Fact #94306
When:
Short story:
Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones rents a flat in Edith Grove, Chelsea, London, UK, which will quickly become the band's base of operations.
Full article:
Keith Richards (guitarist, Rolling Stones) : Brian found an apartment out in the suburbs of Beckham and I started to live there, too. This was an intense learning period, figuring out Jimmy Reed and stuff.
Ian Stewart (pianist, Rolling Stones) The great thing was living in the flat together with no money and nothing to do but play. They really got off on this two-guitar player thing. And they pulled it off really well. All those old records usually featured two guitar players. So they absorbed a lot. They were young enough to be influenced in the heart rather than in the head.... By (1963), having lived together and done nothing else but listen to their records and tapes and play together, Brian and Keith had this guitar thing like you wouldn't believe. There was never any suggestion of a lead and a rhythm guitar player. They were two guitar players that were like somebody's right and left hand.
Keith Richards : When we started playing together, we were listening to Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters. In both cases, you had two guitars weaving around one another. We'd play those things so much - which is the way you have to do it - that we knew both parts. So then we got to the point where we got it really flash, and we suddenly switch. The one doing the lead picks up the rhythm and the one doing the rhythm picks up the lead... We still do it today. The Rolling Stones are basically a two-guitar band. That's how we started off. And the whole secret, if there IS any secret behind the sound of The Rolling Stones, is the way we work two guitars together.
Bill Wyman (bassist, Rolling Stones): Keith and Brian used to sit and all day long practice. When they weren't in bed, they would sit and practice note for note. Every Jimmy Reed song they could hear, every Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Chuck Berry, note for note. And they would do these amazing intricate patterns between the two guitars, one going down the scale and one going up and they would work on it for hours and hours. I mean, they really perfected that.
Keith Richards (guitarist, Rolling Stones) : We were living together, Brian, Mick and me, in this flat in Edith Grove with this cat Phelge, who's worth a brief mention 'cause he was as horrifyingly disgusting as Brian (Jones) and myself at the time. It was the most incredible scene: Mick was going through his first camp period. He would wander round in a blue-linen housecoat, wavin' his hands everywhere - [high-pitched voice] "Oh! Don't!" A real King's Road queen for about six months, and Brian and I used to take the piss out of him.
While Mick was on that kick, this guy Phelge was going through his phase, being the most disgusting person ever. You would walk into this pad, and he would be standing at the top of the stairs, completely nude except for his underpants, which would be filthy, on top of his head, and he'd be spitting at you. It wasn't a thing to get mad about; you'd just collapse laughing. Covered in spit, you'd collapse laughing.
And this pad is getting so screwed up. For, like, six months, we used the kitchen to play in, just rehearse in, because it was cold, and slowly, the place got filthy and started to smell, so we bolted The Doors and the kitchen was condemned.
At that time, I was into making tapes. I had a tape recorder with a microphone wired through the window in the cistern of the bog [toilet]. The tape recorder was at the foot of the bed. I had reels and reels of tapes of people goin' to the bog. Chains being pulled. On cheap tape recorders, if you record the flushing of a john, it sounds like people applauding. So Brian and I would put on a kind of show, like with the chick from downstairs: "And now, folks, Miss Judy What's-Her-Name." Every time somebody would go into the bog, I'd switch the tape recorder on and go round to the bog door and knock, and they'd say, "Wait a minute," and you'd get these conversations going through the door, followed at the end by applause. That's the sort of thing we were into. Real down-home.
Anyway, Brian was just about making enough - he had a job in a record store, after being fired from the electrical department of Whitely's for stealin' cash out of the till - to keep from being chucked out of this place. It was winter, the worst winter ever. It was down to taping our pants up, Scotch tape across the rips.
Dick Taylor (guitarist, Pretty Things) : At the time I left the Stones everybody was still getting along just fine. But that was at the start of the Edith Grove period. We didn't see much of each other 'til he lived in the basement flat of the house The Pretty Things had in Belgravia. By then Brian had changed quite a bit: the more paranoid side of his character was a lot more evident. Which wasn't to say his humour didn't still come out, but it was just darker, and the drink and drugs certainly emphasised his mood swings.
