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Stones first US tour 60 years ago
Posted by: NashvilleBlues ()
Date: June 6, 2024 04:29

[apple.news]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-15 15:35 by bv.

Re: Stones first US show 60 years ago today
Posted by: mariano ()
Date: June 6, 2024 04:33

smileys with beer

Re: Stones first US show 60 years ago today
Posted by: perkmo ()
Date: June 6, 2024 04:45

Very cool - NFA bustout coming up Friday

Re: Stones first US show 60 years ago today
Posted by: esqcjh ()
Date: June 6, 2024 05:04

We/I can only hope for NFA

Re: Stones first US show 60 years ago today
Posted by: treaclefingers ()
Date: June 6, 2024 05:54

It says Santa Barbara and then San Bernadino.

So...I thought it was San Bernadino...is the article wrong right out of the gate, or have I missed something obvious?

Re: Stones first US show 60 years ago today
Posted by: Koen ()
Date: June 6, 2024 08:05

It is San Bernardino. ChatGPT still has a lot to learn. smoking smiley

1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: franzk ()
Date: June 13, 2024 18:37

60 Years Ago The Rolling Stones went on their first US tour. Altough it wasn't successful it started their long and prolific relationship with the US audience. One that continues to this day, as The Rolling Stones are currently touring US again, playing huge sold out stadiums. I think it's a good time to review this first tour. Not many photos and films are available except those filmed for TV performances.

Share your pics, films, reviews, reflections and maybe personal memories if you were lucky to see The Rolling Stones on that tour!

1st US Tour Dates:

5-Jun San Bernardino California Swing Auditorium

6-Jun San Antonio Texas Joe Freeman Coliseum

6-Jun San Antonio Texas Joe Freeman Coliseum

7-Jun San Antonio Texas Joe Freeman Coliseum

7-Jun San Antonio Texas Joe Freeman Coliseum

12-Jun Minneapolis Minnesota

13-Jun Omaha Nebraska Civic Auditorium Music Hall

14-Jun Detroit Michigan Olympia Stadium

17-Jun Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

19-Jun Harrisburg Pennsylvania

20-Jun New York City New York Carnegie Hall

20-Jun New York City New York Carnegie Hall

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: Irix ()
Date: June 13, 2024 18:40

Happy 60th anniversary!

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: NashvilleBlues ()
Date: June 13, 2024 19:08

See the thread I started about this last week:

[iorr.org]

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 01:28

cool good idea for a thread

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 01:28

ok let's start with there time in new york and los angeles just before the tour began

While critics were constantly analysing our appearance, we looked ahead to the US trip. Brian said: ‘It’s people I want to see, not so much the places. I want to meet up with people who have the same ideas on music as we do. I like Bo Diddley and the great Muddy Waters. Muddy’s said some really great things about us and has been an idol of ours for a long time. The Ronettes too, lovely girls. At this stage, we don’t want to say too much about what we hope for in the Stones. I don’t believe in anything good until it happens. Don’t forget, we had a lot of disappointment in the early days and it’s made me rather cautious. Obviously, we hope we’re a success.’
Mick: ‘I’d like to go to the deep south and see some of the blues singers there, but we won’t be able to on this trip. On a tour like this, you don’t get time. I’ll chase up some musicians I’ve heard about and whose records I collect. To see and hear them work in person will be a big thing for me.’

bill wyman - stone alone

june 1 at london airport before leaving for the us


On 1 July 1964 I went by car to London airport, accompanied that far by Diane and Stephen, en route to America on the Stones’ first USA tour. Eric reckoned it would earn us over $100,000. We arrived first, and there were about a hundred screaming girls charging about everywhere. Stephen looked a little alarmed when he saw this. The police did their best to guard and protect us as girls swarmed around. The plan had been to drive us around the back as we arrived, but we got there separately and all of us except Brian were spotted by the fans. Screaming girls surrounded Mick and a policeman tried to guard him. Keith was pulled away from his police guard by girls; finally they got us into a private lounge where we could relax. Mick and I sat on the floor and played toy cars with Stephen. We eventually said our goodbyes and flew BOAC flight 505 (Mick and Keith wrote a song two years later unknowingly using this title) direct to New York. Brian, Charlie and I sat together, and Brian and I spent a lot of time in the cockpit. As we landed in New York Brian, asked what he thought of his first glimpse of the city, replied: ‘It looks like a bigger version of Balham.’ Arriving at 3.30, we were shocked to find the temperature in the high 80s and 500 screaming fans waiting. What they lacked in numbers they more than made up for in noise, which drowned the jet engines! I was amazed, having thought we were practically unknown in the US, with no hit record.* Fifty policemen tried to hold the screamers back, but they broke through and two fans presented us with carnations from their gardens. One of the boys said: ‘The natives appear to be friendly. We don’t need the beads and trinkets after all.’
bill wyman - stone alone


being greeted by fans at jfk after arriving in the us for the first time




Teenage Crowd at Airport To Greet the Rolling Stones

Another British singing group, this one a rock ‘n’ roll quintet called the Rolling Stones, arrived in New York by plane yesterday from London for a threeweek singing tour of the United States and Canada.

