The Rolling Stones are cel­e­brat­ing their 50th anniver­sary this year, and like every­thing with the Stones, they’re doing it big. The band has sched­uled a series of five spe­cial con­certs on both sides of the Atlantic, begin­ning next Sun­day in Lon­don and con­tin­u­ing in Newark, New Jer­sey, and Brook­lyn, New York, in Decem­ber.

And like every­thing with the Stones, it’s expen­sive. Tick­ets for the Lon­don shows, for exam­ple, range in price from about $150 to $1,500, which has prompt­ed more than a few com­plaints. The band has defend­ed the prices, say­ing that they’re doing a large-scale show with only five audi­ences to cov­er the pro­duc­tion costs. “We’ve already spent a mil­lion on rehears­ing in Paris,” gui­tarist Ron­nie Wood told The Tele­graph recent­ly. “And the stage is going to be anoth­er few mil­lion. And the lights. We feel no bad thing about tick­et prices. We’ve got to make some­thing.”

The rock ’n’ roll busi­ness­men also expect to make some­thing from a pay-per-view broad­cast of the sold-out Decem­ber 15 show in Newark, along with sales of a new illus­trat­ed auto­bi­og­ra­phy called The Rolling Stones: 50 and a ret­ro­spec­tive album called GRRR!, which comes in sev­er­al edi­tions rang­ing from the three-disc basic CD ver­sion to a five-disc vinyl boxed set. While pro­mot­ing the album, all four mem­bers of the Stones agreed to be inter­viewed by Melis­sa Block of the NPR pro­gram All Things Con­sid­ered. Block asked each of the Stones to pick one song from their exten­sive cat­a­log to dis­cuss. It’s an inter­est­ing series of con­ver­sa­tions, and you can hear each one by fol­low­ing these links:

• Kei­th Richards: ‘These Riffs Were Built to Last a Life­time’
• Char­lie Watts on What Makes ‘Sat­is­fac­tion’ So Sat­is­fy­ing
• Ron­nie Wood’s Funky Con­tri­bu­tion to the Stones’ Canon
• Mick Jag­ger on the Apoc­a­lyp­tic ‘Gimme Shel­ter’

Along with the expect­ed clas­sics, GRRR! includes two new songs, includ­ing the first sin­gle released by the Stones in six years, “Doom and Gloom.” (See the video below.) It’s a blus­tery tune, lack­ing the rhyth­mic sophis­ti­ca­tion and inven­tive­ness of the band’s ear­li­er work, but it amply demon­strates that even after 50 years, the Stones still know how to rock.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters, 1981

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial, 1964

The Rolling Stones Sing the Bea­t­les’ ‘Eight Days a Week’ in a Hotel Room, 1965

In the spring of 1963 Studs Terkel intro­duced Chica­go radio lis­ten­ers to an up-and-com­ing musi­cian, not yet 22 years old, “a young folk poet who you might say looks like Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, if he lived in the 20th cen­tu­ry. His name is Bob Dylan.” (Lis­ten to the inter­view below.)

Dylan had just fin­ished record­ing the songs for his sec­ond album, The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, when he trav­eled from New York to Chica­go to play a gig at a lit­tle place part­ly owned by his man­ag­er, Albert Gross­man, called The Bear Club. The next day he went to the WFMT stu­dios for the hour-long appear­ance on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram. Most sources give the date of the inter­view as April 26, 1963, though Dylan schol­ar Michael Krogs­gaard has giv­en it as May 3.

Things were mov­ing fast in Dylan’s life at that time. He was just emerg­ing as a major song­writer. His debut album from the year before, Bob Dylan, was made up most­ly of oth­er peo­ple’s songs. The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, which was fin­ished but had­n’t yet been released, con­tained almost all orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al, includ­ing sev­er­al songs that would become clas­sics, like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall.” With­in a few months Dylan would make his debut at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val and per­form at the his­toric March on Wash­ing­ton. But when Dylan vis­it­ed WFMT, it’s like­ly that many of Terkel’s lis­ten­ers had nev­er heard of him. In the record­ed broad­cast he plays the fol­low­ing songs:

