People,

I paste from the mighty www.stonesplanet.com, an excellent reading about the days when rock (and the Stones, mainly) looked like a threat to the world.

Have a good reading, and don't forget to visit the site where this comes from!

Ciao,
Chris

--------------------

Stones rolled in - rolled out faster

It was 40 years ago Tuesday that the Rolling Stones came to play their one and only London concert. The five Stones only played about four numbers before the police pulled the plug, fearing mayhem.

A stage-storming, chair- chucking "riot," to use The Free Press word of the day, ensued on April 26, 1965. There were a few injuries, including fans cut when a plate glass door shattered in the pre-concert press.

As often as the tale of the 3,000 fans at the old Treasure Island Gardens has been told, it is always rewarding to recall the fray.

Some London eyewitnesses to rock history are sure the Stones were playing Off the Hook -- another swears it was Time Is on My Side -- when the police pulled the plug.

But did you know Brian Jones played his tambourine after the plug was pulled, playing on the crowd; that Mick Jagger sported a police officer's hat; that Bill Wyman showed -- euphemism, please -- a healthy interest in an 11-year-old girl.

One of the assembled multitude, Jan (John) Miszczyk, went home that Monday night and made notes. Miszczyk says the Stones started with Everybody Needs Somebody, an R&B hit.

Miszczyk had seen the British Invasion's bad boys up close. "I won a contest and went backstage and met them," he recalls. "I was taller than all of them."

The Stones may have been short fellas, but they were hip. Hoping to impress, Miszczyk went in his tightest pants and his "most pointed" shoes.

Not so the Stones. They were in squared-toed footwear and bell-bottoms. Ahead of the curve. Cool.

Fashion-conscious Jagger even found a hat to his liking at the concert, another fan recalls.

"I remember Mick Jagger taking the hat off a policeman and putting it on and walking across the stage," says Bill Durst. Jagger gave the hat back, but soon somebody warned fans to sit down or else, Durst says.

It didn't work.

Promoter Pat Quinn -- not the Leafs' mighty Quinn -- watched in horror as the snow fence in front of the stage, 30 OPP officers and 20 security guards were tested by a crowd going crazy. The Stones quit the stage. The fans grabbed at OPP hats, ties, shirts and Charlie Watts' drum stool.

The Stones tried to return, but soon fled to the old Holiday Inn.

"They didn't give us any warning. They just turned off the power," Jones said later.

Even if Jagger is Sir Mick now, Jones was the Stone in those days.

Durst says Jones, with his "white blond hair," was the star of the show. "It was thick and straight. He looked like a frickin' angel."

Jones was much more charismatic than Jagger, Durst says.

"Brian Jones had the greatest hair, I remember that," smiles Doug Varty. "A girl jumped out of the crowd and hung on to him until somebody peeled her off."

Jones didn't let the plug-pulling silence him, another fan recalls.

Jack Whiteside had already been fixating on Keith Richards' guitar-playing, listening and learning as he played the Stones at home.

He noticed Jones that night.

"Brian Jones kept going with the tambourine to the beat . . . 'Off the Hook, Off the Hook,' " says Jack Whiteside. Jones urged the fans up to the stage by continuing his tambourine pounding.

Durst, Whiteside, Varty and Miszczyk all found their way into music and can still be heard around London. The Stones concert, far from scaring them off, inspired a whole generation.

At the time, it was just cacophony.

"It was so noisy, you couldn't hear anything and then they pulled the plug," says Sheila Curnoe, who was there with her husband, the late London artist Greg Curnoe.

After that, the din was worse.

Somewhere in the confusion were the McEvenue sisters, including 11-year-old Kelly. They were certain their heroes must be somewhere nearby and so they were. Suddenly, looming large was the Holiday Inn with its welcome to the Rolling Stones sign.

Who should emerge from the inn to greet the merry sisters but Jones, Wyman and Watts. Her older sisters were "gobsmacked" into shy silence -- but little Meg had a fine chat with the British rockers.

"I was an R&B girl. I would have been more excited to meet Sam & Dave," she smiles.

Still, it was Wyman who seemed the nicest.

At the time, this would be completely innocuous, in keeping with Wyman's image as the quiet Stone.

From a 2005 perspective, we know Wyman would divorce 20-year-old Mandy Smith, a former model, in 1990. Wyman had been dating Smith since she was 13.

Such creepiness was far off in 1965. Nothing happened.

That doesn't keep McEvenue from joking about it all now.

Who knows where the evening might have gone, she laughs.

Quinn's brief career promoting British Invasion acts was no laugh. The Gardens management grabbed his gate receipts to cover the damage.

"I would have done bloody well except for the riot," he has said.

©The London Free Press

The last band to make riots must be GN`R. Often because Axl W. Rose did not meet up, but also, like Stones, they did not start to play when they should do. I`ve seen one concert with GN`R and it was psycho, just unbelieble wild. Very good performance. I think that that was the last stadiumband the world made. Now it`s just Stones, Springsteen and U2 who can fill stadiums around the world. And they are not dangerous any more.

but they are----if they make a statement against all the BS going on in this (USA) country right now....music can make a difference and it will this summer or fall if the stones are true to what they feel....i know they have never been really politically active but now is the time!!!

STONES JAM!! MICKEYS RULES!!! (burp) NADER IN 2016!!!!! GO GIANTS!!

Cool story, although I don't think Brian played tambourine on Off The Hook. He's playing the "choppy" sounding guitar on the song. Maybe they mistook that song for I'm Alright?