Филип Норман – Mick Jagger (страница 15)
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
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
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
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
By rights, the paper should have sought details from the loquacious and articulate Brian, but instead, because of the Korner connection, it contacted Mick. Consequently, he rather than Brian seemed like the leader of the band as he listed its personnel and showed a twinge of unease lest its new name should offend the Marquee’s purist blues audience. Brian, for some reason, had decided to revert to his slide-guitar alter ego for the occasion, so was not even identified: ‘Mick Jagger, R&B vocalist, is taking a rhythm and blues group into the Marquee tomorrow night while Blues Inc. is doing its Jazz Club gig. Called “The Rolling Stones” [“I hope they don’t think we’re a rock ’n’ roll outfit,” said Mick], the line-up is: Jagger (vocals), Keith Richards, Elmo Lewis (guitars), Dick Taylor (bass), “Stu” (piano) and Mick Avory (drums).’
So that night of 12 July 1962, under the pink-and-white canvas awning of the Marquee stage, Mick sang with the Rolling Stones for the very first time. To set off his cord trousers, he wore a horizontally striped matelot jersey, common enough among young men in the South of France but in London chiefly identified with girls or sexually ambiguous ‘chorus boys’ in West End musicals. As blues-singing attire, it was as daring as the white frilly dress he would select for an open-air show at the other end of Oxford Street seven years later.
The hour-long set consisted mostly of irreproachable blues and R&B standards by Jimmy Reed, Elmore James and Billy Boy Arnold, with the odd Chuck Berry like ‘Down the Road Apiece’ and ‘Back in the USA’ (‘New York, Los Angeles, oh, how I yearn for you . . .’). As Mick Avory did not, after all, play drums that night, the sound had considerably less attack than usual. Even so, many hard-core blues Marqueesards could not dissociate the word
Among the crowd that night was Charlie Watts, the drummer who occasionally played for Blues Incorporated but more regularly for Blues by Six, the band that was supposed to have given the Rolling Stones both a lead guitarist and a vocalist. Charlie was the epitome of the superior drummer class, immaculately dressed and barbered, with the almost tragically serious face of a latter-day Buster Keaton. True to form, he showed no outward emotion as the stripe-jerseyed figure onstage blew the ‘harp’ passages in Jimmy Reed’s ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ as if it were an erotic rite rather than a religious one. But, as he would recall, the highly esteemed blues and jazz musicians of his acquaintanceship all suddenly seemed like ‘eccentric old men’ compared with Mick.
Afterwards, collecting their £4 apiece (enough in these days to buy three LPs, dinner for two at an Angus Steakhouse or a pair of boots from the modish Regent Shoe store), Brian, Mick, Keith, Dick and Stu felt they had connected with the Marquee crowd at least enough to be offered further regular work there. But Harold Pendleton still considered them to be infected with rock ’n’ roll virus, if not in their repertoire then in the energy of their sound and the body language and flying hair of their front man. He would use them only as an interval band and with the worst possible grace, muttering that they were ‘bloody rockers’ and their R&B idols were ‘rubbish’.
Brian’s adverts in