5th June 1964 - San Bernardino, California, Swing Auditorium. First gig of the Stones' first US tour.
Photographs by Fred Bauman and others (probably photos from the concert).
На фотографиях:
Часть 1. Прибытие.
Часть 2. Шоу начинается!
Часть 3. За кулисами до концерта(Мик в черной футболке с красными горизонтальными полосами) и после концерта (в раздевалке и возле автобуса).
Friday, June 5th. The group took a coach trip to San Bernardino, 62 miles away LA. Accompanying them was Bob Bonis, their American road manager. After more interviews for both TV and press, the group performed their first American concert at Swing Auditorium (4,400 audience). Also on the bill were Bobby Vee (whose 20-year old saxophonist was Bobby Keys), The Chiffons, Bobby Goldsboro and Bobby Comstock.
So, San Bernardino. But How and Why?
One version is that local promoter Bob Lewis had tried to sign the Beatles, and when that deal fell through, he was offered the Rolling Stones as a consolation prize through a New York booking agency.
“I had never heard of them,” Lewis told "The Sun"’s John Weeks in 2013, “but my son said they were cool, so I said OK.”
Another version of the story is that San Bernardino radio station KMEN was the driving force.
Disc jockey Bill Watson had been playing the album “England’s Newest Hit Makers” on the air in its entirety, to great response, after a tip from a young English expatriate that the Stones would be big, according to a 2018 story by Craig Shultz about Watson’s death.
Watson liked to say that he contacted Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham in London and urged him to bring the band here.
To Oldham’s question, “Where’s San Bernardino?”, Watson is said to have replied cannily, “It’s a suburb of Hollywood.”
Opened in 1949, Swing was named for a state senator rather than a style of dance. By 1964 it had transitioned from grownup entertainment by Jack Benny, Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis Jr. to the teen sounds of the Beach Boys and Dick Dale and the Del-Tones.
...When the Stones came onstage, they were greeted by a minute-long crescendo of screaming. Fans jumped up onto the venue’s chairs and stayed there the whole show.
Helmeted deputies from the sheriff’s riot squad surrounded the stage to keep order. Hysterical girls broke through the lines four separate times to hug and kiss band members. In each case, they were half-carried, half-dragged off.
At Swing, the band to have performed 11 songs, covering “Not Fade Away,” " I Wanna Be Your Man", “Can I Get a Witness”,"Beautiful Delilah", “Hi-Heel Sneakers”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You”. They played only one original, “Tell Me.”
In a nod to the hometown crowd, the Stones performed “Route 66,” the song from their first album that name-checks San Bernardino. The audience went wild.
The group boarded the coach back to LA, after the show.
“Actually, the first gig was in San Bernardino. It was a straight gas, man. They all knew the songs and they were all bopping. It was like being back home. “Ah, love these American gigs” and “Route 66” mentioned San Bernardino, so everybody was into it. The next gig was Omaha with the motorcycles and 600 kids. Then you get deflated. That’s what stopped us from turning into pop stars then, we were always having those continual complete somebody hittin’ you in the face, “Don’t forget, boy.” Then we really had to work America and it really got the band together. We’d fallen off in playing in England ’cause nobody was listening, we’d do four numbers and be gone. Don’t blink, you’ll miss us."
- Keith Richards
Примечания:
Спасибо Ларри Мариону (Larry Marion) за его помощь, дружескую поддержку и содействие..
Использованные источники: "It's Only Rock-N-Roll: The Ultimate Guide to the Rolling Stones" by James Karnbach & Carol Beanson (1997),"Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.com"(2019),"The Rolling Stone Interview: Keith Richards" by Robert Greenfield (Rolling Stone, 19 August 1971),"Good Times Bad Times: The Definitive Diary of the Rolling Stones 1960-1969"(1997).