Pod Insights The Rest Is History 558. The Rolling Stones: Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll (Part 1) About this episode What are the origins of Britain’s original bad boys, The Rolling Stones? Where did they all come from and how did they meet? What was it about the 1960s, with its air of sexual liberation, newly elected Labour government, and rising youth culture that allowed them to burst onto the musical scene? Who was Brian Jones, the band's troubled founder? And, what made the Rolling Stones, even from the earliest stages, so much more controversial than The Beatles?
Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the rise of one of history’s greatest, sexiest, and most suavely devilish bands, and the glaring light they shed upon the tumultuous 1960s.
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Twitter:
@TheRestHistory
@holland_tom
@dcsandbrook
Producer: Theo Young-Smith
Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude
Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor
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Transcript 13,122 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Tom Holland? This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.
0:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather, everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people?
0:45 Tom Holland? So they asked over 100,000 people. And what came back wasn't just fear, there was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/RestIsHistory and keep thinking.
1:08 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by TikTok. We obviously love history here. It's always a treat to make a new discovery, especially in unexpected ways.
1:17 Tom Holland? Which is exactly what happens on TikTok. Like, you know coffee, you make it, add milk, drink it, nothing more, except...
1:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Except when you hop on TikTok, you don't just learn how to make an authentic cappuccino. You can also discover videos about how in the 1700s, people would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it.
1:44 Tom Holland? And suddenly, you're imagining how people lived, drank, socialized. Makes you wonder what will baffle historians about us. And that's the joy of TikTok. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different.
1:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Visit tiktok.com/discovermore.
2:11 Tom Holland? This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. So go to mintmobile.com/history.
2:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB of hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.
2:58 Tom Holland? Parents do not like the Rolling Stones. They do not want their sons to grow up like them. They do not want their daughters to marry them. Never have the middle-class virtues of neatness, obedience and punctuality been so conspicuously lacking as they are in the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones are not the people you build empires with. They are not the people who always remember to wash their hands before lunch. Parents feel cheated. Just when the Beatles had taught them that pop music was respectable, just when they were beginning to understand, what happens? Their children develop a passion beyond the comprehension of anybody for these five
3:43 Tom Holland? young men. So that was Maureen Cleve writing in the London Evening Standard on the 14th of April 1964. Maureen Cleve, very groovy, kind of Anna Wintour haircut, probably the most influential pop writer of the day. First national newspaper journalist to champion the Beatles. She would go on to do the infamous interview with John Lennon in which he boasted that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. But Dominic, we're not here to talk about the Beatles, are we? We are here to talk about the Rolling Stones. And what was the headline to that particular article that I just quoted? Because it's quite a good headline, isn't it?
4:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes. Hello, everybody. The headline on that article was, but would you let your daughter marry one? And that was inspired by an article that had run a few weeks earlier in Melody Maker. Would you let your sister go with a Rolling Stone? And I think that captures, Tom, the Stones' enduring image. So even today, I mean, they're in their eighties, aren't they? Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. I mean, amazing, Keith Richards is still around in his eighties. Amazing. But to people like our producer, Theo, who loves the Rolling Stones, they're still symbols of defiance of authority, of rebelliousness, sexual excess. Everything that Theo embodies. Everything that we like our producers on The Rest Is History to embody, exactly.
5:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, some people, I guess, may be thinking the Rolling Stones in a history podcast, really. But I think there are two dimensions in which they're really important. The first is obviously pop cultural. So I think it's the Stones, more than any other band since the 1960s, who came to define the look and the sound and the style of rock music. And I say rock music deliberately. Obviously, the Beatles are enormously influential in all kinds of different areas. But in terms of pure rock music, I think the look of the Stones in particular and their, as it were, dare I say, their vibe, Tom? Their vibe, yeah. Their vibe, it's the Stones who establish, as it were, the vibe. You wouldn't say that from the seventies onwards, though. Basically, they're doing it as a kind of self-parody. Yes, of course.
5:47 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, they're becoming completely predictable, they have a logo, yeah. Yeah, they've become the first tribute act. To themselves. Yeah, in rock music history, to themselves. But they're also, I mean, you mentioned the logo, they're huge commercial pioneers. And in the second episode, we'll talk about their later tours of the United States, where they charged higher ticket prices than anyone had ever charged. They recognise the business potential of this. I mean, of course, famously, they become tax exiles. Yeah, they go to the south of France, don't they? Exactly, so there's that. If you're interested in pop culture, the Stones are obviously really important. But also in the more conventional historical dimension. The Rolling Stones become emblematic in Britain in particular of the 1960s. And I think their story, their rise and rise, normally we do rise and fall in history podcasts,
6:31 Dominic Sandbrook? but this is rise and rise. Their story becomes a brilliant window, I think, into the world of 60s Britain. So we can explore all kinds of things like social class, economic and social change, attitudes towards drugs and whatnot. And we'll do this over two episodes. So in today's episode. We'll look at where they came from, what they represent, why they're so controversial, which I think is a really interesting question, and how they end up being cast as the sort of the yin to the Beatles' yang, you know, that sort of Beatles versus Stones thing, which is obviously massively contrived, but which runs all the way through the 1960s and becomes a big cultural signifier, I would say. And today, we'll be looking particularly at the man who founded the band, who I think is often a little bit forgotten today, and
7:15 Dominic Sandbrook? that's Brian Jones. Originally, it's not Mick Jagger's band, it's not Keith Richards' band, it's Brian Jones' band. So we'll talk about him. But first, Tom, would you like a little bit of historical context?
7:24 Tom Holland? I'd love a bit of historical context.
7:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course you would.
7:27 Tom Holland? You know, I love to embed popular music in historical context.
7:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Brilliant. I'm so pleased. This is why you're the perfect person to do this podcast.
7:35 Tom Holland? I know, I'm so excited. I do. Well, you know I do. You know, that's why I love your books. That's not the only reason I love your books, but it's definitely one of them.
7:41 Dominic Sandbrook? So, so the Rolling Stones first become famous in 1964, and that's the end of 13 years of conservatism in Britain. The premierships of Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, and finally Sir Alec Douglas Hume.
7:55 Tom Holland? Do you know, Dominic, I hope that when this goes out as a video,
7:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
7:59 Tom Holland? maybe they could put in some video image of Alec Douglas Hume looking tweedy on a grouse estate.
8:04 Dominic Sandbrook? You'd enjoy that.
8:05 Tom Holland? And then footage of the Stones.
8:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
8:09 Tom Holland? That's the classic kind of move, isn't it?
8:10 Dominic Sandbrook? It is. It's the juxtaposition. So in that period, the British Empire has largely disintegrated. Everyday life in Britain has been transformed by full employment, by massively rising wages, by free mass education. In other words, this is the absolute high point of what people called at the time, the affluent society. And the people who benefit arguably more than anybody are young people. So there were about five and a half million teenagers in Britain by the early 60s. And they are defined economically. In other words, they are an economic group really for the first time, who are spending more than eight hundred million pounds a year. And they are supporting a huge infrastructure of cinemas and dance halls and music magazines and record shops.
8:54 Tom Holland? And the magazines, the magazines are kind of driven by girls, right? And girls have a kind of outside influence on this teenage culture that's emerging.
9:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, absolutely. Girls spend the most money, girls are the most important. If you are, you know, a record promoter, or you run a dance hall, or you're a magazine editor, it's girls that you think about far more than boys. And it's girls who dominate, who are really important in the record market. So teenagers make up half the market for records and record players, and they buy singles, not albums. So in nineteen fifty five, there had been four million singles sold. In nineteen sixty three, sixty one million. This is big, big money. And for the first time, I think, you have a genuine national youth culture through television. So a really good example of that in August nineteen sixty three, the BBC launched a
9:46 Dominic Sandbrook? programme called Ready, Steady, Go, which is a kind of national pop programme. And it means that basically if you live in Scotland, if you live in Aberystwyth, if you live in Cornwall, wherever, you're watching the same thing, the same fashions, listening to the same music. It is a genuine nationwide phenomenon in a way that was unimaginable in the eighteen nineties or something.