The young men with shoulder?length haircuts, were greeted at Kennedy International Airport by about 500 teen?age girls. About 50 Port Authority and New York policemen were on hand to maintain order.

Most of the teenagers had been informed by the arrival of the singers by announcements made over the radio by disk jockeys.

Those arriving were Mick Jagger, lead vocalist and harmonica player; Brian Jones, vocalist and harmonica and guitar player; Keith Richards, vocalist and guitar player; Bill Wyman, guitarist, and Charlie Watts, drummer.

from the nyt june 2, 1964

We were a long time getting through immigration, where we had a health check - something that no other English group had been subjected to. There was also a protracted search for some of our luggage, which seemed to be missing. When it was found we proceeded through customs. Airport workers and passengers obviously couldn’t believe their eyes, and there were many cries of ‘Get your hair cut’; ‘Where are the razors?’ and ‘Are you the Beatles?’ In a large lounge we held our first American conference, presided over by disc jockey Murray the K; the audience included two English sheepdogs, many high-school-girl magazine editors and fan-clubs presidents. We were presented with bouquets of flowers and presents, and Charlie was given a cake with twenty-two candles for his birthday the following day (although it was in fact his twenty-third birthday).
bill wyman - stone alone

june 2 exploring ny



The first time the Stones went to America, we felt we'd died and gone to heaven. It was the summer of '64. Everybody had their own little thing about America. Charlie would go down to the Metropole when it was still swinging, and see Eddie Condon. The first thing I did was visit Colony Records and buy every Lenny Bruce album I could find. Yet I was amazed by how old-fashioned and European New York seemed--quite different to what I'd imagined. Bellboys and maitre d's, all that sort of thing. Unnecessary fluff and very unexpected. It was as if somebody had said, "These are the rules" in 1920 and it hadn't changed a bit since. On the other hand, it was the fastest-moving modern place you could be.
keith richards - life

A little later, we gave a press conference in the hotel, then radio interviews and photo sessions. Brian fooled around, taking photos of the photographers. We tolerated a lot of silly questions again, then fought our way through fans, jumped into cars and were driven to do a radio show hosted by Murray the K. We were on the air live for three hours, talking, joking, asking each other for fags (which freaked everyone out) and reading commercials.
After the show Murray played us a single by the Valentinos (Bobby Womack) called ‘It’s All Over Now’, and suggested that we cover it for our next single. We liked it, later recorded it, and it became our first Number One single.

bill wyman - stone alone

Andrew and I walked into the Brill Building, the Tin Pan Alley of US song, to try and see the great Jerry Leiber, but Jerry Leiber wouldn't see us. Someone recognized us and took us in and played us all these songs, and we walked out with "Down Home Girl," by Leiber and Butler, a great funk song that we recorded in November 1964. Looking for the Decca offices in New York on one of our adventures, we ended up in a motel on 26th and 10th with a drunken Irishman called Walt McGuire, a crew cut guy who looked as if he'd just gotten out of the American navy. This was the head of the US Decca office. And we suddenly realized the great Decca record company was actually some warehouse in New York. It was a card trick. "Oh yes, we have big offices in New York." And it was down on the docks on the West Side Highway.
keith richards - life

holding a press conference at the hotel astor


dancing at the peppermint lounge




After the show Murray the K took us to a New York club called the Peppermint Lounge (where Joey Dee and the Starlighters had made their name around 1961 with ‘The Peppermint Twist’). We had drinks and watched a very good trio called the Younger Brothers, who did great musical impersonations. They joined us after their set and we chatted for a while. We finally left there, feeling jet-lagged and tired, and returned to our hotel for the night, getting to bed at 1.30.
bill wyman - stone alone

june 3 appearing on hollywood palace with dean martin and there first vist to california and los angeles



rehearsals






But earlier we'd had the experience of Dean Martin introducing us at the taping of the Hollywood Palace TV show. In America then, if you had long hair, you were a faggot as well as a freak. They would shout across the street, "Hey, fairies!" Dean Martin introduced as something like "these long-haired wonders from England, the Rolling Stones.... They're backstage picking the fleas off each other." A lot of sarcasm and eyeball rolling. Then he said, "Don't leave me alone with this," gesturing with horror in our direction. This was Dino, the rebel Rat Packer who cocked his finger at the entertainment world by pretending to be drunk all the time. We were, in fact, quite stunned. English comperes and showbiz types may have been hostile, but they didn't treat you like some dumb circus act. Before we'd gone on, he'd had the bouffanted King Sisters and performing elephants, standing on their hind legs. I love old Dino. He was a pretty funny bloke, even though he wasn't ready for the changing of the guard.
keith richards - life

