Written by The Rolling Stones had toured the US twice, and played shows in France, Holland, Switzerland and Holland, before undertaking their first Irish tour in January 1965. The quintet were booked to play two shows in Belfast, two in Dublin, and two in Cork, and their three days in Ireland were memorable for all concerned, even if the long-haired Londoners weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms everywhere they went.
“The Irish tour was a tonic,” guitarist Brian Jones told NME writer Keith Altham later that month. “The Irish are such fantastic characters. We were travelling on the Cork–Dublin road one morning and I got out of the car to ask a couple of locals with a donkey if they would mind Keith filming them with his ciné. They thought I was going to attack them or something. Next moment they came at me with shovels! I just made it to the car.”
The Stones had played Belfast for the first time the previous summer, performing at the city’s Ulster Hall on July 31. According to the Irish News newspaper, the show lasted all of 13 minutes, as the band were forced to flee to their dressing room when over-excited girls in the audience rushed the stage. According to official figures issued by the St John Ambulance Brigade and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the gig resulted in 350 women fainting, with 20 taken to hospital.
“I’ve never seen anything like it – nor ever want to again!” a police spokesman said.
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The band’s two shows at the ABC Theatre on January 6, 1965, were rather more restrained. The quintet were interviewed ahead of the shows, and clearly enjoyed playing up to the cameras, with Charlie Watts telling their rather uptight interviewer that the group were now a “million dollar concern”, and Mick Jagger absolutely refusing to take the bait when asked if his band or The Beatles were the superior group.
The following morning, the band were interviewed by a reporter from Raidió Teilifís Éirean, the Irish national broadcaster, as they disembarked from the Belfast-Dublin train.
“We’ve heard it said that this long hair makes you look like women,” Mick Jagger is informed. “What do you think of this?”
“I think it’s a dirty lie!” Keith Richard replies in the sort of high-pitched voice that the Monty Python team would have been proud of.
Richards would look share a story about a memorable encounter the band had on the way to Cork.
“We stopped outside a fabulous old shop one morning to buy some gear.,” he told NME. “It was kind of an old army surplus store right out in the sticks. There was an old fella behind the counter who screamed that we’d been sent by Oliver Cromwell. He chased us out of the shop and jumped on the bonnet of the car. Then he proceeded to try and boot the windscreen to pieces. He must have been at least 80!”
The guitarist expanded on this incident in another interview.
“This old Irishman grabbed hold of Brian’s balls,” he revealed, “and dragged Brian outside and pointed to the church tower. There’s these huge holes in it, and he said, ‘Cromwell’s balls did that, now let me see what I’m gonna do to your balls!’ So Brian got his cock out and pissed all over his old overcoats and everything.”
A “tonic” indeed.
Despite this rather rude welcome, the Stones returned to Ireland in September ’65, for a tour documented in their 2012 film Charlie Is My Darling.