10:05 Tom Holland? And it's unimaginable now, I guess.
10:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. It is a much more national, homogenous kind of story. Basically, to separate these young people from their money, record promoters on both sides of the Atlantic have come up with a succession of musical crazes. So the famous one in the mid fifties, rock and roll, Bill Haley and his Comets, Elvis Presley and so on. But that doesn't last forever. By the turn of the sixties, that's over and record company executives are looking for something new. And actually, it's really funny, if you look at the first years of the sixties, the mad things that they think might take over. So calypso, or cha-cha, or yodeling.
10:44 Tom Holland? Or kind of comedy songs which a producer called George Martin is experimenting with.
10:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. Comedy songs done by people in bowler hats, you know, ackerbilk kind of thing, whatever.
10:53 Tom Holland? Yeah, digging holes in roads and things.
10:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly.
10:56 Tom Holland? Window cleaners.
10:57 Dominic Sandbrook? And actually, as everybody listens to this podcast, surely knows, even if they don't think they know it, they know that the big winners are actually the Beatles, Beat Music. And they rise incredibly quickly. So in October 1962, their first single Love Me Do didn't even get into the top 10. But a year on from that, they totally dominate the charts in a way that is unimaginable, really before or since, I would say. So nobody has ever had the hegemony since that the Beatles had in 1963, 64. Maybe Taylor Swift is the only person who comes close. But now the market is so fragmented, it's no comparison, really. Now, why this happens, I would say, some people may disagree. This is not because of
11:38 Dominic Sandbrook? the Beatles' unique genius. It is because the conditions have been established. So in 1963, the economy is roaring on all cylinders because Harold Macmillan and his chancellor Reginald Maudling have unleashed a pre-election dash for growth. So there's tons of money around, and more teenagers are spending more money on records than ever. So in other words, if the Beatles had not existed, or if, you know, Brian Epstein hadn't discovered them, or George Martin hadn't taken them over, or whatever, I think it's reasonable to assume that some other band would have played that part, because the market is sitting there waiting.
12:15 Tom Holland? Well, you say band.
12:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
12:16 Tom Holland? I mean, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. It could have been a solo singer or something. So I mean, famously.
12:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
12:22 Tom Holland? Dick Rowe.
12:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
12:24 Tom Holland? According to Epstein, anyway, the Beatles manager, says that guitar groups are on the way out, right?
12:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, guitar groups are finished.
12:30 Tom Holland? You know, and so that's why he doesn't sign the Beatles. And then a year later, it's Dick Rowe who signs the Rolling Stones.
12:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Correct.
12:37 Tom Holland? On the recommendation of George Harrison, a member of the Beatles. And so the sense that it's the Beatles who blaze the path for the kind of guitar groups that the Stones will be and the Who and the Kinks and everybody else. But it might not, you know, if it had been a solo singer, if it had been a Cliff Richard or somebody like that, then it would have gone on a different course. And it might not have been Britain. It might have been British.
12:58 Dominic Sandbrook? First of all. It almost was a solo singer, Frank Ifield, who becomes the first person, I think, to sell a million records and has the first person of three number ones in a row. In other words, the potential for hegemony, for dominance of the charts, is greater in 1963 than at any point before. But I think the fact that it's groups that come through and the groups that then dominate for the next 10 years.
13:18 Tom Holland? And British groups.
13:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Suggests that there's something, a latent potential in the group. Because you can market four or five people more successfully and more appealingly to more people than you can market one, I would argue. Anyway, we could get massively bogged down in this. One other point about this, I think, I think it's really important to remember. It is very clear at this point that the appeal of pop music is not just, and perhaps not even primarily, about the music. It is also, and I think especially about the attitude and about the atmosphere. The critic Ian McDonald, who wrote a brilliant book about the Beatles, is really good about this, that it's actually about what we would now call, as it were, the vibe. Because a lot of people don't really listen to the lyrics, they're using the music only to dance to.
13:59 Tom Holland? Or famously, just go and scream.
14:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly right.
14:02 Tom Holland? And not hear any of the music at all.
14:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, there are two other elements of this boom that I think are really important for the Stone story. For the first time in the early 1960s, you have a cult of amateurishness. So in the 1950s, there was an expectation that a group or even a singer would have been picked and groomed and manicured by their management and their songs would be written for them by professionals. But by 1963, there's an expectation that a young performer will write their own material. It's meant to come from the heart.
14:30 Tom Holland? That does reflect the influence of the Beatles, doesn't it?
14:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, the Beatles are obviously really important in that. The Beatles are the model. And secondly, the other thing that is very unusual in 1963 is the overwhelmingly and unusually positive coverage of the Beatles. So rock and roll had always been treated with great anxiety. Famously, the Daily Mail in 1956 had called it the Negro's Revenge, African Tom Tom and Voodoo Dance Music. He called it. Even Cliff Richard, you mentioned Cliff Richard. So for non-British listeners, he's the kind of Christian mainstream, you know, the housewives favourite. He is now regarded by people in Britain as the sort of the acme of the sort of diluted, what would, how would you put it, Tom? The sort of safe, boring, bland. White bread.
15:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, white bread pop star. But at the time, the NME, the great kind of music bible, condemned his indecent vulgarity, his violent hip swinging, hardly the performance any parent could wish her children to see. So this kind of sexual anxiety in particular is always there, but not there with the Beatles. Brian Epstein has packaged them to appeal to the widest audience possible. So by the autumn of sixty-three, when they're approaching their peak, the newspapers are constantly saying, isn't it amazing? We have this band and they're really funny and likeable. And the Evening Standard, October sixty-three, they've won over the class snob, the intellectual snob, the music snob, the grown-ups and the
15:57 Dominic Sandbrook? husbands, i.e. the two groups, you know, who are least likely to approve of any pop musician that their daughters are listening to. And then an amazing editorial, I love this, the Daily Mirror in November nineteen sixty-three, hair will be a big feature of today's episode, by the way. The Mirror said, the fact is that Beatle people are everywhere from whopping to Windsor, aged seven to seventy. And it says it's plain to see why the Beatles are very cheerful, they're very high spirited. Quote, they wear their hair like a mop, but it's washed in capital letters, it's super clean. So is their fresh young act. They don't have to rely on off-colour jokes about homos for their fun. So what are they thinking of there?
16:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. This is a mystery. What are they thinking of there? I've often, I've often thought of like writing some essay about what, what lies behind that. It's a mystery. It is a great mystery. Let's get back to the Stones themselves. So we'll kick off with the real founder of the group. And this is a person who I think is a bit overlooked today. And this is Brian Jones.
16:59 Dominic Sandbrook? So Brian Jones is born into a very middle-class family in Cheltenham in 1942. His father works at the local aeronautical engineering factory. He's got a very suburban background, very respectable. He is, like so many people in the story of 60s music, very clever. He passed his 11+, which for overseas listeners is the test that you have to do at the age of 11 to decide which kind of school you will go to in your teens. Will you go to a grammar school for the bright kids, aspirational kids? Or will you go to a secondary modern where the government basically dump everybody else? He passes. He does very well at school. He gets lots of, he passes lots of exams and does well. But he is badly behaved.
17:44 Dominic Sandbrook? He is, depending on your viewpoint, either extraordinarily reckless or extraordinarily selfish. In 1958, he gets a 14-year-old girl pregnant. In 1960, he gets a married woman from Guildford pregnant. In 1961, he gets another girl pregnant. By the time he's 22 and the Stones are becoming famous, he is already the father of five different children.
18:07 Tom Holland? The weird thing is, I mentioned Maureen Cleves and a winter Bob. He looks a bit like a kind of male Maureen Cleve, a little bit.
18:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, that's his hair, isn't it? That's a strange sort of bowl haircut.
18:21 Tom Holland? Yeah, it's his hair. Because there was a weird thing. So his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, didn't she say that he wanted to be François Ardi? Or some kind of French chanteuse? And he would get her to kind of, you know, put on makeup and...
18:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, in the next episode, we will discuss the Pallenberg-Jones relationship, which I think it's safe to say is tangled, Tom.
