Start Up the Eighties

At the beginning of the eighties, the Rolling Stones were facing what seemed like an uphill battle. The pop charts began looking like an alien landscape, with skinny-tied new wavers and slick, modern R & B taking control. The Stones were still playing rough, blues-based rock and roll, despite a couple of experiments with other music, and it was hard to see them having a place in the new market.

They opened the decade with Emotional Rescue. It brought strong sales and fan reaction, and they began planning yet another U.S. tour, but tragedy hit the band hard at the end of 1980. Their old friend John Lennon, of the Beatles, was shot dead in front of his apartment building in New York City. To many, it was a great loss, but to the Stones, it was the end of a long friendship. It also signaled the end of the time period from which the Stones came from. The Beatles had been broken up for ten years at that point, but with John dead, the Stones were now seen as British rock's great survivors.