 kbit/s.

The simplest type of MP3 file uses one bit rate for the entire file — this is known as Constant Bit Rate (CBR) encoding. Using a constant bit rate makes encoding simpler and faster. However, it is also possible to create files where the bit rate changes throughout the file. These are known as Variable Bit Rate (VBR) files. The idea behind this is that, in any piece of audio, some parts will be much easier to compress, such as silence or music containing only a few instruments, while others will be more difficult to compress. So, the overall quality of the file may be increased by using a lower bit rate for the less complex passages and a higher one for the more complex parts. With some encoders, it is possible to specify a given quality, and the encoder will vary the bit rate accordingly. Users who know a particular "quality setting" that is transparent to their ears can use this value when encoding all of their music, and not need to worry about performing personal listening tests on each piece of music to determine the correct bit rate.

Perceived quality can be influenced by listening environment (ambient noise), listener attention, and listener training and in most cases by listener audio equipment (such as sound cards, speakers and headphones).

A test given to new students by Stanford University Music Professor Jonathan Berger showed that student preference for MP3 quality music has risen each year. Berger said the students seem to prefer the 'sizzle' sounds that MP3s bring to music. Others have reached the same conclusion, and some record producers have begun to mix music specifically to be heard on iPods and mobile phones.

==Bit rate==
Several bit rates are specified in the MPEG-1 Audio Layer III standard: 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256 and 320 kbit/s, and the available sampling frequencies are 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz.[21] Additional extensions were defined in MPEG-2 Audio Layer III: bit rates 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 144, 160 kbit/s and sampling frequencies 16, 22.05 and 24 kHz.

A sample rate of 44.1 kHz is almost always used, because this is also used for CD audio, the main source used for creating MP3 files. A greater variety of bit rates are used on the Internet. 128 kbit/s is the most common, offering adequate audio quality in a relatively small space. As Internet bandwidth availability and hard drive sizes have increased, higher bit rates like 160 and 192 kbit/s have increased in popularity.

Uncompressed audio as stored on an audio-CD has a bit rate of 1,411.2 kbit/s, so the bitrates 128, 160 and 192 kbit/s represent compression ratios of approximately 11:1, 9:1 and 7:1 respectively.

Non-standard bit rates up to 640 kbit/s can be achieved with the LAME encoder and the freeformat option, although few MP3 players can play those files. According to the ISO standard, decoders are only required to be able to decode streams up to 320 kbit/s.

==VBR==
MPEG audio may use variable bitrate (VBR). Layer III can use bitrate switching and bit reservoir. Variable bitrate is used when the goal is to achieve a fixed level of quality. The final file size of a VBR encoding is less predictable than with constant bitrate. Average bitrate is a compromise between the two - the bitrate is allowed to vary for more consistent quality, but is controlled to remain near an average value chosen by the user, for predictable file sizes. Although technically an MP3 decoder must support VBR to be standards compliant, historically some decoders have bugs with VBR decoding, particularly before VBR encoders became widespread.

==File structure==

An MP3 file is made up of multiple MP3 frames, which consist of a header and a data block. This sequence of frames is called an elementary stream. Frames are not independent items ("byte reservoir") and therefore cannot be extracted on arbitrary frame boundaries. The MP3 Data blocks contain the (compressed) audio information in terms of frequencies and amplitudes. The diagram shows that the MP3 Header consists of a sync word, which is used to identify the beginning of a valid frame. This is followed by a bit indicating that this is the MPEG standard and two bits that indicate that layer 3 is used; hence MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 or MP3. After this, the values will differ, depending on the MP3 file. ISO/IEC 11172-3 defines the range of values for each section of the header along with the specification of the header. Most MP3 files today contain ID3 metadata, which precedes or follows the MP3 frames; as noted in the diagram.