18:40 Tom Holland? Yeah. The theme of androgyny in the Stones is obviously quite important. I mean, it's there with Mick Jagger as well.
18:45 Dominic Sandbrook? It is indeed. So initially, he gets into Cheltenham Art College, but then after news of his poor conduct emerges, he's kicked out and he ends up taking a succession of odd jobs. Because Brian Jones, he'll dominate these two episodes, it's worth pausing for a moment on his personality. He's a very bright boy, he's sensitive, he's very needy, and he's very, very difficult. Bill Wyman and his autobiography Stone Alone, which is well worth reading, actually, it's a really, really interesting book. Bill Wyman said he was a preening peacock, gregarious, artistic, desperately seeking assurance from his peers. Mick Jagger said of Brian Jones, I've been practicing, Mick Jagger, I can't really
19:26 Dominic Sandbrook? do it, it's so hard to do, no, it's impossible. He was an extremely difficult person, there's something very, very disturbed about him. He was very unhappy with life, very frustrated. But he was talented, but he was a very paranoid personality, not suited for show business. Keith Richards, this is the most principal thing I could find that he said, he said of his former friend and bandmate, he was a bastard.
19:49 Tom Holland? Yeah, like Harold Godwinson on Will and the Conqueror.
19:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, I guess so. Yeah. No, I think the thing about Brian Jones is clearly a very nasty man. He's got a very nasty streak. He has something in common with John Lennon. He enjoys beating up women. He beats up women a lot.
20:04 Tom Holland? John Lennon did not enjoy beating up women, and he repented it.
20:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, he does beat up women. He does it multiple times.
20:10 Tom Holland? He did, but, you know, the great drama of his life is his struggle with that instinct.
20:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Struggle, oh, poor him, what a victim, what a victim.
20:17 Tom Holland? We'll do a thing on John Lennon at some point.
20:19 Dominic Sandbrook? God forbid.
20:20 Tom Holland? Let's not get bogged down into an argument about John Lennon.
20:22 Dominic Sandbrook? God forbid. So, in Cheltenham, there is a little bohemian set, as there is in so many towns in Britain in the early 60s. Art college, coffee bars, people who are students, who are members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
20:37 Tom Holland? Duffle coats.
20:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, who are aspiring musicians. They will meet up and they will listen generally to jazz music or to folk.
20:43 Tom Holland? And Brian Jones plays the clarinet, doesn't he? He played clarinet in the school orchestra. So, yeah, he's ready with his clarinet. Oh, and he's got a saxophone, I think.
20:52 Dominic Sandbrook? He's a talented musician. Now, through listening to jazz and folk, people are starting to get into blues music. So blues music, for people who are not massively familiar with music, the music of the rural Mississippi Delta in the late 19th century, then it spreads to the cities of the American South in the 1920s or so, Atlanta and so on, and then through... The great migration to Chicago in the 1940s, you get people like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.
21:18 Tom Holland? How do you pronounce Howlin' Wolf?
21:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Howlin' Wolf.
21:21 Tom Holland? Howlin'.
21:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Howlin' Wolf, that's his name.
21:23 Tom Holland? That's an important part of the story, isn't it? You drop the G if you're a blues player.
21:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And this is a sort of, the Chicago blues, which is the kind that becomes very popular in Britain, is there's an electric guitar, there's a harmonica, it's a kind of more urban sound. In the late 1940s, the American magazine Billboard started calling it rhythm and blues, as in R and B. And that became a sort of vague euphemism for black music generally. And obviously, this music was very influential on people like Elvis Presley in the United States. But it doesn't go through into the white American mainstream because record company executives believe that white audiences will never take black music. So in other words, when people like the Stones take it to the United States, or the Animals, or whoever,
22:11 Dominic Sandbrook? a lot of white audiences have not heard it before, which is an important thing in their success. But Britain is different. In Britain, white jazz and folk enthusiasts are not hidebound by the same racial inhibitions as in the United States. So they start listening to blues as well. And a good example of this is the best-known jazz band leader of the day, who's called Chris Barber. He went to St Paul's, Tom. So many of these people.
22:34 Tom Holland? Did he?
22:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, so many of these people are either grammar school boys or public school boys. It's really strange and interesting phenomenon. Chris Barber played a lot of blues with his touring band.
22:46 Dominic Sandbrook? And in October 1961, they go to Cheltenham, where Brian Jones lives, and they play at the town hall. And he's 19 years old, Jones, and he goes to see them and he is absolutely transfixed by it. And afterwards, he goes to one of these clubs, the Waikiki Club, to talk to Chris Barber's guitarist, who's a man called Alexis Corner, who's a very influential person in the small British blues scene. Yes, Tom?
23:10 Tom Holland? You see, I was amazed to learn this because I knew Alexis Corner as a DJ when I first started listening to Radio 1.
23:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
23:17 Tom Holland? He had an incredibly gravelly voice.
23:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, very gravelly voice.
23:20 Tom Holland? And he did an amazing series on guitar greats, which was kind of an education.
23:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
23:27 Tom Holland? In all that. And so to find him hanging out with Brian Jones in Cheltenham.
23:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Who knew? Who knew? So Brian Jones plays his guitar for Alexis Corneille, says, I'll show you what I can do. Alexis Corneille says, oh brilliant, you know, you can come to London anytime and stay with me. So let's move on a bit to 1962, Harold Macmillan's last full year as Prime Minister. In March 1962, just giving people a bit of political context, Tom. Never had it so good, Dominic. Yeah. In March 1962, Alexis Corneille starts the first regular blues night at the Ealing Jazz Club with his own band, which is called Blues Incorporated. And other clubs start to copy that. They're in places that are sort of on the suburban fringe of London. So Guildford, Andover, Richmond, Twickenham, quite affluent little sort of places, towns that have been absorbed into the great sprawl of Greater London.
24:17 Dominic Sandbrook? And I think what's basically happening is that the art school, bohemian arty people, who would previously have listened to jazz or folk music three or four years earlier, they're now listening to blues. And among them, at least three future Rolling Stones, who we will come to. And actually, what distinguishes blues from its predecessor jazz is hotly debated by these people. There are furious arguments. Love it. And Brian Jones himself writes a letter to Jazz News in October 1962 to explain what he thinks the difference is. And he says, I think it's actually a pretty good definition. He says jazz is the music of the intellect, but blues can only be emotional. Yeah, that's good, isn't it? But there's something earthier. That's the difference. It's in the kind of the atmosphere and the sound, I guess. And is he wearing a duffel coat at this point?
25:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Almost certainly he is. The fact that he writes that letter speaks volumes about his obsession. He is more into the blues than any future Rolling Stone will be by a huge degree. So by this point, spring 62, he's in London. He's working as appliance salesman. He's sometimes playing with Alexis Corneille's band, Blues Incorporated, but he's desperate to set up his own blues group. So on the 2nd of May, 1962, he puts a classified advert in the Jazz News. He says, I want to form an R and B band. I'm a guitarist. I'm looking for harmonica or sax. I'm looking for piano, bass, drums, et cetera, et cetera. He gets the first recruit is a chap called Ian Stewart, who's a Scottish jazz pianist. Got an absolutely enormous jaw, hasn't he? He does, he does, which actually, yeah, dooms him, I think that's what I'd say, like a Habsburg.
25:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Looks like desperate Dan. And then in June, he picks up three more recruits from the kind of Blues Incorporated millia. And these are two teenage friends from Dartford in Kent, and they are Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and a guy called Dick Taylor. So now we come to Mick Jagger. He's Michael Jagger, isn't he, really? He's Michael Jagger, but he has by this point renamed himself Mick. Jagger was born a year later than Brian Jones. He's born in 1943. His father was a gymnast and a PE lecturer. Oh, like that sinister bloke in the Czech Republic. I knew that comparison was coming. Yeah, Conrad Henline. I mean, they're very different people.
