IN A LITTLE OVER 48 hours, someone's going to get on the P.A. at the Hartford Civic Center and say something like, "Everybody ready? We're sorry for the delay. Welcome the greatest rock and roll band in the world, The Rolling Stones." And then even if Keith Richards doesn't churn into the opening chords of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," as he does when he opens the epic live album, Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, 17,000 people will get just what they came for, fast and with no frills.

After it's over and before the Stones hit the next city on their current "Tattoo You" rampage, Robert Palmer or some other prominent rockologist will write yet another piece confirming that the group has recaptured the old raunch, that Richards seems sharper than ever, that Jagger can still hypnotize the masses by merely taking off his shirt and sticking his hands in his pants. "This is the real thing," we will be reminded.

David Dalton and his collaborators on The Rolling Stones: The First Twenty Years never wonder about who's the best in this business; their partisanship is clear from the opening paragraph. They see no need to justify the Stones' claim to the throne. In 192 over-sized pages of pictures, interviews and narrative, the authors and editors seek the origins of the myth and explain how it has evolved over the past two decades. Nobody will be worrying about this kind of stuff Monday night in Hartford, but it's required reading for the true fanatic.

Though sloppily written, the book conveys the crucial information and images in a series of topical installments, suitable for use as a read-along guide to the path from "Not Fade Away" to "Start Me Up." Twenty Years doesn't offer too much analysis; its strength is Dalton's willingness to let the Stones and their intimates speak for themselves, sometimes in tedious, drug-muddled rockstarese, but more often in concise, intelligent English.

THE STONES HAVE been around for so long that most people listening to them today either can't remember or never knew in the first place where these guys actually came from. As Dalton quickly proves, you can't understand the group unless you're aware of a history that goes back beyond "Brown Sugar," beyond "Honky Tonk Woman," into the murky period before "Satisfaction" was even an embryonic riff ringing from Keef's Stratocaster.

In 1962, a guitarist named Alexis Korner reigned as rhythm-and-blues king of the London club scene. Not only did his gigs at the Ealing Club provide a backdrop for crucial get-togethers attended by various future Stones, but Korner himself unknowingly forwarded musical history by releasing a certain singer and drummer from his group, freeing them to link up with two young guitarists named Richards and Jones. "If things were as they should be, Alexis would be right at the top," Charlie Watts said some years later. "It was a lot different then. People used to come up on the stand and have a go, and the whole thing was great."

Watts and the others did not forget their tutelage in R and B; for years they insisted they were not a rock band, and certainly not a pop band, like their rivals, the Beatles. When McCartney and Lennon dropped in on an early recording session and suggested that the Stones play original material instead of just R and B covers, Jagger was caught by surprise, responding "Oh! You're right; that's a good idea." But still the Stones have always tended to fall back on what they know best: Black American blues. For quite a while, Brian Jones favored the stage name Elmo Lewis.

The group began to move away from R and B after 1965, but those first three years produced a musical foundation on which Jagger and Richards built the many styles they explored and eventually mastered later on. It is, for instance, the conscious distance of the bluesman from his subject that gives Stones songs their biting irony. And at the same time, it is the reckless abandon of a Chicago blues jam that separates the Stones from those who would polish rock and roll into a smooth, blunt weapon. The band members never saw themselves as a part of a British Invasion--not musically, at least. They wanted that "really good funky American sound," from the start, Richards announced in 1964. That raucous, reckless, eminently funky sound has endured as the Stones' special signature, regardless of what other influences are mixed in.

AS HE TRACES the Stones' musical development through the 1960s and 1970s, Dalton also provides a revealing perspective on the private lives and individual psyches that made up the group. He lets Jagger and Jones speak for themselves on their power struggle early on and describes the brilliant efforts of producer Andrew Loog Oldham to package his charges as popular music's bad little mannish boys. And then, once those boys grew up, came the years totally clouded over by drugs, debauchery, and disillusionment, leading ultimately to Brian's death and the rebirth of the others. Struggling to reassert themselves, the Stones were forced to confront a new problem: how to keep the act spontaneous and rebellious after more than a decade of two-four rhythm. The familiar events are all thrown in, but portrayed from new and interesting angles. The drug bust at Redlands, the tragedy at Altamont, the transition from Mick Taylor to Ron Wood, the triumphant American tours and the countless, faceless women--it's all here.

The book's vast array of photographs is often more expressive than the text it decorates. In portrait after portrait, Brian Jones slowly loses the fierce beauty of his youth, transformed by heroin and fear into a corpse-like tag-along, who by the end can barely keep time with a pair of maracas. More cheerfully, Charlie Watts maintains through all the years his proud, patient detachment from the tumult created by his mates. He sits, smiling behind his humble drum kit, clearly amazed that he, or any other grown man, can do this sort of thing for a living. In contrast, Richards gradually develops into the outlaw rocker he always knew he was, even when he kept his hair clipped short and wore a cardigan sweater during performances.

The question of age and ultimate aims inevitably dominates, for that has become the most prominent theme since the Stones hit middle age. Dalton succeeds, however, in placing the problem in perspective; it is not, as some critics now seem to imply, the only major concern that has plagued the group in recent years. They still think a lot about making good music, as they have on the current tour. The author quotes Jagger: "What I was doing when I was 18, I'm doing now.... I'm married and have children and all that, but I don't worry about it because I'm doing what I did before.... I only discovered this really by looking at other people in rock and roll.... It perpetuates your adolescence, for good or bad." Monday night they'll open with "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and it will be like nothing had ever changed.