Following the article about Paul Berriff’s photographs of rock legends (T&A, October 2), T&A correspondent Iain Morris, of Saltaire, recalls his first Rolling Stones concert.
“I first saw The Rolling Stones 50 years ago as a 16-year-old starting out in the Lower 6th, with a group of friends from the Moravian Church School at Fulneck in Pudsey.
“The Stones had just released their first single, Come On, and were playing at the foot of the bill on the Everly Brothers tour at The Gaumont in Bradford.”
Don and Phil Everly’s recording career had started six years earlier with the release of Bye Bye Love, a big hit for them.
But in 1963, the sweet harmonies of the Everlys seemed like the end of an era and the start of a new one to Mr Morris.
“Someone famous once said the 60s really started in 1963,” he added.
He’s right, it was the poet Philip Larkin. The first verse of his poem Annus Mirabilis goes: “Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP...”
Mr Morris continues: “I saw them (the Stones) again topping the bill a couple of years later at the same venue when a student at the Leeds College of Art.
“I seem to remember some shows at the Gaumont having an earlier and later house so that groups played twice in the same evening.”
Mr Morris is right. In the early to mid-1960s, groups – they were only called bands later, towards the 1970s, when long player was Americanised to ‘album’ – were sent round the country on package tours. At each venue, acts did a slot of varying length, depending on where they were placed on the bill.
Solo shows were comparatively rare. Bob Dylan’s first UK tour in the spring of 1965 was such a rarity. When he returned the following year, he brought a rock band with him.
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