Rolling Stones Trivia
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98 free Rolling Stones trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free Rolling Stones trivia questions with answers. The Rolling Stones have been going since 1962, which is a lot of trivia. This quiz runs from Mick Jagger meeting Keith Richards on a Dartford railway platform and Brian Jones naming the band off a Muddy Waters LP, through the Marquee debut, the Ed Sullivan lyric change, the Redlands drug bust, Satisfaction, Paint It Black and Sympathy for the Devil, Jones's death and Hyde Park, Altamont, the tongue logo, tax exile at Nellcôte, Mick Taylor and Ronnie Wood, Some Girls and disco, Start Me Up, Steel Wheels, Bill Wyman leaving, Charlie Watts, and Hackney Diamonds with Lady Gaga and Paul McCartney. Easy questions ask who sings and what the logo is; the hard ones want the gardener who inspired Jumpin' Jack Flash, the cook who baked the Let It Bleed cake, the number of children Jagger has and how many reggae takes of Start Me Up were thrown away. Written for lifelong fans, pub-quiz teams and anyone who has argued about Brian Jones versus Mick Taylor. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the band, its members, albums and songs, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01In which Kent town did Jagger and Richards grow up and reconnect at the station in 1961?
Dartford
Dartford railway station, 17 October 1961: Jagger was carrying Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, which told Richards they shared an obsession with American blues.
Q 02Which multi-instrumentalist founded the band in 1962 and named it off a Muddy Waters LP?
Brian Jones
Brian Jones picked the name on the spot, Richards recalled: asked on the phone what the band was called, he glanced at a Muddy Waters LP on the floor and saw the track 'Rollin' Stone'.
Q 03At which London venue did 'the Rollin' Stones' play their first show on 12 July 1962?
The Marquee Club
The Marquee Club's regular Thursday band, Blues Incorporated, was away playing a BBC radio broadcast that night, so the newly named group stood in.
Q 04Which founding Stones keyboardist was pushed out by Andrew Loog Oldham but stayed as road manager until 1985?
Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart was dropped from the line-up in May 1963 because Oldham thought six members too many and his burly look wrong for the image, yet he played piano with the band until he died in 1985.
Q 05Why, by one famous account, did manager Andrew Loog Oldham lock Jagger and Richards in a kitchen?
To make them write songs
To make them write songs: in Richards' telling he would not let them out without one, and the result became 'As Tears Go By', first recorded by Marianne Faithfull.
Q 06Keith Richards says the riff for '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' came to him while he was doing what?
Sleeping
Sleeping: he woke to find the riff on his bedside cassette recorder, followed, he says, by about forty minutes of his own snoring.
Q 07'Paint It Black' (1966) was the first chart-topping single to feature which instrument?
Sitar
Sitar gives the single its drone: the band's founder took the instrument up in earnest after talking to George Harrison, who had just played one on 'Norwegian Wood'.
Q 08Which word did Ed Sullivan make the Stones sing in place of 'night' in 'Let's Spend the Night Together'?
time
Sullivan made them sing 'Let's Spend Some Time Together' on 15 January 1967; Jagger rolled his eyes at the camera each time he reached the word time.
Q 09For what was Mick Jagger sentenced to three months in prison after the 1967 Redlands raid?
Possessing four amphetamine tablets
Possessing four amphetamine tablets earned Jagger three months in 1967; after a Times editorial asked 'Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?', the appeal court cut the sentence to a conditional discharge.
Q 10The title of Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) is a play on words found where?
Inside a British passport
Inside a British passport the text began 'Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires...', which the title twists; the band built the set for its 3D cover themselves.
Q 11'Jumpin' Jack Flash' was inspired by the clumping footsteps of whom outside Richards' country house?
His gardener
His gardener, Jack Dyer, stomped past the window at Redlands one rainy dawn and woke Jagger; asked what the noise was, Richards said 'that's Jack, that's jumpin' Jack'.
Q 12Which Russian novel did Mick Jagger cite as an inspiration for 'Sympathy for the Devil'?
The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov's novel, reached English readers in 1967 and gave Jagger the devil-as-narrator idea; Richards suggested turning the Dylanesque folk draft into a samba.
Q 13Which French director filmed the Stones recording 'Sympathy for the Devil' for his film One Plus One?
Q 21At which December 1969 free concert did a Hells Angel fatally stab Meredith Hunter?
Altamont
Altamont Speedway, 6 December 1969: Hells Angels were working as security, reportedly for $500 worth of beer, when one of them stabbed Meredith Hunter during the Stones' set.