On Day Three, rising early, we did our packing and checked out ofthe hotel. Keith discovered he’d lost his passport, which became a problem later. We got through some fans and were taken by limousines to Kennedy Airport for the five-hour flight to Los Angeles. On arrival we again found fans waiting to give us a great welcome. Limousines took us to the Beverly Hilton Hotel where we checked into our four double rooms and settled in. This was the high-life! In the afternoon we went to the TV studios for rehearsals for the important Hollywood Palace Show, with Dean Martin as compere; his kids came over for our autographs. It was odd; we sensed an almost hostile attitude by everyone and we felt we were being treated like a comedy act. In Teenbeat magazine Jackie Kallen wrote: ‘NBC, CBS and Ed Sullivan turned the Stones down. They could appear on the Hollywood Palace Show on condition that they would not perform on another TV show for twenty-one days before or after their appearance. Consequently their appearance on a show headed by an alcoholic who takes pride in mentioning how he can drink and hold his liquor, was anything but helpful for their popular image. Besides terrible treatment at the hands of Dean Martin, who vilified and degraded them in a vindictive manner for some reason, their hit record “Not Fade Away” was cut out completely.’
We performed ‘Not Fade Away’, ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’ and ‘Tell Me’, playing live. Unluckily, Keith broke a string halfway through ‘Not Fade Away’ and had to play the rest of our set like that. The only act on the show that we’d heard of was the Kaye Sisters. Other acts included performing elephants and a trampolinist. It quickly transpired we’d been set up for ritual slaughter by Dean Martin, who seemed inebriated throughout the show; he persistently insulted us on the air to grab cheap laughs, and between songs and commercial breaks he made such jibes as: ‘Their hair is not long, it’s just smaller foreheads and higher eyebrows, and, ‘Now don’t go away, anybody, you wouldn’t want to leave me with those Rolling Stones, would you?’ Introducing a trampoline artist he said: ‘That’s the father of the Rolling Stones; he’s been trying to kill himself ever since.’*
Before the show the producer had given us money to ‘go out and buy uniforms’. We said: ‘We don’t wear uniforms.’ The whole atmosphere was just awful. Dean Martin and our tour manager Bob Bonis began arguing, and Keith was about to pop Martin one with his guitar.
Stu said at the time: ‘Unless you’ve been with the Stones, you would never believe the insults they have to face from prejudiced people just because they have long hair and dress unorthodox. Everybody seems to expect the worst.’ Very dejected, we returned to our hotel where we found Joey Paige, the Everly Brothers’ bass-player, waiting to show us some of the local clubs on Sunset Strip. 1 got chatting to a pretty twenty-five-year-old waitress at one of them, and when she got off work she joined me. We got back to the hotel and off to bed late. After the misery of Dean Martin, the night had at least ended well.
Soaking up Hollywood for the first time was a magical experience. Joey Paige and his friend Marshall Lieb (who sang with Phil Spector in the Teddy Bears’ song ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’) took us to Malibu Beach for a sunny afternoon, and in the evening we went with Andrew to the RCA recording studios and met Jack Nitzsche, Phil Spector’s arranger. Jackie De Shannon and Darlene Love were doing backing vocals on a new record. After dinner and a tour of the clubs On the Strip 1 met my waitress friend again and she returned to the hotel with me for the night.


