Nov. 14, 1964 - Louisville, Kentucky was in the Stone Age for 34 minutes tonight — the age of the Rolling Stones, that is.
The Stone Age, for the uninitiated, is a state of ecstasy of the same degree as Beatlemania.
The Stones, a British rock ’n’ roll group with shoulder length hair, have reportedly replaced the Beatles as England’s top pop combo. And their hair is twice as long as the Beatles’.
If tonight’s performances can be used as a yardstick, they’re on their way to replacing the Beatles in this country, too.
During the 34 minutes that they were onstage during two performances at Memorial Auditorium, the Stones caused the teenage audience to shriek, pull its hair, and lose most of its inhibitions.
It was, as one 15-year-old put it, “the wildest.”
As the curtain was raised for the Stones, up went the volume of noise from the audience. For the entire time they were onstage, at least 200 girls kept screaming “Charlie, Charlie” or “Keith, Keith!”
Charlie Watts and Keith Richard were apparently the crowd’s favorites. Both were pelted with flying flashbulbs and love letters.
The place resembled a Hollywood premiere, with flashbulbs going off constantly. When one of the Stones gave a twitch or wave of the wrist, all the bulbs seemed to go off at once, and the volumes of screams increased.
Except for the noise, nine uniformed ushers and policemen kept things pretty well in hand.
But during the first performance, one enthralled young lady ran down the aisle from the back of the auditorium and vaulted a three-foot railing and a four-foot stairwell. She was climbing onto the stage before she could be stopped and carried out by ushers and policemen.
The absence of one of the Stones — Brian Jones, who is in a Chicago hospital with bronchial pneumonia — didn’t seem to affect the excitement of the crowd in the least. The four other Stones — Charlie, Keith, Mick Jagger, and Bill Wyman — had plenty of volume without him.
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