MUSIC
The blues songs The Rolling Stones played at their first-ever gig
July 11th, 1962: Mick Jagger shuffles around backstage at the Marquee Club. He’s been too nervous to eat properly for days. There’s hardly anything in him to hold up his cadaverous frame. He could swallow a dinner plate and it would drop straight out the other end like a coin in a faulty vending machine, briefly held up by the butterflies fluttering in his stomach. This is not just because it’s The Rolling Stones’ first gig but because they happened to be debuting at the notoriously snobbish Marquee Club.
Those running the venue made matters worse when they headed backstage to check on the young kids mulling about there skittishly, beset by pre-show jitters. They looked like hip vagabonds. The trad jazz purists in the lounge, all of them dressed as though Jack Kerouac had scored a modelling contract with Marks & Spencer, would immediately be put off by this scruffy, vaguely psychedelic assortment, and now the Stones were being informed of this.
Suddenly, the realities of rock ‘n’ were dawning on the middle-class youngsters. So far, they had been buoyed by a love of the blues and breakthrough acts like The Beatles to such an extent that it barely crossed their minds that they couldn’t just stroll out there, exhibit a raw sense of fucklessness and a passion for R&B, and have the world open up to them. So, in a manner befitting of the band we now know, they made their first bold move of many and simply doubled down, refused to change, and headed out onto the stage early to unprofessionally tune in front of the audience.
This boldness had been something their leader, Brian Jones, had always displayed with crooked aplomb. As a kid, he had been plagued by asthma and croup that cast him as somewhat of an outsider at his grammar school, but he relished this position, and when the big moments came, he rose to the fore. As his childhood friend Dick Hattrell would recall, “He was a rebel without a cause, but when examinations came he was brilliant.”
In his view, the biggest exam of his life lay ahead, and it was the destiny of The Rolling Stones to pass muster. So, he rallied around his buddies – Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Ian Stewart and the other musicians whose presence is disputed in the blur of the whole thing: Elmo Lewis, Dick Taylor and Mick Avory – and vowed that they go out there and give it some.
This call to arms became all the more important when they began to play, and boos quickly rang out from the trad jazz segment of the crowd. Thankfully, for the sake of the future of rock ‘n’ roll, there were some mods amongst them who were rather more appreciative of the visceral vagabonds playing something new. They hushed the naysayers with all the subtlety of a policeman’s knock and aggressively danced out their appreciation.
This created a violent divide within the room. The band played on, lapping it up. Clashes and skirmishes bought them just enough time to get swinging, and when the room settled down, their sound was steadily gathering. The first song on this offending front was fittingly written by a couple of teenagers back in 1952, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller – the same kids who had been moved to mould the future of rock when they raced home and wrote ‘Hound Dog’ after witnessing Big Mama Thornton blow their minds with a blues show for the ages – so, with the same youthful vigour as the pair who had spawned it, the band raced through ‘Kansas City’ as a statement opener.
As the mods and trads began clashing, the band quickly smashed through ‘Baby What’s Wrong’ before finding their swing in the lively equanimity that followed the early commotion with Chuck Berry’s ‘Confessin’ The Blues’. A solid 90 minutes later, after all 20 songs had been blared out, the band stumbled out into the early hours of a Friday morning, giddy with having survived the Marquee Club’s famed Thursday night slot. The ring of the second group, Long John Baldry, was still sore in their ears, and the freshness of the summer air on Oxford Street almost hurt their lungs in contrast to the smoky lounge they’d just departed, heaving it down with giddy glee.
They hadn’t pleased everyone, but the blues songs below scribbled on a handwritten setlist, had gone down just well enough, and with a raucous originality, to ensure that they’d be back in a hurry.
What songs did The Rolling Stones play at their first gig?
1.‘Kansas City’ – Little Willie Littlefield
2.‘Baby What’s Wrong’ – Jimmy Reed
3.‘Confessin’ The Blues’ – Chuck Berry
4.‘Bright Lights, Big City’ – Jimmy Reed
5.‘Dust My Broom’ – Elmore James
6.‘I’m a Love You’ – Jimmy Reed
7.‘Bad Boy’ – Eddie Taylor
8.‘I Ain’t Got You’ – Jimmy Reed
9.‘Hush Hush’ – Jimmy Reed
10.‘Down the Road Apiece’ – Chuck Berry
11.‘Blues Before Sunrise’ – Elmore James
12.‘Happy Home’ – Elmore James
13.‘Ride Em On Down’ – Eddie Taylor
14.‘Back in the USA’ – Chuck Berry
15.‘Kind of Lonesome’ – Jimmy Reed
16.‘Big Boss Man’ – Jimmy Reed
17.‘Don’t Stay Out All Night’ – Billy Boy Arnold
18.‘Tell Me That You Love Me’ – Paul Anka
19.‘Doing the Crawdaddy’ – Bo Diddley
20.‘Got My Mo-Jo Woking’ – Ann Cole