bill wyman - stone alone



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-15 11:13 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 02:08

june 5 swing auditorium, san bernardino, california (first show)

this video tells the story of the show and how it came together






When we tried to leave the hotel the next day we found fans waiting for us at the elevators and in the lobby. This access to the hotel lobby by fans is something American hotels allowed but was not allowed in Europe. Battling past them into a coach, we set off for our first show of the tour, sixty-two miles away at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. On arrival we were cheered by lots of screaming girls running up to the bus; they were tanned and mostly dressed in tight shorts, some with bare feet and bare midriffs. We played eleven songs to an audience of 4,400 who went wild, chucking jelly-babies, autograph books and love letters on stage, and waving banners saying: ‘We Love the Stones’. Local police, with revolvers at their hips, couldn’t hold them when they started the inevitable rush forward. Cops climbed up on stage brandishing their night-sticks. The odd girl managed to get through and eventually some got on stage, one grabbing Mick around the waist and pulling him bodily across the stage before three large policemen ripped her off. Keith had a girl hanging around his neck, but managed to keep playing, while Brian almost had his harmonica pushed down his throat. I kept well wide of all this. Mick stormed around the stage with his four maracas, leaping into the air doing his dancing tricks. Police threatened to stop the concert unless the girls stopped storming the stage, which subdued them a bit.
As Keith said, the first gig in San Bernardino was ‘a gas’. They all knew the songs and were all bopping. It was like being back home. ‘Route 66’ mentioned San Bernardino, so everybody was into it. Bob Bonis remembers: ‘The Stones were very exciting, but at that time they had no monitors. Bill had a Vox bass amp that had two speakers, with one on each side so he could be heard and the boys could lean on him, and Charlie was solid. The whole band moved, except for Bill, a really fine bass player who was like the local lamp post. They were a raw, vibrant, very entertaining group.’
After the concert a crowd of about 2,000 surrounded our bus parked at the stage door. The sheriff’s office, anticipating what was to follow, had taken the precaution of barricading the area. The riot squad stood behind the wooden barriers and after about fifteen minutes we made a dash for the bus. Then in just a split second I thought, ‘Oh no, a riot.’ The barricades splintered under the crush of fans, the cops were swept up in the wave: pandemonium! But somehow they scrambled us on the bus, struggling past tearing hands and screaming girls. The coach was pursued by fans in cars while others ran alongside. We left at high speed for Los Angeles, feeling much happier and like we belonged in America at last.


bill wyman - stone alone

The first show we ever did in America was at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino, California. Bobby Goldsboro, who taught me the Jimmy Reed lick, was on the show, and the Chiffons.

keith richards - life



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-15 10:40 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: dkwalika ()
Date: June 14, 2024 02:26

I recall an old photo of a couple of Stones meeting Eddie Arnold. I assume it was this tour?

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 02:37

june 6 joe freeman coliseum, san antonio teen fair, san Antonio, texas (show 2 & 3 - the band meets bobby keys for the first time)






Rolling Stones' first trip to S.A. was a disaster - with monkeys
By Hector Saldana,

San Antonio Express-News
Updated June 4, 2017 11:49 a.m.



SAN ANTONIO — Eleven years after four humbling gigs at Teen Fair of Texas where they were booed, taunted and played for small crowds, the Rolling Stones still were grumbling when they returned for two sold-out concerts at HemisFair Arena in June 1975.
“We were here in '64 and only two or three people showed up,” Mick Jagger sarcastically said from the stage opening night.
Jagger was referring to the band's second concert stop on its first U.S. tour, a matinee and evening set each day on June 6 and 7, 1964, at Freeman Coliseum.
The Stones, it turns out, were the first British Invasion band to play Texas, beating the Beatles by almost four months. But hardly anyone knew who they were — not even the guy who booked them for the gig.
Many remember the now-legendary rockers as cocky, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, BO-reeking youngsters on that first visit.
But if Elvis Presley was chagrined singing “Hound Dog” to a basset hound on NBC's “The Steve Allen Show” in 1956, the Stones felt equally disrespected during their visit here 50 years ago this weekend.
Bassist Bill Wyman recounted the scene at Teen Fair — touted as a 10-day World's Fair for Teens — in his memoirs, “Stone Alone.”
“Everyone got a poor reception from a mixed crowd of cowboys and kids,” he wrote. “We had to go on after some performing monkeys. What the hell were we doing here? People didn't know whether to take us seriously or as a joke.”
The monkeys were the world famous Marquis Chimps, who got star billing, in fact. The Stones shared the stage that opening weekend with Bobby Vee, George Jones and Diane Renay.
Guitarist Keith Richards, in his book, recalled a “freak show” with circus seals. With Richard one never knows, but former manager Andrew Loog Oldham apparently hasn't forgotten the same hallucination.
“First U.S. tour was pretty diverse. We did play after performing seals” in San Antonio, Oldham said via Twitter.
How hostile was the reception at that first appearance? A reporter for the San Antonio Express-News described it, looking back in 1975.
“Ten minutes into their act, the group was booed, sneered and laughed at and some even say they were hit by vegetables.”


