Out of Our Heads is the Rolling Stones’ third studio album, released in two distinct 1965 editions: a US version in July (No. 1 charting) containing seven originals — three by Jagger/Richards and four credited to Nanker Phelge — and a UK version in September foregrounding soul covers and four originals that foreshadow Aftermath. It bridges their R&B roots and emerging guitar-driven rock identity.
Aftermath is the Rolling Stones’ first album of entirely original Jagger–Richards songs, recorded across two relaxed sessions at RCA Studios in Los Angeles in December 1965 and March 1966. Engineer Dave Hassinger enabled experimentation, especially with session musician Jack Nitzsche and Brian Jones — who pioneered use of sitar, marimba, and dulcimer — expanding the band’s sonic palette beyond Chicago blues into folk, Baroque, psychedelia, and world music. Melodic ideas were largely developed by Richards and refined collectively in the studio, often guided by Nitzsche’s piano work. Jones’ contributions were central to the album’s textural innovation, though his unreliability occasionally led Richards to assume most guitar duties — a shift marking one of the first Stones albums dominated by Richards’ guitar work. The album also marked the band’s first major use of true stereo and included the extended, improvisational track 'Going Home', nearly 12 minutes long.
Beggars Banquet is the Rolling Stones’ 1968 album — their first with producer Jimmy Miller, their last released in Brian Jones’s lifetime, and their decisive turn from psychedelic pop to roots rock, blues rock, and instrumentally experimental global idioms. It was recorded in early 1968, following 'Jumpin’ Jack Flash', and delayed six months by cover controversy.
Let It Bleed is the Rolling Stones’ final album of the 1960s, recorded between February and early November 1969 amid Brian Jones’s firing and Mick Taylor’s hiring. It reached No. 1 in the UK and No. 3 in the US. It features 'Gimme Shelter' with Merry Clayton, 'You Can’t Always Get What You Want' with the London Bach Choir, 'Midnight Rambler', and a cover of Robert Johnson’s 'Love in Vain'. Keith Richards played nearly all guitar parts; Jones contributed to only two tracks; Taylor added overdubs to two. Recording took place primarily at Olympic Studios in London and Elektra Sound Recorders in Los Angeles. Jimmy Miller produced. Charlie Watts did not play on 'You Can’t Always Get What You Want'.
Some Girls is a tightly wound, reactive rock record — bright, aggressive, and uncluttered. It trades myth for muscle, and legacy for immediacy.
Exile on Main St. is the Rolling Stones' tenth studio album, recorded between 1969 and 1972 in sessions that moved from Olympic Studios in London to Keith Richards's rented villa at Nellcote in the south of France, where the band had relocated after a tax dispute, and finally to Sunset Sound in Los Angeles for overdubs. Producer Jimmy Miller worked with a rotating cast including Nicky Hopkins, Bobby Keys and Dr. John. The eighteen-track double album drew on blues, gospel and country and was received coolly at first, before critics spent the rest of the decade reversing that judgement.
Sticky Fingers is the Rolling Stones' ninth studio album, released in April 1971 on their newly formed Rolling Stones Records label. Recorded between December 1969 and 1971 at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, Olympic Studios in London, and via the band's mobile studio at Stargroves, it was the first Stones album to feature guitarist Mick Taylor throughout and the first since the death of Brian Jones. Jimmy Miller produced, with Andy Warhol contributing the album's famous zip-fastened cover. It became the band's first album to reach number one in both Britain and America.