Posted in: Entertainment History, News | 1 Comment | Posted on July 20, 2022 by Mary Anne

1964 - July 24
A riot broke out during a The Rolling Stones’ gig at The Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, Lancashire. Keith Richards noticed a man with his hands on the stage exhorting the crowd to spit, and warned him, but the spitting continued. Richards is then reported to have stood on his hands and kicked him in the face, whereupon some of the 7000 fans in attendance started fighting, causing over 4,000 Pounds in damage. Blackpool City Council later voted to ban The Stones from playing in the city. 44 years later, the 2008 council voted to lift the ban, but a spokesman for the group said they had no plans to return.

Keith Richards: Blackpool
“We’d walk into some of those places (we were playing) and it was like they had the Battle of Crimea going on, people gasping, tits hanging out, chicks choking, nurses running round with ambulances. I know it was the same for the Beatles. One had been reading about that: Beatlemania… You know that weird sound that thousands of chicks make when they’re really letting it go. They couldn’t hear the music. We couldn’t hear ourselves for years… There was one ballroom number in Blackpool during Scots week when all the Scots came down and get really drunk and let it rip, a whole gang of em came to this ballroom and they didn’t like us and they punched their way to the front, right though the whole 7000 people, straight to the stage and started spitting at us. In those days, I had a temper, and You spit on me? And I kicked his face in.”