Is Everybody Ready for the Next Band? The Rolling Stones 1969 US Tour

In November 1969 the Rolling Stones began a 24-date tour of the United States of America. They arrived from Britain with a new guitarist in the shape of Mick Taylor, the band’s founder Brian Jones having been sacked due to his drug dependency and criminal convictions making him unlikely to secure a visa. It wasn’t the Rolling Stones of old, playing 30-minute sets comprised of Top Ten hits to audiences of screaming teenagers. The Rolling Stones had grown up. So too had their audiences. But touring on the back of two groundbreaking albums in Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed, the Rolling Stones encountered new problems as the 1960s came to an end. There were drugs, there was cynicism – and there was Altamont. With over 100 previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, this is the story of the Rolling Stones on the road in America, with all the drama, all the hype, all the baggage and all the thrills. Is everybody ready for the next band…?

Richard Houghton lives in Manchester and is the author of more than 20 books on music.