26:28 Dominic Sandbrook? I just want to put that on record in case Mick is listening. His mother was a hairdresser and a very keen conservative activist, I read. Mick, like Brian Jones, is very middle class. He sings in the church choir. He does very well at school. I think this is really important. He passes the 11 plus and goes to grammar school and then continues to do really well and wins a place at the London School of Economics. And people often sort of pass that off. That's amazing, isn't it? That's an interesting little detail. Actually, it's more than an interesting little detail. It says that Mick Jagger is both very bright and must be extremely dedicated and hardworking because to get into the LSE, which is one of those prestigious places in Britain, at a time when nine out of 10 people don't even go to university at all,
27:10 Dominic Sandbrook? and especially where he's come from, right, Dartford in Kent, that's an impressive achievement. He always comes across as very, very smart. Yeah, he's very smart and he'll be very smart throughout these two episodes. Now, at Dartford Grammar School, he'd become friends with a plumber's son, another very bright boy to be at grammar school at all, called Dick Taylor. And they are massively into their jazz and their blues, the Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, the Chicago stuff, all this. They form their own teenage band, basically playing in their bedroom. And it's at this point that Mike Jagger, he affects this accent. I mean, even now, his accent is so variable. Yeah. You know, sometimes it's quite, he's very well spoken and sometimes it's just the kind of the weird strangulated S3 voice that he does.
27:52 Dominic Sandbrook? And he obviously starts calling himself Mick, doesn't he? I mean, not Mike, because he thinks Mick is cool. Well, he's not wrong. Is he not wrong, really? I mean, in the context of the early 60s. In Dartford. I think he should have called himself Mickey. Well, thank God you weren't the Rolling Stones producer. Yeah, right, exactly. The Andrew Lou Goldham of podcasting. Yeah. So, very famously, in October 1961, Mick, as he now calls himself, is on his way to the LSE. And he's standing at Platform Two in Dartford Station when he notices a boy from primary school, you know, who remembers from a long time ago. And this is Keith Richards. Keith Richards is from a much more working class family. His father worked in a lightbulb factory, his mother worked in a baker's shop, and he has grown up on a council estate.
28:36 Dominic Sandbrook? He is not a good boy. He did not go to grammar school. He played truant from school. He was expelled from Dartford Tech and he ends up at Sid Cup Art College. And he's also very into the blues. So they're standing there and Jagger notices him and comes over and sees that he's got these records, that Keith is carrying these records. And we know this because Keith wrote a letter to his Aunt Pat right afterwards and described, "I was holding one of Chuck Berry's records when a guy I knew at primary school came up to me. He's got every record Chuck Berry ever made and all his mates have too. They're all rhythm and blues fans, et cetera, et cetera." So they have this little chat and Mick says to Keith, "Oh, do you know Dick Taylor?" He does know Dick Taylor. "What are the chances? Brilliant. Why don't you come and play with us?
29:21 Dominic Sandbrook? We can have our own little band." And they set up their own little band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. It's a terrible title. It is a terrible title. They wouldn't conquer the world with that. They would not. Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. It's like pot pass. It is pot pass. So they're like playing in their bedroom and whatnot, their mum's kind of shaking their heads wearily. And then in May 1962, they see Brian Jones's advert, you know, and they, what are they now? Eighteen, nineteen? And they answer the advert and the band is born. They played, they met up, they played their first gig together at the Marquee Jazz Club, then in a basement in Oxford Street on the 12th of July, 1962. They decide to call themselves after a Muddy Waters song and they call themselves The Rolling Stones. Right. So no G. No G.
30:06 Dominic Sandbrook? And they are unambiguously, basically, a Chicago blues tribute band.
30:12 Dominic Sandbrook? So when they sort of announce themselves to the world, the Jazz News asks them about their name and Mick Jagger says to Jazz News, I hope people don't think we're a rock and roll outfits. Right, so it's only R and B, but I like it. Exactly, it's only R and B, but I like it. And do you know what? They're not very successful. No one likes them. They are too loud, they're too raucous, they're too sort of raw, they play in church halls and in sports clubs and nobody cares. So at the end of 1962, Dick Taylor goes off to art college. Jagger and Richards are basically, you know, they're like, well, this is quite good fun. We'll keep doing it.
30:55 Dominic Sandbrook? And they move in with Brian Jones in this flat in Chelsea. It's the coldest winter in modern British history, the third coldest in all British history, the big freeze. All their water pipes freeze, they've got no money. Keith Richards' mum has to send them food parcels. They are all very close to their mums, aren't they? They are very close, yeah, absolutely. It's very sweet. So they're absolutely freezing and really miserable and nobody likes their music. But somehow, over the winter, they acquire two new members. One of them, they get a bassist, he's called Bill Wyman. He's also a grammar school boy, but he's a fair bit older. This is really important, actually, in the Stones' internal dynamics. Bill Wyman was six years older. Well, he likes hanging out with people who are younger than him, doesn't he? He does, indeed.
31:39 Dominic Sandbrook? He likes, enjoys the company of young people. I think that's what I'd say. He'd done his national service in Germany, so he's been in the army. He was married, he had a baby son and he has a steady job and he lives in Penj. But he's happy, he likes the music and he thinks, yeah, fair enough. Although, that said, he is always more conservative than they are and he's always suspicious of what he sees as their bohemian arty side, which he doesn't trust. So he's the Dominic Sandbrook of the Stones. Well, is he or is the next person Charlie Watts? So Charlie Watts is a lorry driver's son. Yeah, maybe you're more Charlie Watts. And also the Bill Wyman comparison is one I want to encourage.
32:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Charlie Watts is a lorry driver's son from Wembley. He's a trained graphic artist. His passion is jazz. He's a brilliant jazz drummer. He does not like rock and roll and he doesn't even like R and B. That's the amazing thing about Charlie Watts. I know. They have to persuade him to join the band and he only does it because he can see that blues is becoming more popular than jazz. And actually throughout the whole career, Charlie Watts is basically playing music he doesn't really like.
32:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Bonkers. And he's again, a very different character. He was married to his wife Shirley for 57 years. He's not interested in the groupies. He doesn't go out going on tour. He collects model soldiers and memorabilia from the American Civil War. And cricket memorabilia as well. Yeah, he's a great memorabilia man generally. He loves cricket, as actually Mick Jagger does. Mick Jagger's a big cricket fan, isn't he? And also, Charlie Watts, very well dressed man. Loves his tailoring. He is very well dressed. I think actually the Stones generally are very well dressed. Yeah, they are. I think they're very well turned out. So 1963 comes and they get their big break on the 24th of February. When Brian Jones, who's basically spends all his time writing to, you know, blues promoters and jazz people and stuff like this.
33:26 Dominic Sandbrook? He gets them a gig at the Station Hotel in Richmond, so near the railway station in Richmond. On Sunday nights, they have a club night called the Crawdaddy, run by an emigre from Georgia in the Caucasus called Giorgio Gomelski. And the Stones come on and they play in this station hotel. And there's a rival promoter called Vic Jones, who was there, who said of that night, "I honestly didn't know whether to laugh at the Stones or call for an animal trainer. I had never seen anything like them." Because they're just so sort of loud, there's a lot of shouting. Obviously Mick Jagger's style is very... He's kind of Leonine, isn't it? Yeah, Leonine. Later on Andrew Lou Goldham compared him with a puma. Actually, yeah, puma. Puma's better. But he has this kind of mane, I guess.
34:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. And Gomelski, the promoter who is doing this, he thinks they're very loud and raucous and disorganised, but...
34:18 Dominic Sandbrook? You know, they've got something. And his adverts for this night, which is every Sunday, start to play on the fact the Stones will be there and their reputation. And he writes this incredible kind of bullying copy. The inexhaustible purveyors of spontaneous combustion. The unmitigating, ebullient, perturbin' Rolling Stones. Or warning R and B sound barrier to be broken by Rolling Stones.
34:41 Tom Holland? Do you think this is why the Sex Pistols hated the Stones so much? That they kind of looked at the Stones and thought, that might be what we end up becoming?
34:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I think so. I think that's the similarity, isn't it? That the Sex Pistols find alarming.
34:53 Tom Holland? Yeah, there's a real strong similarity.
34:54 Dominic Sandbrook? So by the spring of 1963, they're getting a reputation among blues fans in West London, and that's not a big group.
