Saturday, June 27, 2009

Gillian's Found Photos #17

This week's edition of Gillian's Found Photos carries on last week's look at the Murray The K holiday shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theater. That's the Rolling Stones onstage. Playing in front of the curtain, which is drawn, I find that a bit odd. Brian looks rather lonely all the way over on the left. Can anyone date this? Does anyone know what songs they played? Generally the acts only did 2-3 songs. I assume this was before Satisfaction which really changed things for the Stones. Until Satisfaction they weren't all that big a deal in the States. They were well known, appeared on all the big TV shows: Ed Sullivan, Dean Martin (he made fun of them), Shindig, but certainly they were nowhere as big as the Beatles. In fact, the way I remember it, the Dave Clark 5 and Herman's Hermit's were bigger than the Stones in 1964. History tells us the Stones were the second biggest group of the British Intrusion, but as we know history is often wrong. And in the case of rock'n'roll, controlled and written by morons and hacks. The Rolling Stones struggled for a year and a half to make it in the States, only grabbing the #2 slot after Satisfaction went to #1 in the summer of '65, leading off an incredible string of hit singles that would last nearly eight years. Up until then, It's All Over Now and Time Is On My Side were their biggest hits, both were covers, and neither of them went to #1. I do remember The Last Time, issued a few months before Satisfaction as totally blowing my six year old mind with it's guitar sound. I'd been following the Stones since I got their first album for Christmas 1964,
but nobody else I knew seemed to care that much about them until the following summer. Not that I had a wide social circle at age six, but I knew they were cooler than Herman's Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers, or the Monkees. It's almost forty years since Brian Jones died, I've been thinking about him a lot. More on the subject to come. Here's the Dean Martin clip:

7 comments:

roscoe said...

Wild photos.
Those are the large Fender cabinets that they only made in '64/65

Anonymous said...

Possibly the Rolling Stones second tour of America fall, 1964. BJones didn't used the Vox long, this is long before Satisfaction.

Peter said...

There is no record anywhere -- in programs or news clippings -- of the Stones playing at the Fox. Carnegie Hall, yes. The Fox, no. In fact, when Murray held his Fox extravaganzas, the closed curtain had an enormous "K" hung in front of it, and that's nowhere to be seen. The only English groups of any renown who played on Murray's bills were The Zombies (Christmas '64), Peter & Gordon (Christmas '66), Cream, and The Who, both of the last two debuting at the RKO 58th St Theater -- the venue of Murray's last live show -- in 1967.

Unknown said...

they probly played in front of the curtain so the stage could be struck and/or set up for the main act.

I'm sure they were first or second on the bill at that point, yeah?

skylolo99 said...

Great photos and real nice post-
Stanley Booth's Dancing With the Devil really captures the Stones climb to the top wonderfully.

The Hound said...

"the only English groups of any renown who played on Murray's bills were The Zombies (Christmas '64), Peter & Gordon (Christmas '66),''

There's pix of both of those groups in the same batch....

The Hound said...

"Stanley Booth's Dancing With the Devil really captures the Stones climb to the top wonderfully."

Re-printed as The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, it's far and away the most literate and interesting book about the Stones. There's also a collection of his magazine work called rythm oil that's worth picking up.

Let's Hear It For The Orchestra

Let's Hear It For The Orchestra
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