The Rolling Stones and riots: the soundtrack to the ‘Second Battle of Hastings’ in 1964
While dwarfed by their later Altamont Free Concert disaster, The Rolling Stones had triggered a near riot early on at the cusp of their stardom.
The ‘Second Battle of Hastings’ some called it. 897 years, nine months, and 18 days after the Norman invasion, the East Sussex seaside town was struck unprepared by the burgeoning youthquake that marked the UK’s rock beat explosion. Beatlemania was already well underway, A Hard Day’s Night playing in the theatres up and down the country a few months after the Fab Four’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and their unleashing of the British invasion onto the Billboard Hot 100.
At this point in August 1964, The Stones were truly about to break. They’d been soldiering through in The Beatles’ shadow, gifted the Lennon-McCartney-penned ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, but the ace in their sleeve over the Fab Four was their infinitely more authentic mine of the American songbook.
It was the pop resurgence in blues and R&B where the London outfit shone over their Merseybeat frenemies, conjuring authoritative covers of Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley that would sow the seeds of their later rootsier, golden album run by the end of the decade.
Such a knack for anglicisation of the old US masters finally scored their first UK number one. Released in June, a rendition of The Valentinos’ ‘It’s All Over Now’ shot The Stones to the top of the charts and won a fervent fanbase who preferred manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s bad boys over Brian Epstein’s clean-cut mop tops. The swift spike in popularity would make itself starkly apparent during one fateful gig at Hastings’ Pier Ballroom.
The pavilion venue, called The Happy Ballroom back then, had already hosted The Stones twice previously, as well as featuring the new crop of future swinging greats with The Kinks, The Hollies, and The Springfields pop trio before Dusty decided to go it solo. But The Stones’ third booking was the Pier Ballroom’s most anticipated show yet. Embarking on a 16-date tour including shows in the Channel Islands and the Netherlands, The Stones team kicked off their third tour of 1964 with a high-profile Hastings date.
Headlining Bank Holiday Monday on the 1st of August for just ten shillings and boasting support from The Worrying Kind and The Sabres, growing crowds and a simmering hysteria were already such that Eastbourne Police called in back-up to manage the throng of fans eagerly awaiting The Stones’ arrival. Further anxieties were had among the forces that mods and rockers were rumoured to be respectively scootering and motor biking down to the Hastings pier to get in on the gig.
Shuttled to the venue from the Central Police Station in a disused ambulance, The Stones took to the stage at 9pm as scheduled, but only managed around 12 minutes before being forced to abandon the show due to the crowds’ unruly size and clamour at the new stars of the UK rock explosion. Such reports of teen frenzy only fuelled the lore that surrounded The Stones as their popularity swept across the country.
It’s quite possible that the ‘Second Battle of Hastings’ was coloured by just a little rock apocrypha. Hastings Pier Company general manager, RE Knights, wrote in a local paper, downplaying the supposed chaos that surrounded The Stones’ headline show: “During the Saturday of that weekend, over 1,500 patrons had a most enjoyable evening without a sign of trouble, and the ‘Invaders’ did not attempt to gatecrash or purchase tickets, proof indeed that it was not The Rolling Stones that interested them in Hastings, but was just a continuation of their visits to seaside resorts.”