35:01 Tom Holland? Right, all sex of them.
35:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, we get the first press cutting ever about the Rolling Stones in April 1963 in the Richmond and Twickenham Times. And this newspaper says, there's a thing going on at this station hotel. 300 people they're getting now every Sunday with long hair, suede jackets, gaucho trousers and Chelsea boots. I don't actually know what gaucho trousers are.
35:23 Tom Holland? No, but you've been to Argentina, surely you?
35:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
35:26 Tom Holland? You're not sporting a pair of gaucho trousers as you strutted.
35:30 Dominic Sandbrook? I actually went horse riding in Argentina.
35:31 Tom Holland? Did you?
35:31 Dominic Sandbrook? But I don't remember any special trousers. There might have been some chaps or something like that, but um.
35:37 Tom Holland? God, I don't want to imagine you in chaps.
35:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Brilliant. The other thing is, there's the, this point, the first appearance in the press, is also the first point where people comment on their appearance. Their hair worn pilt-down style, brushed forward from the crown like the Beatles pop group.
35:52 Tom Holland? And pilt-down style?
35:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Pilt-down man.
35:55 Tom Holland? Yeah, pilt-down man, friend of the show.
35:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Do you want to explain pilt-down man very quickly, Tom, to people who didn't hear that episode?
36:00 Tom Holland? Yeah, fake prehistoric man, the missing link, discovered in Sussex.
36:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So the comparison with Stone Age Man, which you hear a lot in the 60s, but also obviously the comparison with the Beatles. So right from the beginning, they're being held to that standard. And as it happens, the very next day, who should come to see them play but? The Beatles. The Beatles have been filming for TV nearby in Teddington, and they've heard that there's this band, and they come to see them at this hotel. It's a sign actually of how relatively unfamous the Beatles are at this point. They're famous enough to have been filming for TV, but not so famous that they can't go to a hotel to watch a, you know, a little local band. And they go there, and the Stones are very excited that the Beatles, who are what? A year or so older, maybe, max, you know, little more than that, roughly the same age,
36:49 Dominic Sandbrook? but far more famous. The Stones are very excited. They actually try to impress the Beatles afterwards by saying, "Listen to this", and they'll play random blues numbers that the Beatles have never heard of and are not interested in. So the Stones are desperately trying to sort of suck up to them. But the Beatles are very nice to them. The Beatles say, "Look, we're playing at the Royal Albert Hall in a couple of weeks. Would you like free tickets?" The Stones don't find that condescending. They're delighted. They're very excited.
37:14 Tom Holland? I mean, but it is a brilliant thing to play at the Albert Hall, isn't it, Dominic?
37:16 Dominic Sandbrook? It is. We should do that to other history podcasts.
37:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Actually, I don't want to, because I don't want to set up a Rolling Stones to our Beatles. That would be terrible. Bill Wyman in his memoir says, "Jagger and Richards idolised the Beatles and were starstruck by them." And I think this, you can argue, this is a key moment for them. Because this is a point when they, for the first time, meet people who have had the success of which they dream. And it's a point at which they glimpse, perhaps, for the first time, what it would be like to become stars. And then, just two weeks later, comes the moment and the meeting that really changes their lives.
37:56 Tom Holland? So if the Richmond Station Hotel is the Rolling Stones' cavern, who will be their Brian Epstein? Find out after the break.
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40:07 Tom Holland? I'd never seen anything like it. They came on to me. The music reached out and went inside me. Totally, it satisfied me. I was in love. I heard what I'd always wanted to hear. I wanted it. It already belonged to me. Everything I'd done up until now was a preparation for this moment. I saw and heard what my life thus far had been for. So that was Andrew Lug Oldham, the Rolling Stones' first real manager, Dominic, remembering the moment on the 28th of April 1963, when he heard them play for the first time.
40:44 Dominic Sandbrook? The kind of equivalent in the stone story of Brian Epstein walking down into the cavern, seeing the Beatles for the first time. And the amazing thing about him, he's Dutch. Well, was that what that was? Yeah, it was kind of my approximation to a Dutch. I'd never, I'd never seen anything. How does a Dutch person whisper, says for sure a lot. And does that sort of strange, they do that, don't they? That's what I was trying to convey. Maybe it didn't work. Well, he was the son of a Dutch American air officer. He didn't actually talk with a Dutch accent. He went to private school. He definitely didn't come out of a British private school speaking like a Dutchman. That would have been beaten out of him. He'd been beaten with his own clogs, surely. So Andrew Lou Golden, who's their first manager, he goes to see
41:25 Dominic Sandbrook? them play on the 28th of April, 1963. He is a tremendously amusing character. His autobiography, like Bill Wyman's, is a cracking read. He's a very wily man. He's very driven and ruthless. His own autobiography approvingly quotes one of his critics, calling him calculatedly vicious and nasty, but as pretty as a stoat.
41:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Is a stoat that, is a stoat? Yeah. The look that you strive for. I don't know, maybe it is. If it's a hot stoat. Yeah, I guess. So after private school, he'd left early. He'd worked as an odd job boy for Mary Quant, the fashion designer we talked about in our 60s fashion episodes. And then he'd worked as a sort of gopher for various pop promoters, people who are promoting Bob Dylan, working for people who are promoting the Beatles. He really wants to be Phil Spector. Right, that's going to prison. That's an odd ambition. He will. Wear a weird wig.
42:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Look, I mean, I'm not approving of it. I'm just saying that's what, you know. That's where he was at. I'm just reporting. That was his dream. I'm just reporting history, Tom. That's how it is. People make bad choices. What can I say? He wants his own band to rival the Beatles. He's heard from a sort of music industry insider. Going down to this station hotel in Richmond. And Dominic, I think there's a real kind of sliding doors moment there, isn't there? Because this club. Yeah. He goes there because it's on the same line as Frognor, where he lived. Yeah, so it's easy to get to. Exactly. So if that hadn't been on the same line, he wouldn't have gone and history would have been different. History would have been different. Never heard of Mick Jagger. What would he be doing now? Who knows? He'd be an English teacher, wouldn't he? He would. He'd be a PE teacher, maybe, like his father.
43:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Not at the LSE, though. He wouldn't go to the LSE, innit? No, he'd be teaching economics. Yeah, he would. He'd be a top economist. He goes down to this hotel. On the way in, he bumps into a young man who's having an argument with his girlfriend. He describes the young man, "He was thin, wasteless, giving him the human form of a puma with a gender of its own." That is a brilliant sentence. And this is Mick Jagger, you see? And it's a very good description of Mick Jagger. You're getting really right. If you read that sentence, someone said, "Who's this?" That's clearly Mick Jagger. Anyway, he goes in. Half an hour later, the bands start playing. Now, Andrew Lou Golden knows nothing at all about music. He's only interested in this as a vehicle to make money. I like that, in a music promoter. Yeah, I mean, he's got his eyes on the prize. And he goes in and then he says, "Oh, this is absolutely amazing." That quotation that you read in your lovely Dutch accent.
43:51 Dominic Sandbrook? He persuades them to sign a three-year contract. Now, I should say, he's only 19 years old. I mean, it's bonkers that they have signed a three-year contract with this man who knows nothing about anything. But he talks the talk. And he finds a partner, an old-school partner called Eric Easton, who's from Lancashire, like our own beloved executive producer, Tony Pasta. So he knows all the nuts and bolts of the music industry. He's the kind of person that all bands had, but that doesn't fit into the sort of, "Oh, the 60s was an age of revolution." Account.
44:30 Tom Holland? So he's not groovy.
44:31 Dominic Sandbrook? No, but he's, you know, he's the kind of person who says, hey, and by the way, you know, I know how this works. You sign this deal, you do this, you know, that's what you need. Tom, do we not have that with the rest is history?
44:42 Tom Holland? We absolutely do.
