Set to The Rolling Stones’ 1965 hit single “The Last Time” (US #9; UK #1), Episode 1 explains the influence of early rock and roll and Chicago blues on the band, and the irony of the British Invasion being the selling of American culture back to its country of origin. Featuring footage of B.B. King, Little Richard and many other heroes of the Stones, as well as audio of Marshall Chess telling the story of meeting the Londoners and inviting them to record in Chicago, one of the highlights of Episode 1 – The Last Time is Keith Richards describing the day he met future musical partner Mick Jagger on a train holding classic-yet-still-obscure R&B and blues records. “What you’ve got under your arm is worth robbing,” Richards gleefully remembers thinking.
Set to the intercontinental #1 hit, follows the themes of sexual liberation, the seeds of the feminist movement and gender equality. Jagger proclaims, "In the last two or three years, young people have been through a transition; instead of just carrying on the way their parents told them to, they’ve started this thing where . . . their sexual lives have become freer.” Footage of women in traditional settings such as the kitchen and in beauty pageants are interspersed by various interviews expressing conflicting opinions about sex, questioning the institution of marriage, and rejecting the prescribed roles of wives as domestic laborers.
The explosion of psychedelics and the infamous “Redlands bust,” wherein Jagger, Richards, singer Marianne Faithfull and other friends were arrested for drug possession at Richards’ home in ’67, is the theme of Episode 3 of The Rolling Stones Chronicles – She’s A Rainbow.
Set to the song partially inspired by the 1968 student upheaval in Paris and elsewhere, Episode 4 of The Rolling Stones Chronicles, “Streets Fighting Man,” focuses on the intense social unrest in the latter part of the ‘60s, centered around the struggle for racial equality, gay rights, the movement against the Vietnam War, student demonstrations and the Troubles of Northern Ireland. Among the featured audio/visual clips are Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali, the latter of whom states, “My people first deserve freedom, justice and equality.”
The theme for episode five of The Rolling Stones Chronicles is the dual nature of technology and its hyper-acceleration during the birth of the computer age. The Cold War, the space race, and innovation in recording techniques are threaded together with footage of nuclear testing, astronauts, and The Rolling Stones recording at Olympic Studios as featured in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Sympathy For The Devil.
The final installment of The Rolling Stones Chronicles is set to Gimme Shelter, the haunting 1969 track that opens the Let It Bleed album and provides a backdrop for the theme of revolution and the turmoil that ended the decade. The hippie movement, the funeral for original guitarist Brian Jones, the Hyde Park tribute concert, and the tragedy of Altamont are all captured. At one point, Jagger explains to an interviewer, “Most young people are dissatisfied with the generation which they think is running their lives.” He is then asked, “What things are you dissatisfied with?” He responds, “The generation that runs our lives.”
