Their performance lasted about half an hour and they sung about eight numbers, although because of all the noise the fans were making, and the primitive sound system on stage, you couldn’t hear anything and couldn’t even tell which songs they were doing – they may as well have sung ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’ and nobody would have noticed – but the fans were happy having seen their idols.
Brian Shaw, photographer at the gig
September 14th 1964, Ron Chesterman stumbles out of the ABC cinema in Love Street, Chester, his ears ringing with the amplified sound of electric guitars and the screaming of schoolgirls packed tightly inside. The smell of sweaty young bodies clings to him as insistently as a well-knotted winding sheet.
All evening, while the attention of the girls around him is focussed on the pouting vocalist and the plump little rhythm guitarist with his mop of blonde hair, Ron only has eyes for the bassist. Not that he fancies him, nor is it the case that this bloke Wyman is a particularly good bass player. Ron should know as that’s his instrument. He just likes the guy’s anti-popstar style. He plays as if the audience were not there, plucking out his percussive bass lines while he stares into the middle distance and feigns indifference to the chaos all around him, but inwardly he is aware of every sound and movement in the room and every gaze that fixes itself upon him. If Ron was to become a popstar that is the kind of image he wants to project: not a preening pretty boy but a serious musician. No screaming schoolgirls for him, but a following of sophisticated young women who like music, poetry and history; the kind you never met in a place like Chester.
Rolling Stones on stage in Chester. Courtesy of Brian Shaw/Mirrorpix
He plays out this musical career in his head as he walks home. The medieval walls are not the quickest way to his bus, but he likes to walk them at this time of night. The stones beneath his feet sing out to him as he strides along in his Chelsea boots and the glowing tip of his Embassy filter lights the way ahead. Snatches of conversation wash over him as he passes couples and groups of Friday night revellers walking the opposite way. Underneath this, in lower register, a drone of other voices, Latin, Norse and Middle English, leaches out of the stones and seeps into the deeper realms of his consciousness. He turns his mind to the evening’s show. The Stones played for no more than half an hour and fucked off after just eight numbers. Bastardised Mississippi blues masquerading as British pop, turning the howling pain of slavery into pound notes for white men. He rehearses the argument in his mind, though he is less than certain he will find anyone to listen.
Ron Chesterman, bottom left. Courtesy of StrawbsWeb
I want a music that honours the blues and not one that appropriates it for a quick buck. He turns and looks back at the old bloke who had just passed him: had he inadvertently just said that out loud? No matter. Real blues is what we need, and real folk music from this country too. I want traditional instruments and electric guitars blasting away on the same stage. Not that you’d ever get anything like that in Chester, the best we can manage is The Black fucking Abbots.
Disclaimer: Ron’s encounter at the ABC cinema in Chester and his subsequent thoughts and ruminations are a work of fiction from the imagination of the author. And there is no such band as the Rolling Stones in real life either.
