Thanks for sharing this excerpt here, Mr Jopling. Looking forward to read your book.

Thank you very much for your memories, Mr. Jopling, that's the best read I've had in ages.
Oh, to have been there...but I was only seven!
I look forward to the book if you ever finish it, but please post excerpts here whenever you please - you have a captive audience!


"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-04 01:00 by Deltics.

Thank you most kindly, Mr. Jopling - that is a briiliant read. It conveys your excitement and realization at what you heard at that gig so well. As I am sure you aware, you were so extremely fortunate to have been there (and how jealous are we?!) Roll on that book of yours!

Thanks Mr. Jopling & Ms. Sssoul
all very fascinating...

Fantastic. Thanks so much Norman.

A fascinating thread, and many thanks to Mr Jopling in particular for his sterling work.

I thought it worth mentioning that it's a time in the band's career that is touched on nicely in David Dalton's The First 25 Years.

indeed, thanks and praises to Mr Jopling for that fascinating excerpt from his forthcoming book.

i'm still pondering the chronology puzzle - i might as well post what i'm pondering,
in case it's of any help to Mr Jopling. his account makes it clear that ALO's book got the "chain of information" wrong -
ALO has it that it was Mr Jopling who got Peter Jones interested in the Stones, not the other way around -
and it also means there's something wrong somewhere with the way all the sources have the events of april 63 dated.
basically it means we have to re-question everything there isn't objectively dated documentation of.

Barry May's article appeared on april 13th, so it must have been april 7th or march 31st that he saw the band at the Crawdaddy.

it's pretty objectively established that it was april 14th that the Beatles came to the Crawdaddy.
they went back to Edith Grove after the gig, and invited the Stones to their april 18th RAH show.

april 21st is the date everyone gives for Giorgio Gomelsky making his film of the Stones.
Bill Wyman, Peter Jones and Giorgio have all stated that that's when Jones first saw them -
i'm not sure what that date is based on, though. (is there any "hard evidence" of it,
for example a newspaper announcement that their afternoon gig at the Ken Colyer Club was cancelled??)

both of Bill's books state that it was april 28th that ALO brought Eric Easton to the Crawdaddy,
approached the band, took them for a meal after the show, etc; Giorgio was absent at the time,
since his father had died and he'd gone back to Switzerland for the funeral.
James Phelge was an eyewitness, and his book relates the story the same way. so ... [scratching head] ...
it's true that there's some fuzziness about the date the Stones signed the management contract with Impact (may 1st or may 6th or both?)
and about the date of the Battersea Park gig (may 4th or may 11th or both?), but we do know for sure
that it was may 10th that they recorded their first single. i guess it's barely possible
that it was may 5th that ALO and EE turned up at the Crawdaddy, not april 28th, but that would mean
an awful lot had to happen in just five days - several meetings between Brian, EE and ALO,
the formal registration of Impact, the buying out of the IBC contract, etc - and i don't know if that seems likely.

at the same time, Mr Jopling is sure it wasn't on may 5th that he went to the Crawdaddy at Peter Jones's urging,
and that Giorgio was present. so it's a mystery - we know it for sure that it all happened, but when?!

another possibility is that everyone is wrong about where ALO approached the band -
that it was at Eel Pie Island on april 24th, not the Crawdaddy on april 28th.
the two venues were pretty close, so maybe it's not that farfetched?
and then Mr Jopling's visit to the Crawdaddy could have been on the 28th ...
sigh! it's futile to speculate without any more evidence, but since Mr Jopling is sure
that he saw them after Peter Jones did, and that it wasn't may 5th,
that seems to mean that Peter Jones must have seen the Stones earlier than the 21st,
and/or ALO must have approached them on some date other than the 28th.

Mr Jopling, i'd truly love to hear your thoughts on any of that!



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-06 19:31 by with sssoul.

