Starting a rock and roll avalanche

You get off the London Underground at the Oxford Circus station in the middle of London.  It’s past dinner time but still light.  You wander east on the right side of Oxford Street, heading to your hotel in the general direction of the British Museum. It's a warm summer evening - a Thursday.  Three blocks from the tube, you hear the blues song “Baby What’s Wrong" through the open door of a club just in front of you.  It's been a long day of sightseeing, and you need a break and a pint, so you make one of those fateful decisions people make every day without realizing it.  You follow the music inside.

The club's called The Marquee, and it's smokey and not very large or glamorous.  You sit down at the worn English pub table and order.  The cute cockney waitress casually mentions that the band’s on its third number, which shifts your attention to the show. Crammed on the relatively small stage are six young men - one energetic singer, three guitarists, one drummer and one on piano.   They're slightly scruffy but really good, as they run through another fifteen songs that include Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley's, and other recent rock and roll hits, although there's a Muddy Waters-bluesy feel that sometimes sneaks through. An hour later, after your second pint, it looks like the band’s set is about to wrap up.  Even though the music is REALLY good, you're tired and head out for your hotel.

Jones

Richards and Jagger

The date is July 12, 1962 and, while you didn’t realize it, you were a witness to one of the great moments in musical history – the first live performance of the Rolling Stones.  That night they were billed as "The Rollin' Stones".  On stage were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones (guitar), Ian  Stewart (piano), and Dick Taylor (bass) and Tony Chapman (drums). Jones and Stewart wanted to play Chicago blues, but were agreeable to the Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley songs of Jagger and Richards.  Fifty years later, Jagger and Richards are still playing together, even though they haven't always been on speaking terms.

Stewart

Chapman

Taylor

The history of the 1960s is necessarily full of both events that were obviously significant at the time, and events, like the Stones' gig at The Marquee, that were insignificant at the time and only become historic because of what happened afterward.  Still, wouldn't you like to have been our imaginary tourist on Oxford Circus?