The anti-Beatles

Bob Coffen Jr. had begged his dad in the spring of '64 to book the Rolling Stones for the fair's opening weekend.
“My dad was not hip,” Coffen said. “He said, 'Who the hell is that?'”
But Bob Coffen Sr., one-half of the Coffen Brothers promotional team with his younger brother, Charles, relented. They booked the London-based act for $3,500.
The Stones arrived June 6, just before their first show, and were greeted by 150 teenagers at the airport. In one newspaper photo, guitarist Richards is wearing shades and surrounded by girls.
KTSA's Bruce Hathaway picked them up there for the first afternoon gig, which by all accounts was a disaster.
Sixteen-year-old Bob Coffen Jr. was worried. Some in the crowd were yelling, “Get a haircut.”
“There were some cowboys and drunks that had come to see George Jones,” said Coffen, now 66. “I recall bringing my girlfriend and her mother to see the Rolling Stones. That was a problem. They didn't like the Rolling Stones.
“Well, nobody liked the Rolling Stones.”
San Antonio musician Joe Sarli was a preteen there because his dad led the Teen Fair big band. He remembers the redneck reaction.
“Mick Jagger at one point stopped the show. My mom used to tell the story better than me, 'Shut up, cowboys. Shut up!'” Sarli said, attempting a cockney accent.
“He was kind of a freak at that time, the pansy look, dancing around, which was real different for people in Texas at that time. Someone yelled, 'Go home.' It was exactly the same thing as the Sex Pistols. It's vivid in my mind. It's locked in like the day Kennedy died.”
Later, the scruffy, barely known British rock 'n' roll band — the Stones' remake of Buddy Holly's “Not Fade Away” was only a minor hit at the time — threatened not to play the evening show. Jagger complained the dressing room mirrors were too small.
The Stones were rattled and angry. Their raw blues sound had been met with stares and jeers by cowboys, and the promised crowd of 14,000 never materialized (Hathaway contends attendance was a few hundred; Coffen Jr. insisted it was closer to 3,000, which still wouldn't have looked like much from the stage of the Freeman).
Bob Coffen Sr., a chain-smoking, former Army soldier who 20 years earlier had stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day during World War II, wasn't going to take any guff from these upstarts.
“My dad said, 'What's the problem?'” Coffen said. “Mick Jagger said, 'We can't go on because we can't see how to dress.'”
The promoter glared at the band and said, “You haven't changed clothes one time since you've been here” in the U.S.
Jagger looked at Richards and, as if on cue, began to strip.
“They changed clothes with each other,” Coffen recounted. “They dropped their pants. I'd never seen that. Mick Jagger had fire engine red, bikini underwear. In 1964, everyone wore boxers or white shorts. They changed clothes and my dad said, 'That's the funniest damned thing I've ever seen. Get these guys some big mirrors.'


Notorious

The Rolling Stones appearance at Teen Fair of Texas is as fabled as the Sex Pistols notorious show at Randy's Rodeo some 14 years later.
Footage of Jagger onstage during that period reveals spastic, overtly sexual dance moves, including turning his back to fans and wiggling his bum en flagrante.
Michelle Edge loved to tell her Lee High School math students that Jagger had “mooned” the Teen Fair audience.
“You would have thought a bunch of criminals were coming to town. Jagger drowned them out with rock 'n' roll,” Coffen said. “The music scene wasn't ready for the Stones in '64. People got their money's worth.”
Tickets were $2.50.
The Stones' set list included yet-to-be recorded covers of the Valentinos' “It's All Over Now” and Chuck Berry's “Around & Around,” also “Little Red Rooster,” “Carol” and “I Wanna Be Your Man.”
Teen Fair, which included a carnival midway with a flaming dive of death, auto show, fashion shows, rodeo, space capsule and cultural exhibits, was dominated by pop stars such as Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vee, Lesley Gore and Diane Renay.
Renay's big hit was “Navy Blue.” She was asked to greet the Stones at the airport. She went even though she'd never heard of them.
At the airport she saw girls screaming. “Not like the Beatles, but they were an English group, and there were kids out there screaming.”
Pauline Cisneros was one of those kids. The Little Flower High School student was determined to get drummer Charlie Watts' autograph.
He signed one of her mother's blank checks. “I pinned it above my desk on a corkboard. I don't know what happened to it,” Cisneros said.
San Antonio Light writer Barry Browne asked them about America.
“It's different,” guitarist Brian Jones said. “And now that we're here, we want to stay.”
“It's big, hot and sunny,” added Wyman, who attributed the Stones' success to being “lucky” and their long hair to the Beatles, who “got the whole thing rolling.”
The Stones' personal hygiene in S.A. is part of the mythology. Sarli's dad, Don, shared a dressing room with them.
“My dad commented on how bad they smelled. They smelled horrible, they reeked. He said they were super foul-mouthed, chain smoked and reeked,” Sarli said.
“They were the opposite of the Beatles as far as their appearance and their persona,” said Renay, who is retired and lives in Las Vegas. “But they were very nice. They didn't have groomed haircuts like the Beatles. Everybody had their own thing going on. They dressed informally.”
She didn't like their music, but she could see Jagger was a star. “He was all over the stage. He's the same now as he was then.”