>> I arranged to see Brian, who seemed to be the group’s leader and spokesman,
up at Record Mirror the following week. <<

Mr Jopling, since you've kindly offered to respond to questions: could you tell us a bit more about that meeting,
please and thank you kindly? is that when you got most of the details about the personnel, their recording aspirations, etc?
was there any hint at all that they were in negotiations with a new manager? and so on.
anything you could tell us about it would be very avidly and gratefully received indeed

>> I’d never heard anything like it in a live act. I’d never felt anything like it.
The place shook, everyone in the audience was wet with sweat, the sound was bouncing off the walls,
throbbing, utterly irresistible. It lifted me up and swept me along, song after song. <<

thank you again for those wonderfully resonant words, Mr Jopling - you've conveyed so much there, really strongly.

and i have another question, if you can stand it: have you kept in touch with the Stones since the 60s?
and/or with Giorgio, and/or ALO? how about Peter Jones? i hope he's well and prospering!
he deserves thanks and praises too, for getting you down there to witness that glorious raunch in its natural habitat



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-06 11:32 by with sssoul.

Amazingly good to read this stuff!

Very confusing too!

Maybe it could help, with sssoul, that's the page 14 of the book from which I already posted the page 13 in the beginning of this thread

thanks Christian - i know april 28th is a date frequently given for when ALO took EE to see the Stones,
and that most people say it was at the Crawdaddy (aka the Station Hotel), but that doesn't fit in too easily
with the way Mr Jopling recalls it. with all due respect (and a lot is due, at least in some cases!)
the input from third parties (i mean like Karnbach, Dalton, et al) isn't really evidence of anything -
so many writers have simply repeated what others wrote before them, and if one person was wrong,
then we end up with whole decades of mistaken "information". by "hard evidence" and "objective documentation"
i mean things like newspaper clippings from that time period with clear dates on them -
which there aren't too many of. historical research can be so ... amazing ... sometimes :E



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-06 19:39 by with sssoul.

with sssoul,
Massively interesting stuff. Thank you.

OK...here's a theory. I didn't know Giorgio wasn't there on April 28th - so it couldn't have been then that I saw them. And it couldn't have been the 14th because of the Beatles. Therefore it could only have been the 21st. Bill Wyman didn't know me from Peter Jones and got us confused. Peter was wrong about the dates because he definitely saw them long before I did (as I said, I stalled for weeks before reluctantly going to see them). And Giorgio was understandably confused because it was such a traumatic time in his life (losing his father, then the Stones). That way, it makes sense that ALO saw them on the 28th and moved in quick.
Here's another story. In 1995 Andrew Oldham and his business partner in Immediate, Tony Calder, and writer Colin Irwin, co-wrote a book on Abba. I was doing some deals with Tony at the time, and went to HMV for the book launch where Bjorn Again did a launch-party gig. I took a book from the pile and joined the queue of punters waiting to get their book signed by the three writers. When I got to the table where the guys were sitting and signing, Tony saw me and said "Hey Andrew, it's Norman!" Now, I hadn't seen ALO since '72 in NY. They all wrote in my book. And Andrew wrote: "Norman, where was Giorgio?"!!! That few weeks still resonates...
I lost touch with the Stones and ALO when I quit music journalism in '72. PJ is hale and hearty at 80. Gotta crash now!

thank you so much for the further input and the theory, Mr Jopling! and for taking an interest
in my rather confusing post about the chronology - sorry, everybody! i don't mean to be confusing,
it's just that so much was going on that month! but i see i wasn't too clear about (at least!) one part:

>> I didn't know Giorgio wasn't there on April 28th - so it couldn't have been then that I saw them. <<

we don't really know for sure that it was april 28th that Giorgio was absent -
all the eyewitnesses agree that he was away for his father's funeral when ALO brought EE to see the Stones,
and most sources say that was april 28th. those sources seem to have settled on that date by deduction,
not because of any hard evidence that that was definitely the date ... but it does make sense in a few ways.

