Fifty-one years ago today, the Rolling Stones played their first featured gig at the famed Marquee Club, a popular jazz haunt in London. That night, the Stones lucked out when the regular house band, Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated (whom Stones lead singer Mick Jagger often performed with), forewent their usual set at Marquee to appear on a live BBC broadcast.
So Mick and the boys—who were so financially strapped they had to borrow cash to rent equipment for the show—seized the opportunity. Remembering the night in his 2010 memoir, Life, Keith Richards said, “There’s a certain moment when you realize that you’ve actually left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you….It’s flying without a license.”
The group’s lineup for the show at Marquee has often been debated, with most of the questions surrounding the identity of the drummer. Richards believes it was his longtime friend Mick Avory, who was known to practice with the group from time to time. But others contend that it was drummer Tony Chapman, who, along with Jagger, Richards, guitarist Brian Jones, pianist Ian Stewart and bassist Dick Taylor, rocked the club performing tracks such as “Kansas City,” “Baby What’s Wrong,” “Confessin’ the Blues,” “Bright Lights, Big City” and “Bad Boy.”
Source: DoYouRemember
