From the Publisher

You mean, the Rolling Stones have never been on the cover of TIME? Well, they almost were, back in 1972, when their seventh U.S. tour was taking America by storm. Photographer Ken Regan posed the "satanic majesties" of rock backstage in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but the cover did not appear: it was bumped by one on George McGovern taking over the Democratic Party. "I've been waiting 17 years for this cover," chuckled Regan last week, as he arranged the Stones for their portrait, older but still flaunting their stuff.

Yet the bad boys of rock have definitely mellowed. "Through the years, the Stones have rarely been accessible," says Regan, who has shot pictures for several of the band's tours and albums. For our cover shoot, Mick Jagger and his mates interrupted (for 1 1/2 hours) preparations for their first American tour in eight years. Regan trundled his gear up to tiny Washington, Conn. (pop. 3,700), where the Stones were rehearsing in a former girls school. "They're not terribly comfortable posing for pictures," Regan notes, "but this time they were as loose and relaxed as I've ever seen them." Quipped Jagger, after being asked to strike a new pose: "Oh, do we have to do this again? We did it years ago."

TIME art director Rudy Hoglund, who coordinated the shoot, caught a glimpse of the personal Stones. "Their public image comes across as rather harsh," Hoglund says. "But I found them to be charming, regular people. Keith Richards had a friendly Labrador dog that followed him everywhere. He seemed like a very gentle kind of guy."

MaryAnne Golon, TIME's assistant picture editor for special projects, was struck by the natural excitement the Stones seem to generate. "You can plan where people should stand, what they should wear and which kind of background to use," she notes, "but you can't plan them." She didn't need to. Long before the session was over, TIME had caught that old Stones magic.

Our 50th-anniversary special on World War II concludes this week with a look at the nightmare years that led up to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.