“What can a poor boy do in sleepy London town?” sings Mick Jagger in The Rolling Stones hit “Street Fighting Man”. Change “London” to “Rome” and if you suffer from boredom a possible answer to that dilemma is to go and watch The Stoners, one of the best Rolling Stones tribute bands currently performing. The group’s musicians are all from Rome, apart from vocalist Domenico Scola who was born in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia, and is a mother-tongue English speaker. He grew up listening to 93.3 WMMR “The Home of Rock’n’Roll”, a radio station that helped launch Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, and which played The Rolling Stones all the time. Scola is a born entertainer and says he has been singing since the age of three.

People who turn up their nose at the thought of tribute bands are probably underestimating a phenomenon that is here to stay and will only get bigger. Perhaps they ignore the fact that originally even The Rolling Stones used to do covers, until their manager Andrew Loog Oldham decided that they had to start writing their own material. He allegedly locked Keith Richards and Mick Jagger inside a windowless room from which they were released only after producing their first original song, “As Tears Go By”.

To avoid misunderstandings, cover bands are not the same thing as tribute bands. A cover is a reworked and reinterpreted song, whereas tribute bands are philologically faithful to the original version. The Stoners would never dream of performing “Waiting On A Friend” or “Slave” without a saxophone player, because both the original versions on the “Tattoo You” album have a sax solo. As true perfectionists trying to emulate the old epic of the Glimmer Twins (the notorious definition of the Jagger-Richards partnership), The Stoners want to get it right in every single detail. “When I perform a song like ‘Miss You’ for instance, I feel like it’s my own,” says Scola. “And we keep rehearsing it, even if we play it all the time. People come to us and say, ‘Oh, you played that song so great, why do you need to practice it?’ And we say, ‘We played it so great because we practice it.’”

The energy The Stoners create during a live performance is extraordinary. They have by now established a sort of cult, with a crowd of faithful followers who turn up regularly to their gigs and rarely miss the monthly appointment at Lettere Caffè in Trastevere. There is a sense of community among fans, whose age ranges from the early 20s to 50 or 60. According to Scola, their crowd is made up “only of young beautiful women”, but this fact has not yet been verified.

Amazingly, the phenomenon of tribute bands can produce a virtuous circle. People have turned up at a Stoners gig without knowing anything about The Rolling Stones, and ended up buying the whole Rolling Stones discography.

Ugo Moretti, guitarist and founder of The Stoners, was therefore right when he first embarked on this adventure with the clear awareness that it was first and foremost a cultural operation. “I put an ad in Porta Portese magazine looking for a singer when Domenico called me and said: ‘I’m Mick Jagger’, to which I replied: ‘yeah, I’m Keith Richards,’” recalls Moretti. This is how their mission started to re-propose the blues and the pure sound of rock in Italy, where the melodic element is usually dominant and rock’n’roll is not always recognised as a form of art.

Cover and tribute bands are sometimes criticised by other musicians who play their own material and find it difficult to have a chance to perform, because audiences prefer to listen to something they already know. Scola understands this problem well, having just released “Betting On Dreams”, a CD of original songs written by him and his band Crazy Fish. The only real question club owners usually ask is “How many people can you bring?”.

In any event, The Stoners attract big crowds. They played at Messaggerie Musicali, at the Nag’s Head for The Rolling Stones Fans Meeting in Rome, at the Trecentoallora Biker’s Rock Festival in the province of Rovigo, and even opened the Estate Romana 2007 season with a spectacular gig on the Tiber. Last but not least, The Stoners have been invited to play at the historical club Kenny’s Castaways in Greenwich Village, New York in June and are contemplating doing an extended US-tour.

The Stoners perform in Rome regularly. It’s only rock’n’roll – but they like it, and do it well.

For The Stoners’ current repertoire covering at least

60 songs http://www.stoners.it/.

They are currently looking for a saxophonist and a female backup singer.

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