Rolling in the deep: Stones still going, 57 years after their live debut

I have, on many occasion, used this platform to write about my fascination with the suburban British roots of some of rock's biggest global superstars, especially Eric Clapton and others who (like me) emanate from the Surrey/south-west London borders. These suburbs also play a part in, arguably, the most enduring success story of London's musical product, The Rolling Stones, who are - as I write - in the midst of their delayed US 'No Filter' tour, heading for New Orleans (along with Hurricane Barry, which is about to batter the Louisiana coastline).

That the Stones are, in 2019, still rolling is all the more remarkable when you consider that they played their first official gig under the name 'Mick Jagger & The Rollin' Stones' on this very day, 57 years ago, at London's Marquee Club, as it once was at 165 Oxford Street.

"It is quite amazing when you think about it," Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine on the gig's 50th anniversary. "But it was so long ago. Some of us are still here, but it's a very different group than the one that played 50 years ago." The line-up that night included Jagger, Brian Jones and Keith Richards, but not Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, who would join the Stones later.

The significance of that first gig is even more remarkable when you consider its chronological place: Jagger and Richards had only rekindled their childhood friendship the previous October, when they famously met on Platform 2 of Dartford railway station, the latter enamoured by the Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry records under crook of the future Stones frontman's arm. By the following spring they were members of the Blues Boys quintet, which later led to their involvement in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated on the other side of London at the Ealing Jazz club, prompting Jagger and Richards to start jamming with the outfit (which also included Jones, Watts and eventual Stones keyboard player Ian Stewart). The jams led to the formation of a group playing cod covers of Berry and Waters numbers. Given the confected rivalry between the Stones and The Beatles, it should be remembered that the Liverpudlian band had, at this point, yet to sign with George Martin and Parlophone, or even release a single. The 'British invasion' was yet to commence.

By the time the new combo - which featured future Kinks drummer Mick Avory (according to Richards' autobiography Life) - managed to get booked for the Marquee, Jagger was still studying at the London School of Economics and just a couple of weeks shy of his 19th birthday. Like Richards, he was still living at home. The older Jones had migrated to London from Cheltenham and was already living the dream. The gig itself came about by a happy accident: Blues Incorporated were the Marquee's regular Thursday night band, but they'd been invited to do a live BBC radio broadcast elsewhere. Jones used his considerable charm to persuade the Marquee's owner, Harold Pendleton, to let their new group fill in. It was then, with Jones the band's de facto figurehead, that he got in touch with the local listings magazine Jazz News to plug the gig. When asked for the band's name, he caught a copy of Muddy Waters' Best Of album out of the corner of his eye, and saw the track listing for the song Rollin' Stone. A legend - one which remains to this day arguably the most enduring of the rock era - was born.

As for the gig itself, the Stones performed a sweaty 18 songs, all blues covers including Bright Lights, Big City, Kind of Lonesome and Blues Before Sunrise, ending with Elmore James' Happy Home. Jones pocketed six pounds in old money, while the rest took home five each. Even so, for those days and for their age, not a bad wage for a night's work, and the foundation of the money-making machine to which the Rolling Stones would become adept.

When celebrating the gig's 50th anniversary in 2012, Jagger was somewhat uneasy about the landmark: "Part of me goes, 'We’re slightly cheating,' because it’s not the same band, you know," he told Rolling Stone. "Still the same name. It's only Keith and myself that are the same people, I think. I've tried to find out when Charlie's first gig was, and none of us can really remember and no one really knows. But it's an amazing achievement, and I think it's fantastic and you know I'm very proud of it." Richards, ever the contrarian, was less fussed about the anniversary: "...[we] always really consider '63 to be 50 years, because Charlie didn’t actually join until January. So we look upon 1962 as sort of the 'year of conception'. But the birth is next year."

Even so, the now-near 60-year-old band, continuing to bowl over audiences over with their exuberant brand of blues, their showmanship, their sheer corporate might (The Rolling Stones BV is actually incorporated in Amsterdam for reasons, I'm told, of tax efficiency rather than Keith's proximity to the city's delights...). Even so, as they finally kicked off their No Filter tour earlier this week in Chicago - delayed due to Mick Jagger's heart surgery - the band, with a combined age of its core membership of 300, were every bit as dazzling as they've ever been, playing songs like Street Fighting Man, Tumbling Dice, Sympathy For The Devil, Paint It Black and a ten-minute version of Satisfaction with as much vibrancy as a band a quarter their age.

Picture: Facebook/The Rolling Stones

After all these years of mega tours like this one, not to mention the some 24 studio albums they've recorded (with another on the way), plus all the Glimmer Twins aggro and regular splits and spats, it would be easy to look upon the Rolling Stones as some vaudeville act still pounding the boards, six decades on from their first outing. Having seen them four times in my life (with the last one, in Amsterdam 13 years ago one of the best ever), I'd still like to see them one more time. For all their success, their wealth and all that comes with it, the Stones today are still, largely, the blues purists they were on this day in 1962. The Beatles and other contemporaries may have given way to psychedelia and progressiveness - and that's absolutely fine - but the Stones have never wavered from their core interest in 57 years (with the exception of the faux disco of Miss You), With that, they have retained and even reinvigorated their zest for what they do and have always done best. And, even if they have lost original members, inevitably like most of their contemporaries from the 1960s, the Stones today are still a force. A nature-defying one at that.