it might well be that the sources are also speculating about the april 21st date for Giorgio making his film -
you mention the film in your article, of course, but in the account you've shared with us here,
it doesn't sound like the filming had been going on the same day you went down to the Crawdaddy?

in any case i agree that it seems like it must have been earlier than the 21st that Peter Jones saw the Stones.
the film was made in the afternoon (they cancelled their usual Ken Colyer Club matinee to make it)
and they played a regular gig in the evening. the way Peter Jones relates it in Bill's books,
he was there for both the filming and the evening show ... but maybe that wasn't the first time he'd seen the Stones,
and/or maybe the film was made on an earlier date than april 21st ... so when could it have been?
april 7th seems like the only other possibility for the filming - which would in turn mean
that Barry May must have seen them on march 31st, not april 7th (unless of course
he simply omitted to mention the film ... but why would he?)

>> "Norman, where was Giorgio?"!!! <<

he might well ask!
very cool anecdote - thank you!

please give my (our!) best regards to Peter Jones. and of course it would be fascinating to know
if he has any opinions about the chronology theories we're entertaining here, if you have a chance to ask him!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-08 10:47 by with sssoul.

>> april 7th seems like the only other possibility for the filming <<

well, i just checked Bill's book (Rolling With, i mean); Peter Jones's account of the story is on page 56
and he specifies that on the day of the filming Brian had the local paper's article about the Stones in his wallet.
that must refer to Barry May's article, which we know came out in the april 13th Richmond & Twickenham Times,
so unless Mr Jones is confusing/conflating two different occasions, that puts a big hole in my theory
that Giorgio might have made his film on april 7th. oh well, back to the drawing board!

what we really need is a newpaper announcement of the date the Stones cancelled their Ken Colyer Club matinee.

meanwhile, if someone who owns Rolling With and a scanner could find the time and good will
to scan and post page 56 so that Mr Jopling can see how Peter Jones recollects his visit,
that would be brilliant, please and thank you kindly!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-08 10:50 by with sssoul.

Hang On Babe....



ROCKMAN



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-08 14:30 by Rockman.

ohh thank you Rockman! if you can, it would be so cool if Mr Jopling could see the whole page -
both columns of print, i mean - everything from "We went to the RG Jones studios"
to "our first show at Eel Pie Island" is relevant to this chronology puzzle.
please & thank you kindly, Rockman - feathers en route!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-08 16:08 by with sssoul.

Here we go .... HOPE it's what ya neeeeeeeed....



ROCKMAN

perfect - thank you thank you! [shaking tailfeather at Rockman]

Peter Jones saying "the first thing they needed was a good manager" was a bit ... er striking, wasn't it -
i guess Giorgio was not a participant in that conversation, but still!

Quote
with sssoul
a related question i'm hoping someone here may be able to help with, or know who to ask:
thanks to an amazingly intrepid and glamourous researcher, i now know that the dateline
on 1963 issues of Record Mirror read: "week ending [saturday date, eg 11 may]" and also "thursday".
our best guess right now is that thursday was probably the distribution day - the day it hit the newsstands -
but which thursday would that be, relative to the saturday mentioned in the "week ending" part?
that is: would the Record Mirror for the week ending saturday 11 may have come out on thursday 09 may?
or on thursday 16 may? (the latter idea seems tres weird to me - but a lot of things in this world seem tres weird to me,
so i'd rather ask if someone remembers how it was, or knows someone who would remember.)

(Record Mirror doesn't exist anymore so i can't ask them; i have asked the current copyright owners but they don't know.)

yet another question is what sort of lead time a weekly normally had in 1963 -
how long before distribution was an issue sent to the printers?
monthlies in those days had pretty long lead times - the december issue for example
would tell you what had been going on in october - and it probably came out in early december or late november,
not weeks ahead of the stated date like monthlies now do. but i don't know what the situation was
with UK weeklies in 1963 - any insights would be very very gratefully received!

In "Rolling With The Stones" Bill refers to Norman Joplings article as being written/published two days after the death of Elmore James (who died on 24th of may 1963).