1. Farewell
2. A Hard Rain’s a‑Gonna Fall
3. Bob Dylan’s Dream
4. Boots of Span­ish Leather
5. John Brown
6. Who Killed Dav­ey Moore?
7. Blowin’ In The Wind

Dylan tells Terkel that “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall” is not about atom­ic fall­out, even though he wrote the song in a state of anx­i­ety dur­ing the Cuban mis­sile cri­sis. “No, it’s not atom­ic rain,” Dylan says, “it’s just a hard rain. It isn’t the fall­out rain. I mean some sort of end that’s just got­ta hap­pen.… In the last verse, when I say, ‘the pel­lets of poi­son are flood­ing their waters,’ that means all the lies that peo­ple get told on their radios and in their news­pa­pers.”

But as the con­ver­sa­tion pro­gress­es it becomes clear that the moti­va­tion behind Dylan’s com­ments isn’t to dis­pel myths or to clear up any of the “lies that peo­ple get told on their radios.” Rather, he’s dri­ven by his life-long dread of being pigeon­holed by oth­ers. Dylan is hap­py to spread his own myths. At one point he tells Terkel a “stretch­er” that would have made Huck­le­ber­ry Finn proud: He claims that when he was about ten years old he saw Woody Guthrie per­form in Bur­bank, Cal­i­for­nia. Regard­less of its fac­tu­al­i­ty, the Dylan-Terkel inter­view is an enter­tain­ing hour, a fas­ci­nat­ing win­dow on the young artist as he was enter­ing his prime. You can stream it here.

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Will any radio DJ ever draw more respect than John Peel has? It seems unlike­ly, espe­cial­ly since so many fas­ci­nat­ing arti­facts of his life and career have become avail­able on the inter­net since his death in 2004. You can now explore, thanks to the John Peel Archive, Peel’s dig­i­tized office, a repos­i­to­ry of videos, sound record­ings, pho­tos and broad­casts. But for its obvi­ous pièce de résis­tance, look no fur­ther than Peel’s record col­lec­tion, made vir­tu­al for your brows­ing enjoy­ment. There you’ll find stream­able albums, pop-cul­tur­al arti­facts, and tes­ti­mo­ny from many a famous musi­cian about the vital impor­tance of John Peel to their careers. Those too young or too non-Eng­lish to have tuned in to BBC Radio 1 dur­ing Peel’s hey­day may not real­ize that this is no ordi­nary record col­lec­tion. This is a trea­sure trove of 25,000 LPs and 40,000 sin­gles assem­bled by a man who brought to the rock-enthu­si­ast pub­lic the likes of Bil­ly Bragg, Orches­tral Manoeu­vres in the Dark, The Fall, Pave­ment Buz­zcocks, Elvis Costel­lo, David Bowie… the list goes on.

Peel show­cased such artists on his famous Peel Ses­sions, which would bring these per­form­ers into the BBC’s stu­dios to lay down four or five songs. Quick­ly mixed and read­ied for broad­cast, these songs would retain a rougher, loos­er, often more impro­vi­sa­tion­al feel than the records that made these play­ers famous. Tapes of a band’s Peel Ses­sion thus imme­di­ate­ly became a hot­ly trad­ed com­mod­i­ty among that band’s fans. Today, Peel’s own fans have help­ful­ly uploaded a selec­tion of his broad­casts, offi­cial Peel Ses­sions and oth­er­wise, to the audio-shar­ing site Sound­cloud. Per­haps you’d like to hear a snap­shot of Peel’s view or the rock world on Christ­mas Eve 1979. Or how about Octo­ber 13, 2004? Maybe April 4, 1988? Then, when you’re ready — and if you use Spo­ti­fy — make a return to the John Peel Archive and pull up his Ses­sions with a favorite band, be it The Cure, Smash­ing Pump­kins, PJ Har­vey, Cin­era­ma, or whomev­er. You’ll hear why, 45 years on from his broad­cast­ing debut and eight from his pass­ing, John Peel remains the locus clas­si­cus of knowl­edge­able, dis­cern­ing rock-radio cool.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.