Fifty years ago, The Rolling Stones played their first gig at London’s Marquee Jazz Club. On that night, the newly minted Rolling Stones featured Mick Jagger on vocals, guitarists Brian Jones and Keith Richards, pianist Ian Stewart and bassist Dick Taylor. The identity of the drummer who joined them that fateful night is still infamously up for debate, but as best as Richards can recall, it was friend Mick Avory.
The young R&B band borrowed money from Jagger’s dad to rent equipment for the gig. “My parents were extremely disapproving of it all,” Jagger told Rolling Stone decades later. “Because it was just not done. It was for very low-class people, remember. Rock ‘n’ roll singers weren’t educated people.” In Life, Richards recalled playing a few of the songs: “Dust My Broom,” “Got My Mojo Working” and “Confessin’ the Blues” were all on The Stones’ first set. “You’re sitting with some guys, and you’re playing and you go, ‘Ooh yeah!’ That feeling is worth more than anything,” he wrote.
Perhaps it’s a feeling that the band would like to recapture. The Rolling Stones — Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts — celebrated Thursday by attending a photo exhibition chronicling their career at London’s Somerset House. There, Richards confirmed that they have met up for a number of rehearsals. “There’s things in the works, there’s so nothing final that I can say,” Richards told BBC News of the prospect of a live return. “We’re playing around with the idea and had a couple of rehearsals – we’ve got together lately and it feels so good. I think, soon! I think it’s definitely happening. But when? I can’t say yet.” He later added: “There might be life in the old dog yet — we’ll die gracefully, elegantly wasted.”
Official plans to commemorate The Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary have not yet been set. It was earlier reported that The Stones will not tour to mark their anniversary this year. Instead, the anniversary tour has reportedly been pushed back to 2013. Despite earlier reports of reuniting in the studio, Jagger has denied such claims. The Rolling Stones’ last tour together, 2005’s “A Bigger Bang,” was, at the time, the highest-grossing tour of all time before being topped by U2’s 2009-2011 tour, 360.
