Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis Page A

the bar and the saxes ruled. But Stu could see Brian’s potential and stifled his disappointment when Jones kept talking about Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters.
    They began rehearsing, got thrown out of the pub after Brian was caught stealing cigarettes, then moved to the Bricklayer’s Arms in Lisle Street, Soho, where golden Brian Jones and solid, true-hearted Ian Stewart became the two founding members of the Rolling Stones.
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    Alexis Korner helped Brian find players for his new band. Geoff Bradford had recorded with Alexis and also played slide guitar (better than Brian, according to Charlie). Brian Knight was a good blues singer and played the harmonica well enough to teach Brian Jones a little. But Bradford was a serious blues purist, deep into Elmore and John Lee Hooker, and didn’t want to rock out. Knight quarreled with Jones over songs—Knight wanted to do country blues—and quit. Brian asked Charlie Watts to join on drums, but Charlie didn’t want to turn pro. He’d turned down Korner’s offers to play full-time because he didn’t want to give up his job. In fact, when Blues Incorporated got really big that summer, Charlie left the group, later joining a band, Blues by Six, that didn’t interfere with his work schedule. So other drummers were in and out of Brian’s new band: Ginger Baker, Carlo Little, Tony Chapman, Mick Avory.
    And Brian wanted Mick Jagger because the buzz was out that this weird new talent was out there, this young cat who was putting (and this was, of course, completely unspoken) a sex appeal spin on R&B, the only possible way to transcend the rigid boundaries of fandom and maybe take R&B
to the kids.
Brian knew that Jagger was the guy he wanted to be in a band with. Over a pint of ale in a pub during the interval of a Marquee gig, Brian invited Mick and (somewhat grudgingly) Keith to a rehearsal the next day.

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    The Rollin’ Stones
    Keith Richards— eighteen years old, rail-thin, in jeans, denim jacket, and purple shirt, looking like, in William Burroughs’s phrase, a sheep-killing dog—slung his cheap guitar in a plastic case down Wardour Street as strippers darted past him in wigs and brassieres. Bricklayer’s Arms, at the corner of Wardour and Lisle, smelled of warm ale and last night’s cigarettes. Cheery old barmaid. “We’re supposed to rehearse here. Would you know—?” “Second floor, luv.”
    Keith heard the piano by the time he hit the first landing. Beautiful rolling boogie with a touch of Crescent City stride—relaxed, soulful, totally, craftsmanly expert. Keith slipped into the room and doughty Ian Stewart was sitting at the piano, which had been pushed over by the window. He was playing whorehouse piano licks, Jelly Roll Morton and Professor Longhair, and he didn’t know anyone was listening. He was staring out the window because, Keith later realized, his bicycle was chained to a post outside and he was worried someone would nick it.
    Keith was impressed,
riveted.
He’d seen Stu play with Korner and pull the amateurish band together with his authority. He knew Stu didn’t care shit for Chuck Berry. To hard-core blues fans like Stu, Keith was rock and roll and should have been ducking brawls on the ballroom circuit with Neil Christian and the Crusaders (whose guitarist was seventeen-year-old Jimmy Page). Keith just stood in awe and listened to the fluid pianism of this Pinetop Perkins in the body of a square-jawed Scot. Every few minutes Stu would comment on one of the strippers flashing down the street in her high heels. Finally Stu turned around, inspected Keith, and deflatingly deadpanned: “And you must be the Chuck Berry artist.”
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    Rehearsals got under way. Brian Jones was in charge, the leader. Geoff Bradford, ten years older and visibly