OLD people often complain that the younger generation “don’t know they’re born” – whatever on earth that means.
But increasingly younger people can feel a certain resentment towards the older generation, those who were once deemed baby boomers and are now grandparents.
They benefited from secure and often well-paid jobs, affordable housing and free university tuition if they went.
Now they have final salary pension schemes, free TV licences and selective deafness, and in the UK they dragged the country out of the European Union against the wishes of the young. And they got to hear all the good bands. Baby boomers in Jersey weren’t left out. In 1963, the Beatles came to the Island and the next year the Rolling Stones followed them, as they usually did.
Whatever else the musicians got from the experience, they learned not to wear white trousers.
It had been a big year for the Rolling Stones. They appeared on the first ever episode of the BBC’s Top of the Pops, they recorded a jingle for Kellogg’s Rice Krispies breakfast cereal, and they were busy touring.
•The band backstage in Guernsey, where they played before coming to Jersey GUERNSEY PRESS
That year they completed four British tours and two American tours, performing 106 dates. The UK and Channel Islands tour came just after a tour of the US that included 12 shows in eight cities, including New York, Detroit and Pittsburgh.
The dates in the Channel Islands were part of the Rolling Stones’ third British tour, which ran from 1 to 22 August and took in venues such as London and Manchester.
They played at St George’s Hall in Guernsey from 18 to 20 August and Springfield Hall in Jersey immediately afterwards on 21 and 22, with a set that included Not Fade Away and Can I Get a Witness.
On almost all their British dates, the band had had to stage two separate concerts to satisfy the number of people wanting to buy tickets. Each gig in Jersey attracted crowds of around 4,000.
• How the JEP reported the concert at Springfield in 1964
While here they stayed in Sion House Hotel, later to become Hotel L’Emeraude.
It was by all accounts a night to remember. One audience member who can’t have forgotten it in a hurry is the one who threw a tomato at Mick Jagger’s leg.
The JEP reported on the concert, and noted sternly that many local young concertgoers were denied entry due to their scruffy choice of attire, such as “jeans and open-necked shirts”.
It described the concert inside as “deafening”, with the venue filled with “roars, screams, and applause” along with “fanatic teenagers and electrifying music”.
And it misnamed frontman Mick Jagger as “Mike Jaggers”.
•The Rolling Stones on stage at St George’s Hall in Guernsey
Picture: GUERNSEY PRESS
But it is most notorious for the tomato-throwing incident. One member of the audience, Islander Peter “Biffo” Smith, expressed his opinion of the band by throwing tomatoes at Mick Jagger, with one hitting his white trousers.
The singer was none too pleased and challenged whoever had thrown it: “Come up on the stage and we can have it out between us.”
These days he might have appreciated the importance of getting your five portions of fruit and veg per day. But the incident apparently stemmed from the Stones’ appearance on the 1960s equivalent of the X Factor, Juke Box Jury.
The Stones had been acting as judges on the programme, and Mr Smith was annoyed by their attitude, feeling they had been rude and insensitive in their criticisms of the other bands and their music.
The tomato did nothing to spoil the show in Jersey, even if it did spoil Mick Jagger’s trousers.
Concertgoer Thelma Warren, who was 15 at the time, recalled the tomato throwing and the singer’s reaction, but said that there was a brief pause, Mr Smith was ejected from the concert, and the band “played even better than before”.
•This image from the JEP report was captioned: “A selection of the screaming fans with photographs of their idols”
She described the evening as being full of young people “jumping up and down and screaming” with excitement.
The Stones are still rolling, but at the time of the band’s Jersey dates, the line-up was slightly different.
It comprised Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, with Ian Stewart joining them on tour to play piano. Brian Jones, who is said to have given the group its name, died five years after they played in Jersey. Ronnie Wood did not join until 1975.
With thanks to Jersey Archive for their help in researching this feature.