Keith Richards : The only thing that gave it character was the pong ... I mean that's where we sat around and basically concentrated every night on how to play together. We were endlessly listening to records and occasionally we went out and did a gig...
(Source : interview in The Sun newspaper, 2012)
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Ian Stewart (pianist, Rolling Stones) The great thing was living in the flat together with no money and nothing to do but play. They really got off on this two-guitar player thing. And they pulled it off really well. All those old records usually featured two guitar players. So they absorbed a lot. They were young enough to be influenced in the heart rather than in the head.... By (1963), having lived together and done nothing else but listen to their records and tapes and play together, Brian and Keith had this guitar thing like you wouldn't believe. There was never any suggestion of a lead and a rhythm guitar player. They were two guitar players that were like somebody's right and left hand.
Keith Richards : When we started playing together, we were listening to Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters. In both cases, you had two guitars weaving around one another. We'd play those things so much - which is the way you have to do it - that we knew both parts. So then we got to the point where we got it really flash, and we suddenly switch. The one doing the lead picks up the rhythm and the one doing the rhythm picks up the lead... We still do it today. The Rolling Stones are basically a two-guitar band. That's how we started off. And the whole secret, if there IS any secret behind the sound of The Rolling Stones, is the way we work two guitars together.
Bill Wyman (bassist, Rolling Stones): Keith and Brian used to sit and all day long practice. When they weren't in bed, they would sit and practice note for note. Every Jimmy Reed song they could hear, every Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Chuck Berry, note for note. And they would do these amazing intricate patterns between the two guitars, one going down the scale and one going up and they would work on it for hours and hours. I mean, they really perfected that.
Keith Richards (guitarist, Rolling Stones) : We were living together, Brian, Mick and me, in this flat in Edith Grove with this cat Phelge, who's worth a brief mention 'cause he was as horrifyingly disgusting as Brian (Jones) and myself at the time. It was the most incredible scene: Mick was going through his first camp period. He would wander round in a blue-linen housecoat, wavin' his hands everywhere - [high-pitched voice] "Oh! Don't!" A real King's Road queen for about six months, and Brian and I used to take the piss out of him.
While Mick was on that kick, this guy Phelge was going through his phase, being the most disgusting person ever. You would walk into this pad, and he would be standing at the top of the stairs, completely nude except for his underpants, which would be filthy, on top of his head, and he'd be spitting at you. It wasn't a thing to get mad about; you'd just collapse laughing. Covered in spit, you'd collapse laughing.
And this pad is getting so screwed up. For, like, six months, we used the kitchen to play in, just rehearse in, because it was cold, and slowly, the place got filthy and started to smell, so we bolted The Doors and the kitchen was condemned.
At that time, I was into making tapes. I had a tape recorder with a microphone wired through the window in the cistern of the bog [toilet]. The tape recorder was at the foot of the bed. I had reels and reels of tapes of people goin' to the bog. Chains being pulled. On cheap tape recorders, if you record the flushing of a john, it sounds like people applauding. So Brian and I would put on a kind of show, like with the chick from downstairs: "And now, folks, Miss Judy What's-Her-Name." Every time somebody would go into the bog, I'd switch the tape recorder on and go round to the bog door and knock, and they'd say, "Wait a minute," and you'd get these conversations going through the door, followed at the end by applause. That's the sort of thing we were into. Real down-home.
Anyway, Brian was just about making enough - he had a job in a record store, after being fired from the electrical department of Whitely's for stealin' cash out of the till - to keep from being chucked out of this place. It was winter, the worst winter ever. It was down to taping our pants up, Scotch tape across the rips.
Dick Taylor (guitarist, Pretty Things) : At the time I left the Stones everybody was still getting along just fine. But that was at the start of the Edith Grove period. We didn't see much of each other 'til he lived in the basement flat of the house The Pretty Things had in Belgravia. By then Brian had changed quite a bit: the more paranoid side of his character was a lot more evident. Which wasn't to say his humour didn't still come out, but it was just darker, and the drink and drugs certainly emphasised his mood swings.
Keith Richards : The only thing that gave it character was the pong ... I mean that's where we sat around and basically concentrated every night on how to play together. We were endlessly listening to records and occasionally we went out and did a gig...
(Source : interview in The Sun newspaper, 2012)