==Design limitations==
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There are several limitations inherent to the MP3 format that cannot be overcome by any MP3 encoder. Newer audio compression formats such as Vorbis, WMA Pro and AAC no longer have these limitations. In technical terms, MP3 is limited in the following ways:

Time resolution can be too low for highly transient signals and may cause smearing of percussive sounds.
Due to the tree structure of the filter bank, pre-echo problems are made worse, as the combined impulse response of the two filter banks does not, and cannot, provide an optimum solution in time/frequency resolution.
The combining of the two filter banks' outputs creates aliasing problems that must be handled partially by the "aliasing compensation" stage; however, that creates excess energy to be coded in the frequency domain, thereby decreasing coding efficiency.
Frequency resolution is limited by the small long block window size, which decreases coding efficiency.
There is no scale factor band for frequencies above 15.5/15.8 kHz.
Joint stereo is done only on a frame-to-frame basis.
Internal handling of the bit reservoir increases encoding delay.
Encoder/decoder overall delay is not defined, which means there is no official provision for gapless playback. However, some encoders such as LAME can attach additional metadata that will allow players that can handle it to deliver seamless playback.
The data stream can contain an optional checksum, but the checksum only protects the header data, not the audio data.

==ID3 and other tags==
Main articles: ID3 and APEv2 tag
A "tag" in an audio file is a section of the file that contains metadata such as the title, artist, album, track number or other information about the file's contents.

As of 2006, the most widespread standard tag formats are ID3v1 and ID3v2, and the more recently introduced APEv2.

APEv2 was originally developed for the MPC file format. APEv2 can coexist with ID3 tags in the same file or it can be used by itself.

Tag editing functionality is often built into MP3 players and editors, but there also exist tag editors dedicated to the purpose.

==Volume normalization==
Since volume levels of different audio sources can vary greatly, it is sometimes desirable to adjust the playback volume of audio files such that a consistent average volume is perceived. The idea is to control the average volume across multiple files, not the volume peaks in a single file. This gain normalization, while similar in purpose, is distinct from dynamic range compression (DRC), which is a form of normalization used in audio mastering. Gain normalization may defeat the intent of recording artists and audio engineers who deliberately set the volume levels of the audio they recorded.

A few standards for storing the average volume of an MP3 file in its metadata tags, enabling a specially designed player to automatically adjust the overall playback volume for each file, have been proposed. A popular and widely implemented such proposal is "Replay Gain", which is not MP3-specific. When used in MP3s, it is stored differently by different encoders, and as of 2008, Replay Gain-aware players don't yet support all formats.

==Licensing and patent issues==
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Many organizations have claimed ownership of patents related to MP3 decoding or encoding. These claims have led to a number of legal threats and actions from a variety of sources, resulting in uncertainty about which patents must be licensed in order to create MP3 products without committing patent infringement in countries that allow software patents.

The various MP3-related patents expire on dates ranging from 2007 to 2017 in the U.S. The initial near-complete MPEG-1 standard (parts 1, 2 and 3) was publicly available in December 6, 1991 as ISO CD 11172. In the United States, patents cannot claim inventions that were already publicly disclosed by the inventor more than a year prior to the filing date, but for patents filed prior to June 8, 1995, submarine patents made it possible to extend the effective lifetime of a patent through application extensions. Patents filed for anything disclosed in ISO CD 11172 a year or more after its publication are questionable; if only the known MP3 patents filed by December 1992 are considered MP3 decoding, then MP3 may be patent free in the US by December of 2012.

Thomson Consumer Electronics claims to control MP3 licensing of the Layer 3 patents in many countries, including the United States, Japan, Canada and EU countries. Thomson has been actively enforcing these patents.

MP3 license revenues generated about €100 million for the Fraunhofer Society in 2005.

In September 1998, the Fraunhofer Institute sent a letter to several developers of MP3 software stating that a license was required to "distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders". The letter claimed that unlicensed products "infringe the patent rights of Fraunhofer and Thomson. To make, sell and/or distribute products using the [MPEG Layer-3] standard and thus our patents, you need to obtain a license under these patents from us."

However, there exist both free and/or proprietary alternatives, with free formats such as Vorbis, AAC, and others. Microsoft's usage of its own proprietary Windows Media format allows it to avoid licensing issues associated with these patents by avoiding usage of the MP3 format entirely. Until the key patents expire, unlicensed encoders and players could be infringing in countries where the patents are valid.

