Jelly babies, hysteria, and a topless Brian Jones: The Rolling Stones’ chaotic introduction to Bradford
The Rolling Stones certainly grew accustomed to a life of rock anarchy and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake during their rebellious heyday. It was during their early days, though, that this reputation was first cemented, and the wool city of Bradford certainly had a part to play in that.
While it wouldn’t be until a few years later that The Rolling Stones exercised their control over the pop charts with original efforts like ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, the band’s inaugural tour of the UK in 1963 certainly changed the rock and roll landscape of the nation. Speaking to their sheer power at that time, the tour’s bill included the likes of Bo Diddley and Little Richard, and yet The Stones still managed to be the stand-out.
Bradford marked the halfway point of the extensive tour, and by the time the band arrived at the Gaumont theatre – recently re-opened in 2025 as Bradford Live – their reputation preceded them. Having already had their first taste of 1960s stardom a few months earlier when The Beatles came to town, the teenagers of West Yorkshire were out in full force on that October evening.
Immediately, the audience set the tone for the evening when they began pelting The Rolling Stones with Jelly Babies as their set commenced. “Charlie Watts’ drum kit was covered with them,” audience member John Heffron once recalled to local paper The Telegraph and Argus. “The Stones were laughing their heads off.”
As the set marched, things only became more chaotic, with bassist Bill Wyman consistently moving off into the wings to talk to somebody, while continuing to play, much to the amazement of the legions of screaming teenage girls who had rushed to the front of the stalls upon the band’s first emergence.
If that inaugural performance in Bradford had been chaotic, though, it was nothing compared to the band’s subsequent return, performing two shows at the historic St George’s Hall in May 1964. With a much larger audience having caught on to the incredible output of The Stones, and the band now being a regular fixture of the singles charts, those shows attracted even more crazed teenagers than the band’s first showing in the West Yorkshire city.
Quickly after the show, then, that audience descended into near-riots outside the stage door, as hundreds of teenage girls – presumably not used to seeing people who looked like The Rolling Stones in the industrial surroundings of their city – set upon the band with a fury. Most of the group managed to escape unscathed, although Mick Jagger reportedly fell exhausted into the back of a police car, to be escorted back to his hotel away from the hysterical riots outside.
Brian Jones, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky in his escape. In the malaise of screaming fans, the guitarist became separated from the rest of his troupe and made the executive decision to try to flee on foot. Perhaps overexerted from the two shows he had just performed, though, the fans soon caught up to him, knocking him down onto the floor and tearing the shirt from his back.
Being set upon by a gaggle of Bradfordian teenagers pales in comparison to the kind of rock and roll depravity The Rolling Stones would find themselves in during later years, particularly during the height of their hedonistic lifestyle in the early 1970s. However, those early shows in Bradford arguably marked the arrival of The Rolling Stones as the rock phenomenon and adolescent revolution that they came to represent throughout the 1960s.