44:44 Dominic Sandbrook? So Eric Easton and Andrew Lou Golden arranged a meeting with Dick Rowe at Decca. And you mentioned him in the first half. He's the man who turned down the Beatles. And Dick Rowe is looking for groups. He wants as many groups as he can get. And as it happens, Dick Rowe has recently been judging a talent show in Liverpool with George Harrison. And George Harrison had said to him, I went to see this band at the Station Hotel in Richmond the other day. They were quite good, the Rolling Stones. And so when the Rolling Stones come to him, he says, great, right, brilliant. You know, what's not to like? And he signs them. Now, at this point, Andrew Lou Golden makes two changes. First of all, he says, the name is rubbish. The Rolling Stones.
45:28 Tom Holland? Yeah. See, he's worrying about that as well.
45:29 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, like you.
45:30 Tom Holland? Yeah.
45:31 Dominic Sandbrook? How he said, and I quote, how can you expect people to take you seriously when you can't even spell your name properly?
45:36 Tom Holland? I mean, he's not wrong.
45:37 Dominic Sandbrook? So the second thing is, so they didn't become the Rolling Stones. Now, the next thing is that, um, he says, six people in the band is far too many. Like, well, someone's got to go. And he says, Ian Stewart, like you, Tom, again, very similar people you and Andrew Lou Golden. He says, um, Ian Stewart, he's ugly. He's too ugly and he's got to go. Get rid.
45:58 Tom Holland? I don't think he's ugly. I mean, I think if you like massive square jaws.
46:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
46:02 Tom Holland? He'd chew on a girder or something like that and have no problem with that. But I mean, I can see it doesn't blend in with the kind of androgynous look of the Stones.
46:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. Now, they say to Stuart, oh, I'm so sorry, you've got to go. And he says, well, fine, I'll stay on and I'll drive you about and I'll be your road manager, which is so sweet.
46:20 Tom Holland? He's such a noble guy, isn't he? He does end up in a band, I think, with Charlie Watts, doesn't he? And Alexis Corner.
46:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, they did indeed.
46:27 Tom Holland? So that's good.
46:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. And he drove around and did stuff for them and helped look after them for 20 years. I have to say, Brian Jones promised him that he would get a sixth of everything. And did he? No, he didn't.
46:38 Tom Holland? That's bad.
46:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway. We've now got to about May 1963. Now, this is the point where Beatlemania is taking off in Britain. And obviously Andrew Lou Golden does the obvious thing. He decides to make them just like the Beatles. So he takes them to Carnaby Street. He gets them velvet jackets and little ties and Cuban heels. And they absolutely hate it, matching uniforms. He gets Keith Richards to change his surname to Keith Richard, so he will sound more like Cliff Richard. I mean, that's mad, isn't it? It has a more pop sound. They're often confused.
47:13 Dominic Sandbrook? He starts placing articles in the music press. So a very good example, Record Mirror, May 1963, their style, it says, is, quote, "The new jungle music. They sing and play in a way that one would have expected, more from a coloured US group than a bunch of wild, exciting white boys." And this is actually important. I said we would explain why the Stones are so controversial. I think this is actually really important, that people say from the very beginning, they are playing, you know, black music. This is unprecedented. Well, that's the great quote in the Rock and Roll Spindel about Mick Jagger. Exactly. Unquitable, I think, on this podcast, Tom. Very much unquitable, yes. But it's a very slow start. They spend the summer of 63, they're doing this long
47:54 Dominic Sandbrook? provincial tour. And this is how rock worked in those days. They're supporting people like the Everly Brothers touring Britain. And they are playing the maddest, tiniest venues. So my favourite one, I always love this story, they played the Co-op Ballroom None Eaten. And they were playing, they were booked to play at an afternoon tea for the town's primary school children. And when they came on stage and they start playing this music, these children who are literally eight years old, all threw cream cakes at them. Oh dear. It's only rock and roll. Bill Wyman mentions this in his, he mentions this in his memoir. He said, you know, it was terrible. I hate it.
48:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Pastry is raining down from these eight year olds. Yeah, people go on about Altamont, but this non eaten is the real, the real dark moment. Anyway, this actually works because this is how you build a national reputation. So their very first single, which was Come On, a Czech Berry cover, had only peaked at number 21 in June, but by December, their second single, which is I Want To Be Your Man, which was given them by Paul McCartney, gets to number 12. And people are starting to notice them at this point. So the Daily Sketch, national newspaper, January 1964, says to its readers, watch out for this new band with heads like hairy pudding basins. Got to say, the standard of music journalism in the 60s was superb.
49:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, brilliant. There's more of it, I think, and it's more. It's wittier. Yeah, it's fun because it's all new, you see. It's all new. It's gear. Yeah. Now, there's one really big development at this point, hugely important for the Rolling Stones, which is the rise of Mick Jagger and the decline of Brian Jones. So Mick Jagger has all this time been at the LSE. He's been a registered student at the LSE and he doesn't drop out until the end of September 1963, when he writes a letter to his tutors. I've been offered, I can't do his voice, I've been offered a really excellent opportunity in the entertainment world, he says. Now, up to this point, they had very obviously been Brian Jones's band, a blues band. Jones had put them together, Jones had booked the gigs, Jones had collected the money and
50:10 Dominic Sandbrook? doled it out, keeping the lion's share, I have to say, for himself. But at exactly this point, he starts to lose his position. He starts to be pushed out a little bit, basically because he's a complete flake. He doesn't have the temperament or the stamina to tour and play full time. He keeps collapsing with nervous exhaustion. The other Stones say he's a hypochondriac. They're always making jokes about, oh, has he got a doctor's letter? Has he got a letter from his mum to let himself off rehearsing or whatever? But crucially, Andrew Lou Golden says to them, playing old blues classics will not cut it. We're in a new age and a new audience expects people to write their own songs as the Beatles do. So, you know, Jagger and Richards say, oh brilliant, we'd love to try writing our
50:54 Dominic Sandbrook? own songs. And Brian Jones doesn't want to do that. In fact, Mick Jagger, slightly ungallantly, I think it's fair to say, said later, Brian couldn't do that. To be honest, Brian had no talent for writing songs, said Mick says Mick. None. I've never known a guy with less talent for songwriting, which is harsh, right? And now can't answer back. Anyway, Jagger and Richards move into a flat with Andrew Lou Golden. Brian Jones is left on his own. So he's even more marginalized. And as Bill Wyman says in his autobiography, Brian would try to ingratiate himself by crawling first to Mick and then to Andrew, which didn't do any good. He should simply have been strong in himself.
51:38 Speaker 03 They're terrible, aren't they? They're such a bunch of bullies. Well, Brian Jones.
51:44 Dominic Sandbrook? See, I think Brian Jones is terrible and they behaved remarkably patient, given his poor behaviour. But anyway, there you go.
51:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, well.
51:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, from the start, I said we'd get into why they're so controversial. They had been controversial from the moment they stepped onto the national stage. So they'd made their television debut at the very bottom of the bill on a kind of variety show called Thank Your Lucky Stars in July 1963. They were still in their matching outfits. They're in checked jackets and slacks, like lecturers at a midwestern university, history lecturers at an American university, nice chinos or something with ironed with creases down the middle. And even though they were wearing these outfits, ATV, who made the show, were deluged with letters, people saying absolute disgrace. And I quote, "It is disgusting
52:34 Dominic Sandbrook? that long haired louts such as these should be allowed to appear on television. Their appearance was absolutely disgusting. The whole lot of you should be given a good bath and all that hair should be cut off. Your filthy appearance is likely to corrupt teenagers all over the country."
52:48 Speaker 03 Do you know, the sense that Britain was a much more fun place.
52:52 Dominic Sandbrook? I know. The weird thing is when you watch the, if you look at them now, the hair really isn't that long. Very slightly long hair.
53:01 Speaker 03 But everyone wins, don't they? Because outraged people can be outraged. The Stones get to be dangerous. And they're not really. And everyone's a winner.
