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The Rolling Stones · S1 E5
The Crawdaddy Club
The Station Hotel pub in Richmond, Surrey. Every Sunday night, the Stones play to a room that goes from half-empty to dangerously packed in eight weeks
Sunday night, February 1963, the back room of the Station Hotel in Richmond, Surrey. Thirty people are watching five young men play Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley so loud that the glasses behind the bar are rattling.
The Rolling Stones, Start Me Up. That opening riff hits like a door being kicked open. The Crawdaddy was where the Stones learned to do exactly this: walk into a room, plug in, and make every single person move.
Giorgio Gomelsky
Giorgio Gomelsky is a Russian-born, Swiss-raised film enthusiast who promotes jazz and blues shows around London. He books the Stones for a Sunday night residency at the Station Hotel, a back room with a low ceiling, no ventilation, and space for about a hundred people. He becomes their unofficial manager, promoter, and biggest believer.
Sources
Norman, Philip. "The Stones." Elm Tree Books, 1984.
Wyman, Bill. "Stone Alone." Viking, 1990.
“It was heaving in there. The condensation was dripping off the ceiling onto the crowd.”
— Keith Richards on the Crawdaddy Club, in Richards, Keith. "Life." Little, Brown and Company, 2010
TAP TO REVEAL: Where did the name "Crawdaddy Club" come from?
The Station Hotel, Richmond
Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey. The pub where Giorgio Gomelsky ran the Crawdaddy Club, and where the Rolling Stones became a live band.
Mona (I Need You Baby) -- The Rolling Stones
From the Rolling Stones' debut album (1964), a Bo Diddley cover built on the same pounding, hypnotic rhythm that gave the Crawdaddy Club its name. The repetitive, driving beat builds and builds without ever letting go. This is the closest recording to what it actually sounded like in that room on a Sunday night in Richmond.
The Crawdaddy Club: The File
Which famous band came to see the Rolling Stones at the Crawdaddy Club in April 1963?
On an April night in 1963, a nineteen-year-old former publicist for Brian Epstein pushes through the crowd at the Crawdaddy and watches the Stones play. By the following week, he will be their manager, and he will change everything.
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