Nik Cohn on The Rolling Stones

Posting about Brian Jones today and listening through to all four sides of that wonderful compilation of their sixties stuff Rolled Gold now made me think of this great passage about the band:

From Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom.

'In Liverpool, one time early in 1965, I was sitting in some pub, just next to the Odeon Cinema,, and I heard a noise like thunder.

I went outside and looked around but I couldn't see a thing. Just this noise of thunder, slowly getting closer, and also, more faint, a noise like a wailing siren. So I waited but nothing happened. The street stayed empty. 

Finally, after maybe five full minutes, a car came round the corner, a big flash limousine, and it was followed by police cars, by police on foot and police on motorbikes, and they were followed by several hundred teenage girls. And these girls made a continuous high-pitched keening sound and their shoes banged down against the stone. They ran like hell, their hair down in their eyes, and they stretched their arms out pleadingly as they went. They were desperate.

The limousine came up the street towards me and stopped directly outside the Odeon stage door. The police formed cordons. Then the car door opened and the Rolling Stones got out, all five of them and Andrew Loog Oldham their manager, and they weren't real. They had hair down past their shoulders and they wore clothes of every colour imaginable, and they looked mean, they looked just impossibly evil.

In this grey street they shone just like sun gods. They didn't seem human, they were like creatures off another planet, impossible to reach or understand but most exotic, most beautiful in their ugliness.

They crossed towards the stage door and this was what the girls had been waiting for, this was their chance, so they began to surge and scream and clutch. But then they stopped, they just froze. The Stones stared straight ahead, didn't twitch once and the girls only gaped. Almost as if the Stones weren't touchable, as if they were protected by some invisible metal ring. So they moved on and disappeared. And the girls went limp behind them and were quiet. After a few seconds, some of them began to cry.

In this way, whatever else, the Stones had style and presence and real control. They are my favourite group. They always have been.'