53:10 Dominic Sandbrook? No, absolutely, Tom. Everyone's having a great time, I think. They're also, they've got so much money, I think, by comparison with what they had before. So they're all, you know, they're all excited. Now, this is of course the summer of the Beatles. And I think the context of this really matters. But the Beatles are mainstream. The Beatles, thanks to Brian Epstein's marketing, their huge popularity. And then, of course, especially when they do things like the Royal Variety Performance, or when they go to America and conquer the American charts. They become kind of national heroes. You were laughing earlier about Sir Alec Douglas Hume. Sir Alec Douglas Hume goes out of his way to praise the Beatles. He says, if anyone asks why the Beatles are successful, I can tell you. It is because they are a band of very natural, very funny young men.
53:54 Dominic Sandbrook? That thing about them being funny, by the way, that is one massive difference between the Beatles and the Stones. The Stones are never, they're unintentionally funny, but they, but they're never really funny, are they, in the same way the Beatles are?
54:07 Tom Holland? Yeah, I mean, they are funny, I guess, in private.
54:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
54:11 Tom Holland? But in their interviews, they're not kind of bantering and joshing and all that kind of ring going away. How did you find America, Turn Left at Greenland? Hilarious.
54:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, amazing banter. So I think what's happened is because the Beatles have occupied the centre ground, there is clearly a gap in the market for a group that is more unsettling, more rebellious. And this is where the hair comes in. Almost every single article about the Stones in their first 18 months or so mentioned the hair. In mid-century Britain, I think in large part as a legacy of the Second World War and the mass conscription involved in national service in the 1950s. Long hair is viewed as dissident, dirty, licentious, subversive, bohemian, all of these kinds of things.
54:58 Tom Holland? What's not to like?
54:59 Dominic Sandbrook? And people really are offended by the Stones' hair. So in spring 1964, this is an amazing fact, the National Federation of Hairdressers held its annual conference and the-
55:10 Tom Holland? Well, they're staring down the barrel, aren't they, with this?
55:12 Dominic Sandbrook? The president of the National Federation of Hairdressers devoted his speech to an assault on the Rolling Stones' sloughingly dirty and downright ragged appearance.
55:23 Speaker 03 Theo's very keen that we make the joke that basically the story of this episode is the Stones versus big hair. So it's basically big hair versus big hair, the kind of big or big hairdressing, I should say.
55:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway, the puzzle actually is that the Beatles also have long hair.
55:39 Speaker 03 But that's clean. It's fun.
55:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, it's clean and wacky and fun. Here's, I think, the difference. The Beatles, because they present themselves as funny and cuddly and child-friendly, their long hair is eccentric and quirky and entertaining, whereas the Stones' long hair is dangerous and threatening. But I think it's also because of the nature of the music. The Beatles' music is already familiar. It's a familiar style. It's not an alarming style of music because it's the beat music that has been around for a couple of years. The Stones' music is rhythm and blues, which has no chart history before 1964. And when people do talk about it, they say, what is it? Oh, it's the music of poor black Americans. And so people talk about it as kind of scruffy music, rebellious music. And so I think even before the Stones
56:26 Dominic Sandbrook? have conquered the charts, before they've actually done anything wrong, the press are talking about them as bad boys, rebellious, outlaws and so on. And for me, Andrew Lou Golden's genius as a manager is having started out thinking, I will make them like the Beatles. He ditches that quite quickly and realises, we cannot possibly compete with them because they have such a massive head start. The gap in the market is for the anti-Beatles. It's for a group teenagers can have for themselves that will shock their parents. In his memoir, he says, at the end of 1963, he consciously decided to turn the Stones into, quote, "the group parents love to hate, dangerous, dirty, intergenerate. And he said
57:08 Dominic Sandbrook? to them, be as nasty as you can be in your interviews and your public performances."
57:14 Speaker 03 And he is the guy who's kind of spoon feeds titles like, you know, would you let your daughter go up with the Rolling Stone, things like that to the press. So it's very, very calculated, isn't it?
57:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And that's the interesting thing, right? People always, at the time and afterwards, have said, well, the Beatles were very commercialised, they were manicured, the Stones are more authentic because they're more rebellious. Actually, that is totally wrong. The Stones' rebelliousness is completely contrived and manufactured.
57:40 Tom Holland? Can I just read you something that, because I didn't have time to dust down all my Rolling Stones books, so I turned to Bob Stanley's Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
57:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
57:48 Tom Holland? Which is the kind of Plutarch's Lives of popular music. Brilliant pen portraits of all the acts, including the Stones. He said, "The youthful authority the Stones perceptively had, which even the Beatles lacked, resulted not from their knowledge of muddy waters' b-sides, but from their complete control of their image, sound and media angle from the start. Oldham produced the records and designed the sleeves, while Jagger and Richards made sure there would be no pantos, no synchronised head shaking on stage, nothing predictable."
58:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
58:14 Tom Holland? So it's the lack of predictability that enables their rise to become predictable.
58:18 Dominic Sandbrook? The contrivance, the manufacture, is the lack of contrivance, if you know what I mean. There's a story, Oldham gets a guy called Gerard Mankiewicz, very well-known photographer, to photograph them, and he says, you know, snarl more, make it more...
58:31 Tom Holland? Or pilted down.
58:32 Dominic Sandbrook? More pilted down, more moody, you know, look more angry and difficult. Whereas in fact, actually, they're not especially angry and difficult offstage. But the media love this.
58:42 Tom Holland? Everyone's happy.
58:43 Dominic Sandbrook? It works for everybody. So by an early 1964, the media are playing along. The Daily Express, February 64. "They look like boys whom any self-respecting mum would lock in the bathroom. But the Rolling Stones, five tough, young, London-based music-makers with doorstep mouths, pallid cheeks and unkempt hair, are not worried what mums think."
59:02 Tom Holland? God, so Mick must be thrilled at being called a tough, young Londoner.
59:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, but a weird thing is, of course, as we will see, they do worry about what mums think, meaning their own mothers, because they're very filial. And the contrast of the Beatles becomes so explicit, it becomes a cliche. Here's the news of the world, November 1964. "The Beatles bubble with laughter, they make jokes, they wear neat clothes, they get along with royalty, but it's different with the Stones. They leer rather than smile, they don't wear natty clothes." And at the end of the piece, the journalist notes correctly, "The extraordinary thing is that more and more youngsters are turning towards the Stones. The Beatles have become too respectable." And it's that very respectability... That the Beatles clearly do have in 1963, 64, that gives the Stones their opportunity to cast themselves as the antithesis of it. Had the Beatles been less respectable,
59:50 Dominic Sandbrook? actually, there would have been much less room, I think, for the Rolling Stones to make a name for themselves.
59:55 Tom Holland? And of course, the irony is, is the Beatles are authentically working class.
59:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
59:58 Tom Holland? And that their apprenticeship had involved any number of pills and, you know, hanging out with prostitutes in brothels and all kinds of stuff.
1:00:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:00:06 Tom Holland? But all that has been buried.
1:00:07 Dominic Sandbrook? That has been buried, as has the Stones' respectability.
1:00:12 Tom Holland? The LSE and all of that.
1:00:14 Dominic Sandbrook? The Mick Jagger going to the LSE, the fact that Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts had held steady, serious jobs, the fact that Bill Wyman was married with a child, the fact that when journalists interview them, they say, offstage, they are quiet and modest, and Mick Jagger, their leader, Brian Jones would not have been happy with that, Mick Jagger, their leader, is unusually friendly and intelligent. That's from a book called The Teenage Revolution by Peter Lorre, 1965. Their parents, their family, are really surprised at the criticism of them. Charlie Watts' mother, he's always been a good boy. We've never had police knocking on the door. He's always been terribly kind to old people.
1:00:50 Tom Holland? Which is good preparation for going on tour with the Rolling Stones.
1:00:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Bill Wyman's mum says, what's going on here? And Bill Wyman says, just about his hair. And Bill Wyman says, I love this quote because it expresses, it basically expresses my worldview, like how I approach everything. Bill Wyman says to his mum, mum, it's only for about three years, off his hair, and I'll get a nice car and a nice house, fully furnished out of it.
1:01:18 Tom Holland? You've put "fully furnished" in italics.
1:01:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, I think the "fully furnished", it's like, there's the banal practicality.
1:01:23 Tom Holland? Futurish quality.