mysanantonio

Woken early on 6 June, we left for the airport in limos at 7 a.m. On arrival, we were again greeted by a police cordon holding back the fans. We flew to San Antonio, Texas, stopping off twice on the way. We arrived at lunchtime to find it incredibly hot and only a handful of fans waiting. Our first worries about the American trip had come soon after we arrived. When we heard about some of the shows we were to do, they didn’t sound quite the right sort of venues, not being the places where teenage audiences could be expected. Now this worry seemed justified. We drove directly from the airport to play an afternoon show at the state fair in San Antonio. When we arrived most people were watching a rodeo going on nearby.
On the bill with us were George Jones, the great country singer, and singer Bobby Vee. Here we first met Bobby Keys, who was playing sax with Vee’s band. Keys was born in Lubbock, Texas (the same town as Buddy Holly) on the same day as Keith, which practically made them blood- brothers. During the 1970s and 1980s, he played on many tours and sessions with the Stones and other bands. Bobby remembers the period: ‘The whole Bobby Vee band were dressed in mohair suits, high-rolled collar shirts, silk ties and handmade shoes. At this point in time everybody was dressed alike and we did these little steps. Bobby Vee was big then. What was the deal with these English bad boys? They came onstage and they weren’t dressed alike! That impressed me more than anything I had seen, apart from the fact that they were singing one of Buddy Holly’s songs, “Not Fade Away”.’
The concert was in the open air and everyone got a poor reception from a mixed crowd of cowboys and kids. We had to go on after some performing monkeys. What the hell were we doing here? People didn’t know whether to take us seriously or as a joke! We fared only slightly better than the rest. Cowboys jeered at us and Mick told them to go and jump on their horses. We left there feeling very low. Jack Hutton reported in the Daily Mirror: ‘The Stones are being treated as freaks in America. People gasp in amazement when they appear at airports, in hotel lobbies and in the streets. Men have whistled and girls ask, “Do they wear lipstick and eye make-up and carry purses?” No one takes them seriously.’
We returned for the evening show at the San Antonio State Fair, chatting backstage with George Jones and Bobby Vee before doing our set. Bobby Keys: ‘In the dressing-room I remember saying that all the American groups changed clothes before going onstage. Brian said, “Well, we can do that.” So, not to be un-American, they switched clothes with each other, which immediately won my heart.’
That show was not much better than the afternoon one as far as the reaction was concerned. We returned to the hotel and got to bed. What had we let ourselves in for? Crowds were great to us at airports and hotels but these two shows set us back years! There was no solace from the press. We were described, fairly typically, by the Omaha World Herald as ‘scruffy, undisciplined, skinny, ugly, and a menace’. The next day while we were sunbathing around the hotel pool in a temperature of 95° a young waiter who was serving us drinks said that a guest had complained to the hotel that girls were at the pool, swimming and sunbathing topless - that was us! A little later we were joined by about six real girls who were very friendly but extremely naive. One got very excited and tried to pull Brian’s hair off, saying she thought it was a wig. A few of us tried pulling them. I took one to our room for a while and fooled around a bit, but gave up when I came up against those American ‘passion-killers’ - tight one-piece clinging elastic knickers, high in the waist and half-way to the knees — almost like corsets. There was no getting them off.
Instead duty called and, full of apprehension, we went to play the afternoon show at the state fair again. Here, Bobby Vee amazed us by going onstage in Bermuda shorts, looking really ridiculous. Bobby Keys: ‘He could do that - he was the lead vocalist. So I said “OK, man, if they can do it, shit! So can I.” It was like a show of allegiance. I damn near got fired over that.’

bill wyman - stone alone



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-15 11:43 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 03:01

Quote
dkwalika
I recall an old photo of a couple of Stones meeting Eddie Arnold. I assume it was this tour?

from 64 but i'm not sure if it's from the first tour

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: U2Stonesfan ()
Date: June 14, 2024 03:02

Thanks Franzk and ProfessorWolf! This is a cool thread idea

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: CaptainCorella ()
Date: June 14, 2024 03:24

Quote
ProfessorWolf
june 6 joe freeman coliseum, san antonio teen fair, san Antonio, texas (show 2)

One enormous snippage....

