10 Most Influential British Acts On American Rock
2. The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones jumped on the bandwagon, directly following the Beatles success in the States. Part of the British Invasion, they stormed American culture with bad-boy attitudes and re-workings of traditional American music.
Blues enthusiast Brian Jones was the original figurehead of the Stones, giving them their name and informing their early style as blues revisionists. Eventually the swaggering allure of Mick Jagger and the song writing chops of Keith Richards, pushed Jones to the sideline, before his untimely death in 1969. But even before his death they still had a huge impact.
The Beatles were the pretty boy, pop sensation that brought crowds of teenage girls to floods of tears; the Stones were the rebellious counter parts, with edgier, darker and more dangerous undertones. Beggars Banquet , Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St. are all seminal records on modern rock. But, one of the group's biggest achievements was reintroducing the sound of American blues to the country that spawned it.
Before the Stones popularised blues-inspired, rock 'n' roll, acts like Muddy Waters, BB King and John Lee Hooker had been mostly ignored by the mainstream, after the Stones came along, sales of these guys started skyrocketing.