Mick Jagger. Philip Norman

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СКАЧАТЬ most memorable was a grand ball given by the youthful marquess of Londonderry at his ancestral home, Londonderry House in Park Lane, shortly before its demolition to make way for the new London Hilton Hotel. Among the guests was the future interior designer and super-socialite Nicky Haslam, then still a pupil at Eton. Though America’s legendary Benny Goodman Orchestra was the main musical attraction, Blues Incorporated had an early-evening spot fronted, as Haslam’s memoirs recall, ‘by a hired-in singer . . . a skinny kid named Mick something’. Haslam’s companion, the future magazine editor Min Hogg, later reported the skinny kid had been sure enough of himself to make overtures and even ‘paw’ at her strapless pink satin evening gown. From the ABC bakery to the upper crust: he had found the milieu where from now on he would be happiest.

      THE EALING CLUB had started with just one hundred members; now, only two months later, it boasted more than eight hundred. When it was crowded to capacity, and beyond, the heat rivalled that of a similar subterranean space called the Cavern in far-off Liverpool. So much condensation dripped from the walls and ceiling that Korner had to hang a tarpaulin sheet over the stage canopy to stop the already precarious electrical connections from shorting out.

      Korner’s real triumph was a phone call from Harold Pendleton, manager of Soho’s Marquee Club, who had so loftily banned the blues from his stage at the beginning of the year. Worried by the numbers who were defecting from the Marquee to Ealing Broadway – and by an upsurge of younger blues musicians in rival Soho clubs – Pendleton had undergone a rapid change of heart. It happened that in his weekly programme, the Thursday-night spot had fallen vacant. This he offered to Blues Incorporated, starting on 19 May.

      There was, of course, no question of the band appearing without a regular vocalist as it had mostly done in Ealing. Korner wanted Mick but – atypically nice man that he was – hesitated to split up the band Mick still had with Keith. However, Keith was happy for his friend to jump at this big chance. ‘I’ll always remember how nice he was about it,’ Bobbie Korner recalls. ‘He said, “Mick really deserves this and I’m not going to stand in his way.”’

      Disc magazine made the announcement, a first droplet of newsprint oceans to come: ‘Nineteen-year-old Dartford rhythm and blues singer Mick Jagger has joined the Alexis Korner group Blues Incorporated and will sing with them regularly on their Saturday dates in Ealing and at their Thursday sessions at the Marquee.’

      Brian Jones was also heading for the West End. His stage partner Paul Pond, the vocalist he needed to set off his slide guitar riffs, had decided to resume studying at Oxford (and would do so until being recruited into Manfred Mann as Paul Jones). Korner’s move back to Soho, taking Mick along, spurred Brian into forming a blues band of his own whose centre of gravity would be there rather than provincial Ealing. The fact that he was unknown in Soho did not deter him. He placed an ad in Jazz News, the most serious of all London’s music trades, inviting prospective sidemen to audition in the upstairs function room of a pub called the White Bear, just off Leicester Square. When its management caught him pilfering from the bar, he was forced to relocate to another pub, the Bricklayers Arms on Broadwick Street.

      His original plan had been to poach the two most talented members of a well-regarded band called Blues by Six, lead guitarist Geoff Bradford and vocalist Brian Knight. Soon after the move to the Bricklayers Arms, however, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards turned up, accompanied by the other most serious musician from the Blue Boys, Dick Taylor. There was nothing to stop Mick singing with Brian’s band as well as Blues Incorporated if he chose, but that spot already seemed to have been taken by Brian Knight. Fortunately for him, the instrumental mix as it stood simply did not work. Geoff Bradford wished only to play the authentic blues of Muddy Waters and his ilk and was offended by Keith’s Chuck Berry licks – as well as nervous of Brian’s kleptomania. After a couple of practice sessions, Bradford bowed out, loyally accompanied by his friend Knight, so leaving the way open for Mick and Keith.

      The only other worthwhile recruit was a burly, pugnacious-looking youth named Ian Stewart, a shipping clerk with the Imperial Chemical Industries corporation who arrived unpromisingly wearing too-brief leather cycling shorts and munching a pork pie, but who could play stride and barrelhouse piano as if he’d grown up around the New Orleans bordellos rather than in Ewell, Surrey. Just as appealing were his plain-spoken manner, dry wit and refusal to show his prospective bandmates the slightest reverence. ‘Stu’ was not only welcomed into the line-up but recognised as a natural friend and ally even by the cautious Mick – in his case, perhaps the only one who would always talk to him as an equal, refuse to flatter him and be unafraid to tell him the truth.

      Brian had now filled every spot in his blues band except that of drummer. It was the vital ingredient for any kind of ‘beat’ music, marking out the serious from the strum-along amateur. Drummers tended to be slightly older men with daytime jobs well paid enough for them to afford the £60 which a new professional kit could cost. Even mediocre players were as sought after as plumbers during burst pipe season and could take their pick from among the best Trad or rock ’n’ roll bands. Although Soho had a whole street of drummers for hire (Archer Street, where pro and semi-pro musicians congregated seeking work), none was likely to be tempted by a gaggle of young blues apostles without money, management or prospects. The Bricklayers Arms auditions did produce one promising candidate in Mick Avory, who sat in with the line-up a couple of times and seemed to fit in well enough. But he could see no future in playing behind this other Mick, and refused to commit himself permanently.

      There was also the question of what to name the band. Brian, whose prerogative it was, had endlessly agonised about it, rejecting all suggestions from Mick and Keith while thinking of nothing suitable himself. The problem was only resolved when he decided to advertise for gigs in Jazz News and had to come up with a name while dictating the small ad over the telephone. His impromptu choice of ‘the Rolling Stones’ was a further debt to Muddy Waters – not only Waters’s 1950 song ‘Rollin’ Stone’ but a lesser-known EP track, ‘Mannish Boy’, which includes the line ‘Oh, I’m a rollin’ stone.’

      To British ears it was an odd choice, less evocative of a blues master’s raunchy potted autobiography than of the sententious proverb recommending stagnation over adventure: ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’ Mick, Keith, Stu and Dick all protested that it made them sound halfway between a classical string quartet and an Irish show band, but the die was cast – and, after all, it was Brian’s group.

      Their big break was the end result of a rather brutal slap in the face for Mick. Alexis Korner’s success at the Marquee Club had by now not only galvanised Soho but come to the notice of the British Broadcasting Corporation in Portland Place, three-quarters of a mile to the north. As a result, completing Korner’s sense of vindication, Blues Incorporated were offered a live appearance on BBC radio’s Thursday night Jazz Club programme on 12 July. It was an opportunity not to be missed, even though it clashed with the band’s regular weekly show at the Marquee. So as not to disappoint their club audience, Long John Baldry, the Ealing Club’s queenly blond giant, was lined up to deputise for them.

      For this hugely important exposure on national radio, Korner did not want Mick to be his band’s sole vocalist but to perform in alternation with Art Wood, elder brother of the still-unknown schoolboy Ronnie. However, the parsimonious BBC would not pay for two singers on top of five instrumentalists. So Korner, figuring that Mick’s appeal was more visual than vocal, and thus of doubtful impact on radio, decided to drop him in favour of Art Wood. (In the end Art did not appear either, and the vocals were left to Cyril Davis.)

      As a consolation prize for Mick, Korner arranged that the band in which he’d been moonlighting should play their first-ever gig on the same night as the broadcast, filling the Marquee’s intermission spot between Long John Baldry’s sets for a £20 fee. They even received a mention in Jazz News’s preview section, on equal terms with all Soho’s most illustrious jazz names, Chris Barber, Ken Colyer and the like.

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