Doesn't meeting Bobby Keys get in there somewhere?

Captain Corella

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 03:40

june 10-11 there first visit to chicago

the lee philips show, chicago


press conference in front of tribune tower in chicago


chess studios sessions










Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-14 07:13 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 03:44

Quote
CaptainCorella
Quote
ProfessorWolf
june 6 joe freeman coliseum, san antonio teen fair, san Antonio, texas (show 2)

One enormous snippage....

Doesn't meeting Bobby Keys get in there somewhere?

whoops

sorry

corrected that

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 04:28

june 12 big reggie’s ballroom, excelsior fair minneapolis, minnesota (show 4)



local news story about the show with an interview of someone in one of the other bands on that night and the same man who took the above photo




another report about the supposed original mr. jimmy from ycagwyw




some articles about the show
hennepenhistory.org

twincitiesmusichighlights.net



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-14 04:31 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: CaptainCorella ()
Date: June 14, 2024 04:34

The claim in the report shown in the above posting about the origin of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" has to be the most far fetched claim I can recall.

Captain Corella

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 04:59

Quote
CaptainCorella
The claim in the report shown in the above posting about the origin of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" has to be the most far fetched claim I can recall.

i agree

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 05:36

june 13 civic auditorium music hall, omaha (show 5)



being interviewed on the local tv show dancestand before the show


keith on omaha

We really felt like a sore pimple in Omaha. On top of that, the first time we arrived there, the only people to meet us off the plane were 12 motorcycle cops who insisted on doing this motorcade thing right through town. And nobody in Omaha had ever heard of us. We thought, Wow, we've made it. We must be heavy. And we get to the auditorium and there's 600 people there in a 15 000-seat hall. But we had a good time. That's what stopped us from turning into popstars then... Then we really had to work America and it really got the band together... Some towns you went into on that first tour they'd look at you with a look that could kill. You could just tell they wanted to beat the shit out of you.

timeisonourside.com

some quotes from this site (the stones content is rather far down)
myomahaobsession.com

I was surprised to find that when the Rolling Stones landed at Eppley, they were met by protest in the form of rabid teenage girl-fans of the Beatles. They were not interested in having the Stones play in their town. The OPD escorted them through the crowd of insulting banners.

According to the OWH, Omahan Johnny Ray Gomez, who hosted a Saturday afternoon local TV show called Dancestand, got a phone call from the concert promoter a few days before the Rolling Stones were scheduled to play the Civic. “’Tickets aren’t going well,’ he told Gomez. ‘Can we get them on your show?’ Gomez remembered the Stones appeared on his show for about 10 minutes. He did a five-minute interview with band members, asking them where they had played last, if they were excited about their new record, what their concerts were like. The band watched the Omaha girls dancing for the other five minutes.

The night of the concert, there was said to be a “crowd of 651 screaming, mainly teen age girls.”


I would learn that the Rolling Stones stayed at the Indian Hills Inn from Niz Proskocil’s OWH article from 2006. It was at this time that some local musicians also got to play host and hang out with the new band—the antics of a lifetime. What follows is from her original piece:

David Trupp was a 21-year-old musician when he met the Rolling Stones in June 1964. A drummer, Trupp and his band the Eccentrics were booked to play the Peppermint Cave, a nightclub in the now closed Hill Hotel in downtown Omaha. (For more on David Trupp, the Eccentrics and the Peppermint Cave, check out my previous investigation: I Wish I Could Have Gone to the Cave Under the Hill.) The owner of the club asked Trupp and his band if they would hang out with an English rock group that was in town, maybe show them around and keep them company before their concert at the Civic. “We said, ‘Yeah, we’ll spend the day with them,'” Trupp recalled. The Stones didn’t get the grand tour. Instead, the two bands hung out in the Stones’ hotel room at the old Indian Hills Inn near 84th Street and West Dodge Road. “It rocked,” Trupp said. “They were real, real nice. We stayed with them for two or three hours.” At one point, said Trupp, now retired and living in Lincoln, Jagger asked if anybody had any diet pills. Apparently, those “mother’s little helpers” were all the rage back then with musicians. Sure enough, Trupp had some and gave one to Jagger, who spent the next couple of hours on the phone “talking business” with associates in England. Trupp spent most of the time talking music with then-guitarist, Brian Jones, who died five years later at age 27.