In spite of the patent restrictions, the perpetuation of the MP3 format continues. The reasons for this appear to be the network effects caused by:

familiarity with the format,
the large quantity of music now available in the MP3 format,
the wide variety of existing software and hardware that takes advantage of the file format,
the lack of DRM restrictions, which makes MP3 files easy to edit, copy and play in different portable digital players (Samsung, Apple, Creative, etc.),
the majority of home users not knowing or not caring about the patents' controversy and often not considering such legal issues when choosing their music format for personal use.
Additionally, patent holders declined to enforce license fees on free and open source decoders, which allows many free MP3 decoders to develop. Thus, while patent fees have been an issue for companies that attempt to use MP3, they have not meaningfully impacted users, which allows the format to grow in popularity.

Sisvel S.p.A. and its U.S. subsidiary Audio MPEG, Inc. previously sued Thomson for patent infringement on MP3 technology, but those disputes were resolved in November 2005 with Sisvel granting Thomson a license to their patents. Motorola also recently signed with Audio MPEG to license MP3-related patents.

In September 2006, German officials seized MP3 players from SanDisk's booth at the IFA show in Berlin after an Italian patents firm won an injunction on behalf of Sisvel against SanDisk in a dispute over licensing rights. The injunction was later reversed by a Berlin judge, but that reversal was in turn blocked the same day by another judge from the same court, "bringing the Patent Wild West to Germany" in the words of one commentator.

On February 16, 2007, Texas MP3 Technologies sued Apple, Samsung Electronics and Sandisk with a patent-infringement lawsuit regarding portable MP3 players. The suit was filed in Marshall, Texas; this is a common location for patent infringement suits due to the speed at which trials are conducted there.

Texas MP3 Technologies claimed infringement with U.S. patent 7,065,417, awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel, covering "an MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a method for reproducing sound data compressed using the MPEG method."

Alcatel-Lucent also claims ownership of several patents relating to MP3 encoding and compression, inherited from AT&T-Bell Labs. In November 2006 (prior to the companies' merger), Alcatel filed a lawsuit against Microsoft (see Alcatel-Lucent v. Microsoft), alleging infringement of seven of its patents. On February 23, 2007, a San Diego jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent a record-breaking US$1.52 billion in damages. The judge, however, reversed the jury verdict and ruled for Microsoft, and this ruling was upheld by the court of appeals. The appeals court actually ruled that Fraunhofer was a co-owner of one patent claimed to be owned by Alcatel-Lucent, due to work by James D. Johnston while Dr. Brandenburg worked at AT&T.

In short, with Thomson, Fraunhofer IIS, Sisvel (and its U.S. subsidiary Audio MPEG), Texas MP3 Technologies, and Alcatel-Lucent all claiming legal control of relevant MP3 patents related to decoders, the legal status of MP3 remains unclear in countries where those patents are valid.

==Security issues==
Microsoft Windows Media Format Runtime in Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server contained a coding error that permitted "remote code execution if a user opened a specially crafted media file". Such a file would allow the attacker to "then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights", if the account on which the file was played had administrator privileges. The problem was addressed in a critical update issued on September 8, 2009 (KB968816).

==Alternative technologies==
Main article: List of codecs
Many other lossy and lossless audio codecs exist. Among these, mp3PRO, AAC, and MP2 are all members of the same technological family as MP3 and depend on roughly similar psychoacoustic models. The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft owns many of the basic patents underlying these codecs as well, with others held by Dolby Labs, Sony, Thomson Consumer Electronics, and AT&T. In addition, there is also the open source file format Ogg Vorbis that has been available free of charge and without patent restrictions.

==See also==
Audio compression (data)
Comparison of audio codecs
Copyright infringement
Digital audio player
ID3
Joint stereo
LRC (file format)
Media player
MP3 blog
MP3 Surround
Streaming Media
DJ digital controller
AAC
Ogg Vorbis

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