Scenes at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool after riots broke out during the Rolling Stones concert on 24 July 1964.<\/p>\n
It was one of the most notorious riots in rock and roll history and it happened right here in Blackpool.\u00a0A teenage mob forced The Rolling Stones to flee from the Empress Ballroom, as they stormed the stage wrecking their kit.\u00a0The cheers and screams of the teenagers turned into threatening boos and the five band members ran from the stage to safety while\u00a0grand piano was reduced to matchwood.<\/p>\n
In March 1964, the Stones were back in the North West, playing at the Opera House in Blackpool.\u00a0But it was their second appearance in Blackpool later that year which is remembered, and for all the wrong reasons.\u00a0The riots actually led to the band being banned from Blackpool for almost 50 years.<\/p>\n
Music writer Richard Houghton captured memories of these shows in his book, The Rolling Stones \u2013 You Had To Be There<\/em><\/strong> (spenwoodbooks.com). He explained: ‘The concert was held during Glasgow Fair, when Blackpool would see an influx of Glaswegian factory workers and their families taking their two-week summer holiday.\u00a0Glaswegian audiences were famously hard to please, and the evening ended in a riot, with the Stones unable to perform the second of their sets and Charlie\u2019s drum kit being rescued from the stage as sections of the crowd set about destroying the ballroom. Three quarters of the way through the concert the venue seemed to get rowdy. The riot became front page news and led to copycat riots at Stones concerts in Continental Europe, with tear gas and baton charges by the police. Blackpool really cemented the Stones reputation as the bad boys of pop and the antithesis of The Beatles, who dressed nicely and were the kind of boys a girl could bring home to meet their parents. Charlie found himself firmly in the \u2018scruffy-looking, long-haired layabouts\u2019 Rolling Stones camp, even though in reality he was a smart dresser and kept his hair quite short.’<\/p>\n Peter Fielding was on stage as a member of the Blackpool band The Executives<\/strong>, who supported the Rolling Stones that night and said that the crowd were throwing old pennies at us and shouting, \u2018We want the Stones! We want the Stones!\u2019<\/p>\n ‘The Stones came on and did the Bo Diddley number Mona<\/em> and started another song. One of the audience spat at Keith Richards, who tried to push him off the front of the stage with his foot.\u00a0There was a bit of a fracas and it erupted into the crowd throwing bottles and all sorts. We ran on to get our gear off and it just went bananas.\u00a0The crowd got on the stage and pulled all the Stones gear off and kicked it to pieces. The band ran off for their lives.\u00a0I don\u2019t know whether Charlie got his drum kit. The amps really got jumped on. A grand piano was pulled off the stage and onto the floor and smashed. We went back the next day. The debris was all over the place. They ripped the ballroom apart.\u2019<\/p>\n Syd Bloom was also at the Empress Ballroom for the second time. ‘Roy Carr from The Executives<\/strong> started winding everybody up by doing I\u2019ve Got My Mojo Working<\/em> and starting the song up again.\u00a0So there was a bit of a tension because people were telling him to get the Stones back on. Two or three Scots guys got their way to the front right by the stage and one of them threw a fork at Stones\u2019 guitarist Keith Richards, who promptly went forward and kicked his teeth out with his Cuban heel and it just kicked off from there.\u00a0The Stones ran for it. Charlie\u2019s cymbals were being thrown around. Can you imagine a more deadly weapon than a cymbal?\u2019<\/p>\n