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The Rolling Stones live at the Hollywood Bowl 1966

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July 25, 1966: Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA, USA

From the Los Angeles Times (July 27 1966):
The Rolling Stones gathered lot of moss-green money at the Hollywood Bowl Monday night. Something approaching $1,500 a minute of their performing time, if the revealed stipendium and my lightning calculations are both accurate. Their concert, promoted by KHJ, was a virtual instantaneous sellout. To judge by some overheard conversations on the malted-milk circuit, a lot of disappointed ticket seekers cried themselves to sleep that night. The concert overall lasted a tight two hours with no intermission and the Stones were aboard for just about the last half hour of it. But it was clear from the indifference of the audience to the three preceding groups that nothing mattered except that final half hour. The Stones are an impossible act to follow, but they are also pretty difficult to precede.

Except in the hearts of their rabid followers, the Rolling Stones remain No. 2 in the curious hierarchy of the pop world. Since, like the Beatles, they are English, comparisons with royalty come to mind. Astonishing Hold on Crown In that sense, the Stones are collectively like a crown prince, with everything going for them except the law of primogeniture. And the Beatles, collectively the kinr, continued to display an astonishing hold on the crown, an amazing longevity in the musical empire where swift insurrection is the rule and the fidelity of the faithful is flighty indeed. It must, now and again, gall the Stones to beat hell. They enjoy power and pelf and the cheers of the multitudes, but the House of Epstein (Brian) continues to hold sway over the House of Oldham (Andrew Loog).

The evening was arranged as if deliberately, to assure us all that still and all a crown prince is leagues ahead of the commoners. After the sonic disaster of the recent Beach Boys Bash, the bowl’s sound system was working to cruel perfection to make voice and instrument equally audible with only minor distortion. The Tradewinds, the Standelles and the McCoys each did their turn. Each revealed all too clearly the thump- ing and unimaginative accompaniment in the rhythm guitars and or the small electric organ, urging on not very inspired vocalizings which were distantly related to blues shouting. But it was at best kind of half-souled. The McCoys, whose recording of “Hang On Sloopy” was very successful, used more interesting and gentler vocal harmony and were more adventurous rhythmically, yet their session overall became too pallid and polite.

Heady Aura of Royal Triumph It was the Stones’ evening and they wafted on in the heady aura of royal triumph. Here was leader Mick Jag-. ger, the king among crown princes, in a black and gold jacket aglow with what seemed from a distance to be gold sequins, worn over a cloth-of-gold shirt and above white duck slacks. And here was lead guitarist Brian Jones in a never-to-be-forgotten suppressed-waist suit of wider black vertical stripes alternating with narrower red vertical stripes, a kind of Brighton rook gone mad. And there was Keith Richard in a purple bush jacket, with Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts merely colourful. hollywood bowl

And despite Mick’s camping about like a vaudeville turn, the music rated the royal The inspiration, way back, was American Negro; they took their name from a Muddy Waters’ blues, “Like a Rolling Stone.” Their anthems are not protest of sociological lament; but an earthy, physical vitality, is still there. Like the Beatles they progress; and on a long, folky tune, “Lady Jane,” they use what is described as an Indian Blide guitar (somewhere between a zither and a Hawaiian guitar) to provide a marvelous minor accompaniment.

On one of their standards, “Get Off of My Cloud,” Brian Jones evokes the same kind of faintly off-key effect from the straight electric guitar. By now, the Rolling Stones’ on stage performance is permeated by the legend of their off-stage And as reigning symbols of sex as opposed to romance, they have long since dethroned the Beatles. But it remains true, too, that they are also talented and inventive musicians.