On this date in 1963, The Rolling Stones started a Sunday night residency at The Crawdaddy Club, located at the back of The Station Hotel in Surrey, England.
The Stones were paid £24 ($41) for the gig. This first gig was not a commercial success; Giorgio Gomelsky, the club promoter, had to plead with customers of the main hotel to attend, offering two entries for the price of one ticket—it ended up with a total of 66 people.
And it was at the Crawdaddy Club The Stones met The Beatles on 14 April 1963. “Halfway through the set we kind of glanced up, and there were four silhouetted leather-clad persons standing just in front of the bandstand in amongst all these kids who were all dancing and playing around,” Bill Wyman recalled, noting that John, Paul, George and Ringo were “being totally ignored by the audience.” “I turned round to Charlie [Watts], and I said, ‘It’s the Beatles!’ They’d had two or three big No. 1 hits and they were like the rave of England at that time. So when we finished our set, we got chatting to them and had beers, and they stayed for the second set.”
After the show, the two groups went back to the Chelsea flat shared by Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Keith Richards. “We hung out all night playing blues music, just talking about music and became great mates.”
Did you see the stage dive? Most prolly the first ever stage dive in rock ‘n’ roll history!
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Featured image via British GQ/Terry O’Neill.
