The Rolling Stones played their first concert
On this day · 12 July 1962
A blues-mad fill-in band took a London jazz stage one Thursday night in 1962 and quietly started one of rock's longest careers.
When Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated was booked for a BBC radio session, somebody had to cover their regular Thursday slot at London’s Marquee Jazz Club. On July 12, 1962, a scratch group of young blues obsessives — billed as The Rollin’ Stones — stepped up to deputize.
The lineup was Mick Jagger on vocals, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, Ian Stewart on piano, and Dick Taylor on bass. Even the drummer is disputed; members never fully agreed who sat behind the kit that night.
They hammered through roughly 16 songs, leaning hard on Chuck Berry, plus Robert Johnson, Jimmy Reed, and Elmore James — American blues and R&B reborn for a small, curious London crowd.
A one-off cover gig became the opening night of a sixty-year run.
Nobody present marked it as history. Yet that borrowed slot launched a band that would help define rock and roll and keep touring stadiums into the next century.
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