Life [42]
We first met Brian Jones at the Ealing Jazz Club. He was calling himself Elmo Lewis. He wanted to be Elmore James at the time. “You’ll have to get a tan and put on a few inches, boy.” But slide guitar was a real novelty in England, and Brian played it that night. He played “Dust My Broom,” and it was electrifying. He played it beautifully. We were very impressed with Brian. I think Mick was the first one to go up and talk to him, and discovered that he had his own band, most of whom deserted him in the next few weeks.
Mick and I had come up together to the club and done Chuck Berry numbers, which annoyed Cyril Davies, who thought it was rock and roll and he couldn’t play it anyway. When you start to play in public and you’re playing with some guys that have done it before, you’re low in the hierarchy and you always feel you’re being tested. You’ve got to be there, on time, your equipment’s got to be working, which it rarely was in my case. You have to measure up. Suddenly you’re in with the big boys, you’re not just pissing around in school gyms. Shit, this is pro. At least semipro; pro with no money.
I left art school around this time. At the end your teacher says, “Well, I think this is pretty good,” and they send you off to J. Walter Thompson and you have an appointment, and by then, in a way you know what’s coming—three or four real smarty-pants, with the usual bow ties. “Keith, is it? Nice to see you. Show us what you’ve got.” And you lay the old folder out. “Hmmmm. I say, we’ve had a good look at this, Keith, and it does show some promise. By the way, do you make a good cup of tea?” I said yes, but not for you. I walked off with my folio—it was green, I remember—and I dumped it in the garbage can when I got downstairs. That was my final attempt to join society on their terms. The second pink slip. I didn’t have the patience or the facility to be a hack in an advertising agency. I was going to end up the tea boy. I wasn’t very nice to them in the interview. Basically I wanted an excuse to be thrown out on my own and thrown back on music. I think, OK, I’ve got two free years, not in the army. I’m going to be a bluesman.
I went to the Bricklayers Arms, a seedy pub in Soho, for the first time for the first rehearsal for what turned out to be the Stones. I think it was May of ’62, lovely summer evening. Just off Wardour Street. Strip Alley. I get there, I’ve got my guitar with me. And as I get there the pub’s just opened. Typical brassy blond old barmaid, not many customers, stale beer. She sees the guitar and says, “Upstairs.” And I can hear this boogie-woogie piano, this unbelievable Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons stuff. I’m suddenly transported in a way. I feel like a musician and I haven’t even got there! I could have been in the middle of Chicago, in the middle of Mississippi. I’ve got to go up there and meet this man who’s playing this, and I’ve got to play with him. And if I don’t measure up, it’s over. That was really my feeling as I walked up those stairs, creak creak creak. In a way I walk up those stairs and come down a different person.
Ian Stewart was the only one in the room, with this horsehair sofa that was split, horsehairs hanging out. He’s got on a pair of Tyrolean leather shorts. He’s playing an upright piano and he’s got his back to me because he’s looking out of the window where he’s got his bike chained to a meter, making sure it’s not nicked. At the same time he’s watching all the strippers going from one club to another with their little round hatboxes and wigs on. “Phoar, look at that.” All the while this Leroy Carr stuff is rumbling off his fingers. And I walk in with this brown plastic guitar case. And just stand there. It was like meeting the headmaster. All I could hope for was that my amp would work.
Stu had gone down to the Ealing Club because he’d seen an ad Brian Jones had placed in Jazz News in the spring of ’62 for players wanting to start an R&B band. Brian and Stu started rehearsing with a bunch of