While Trupp was with the rockers during the day, Bellevue dentist Rick Engel, then a college student, hung out with them at night. After the band’s concert at the Civic, Engel partied with Stones at the Indian Hills Inn. “One of my fraternity brothers kept making funny remarks about the Rolling Bones. I said, ‘Who are they?’ He said, ‘They’re an English rock group. They’re staying down the hall.'” Engel looked down the hall and saw about a half-dozen girls clutching autograph books outside the band’s door. Engel asked one his frat brothers to invite the band over for a drink. About a half-hour later, at around 11:30 p.m., the Stones showed up at the party. “I guess they had nothing better to do,” Engel said. He remembers that Jagger wore a silk shirt, vest, tight pants and ankle boots that zipped up the side. “He wasn’t dressed sloppy, no grunge style,” Engel said. “He was clean-shaven. His hair was longer than it is now.” Jagger brought his own bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, and drank it without water or ice. “I had never seen anyone drink like that,” said Engel, who was 20 at the time. Over the next couple of hours, everyone drank, talked and had a great time. “




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-14 05:36 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 05:55

june 14 olympia stadium, detroit (show 6)






Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 06:12

june 17 west view park, danceland, pittsburgh (show 7)




Rip This Joint
Take a trip back to 1964, when the Rolling Stones made their maiden voyage to Pittsburgh and played in front of a crowd of 400.
May 16, 2013
Rick Sebak


Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts — the six original members of the world’s greatest rock ’n‘ roll band, the Rolling Stones — were young, fresh and devoted to old American blues in 1964, when they stopped in Pittsburgh as part of their first American tour. They played only nine cities that summer, so Pittsburgh was lucky (so was Harrisburg!) — but Keith Richards was still a year away from dreaming about “Satisfaction” when the Stones played to a crowd of 400 or so on Wed., June 17, at Danceland in the old West View Amusement Park. Admission was only $1.50.

Although the Stones had a No. 1 album in England, few folks around here were paying attention. The band’s biggest hit at that point was a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”

At West View Park, the Stones were the last performers on a six-act bill. Bobby Goldsboro (who already had a Top 10 success, “See The Funny Little Clown”) performed before the young sextet. In his autobiography, Keith Richards remembers that first American tour: “Sometimes we were top of the bill, not always — but usually.”

There seems to have been no press coverage of the concert, but one girl, Paula Cline from Dormont, took her camera and snapped shots of the band (pictured). Local rock historians have been grateful ever since.

During the summer of ’64, the British Invasion came to Pittsburgh several times. The Dave Clark Five played the Civic Arena June 5. On Sept. 14, The Beatles made their only local appearance, also at the arena. The Stones have been back many times: in 1965, 1966, 1972, 1999 and 2003 at the Civic Arena; in 1989 and 1994, at Three Rivers Stadium; and in 2005, at PNC Park. But locals still love to imagine that first show at Danceland.

In LIFE, Richards wrote about that odd first tour of America: “The most bizarre part of the whole story is that having done what we intended to do in our narrow, purist teenage brains at the time, which was to turn people on to the blues; what actually happened was we turned American people back on to their own music. And that’s probably our greatest contribution to music.”

(Thanks to Brian Butko at Western Pennsylvania History Magazine for assistance with this article.)


pittsburghmagazine.com

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 06:26

june 18 the mike douglas show, cleveland




rehearsals



Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 06:36

june 19 farm show arena, harrisburg, pennsylvania (show 8)





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-14 06:59 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 06:55

june 20 carnegie hall, nyc (show 9 & 10)











keith on the show

(Carnegie Hall) was just screaming with kids. We'd almost forgotten what it was like, 'cause we were used to that every night, every time we played (in England), and suddenly (on our first American tour) we were brought down, bang, everybody saying, What a fuckup, we've blown it. America was still very much into Frankie Avalon. There wasn't any thought of long-haired kids, we were just entertainment-business freaks, with long hair, just like a circus show. And we get to New York and suddenly we realize that maybe we... that it's just starting.

timeisonourside.com



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-14 07:17 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: ProfessorWolf ()
Date: June 14, 2024 07:06

june 22 arriving at london airport after the tour


mick's wearing the same shirt he wore when he arrived at jfk on june 1stwinking smiley



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-14 07:08 by ProfessorWolf.

Re: 1964 1st US Tour - It was 60 years ago
Posted by: CaptainCorella ()
Date: June 15, 2024 02:20

Epic postings! Epic topic! Epic research!

Thanks for the postings.

Captain Corella



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-06-15 02:21 by CaptainCorella.

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