They had started as a cover band in a London club, playing other people's blues. By the autumn of 1964, The Rolling Stones were the sharpest edge of the British invasion, and American television wanted a look. On October 25, 1964, the five young men from London walked onto The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time and played Chuck Berry's 'Around & Around' followed by their own single 'Time Is on My Side'.
Prime-time test for a blues band
The question hanging over that Sunday night was simple: could a band built on raw rhythm and blues survive the polished glare of prime-time variety television? Ed Sullivan's stage was where careers were made or quietly buried. The Stones had formed in London and spent their early years learning from the blues and rock 'n' roll records they covered, so the Chuck Berry choice was both a tribute and a test of nerve.
What viewers saw was not a polite imitation of the clean-cut acts around them. The Rolling Stones brought the same coiled energy that had made them part of the British invasion earlier in 1964, a wave of UK bands suddenly conquering American airwaves. 'Time Is on My Side' was their calling card, a song they could claim as their own even while still leaning on the American music that shaped them.
Jagger and Richards take the writing
The Ed Sullivan appearance did not make them stars overnight, but it marked a shift. The songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, pushed hard by their manager Andrew Loog Oldham, produced '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', and the album Aftermath showed they no longer needed anyone else's songs. The cover band from the Marquee club was becoming something else entirely.
The Ed Sullivan appearance did not make them stars overnight, but it marked a shift.
That transformation had a cost. The early leader Brian Jones, who had named the group after a Muddy Waters record, found himself pushed aside as Jagger and Richards took control of the writing. He left the band and was replaced by guitarist Mick Taylor, and The Rolling Stones were being introduced on stage as the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world. The Ed Sullivan gamble had paid off, but the group that emerged was harder and more self-made.
Rolling Stones Records and the hit streak
The momentum from those first American television appearances carried them through a remarkable run. Their own label, Rolling Stones Records, launched in 1970 with the famous lips and tongue logo, and Sticky Fingers began a streak of eight consecutive number-one albums in the United States. Beggars Banquet had already given the world 'Sympathy for the Devil' and 'Street Fighting Man', proof that the songwriters could be as dark as the bluesmen they once copied. The run continued with Exile on Main St., featuring 'Tumbling Dice' and 'Happy', and Goats Head Soup with 'Angie'. When Mick Taylor left, Ronnie Wood of Faces stepped in on guitar.
The Rolling Stones have broken the record for the highest-grossing concert tour three times over, and they became the highest-paid live act in the world. Total album sales passed 250 million copies. They have four Grammy Awards, a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and spots on the greatest-artists lists of both Billboard and Rolling Stone. After Bill Wyman departed, Darryl Jones became the regular bassist. Following Charlie Watts's death, Steve Jordan took over on drums, leaving the core of the group as a trio. Their most recent album, Foreign Tongues, arrived in July 2026 and became their 15th chart-topper in the United Kingdom.
The band that once covered Chuck Berry on a Sunday night variety show is still releasing original music. Hackney Diamonds came out in October 2023, their first album of new material in 18 years and their 14th to top the British chart. None of it would have been possible without that first nervous step onto Ed Sullivan's stage, where a London blues cover band had to decide whether it was ready to be the Rolling Stones in front of the whole country.