A new fully authorised book, The Rolling Stones: On Tour, charts the band's seven-decade journey from the Marquee Club to global rock legends, featuring hundreds of rarely seen photos and revealing the story of their raucous decades on the road.
A Seven-Decade Spectacle
The Rolling Stones' gigging life began in 1962 and became the longest and most exciting road trip in history. From the Marquee Club to Madison Square Garden, Southend-on-Sea to Santiago, and Hyde Park to Havana, the band has performed everywhere from the Odeons and Gaumonts of their youth to a record-breaking audience of 1.5 million on a beach in Rio.
With rumours still swirling of a possible one-venue live residency somewhere in the world next year, that performing lifeblood is still flowing. Those lucky enough to be standing three feet from Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood when they played a surprise acoustic set at the launch of the Stones' new album, Foreign Tongues, in London in July can attest to that.
From Humble Beginnings to Global Phenomenon
Mick was a dozen days from his 19th birthday, and Keith five months from his, when the "Rollin'" Stones took to the stage for the first time, as late stand-ins for their mentor Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated at the Marquee, on July 12, 1962. Co-founder Brian Jones, who essentially helmed the fledgling wannabes, was already a grand old 20, and Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts still some months from climbing aboard.
As they started touring, anyone climbing aboard was into the Commer van driven up and down the country by the indefatigable Ian Stewart. The group's early sixth member, "Stu", was reassigned as road manager when his face was deemed not to fit the Stones' early collective image by its architect, Andrew Loog Oldham.
The group's famous, formative residencies at such key locations as Eel Pie Island and the Station Hotel in Richmond were augmented by gigs solely down south, in such pubs as the Woodstock in North Cheam and the Red Lion in Sutton. But as Mick observed in one of his first press quotes to Melody Maker in early '63, the R&B boom needed to go further. "It has got to move out of London," he urged.
Intense Touring and Fan Mania
Their first gig further afield didn't happen until a year and a day after that Marquee debut. "Stu" set off 250 miles north with the group he would come to describe with plain-speaking affection as "my little shower of sh**". Their destination was Middlesbrough's Outlook Club, more often referred to as the Alcove, where the Stones played support to fellow chart newbies the Hollies.
Their touring itinerary became mercilessly intense. Consecutive bookings could have them schlepping from Lowestoft to Aberystwyth or Morecambe to Walthamstow, and by the end of 1963, now often playing two shows a night, the Stones' gig total for the year was estimated at a mind-boggling 308. Mick wrote to the London School of Economics to say he didn't feel he could continue his studies because of the group's success.
Bill Wyman would recall that the Lowestoft show was the first time the group were the reluctant recipients of fan mania, when a crowd of 1,200 at the Grand Hotel Ballroom became so frenzied that he had half his shirt torn off and a ring pulled from his finger.
Global Stardom and Mega-Gigs
The Stones' first US tour in June 1964 was well-received only on the coasts, and both Mick and Bill would describe the overall excursion as a "disaster". But by the time they returned to the US in October of that year, with their first UK No 1 single under their belt in It's All Over Now, it was a different story. A tour of Australia and New Zealand in early '65 played to 100,000 people, and their fourth American trip overall the following autumn brought ticket grosses of $500,000.
The year of 1968 contained no touring at all, and the breathing space for renewed creativity kick-started what is generally perceived as their finest era of recording, from Beggars Banquet to Exile On Main St. The first of the epoch-defining mega-gigs that defined their live persona was at Brian Jones' Hyde Park requiem in July '69, for a quarter-million or more.
The 1970s saw the establishment of the Stones' touring juggernaut, literally and metaphorically, as their private jet followed their increasingly enormous stage sets across states and continents. When they returned to international stages after a seven-year gap with 1989's Steel Wheels, the set took 80 trucks to transport it across the US, 200 people to build, and the tour ran for an entire year.
The Rolling Stones: On Tour by Paul Sexton (Welbeck, £50) is out now.
