Western Daily Press (Saturday)
WHEN THE STONES PLAYED LONGLEAT
THESE days the vets tending the huge number of animals at its safari park are far busier than any medical staff at Longleat House.
But flash back to August 1964 and the magnificent stately home in Wiltshire probably had its busiest day of medical drama since it was a convalescent hospital for injured soldiers in the First World War.
For the Rolling Stones had come to West Wiltshire and the excitement was too much for many, with an estimated 200 people – mostly teenage girls – fainting.
The death of legendary drummer Charlie Watts earlier this week had us trawling through the archives for when the Rolling Stones were visitors to the region.
And as these photographs show, they certainly caused a stir – with the Rose Garden at Longleat full of St John’s Ambulance personnel applying the smelling salts to those who had passed out.
As the Bath Chronicle reported at the time, some 20,000 concertgoers flocked to Longleat, and Lord Bath, wearing a ‘with-it’ wig, introduced the acts and, when the Stones came on to the stage, according to the newspaper report: “The crowd went wild.
“One after another, members of the crowd – mostly girls – collapsed or fainted and were lifted over the wire.
“The Rose Garden was used as a temporary hospital and eventually resembled ‘a casualty clearance station’.
“In the end, the police stepped in and called a halt to the concert. A senior officer asked Mick Jagger, who had earlier appealed for calm, to end the programme.”
Although not quite on the scale of Longleat, Charlie Watts was the owner of several large West country estates.
Between 1976 and 1983 he and his wife Shirley owned Foscombe House, top left, near Hartpury in rural Gloucestershire, where Shirley trained Arabian horses and Charlie had a studio.
They subsequently moved to Devon where Shirley continued to breed Arabians at Halsdon Manor near Dolton.
Living in the South West was one thing, but playing here was another. In recent decades the Stones’ visits to the West were few and far between, as their megabucks global tours largely only called on giant stadiums.
Indeed, their 2013 headline performance on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival is the only show in the West in the 21st century.
Though as they were making their name in the early 1960s they were frequent visitors – with five Wiltshire gigs in 1963 alone.
Among those gigs were performances at McIlroy’s Ballroom – above the celebrated department store of the same name in Swindon.
As hard as it might seem to believe today, dozens of top acts in the 1960s played that department store venue – including the Beatles.
Many of the Stones’ gigs in the West were at Gaumont Theatres, including in Salisbury, Weymouth, Cheltenham and Taunton.
For their first gig at the Gaumount in Salisbury in 1963 they were fourth on the bill – behind The Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley and Little Richard,
In Bristol the Rolling Stones played at the Corn Exchange and Colston Hall in the 1960s and early 1970s, with their most recent gig in the city being their only West stadium show in June 1982 at Ashton Gate.
Some 36,000 people crammed onto the terraces on three sides of Ashton Gate on a night when the heavens opened.
The Bristol Evening Post reported: “The weather stayed kind throughout the warm-up proceedings. Indeed, the Stones were halfway through their long show when
dark clouds rumbled overhead and the rain came down.
“Jagger himself remarked on the ill luck, pointing out that he was quite likely to end up on his backside if he kept on racing like a teenager around the slippery, sloping stage.
“The crowd response gathered momentum through the downpour and by the time the Stones launched into their old classics, the sun was out again.
“And when Mick Jagger tore off his T-shirt to wild applause, it was too much for one well-endowed young lady who decided to follow suit.”