Fact #187062
When:
Short story:
The Rolling Stones record their debut single, a cover version of the Chuck berry song Come On, at Olympic Studios, London, England, UK, Europe.
Full article:
Keith Grant (co-founder, Olympic Studios) : A BBC producer called Jimmy Grant, who was a mate of mine, rang me up and said, 'I'm going out to see this group in Richmond, do you want to come with me? So I picked him up and we went down and there was this absolutely terrible band there! So we went and had a pint and we just thought 'Forget that.' But about three days later, Roger Savage, who was one of my very good protégé assistants, said, 'Andrew Oldham's got this little band and he wants to do a session - do you mind if we do it as a freebie?' And I said, 'Yeah', because I loved to give the guys chances to get their hands on the knobs. And Roger played it to me the next morning and I said, 'Bloody hell, that's good! What's the band called?' and he said, 'The Rolling Stones'. I said, 'Oh, come on!' - no pun intended - 'You're joking, I went to see these with Jimmy and they were awful!' It was the same band and it was a pretty damn good record! Then Eric Easton, the group's other manager, rang the studio the next morning to say 'We'd like to actually pay for the session.' So I think Roger got four pounds, 10 shillings for his engineering for the night, and that was 'Come On'…”
(Source : http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug12/articles/keith-grant.htm)
Keith Richards (guitarist, Rolling Stones) : We were always doing other people's material but we thought we'd have a go at that - Oh, it sounds catchy. And it worked out. At the time it was done just to get a record out. We never wanted to hear it. The idea was Andrew's - to get a strong single so they'd let us make an album which back then was a privilege.
Pete Meaden (publicst) : I'd been knocking around with The Rolling Stones, Andrew Oldham, the manager of The Rolling Stones, who had Andrew Logan, and I was his first business partner in a company called Image. We were doing things, and I went to Spain for seven months, came back from Spain, I met the Stones on my first morning back, they were recording Come On and Money, at Decca, West Hampstead. I saw Andrew in the studio, pushing up the control knobs on the deck there, all I could see him doing was bringing up bass lines, and the high treble on the top end of the guitar line, and putting Mick's voice forward, and there was Bill there. He had a great pair of trousers - they were stove-pipe trousers, which I was very much impressed by, 'cos I was very much into clothes.
(Source : Steve Turner feature in NME, November 17, 1979)
Tweet this Fact
(Source : http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug12/articles/keith-grant.htm)
Keith Richards (guitarist, Rolling Stones) : We were always doing other people's material but we thought we'd have a go at that - Oh, it sounds catchy. And it worked out. At the time it was done just to get a record out. We never wanted to hear it. The idea was Andrew's - to get a strong single so they'd let us make an album which back then was a privilege.
Pete Meaden (publicst) : I'd been knocking around with The Rolling Stones, Andrew Oldham, the manager of The Rolling Stones, who had Andrew Logan, and I was his first business partner in a company called Image. We were doing things, and I went to Spain for seven months, came back from Spain, I met the Stones on my first morning back, they were recording Come On and Money, at Decca, West Hampstead. I saw Andrew in the studio, pushing up the control knobs on the deck there, all I could see him doing was bringing up bass lines, and the high treble on the top end of the guitar line, and putting Mick's voice forward, and there was Bill there. He had a great pair of trousers - they were stove-pipe trousers, which I was very much impressed by, 'cos I was very much into clothes.
(Source : Steve Turner feature in NME, November 17, 1979)