Fact #173071

Mike Wilcock (gig organiser) : I phoned this agent in London called Tito Burns, and he said to me 'I've got this band who are a bit different and it'll cost £95 but they are a great rhythm and blues act.'

I was worried I had made a huge mistake. Nobody had heard of them (The Rolling Stones) at the time and £95 was a lot of money in those days because I was only on £12 a week.'

I was most worried because they were a southern group and I wasn't sure they would work up north where the Mersey scene was doing so well - I could have booked The Searchers for £75.

But I heard them on the radio and I could see them attracting an audience so I decided to take a chance.

The tickets cost five shillings each or six shillings on the door and I needed to sell 400 tickets to break even. We sold 2,000 tickets.

My mother told me to be careful of those long-haired types because they might have fleas but they all looked very smart. They all had nice white shirts and pinned down black ties. Jagger's Chelsea boots were so shiny it looked as if his mother had polished them. Brian Jones was painfully shy and quiet. They weren't extroverts at all, unlike The Who because when I booked those, Keith Moon was just mad.

But when they went on stage the crowd just stood there in awe of them because they had never heard the kind of way-out blues music they were playing.

The band didn't need to say anything, because their music made a statement; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry.

There were people sitting on the stage close enough to have grabbed Mick Jagger by the knee if he hadn't been leaping about that stage and I remember thinking back then what a great guitarist Keith Richards was.

Anyway, they played two sets of about 45 minutes each and between sets they came back to the bar for a few drinks.

They just had a cigarette and a pint between gigs because no-one really knew what drugs were at that point and they didn't have any groupies because no-one recognised them.

So it was myself, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, their manager and one or two others, and I was standing so close to Mick I could have put my arm around him.

It was strange, I was a little bit in awe of him having seen them play, and I thought to myself 'What have I got in common with these London students?' so I didn't say anything to him.

But I did take a picture of him as we stood there on an old black and white 35mm camera I had.

To me they were a very good band who played good music but you couldn't foretell that they would go stratospheric.

They started in about May 1963 and I had them in the September.

But in 1964 they released Satisfaction and I think that's when I realised I should have booked them another six times but when I went back to Tito, he said they had already outgrown us.

I had three years in the music industry and it was the best three years of my life.

Booking The Stones was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, I was lucky. But not lucky enough that the Sports And Social Club gave me any of the money I earned for them that night.
(Source : interview by Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo, 2006)