Q 22The Stones' tongue-and-lips logo was inspired by the stuck-out tongue of which deity?
Kali
Kali: Jagger suggested the Hindu goddess's stuck-out tongue to designer John Pasche, whose logo went on sale with Sticky Fingers in 1971 and became the band's emblem.
Q 23Which pop artist conceived the Sticky Fingers cover, with its working zip that revealed underwear?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol conceived the 1971 sleeve, executed by Craig Braun; the working zip reportedly dented records stacked in transit, so copies were shipped with it pulled halfway down.
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard filmed the June 1968 sessions at Olympic Studios for One Plus One; one of his crew's lamps started a fire that wrecked equipment, though the tapes were saved.
Q 14Why was the release of the Stones' Beggars Banquet delayed for months in 1968?
Decca rejected its toilet-wall cover
Decca rejected its toilet-wall cover, a photo of a graffiti-covered bathroom, so the album came out months late in a different sleeve; later reissues restored the original.
Q 15Which one-off supergroup with Lennon, Clapton and Keith Richards on bass played the 1968 Rock and Roll Circus?
The Dirty Mac
The Dirty Mac played 'Yer Blues' with Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums; the Stones, unhappy with their own tired performance, kept the film unseen until 1996.
Q 16How did the Rolling Stones' founder die in July 1969, weeks after leaving?
He drowned in his swimming pool
He drowned in his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm, once the home of Winnie-the-Pooh author A. A. Milne; two days later Jagger read Shelley in his memory at a free Hyde Park concert.
Q 17Which guitarist, poached from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, joined in 1969 to fill the founder's spot?
Mick Taylor
Mick Taylor was 20 when he made his stage debut with the band at a free Hyde Park concert before some quarter of a million people; he quit in December 1974.
Q 18'Honky Tonk Women' was written on a ranch holiday in which country, inspired by the cowboys there?
Brazil
Brazil: Jagger and Richards wrote it on the ranch-house porch as a country song in the style of Hank Williams, and that country version, 'Country Honk', is on Let It Bleed.
Q 19Which then-unknown cookery writer baked the cake on the cover of Let It Bleed?
Delia Smith
Delia Smith, then an unknown cookery writer, was asked for 'a gaudy cake'; hers, topped with figurines of the band, crowns the stack on designer Robert Brownjohn's cover.
Q 20Which American singer shares the vocal with Jagger on 1969's 'Gimme Shelter'?
Merry Clayton
Merry Clayton was called in late one night in 1969 to trade lines with Jagger on 'Gimme Shelter'; her voice famously cracks during the final 'rape, murder' refrain.
Q 24'Wild Horses' and 'You Gotta Move' were recorded in December 1969 at which Alabama facility?
Muscle Shoals Sound
Muscle Shoals Sound, the Sheffield, Alabama studio founded by four session players, hosted three days of sessions from 2 December 1969 that also produced a future number one single.
Q 25The Stones recorded their 1972 double album at a villa in the south of France because they had become what?
Tax exiles
Tax exiles: owing far more British tax than they could pay, the band left England in 1971, and the basement of Richards' rented villa, Nellcôte, became the studio for Exile on Main St.
Q 26According to Keith Richards' memoir, who is the song 'Angie' about?
No one in particular
No one in particular, Richards wrote in his 2010 memoir: 'Angie' was a random name sung before he knew his unborn child would be a girl called Angela; the single topped the US chart in October 1973.
Q 27Ronnie Wood joined the Stones in 1975 from which band, alongside Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones?
Faces
Faces formed in 1969 when Wood and Rod Stewart, fresh from the Jeff Beck Group, joined the remaining Small Faces; Wood left for the Stones in 1975 and Faces split that December.
Q 28Which Some Girls single, with a 'Special Disco Version' 12-inch, reached number one in the US in 1978?
Miss You
Miss You topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978; its harmonica is by Sugar Blue, a Harlem bluesman said to have been discovered busking in Paris.
Q 29Tattoo You (1981) is mostly made up of what?
Studio outtakes from the 1970s
Studio outtakes from the 1970s make up most of the album: with Jagger and Richards barely speaking, associate producer Chris Kimsey raided the vaults for unfinished tracks dating back to 1972 and the band added new vocals.
Q 30Which bassist played with the Stones from 1962 until his departure was announced in January 1993?
Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman, born William Perks, passed his 1962 audition partly because he owned a Vox amplifier the hard-up band could use; he stayed for thirty years.