1:01:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. Keith Richards always kept in touch with his mum when he went on tour and used to send her presents when the countries that he visited. Charlie Watts arranged to have his mum receive her favourite chocolate cake every Friday night. Isn't that nice?
1:01:39 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:01:39 Dominic Sandbrook? John Lennon never behaved like that, Tom.
1:01:41 Tom Holland? He bought Aunt Mimi a house in Bournemouth.
1:01:43 Dominic Sandbrook? He did, that's true, he did. The media, of course, aren't interested in any of that, doesn't fit the personas and Oldham downplays it. And all that happens is their rebellious image becomes greater and greater. Every little incident, and of course, there are bound to be lots of incidents because these are young men, you know, surrounded by adoring girls, that drink, they're having fun. Later on, of course, there will be drugs. So it's not like there aren't any incidents, it's not like there isn't any bad behaviour, but it's massively magnified. And it's a strategy that works. In April sixty four, their album, The Rolling Stones, knocks with The Beatles off the top of the album charts. In July, It's All Over Now becomes their first British hit single. In December sixty four, Little Red Rooster becomes the only blues song ever to top the British singles charts.
1:02:28 Tom Holland? But Dominic, just to say, that in turn then gets knocked off the top by I Feel Fine by The Beatles, which has that kind of amazing feedback.
1:02:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:02:37 Tom Holland? At its start, which is no one's ever done before. So the idea that The Beatles are conventional and The Stones are rebellious, in musical terms, it's The Beatles who are, I mean, way, way ahead.
1:02:47 Dominic Sandbrook? I would agree with that. That said, theirs is not the musical journey of The Beatles, but in the next eighteen months or so, they do have a pretty amazing run of singles. Heart of Stone, Play With Fire, Satisfaction, Get Off My Cloud, Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown, Paint It Black, and so on and so forth.
1:03:02 Tom Holland? But these are all their own, I mean, they're kind of their own songs, right?
1:03:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:03:06 Tom Holland? And so that is taking them away from Brian Jones's vision.
1:03:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. Brian Jones is more and more unhappy with this because actually what they're no longer doing is playing Chicago blues. They are evolving into a rock band, into something new, something that hasn't actually really existed before.
1:03:21 Tom Holland? I mean, imagine being unhappy that you've released Satisfaction.
1:03:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly.
1:03:25 Tom Holland? As a single.
1:03:26 Dominic Sandbrook? So Satisfaction was their first US number one in nineteen sixty five. Then they have their first US number one album, Out Of Our Heads, a month later. In October nineteen sixty five, when they released in America, December's Children, Everybody's, which was their next album, you know, the US title, it was advertised by a huge David Bailey poster in Times Square. So this is two years after they had been on the stage in None Eaten.
1:03:51 Tom Holland? Having bums thrown at them. By eight year olds.
1:03:55 Dominic Sandbrook? By eight year olds. I mean, that is bonkers. Because we now take their rise, and that's of The Beatles and groups like them for granted. We underestimate, I think. What an extraordinary thing that was, not least because stuff like this had never happened before and certainly never happened to a British group. It might happen now all the time, so we're used to the trajectory and there's a sort of formula.
1:04:16 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:04:16 Dominic Sandbrook? But at the time, people like the Rolling Stones had never even been to America on holiday.
1:04:22 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:04:22 Dominic Sandbrook? So to go and have your poster in Times Square at the age of, what, 22, 23? I mean, it's, it's a mind boggling experience for them. And the interesting thing is, when the Beatles did this, the Beatles came home and they were national champions, patriotic heroes, hurrah, you know, banner headlines. But the Stones never enjoy that reputation because they appear more cynical, more confrontational. What they've done is they've established something that I think is new, which is the image of the rock group as insolent, as representing aggression, sensuality, confrontation, generational discord.
1:05:03 Tom Holland? Well, that's the key thing, isn't it? And this is a recurring theme right the way up to the present, is that if you're a rebellious teenager, you don't want your parents digging what you're into.
1:05:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but nobody had had that conversation before this point.
1:05:17 Tom Holland? No, so they invent that.
1:05:18 Dominic Sandbrook? They infectively invent that. I mean, the generation gap, I think, is massively inflated in the 60s. But there clearly is a market for a group that will annoy your dad.
1:05:28 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:05:29 Dominic Sandbrook? And the Stones fill that gap perfectly. And actually, at the point when they're conquering America, something happens in Britain that I think if you'd asked most adults in Britain in 1965, what's the one thing you know about the Rolling Stones? It is this story. So we'll end with this.
1:05:45 Tom Holland? Does it involve Mick Turation?
1:05:47 Dominic Sandbrook? It does.
1:05:48 Tom Holland? Mick Turation.
1:05:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Oh, that's, that's what they pay you the big bucks for, isn't it, Tom? That kind of wordplay, witty wordplay.
1:05:53 Tom Holland? Yeah, yeah.
1:05:54 Dominic Sandbrook? So in March 1965, they'd been giving a concert at the Romford Odeon. That's the other great thing about, about the 60s, right?
1:06:02 Tom Holland? No, you come back from Times Square, you're in the Romford Odeon.
1:06:04 Dominic Sandbrook? That one minute you do something brilliant, and the next thing you're in that Boreham in Dunedin again. And their daimler, their chauffeur driven daimler is bringing them back from Romford. And they, late at night, and they stop at a service station, a garage, a gas station, as our overseas listeners would call it, in Stratford, East London. And the garage manager, whose name was Charles Keely, just later told a court that a shaggy haired monster got out of the car and asked, quote, "in disgusting language" if he could use the toilet. And Keely said, "No." This person was Bill Wyman, by the way, married with a child living in Penj. And then the other members of the band got out of the car too and started to argue with
1:06:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Charles Keely and said, "Come on, you know, can you let him use the toilet?" We piss anywhere, man. Yeah, Jagga comes out with this terrible line, "We piss anywhere, man." But still, they're trying, they're not insisting, they're bargaining with the petrol station staff. And Charles Keely lost his temper and shouted, "Get off my forecourt." At which Brian Jones started dancing around this forecourt station, shouting and singing, "Get off my foreskin at the station, ma'am." Not "Get off my cloud." No, not "Get off my cloud." Anyway, this episode, inglorious as it may sound, ended with Bill Wyman, Mick Jagga and Brian Jones urinating on the wall of the forecourt and then driving off in triumph in their daimler.
1:07:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Charles Keely brought a private prosecution against them. They were dragged into an East London courtroom and convicted of insulting behaviour liable to cause a breach of the peace and handed a very small fine. And was this all arranged by Oldham? Well, this is a brilliant, this is an amazingly trivial and pathetic story, but it was like, front page headlines, Stones, Shame. But massive for their reputation. A massive, massive, their reputation. So a magistrate, a Scottish magistrate in a totally unrelated trial, a week later, went off on a massive rant and he said about the Stones. Some incidents happened in Scotland, he said, "It's basically all the fault of people like the Stones."
1:08:13 Dominic Sandbrook? He said, "They are, quote, 'complete morons who wear their hair down to their shoulders, wear filthy clothes and act like clowns.'" And the news of the world came out with a wonderful verdict, "They wallow in a swill tub of their own repulsiveness." Does that make you nostalgic for the good old days when you were writing for the Daily Mail? You could coin phrases like that? Yeah, that's exactly the kind of stuff I would come out with. Right. That's not the end of the story with the New Year's of the world and the Rolling Stones though, Tom, because next time we will be moving forward to the end of the 60s. We will talk about the great scandal of their arrest at Redlands, Keith Ritter's house, and their trial on drugs offences. We'll talk about the fate of Brian Jones, who's been pushed out of his own band, and
1:08:57 Dominic Sandbrook? we'll come to the moment for many people marks the very end of the 60s, the death and darkness at the Altamont Raceway.
1:09:04 Tom Holland? Brilliant stuff, Dominic. Thanks so much. Members of the Rest is History Club can hear that right away. And if you are not a member and you would like to be and get to hear all about breaking butterflies on wheels, swimming pools and Hells Angels, then head to therestishistory.com and sign up there. We will be back on Thursday. Goodbye.
1:09:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Goodbye.
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