As we get started in this course: The Music Of The Rolling Stones. I just want to to say a couple of words as a general introduction to the course, just to talk about some of the kinds of things that are going to be happening over the course of the seven weeks that we'll be together. The first thing is, there is specifically no textbook for this course. There are a lot of great books on The Rolling Stones. And be sure that you check out the special feature where I walk through a bunch of the what I think are some of the most useful books written on the Rolling Stones. But if you'd like to do some reading along as, as the course develops, there are some great bio, autobiographies, sort of first-hand accounts, the relatively recent Keith Richards book. There's a book by bassist Bill Wyman that was really good on the stuff in the 60s up to about the, the end of the 60s. And,then Andrew Loog Oldham has got two and then now a third book that sort of goes through all of his experience with the Stones during the 60s. So those are great, really for first-hand accounts of how each of those members of the Rolling Stones, Andrew Loog Oldham being the manager and producer of the group. How each of those saw the experience, especially during the period that we're focusing on, between 1962 and 74. Again the Wyman and the Oldham books best for the 60s. There's also a great coffee table book that you can find around in use book stores and on the internet. It's a, a big bound oversized book called According to the Rolling Stones, and that's a wonderful resource and reference, although it's big, it's thick, there's a lot of reading there, so you're really going to be going for making a real commitment to reading if you get that one. And then, you know, University prof, professors don't usually say this kind of thing, but I would direct you to Wikipedia entries on a lot of this Rolling Stones stuff. I mean, the Wikipedia entries on the albums, the singles each individual member are actually pretty good. And in terms of fact-checking, I would say, you know, with, with fans checking on, on the, on the factoids and stuff, and all of these facts sort of having been released in various reference books, and on CDs, and stuff like that. I, I found it to be pretty accurate anyway. It's a very inexpensive way of getting a specific information about the Stones as we go along. Although, it's not really like reading, a kind of a story of the history of the Rolling Stones. For that, you might look might look to Phillip Norman's book on the music of the Rolling Stones. But again, don't forget to have a look at the special feature where I walk through a lot of the the books that I use in my references, and sort of talk about in some detail. Another thing about this course, and really all of my rock courses on Coursera is that we can't play any music during the course. In fact, I really can't even quote any lyrics. There are all kinds of copyright restrictions. They vary from country to country. These courses reach over 165, 170 countries, and so we put music up, licensing becomes a real problem. And you think at, at the beginning of it, well if you can't play music, why do a course that talk, you know, a music course, right? But it just turns out that music is so readily available on the internet. We've been doing this for, for years now, and it turns out that students usually have no problem finding the music that's referenced here in some easy and quick way on the internet. And so why bother irritating music business lawyers and having them come after us if, if we don't have to? So I'm sorry, I wish I could do as I do in my classes here at the University of Rochester, and play music and talk over it and start and stop, demonstrate things on the guitar. But that's just not possible, yet. Hopefully online education will take care of those kinds of license and things, and we'll be able to do that kind of thing very soon. I want to say one last word about a kind of a general attitude toward the course that I hope to encourage. We're all fans of this music. Why would you want to study a particular style of music, or the music of a particular group if you weren't a fan? Nobody really says, boy I really love to study this music because it sucks. You know, people want to study music that they like. They bring to it a kind of what I call fan mentality, which is, which is great. Fan mentality means you have a lot of enthusiasm for the music, you have a tendency to want to like it. You have a tendency to overlook some of its shortcomings. And that's, that's a wonderful way to appreciate the music as a fan. But it's a little bit different when you're a scholar. As a scholar, you try to remain a kind of, try to maintain a kind of objectivity. Now, pure objectivity in, in humanity scholarship is probably never really possible, but you can be more objective than subjective when you look at these things. So, what I would like you to do as we go through this is, no matter how much you love the Rolling Stones music, try to hold it a little better to distance and look at it as a kind a historical repertory. And as we talk about it unfolding, be willing to accept not only some of the, the fine, excellent points about the music but perhap, some shortcomings. There won't be many, and I'm not going to be overly critical of the music because like you I'm a fan, but I just mean, keep a kind of an objectivity. And when you're posting in the forums it, it'd be great if you offer a view on the music, if you can support it with evidence the way that a scholar would. So, you know, comments that say, well I really liked this one because I think it's the best song ever recorded. It's great that you feel that way, but it probably doesn't advance the discussion very much in terms of in, in, in a kind of a scholarly kind of way. So, I guess what I'm saying is, if, as much as possible, please check your fan mentality at the door, I will try to do the same, and let's try to look at this music as objectively as we possibly can. As we go forward, we're going to follow the music of both the singles and the albums in chronological order, starting from the very early, earliest sort of pre-history of the group. There maybe will be a mild preference for the American releases but I'll talk about that as we, as we work our way through some of this music. So having said that, let's dig right in to the music of the Rolling Stones, 1962 through 1974.
