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November 1st, 2026 · 10:30pm GMT
Even though fame and fortune have allowed the members of The Rolling Stones to own properties in different parts of the world, moving between locations at their own discretion, there’s still something quintessentially British about the classic rock band.
It’s not as though artists from other nations are incapable of exuding so much swagger; in fact, it’s something that is universal in rock bands all over the globe. However, there’s something about the manner in which the Stones used to inject it into their own artistry, whether in the music or their presentation, that felt as though it couldn’t possibly have been done by an act from anywhere other than South East England.
It’s almost done in an inexplicable fashion as well, and it’s simply instincts that make that connection between the way the band present themselves and the area they hail from. Not even Manchester bands have what the Stones have, at least not in the same way. Oasis would probably argue that they’ve got swagger, and it’s true, but even that doesn’t come across in the same way as what Mick Jagger and Keith Richards delivered. They’ve got a quintessentially Northern feel about their version of it, and similarly, that couldn’t be replicated by a band from the same region as the Stones.
However, as the band got progressively bigger, the greater was their exposure to musical movements from around the world, thus pushing their prerogative to start incorporating elements of them into their own work. They’d experienced something of a dip in fortune after the release of 1973’s Goat’s Head Soup in terms of critical reception, and therefore by the time the end of the ‘70s was rolling around, they began throwing various different ideas around to see what stuck.
Throughout the 1970s, New York City had solidified its status as a hotbed of culture, but given how the Stones were so far removed from it as a location, they were never necessarily as indebted to the sounds that were emerging from their underground scene.
That was until 1979, when they recorded Emotional Rescue, an album that was largely created in the city and owed a huge amount to it in terms of what had inspired it. However, despite the association between the band and the ‘Big Apple’ becoming stronger, Jagger insisted a year after its release that it was never a ‘New York album’ in the first place.
“I don’t think it’s a New York City album,” the vocalist argued. “To me, New York is like Lou Reed and all those other bands. The rhythms in ‘Dance’ and ‘Emotional Rescue’, that is New York”.
Further reading: From The Vault
He continued arguing that this presumed association with the city was what caused audiences back home in the UK to perceive the album as being a monumental failure. “English people hate it, ‘cause they say it’s all disco,” he explained, “I know it’s not, but that’s what they think it is, you see. It’s just Black music”.
It may have been inspired by the city’s vibrant disco culture, for sure, but he’s right: there’s no way you can make a New York record unless you’ve got a lifelong connection to the place, and just because Emotional Rescue was made there doesn’t make it belong to the city any more than anything Reed or any other major proponents of New York’s music scene have done. Unfortunately for the Stones, it doesn’t make it a good album either.
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