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Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?

Broadcast Date: Nov. 14, 1965

It's the height of the British Invasion. In 1965 five lads known as the Rolling Stones arrive in Canada and are touted as the bad boys of rock 'n' roll. That image is partly an attempt to distinguish themselves from the boy-next-door sheen of that other British band — The Beatles. That bad boy image has CBC's Larry Zolf asking, would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?

But the warning fails to stop the "screamies," legions of adoring females, from fainting at Toronto's first Rolling Stones concert at Maple Leaf Gardens on April 25, 1965. The players — Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and Brian Jones — don't seem bothered by their sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll reputation. In fact they seem to embrace what Zolf refers to as "vulgar, obstinate and hostile" behaviour.

Despite the sensation surrounding their run-ins with the law, their association with beautiful women and their wild ways, it's the music that accounts for their success, says drummer Charlie Watts. Mick Jagger even finds time to keep on top of Canadian politics. When asked who Diefenbaker is, the Stones frontman correctly identifies him as the former prime minister of Canada.

Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?

• The band's name was taken from a Muddy Waters tune, Rollin' Stones Blues.
• The Toronto Star ran an unfavourable review of the 1965 Maple Leaf Gardens show, with its headline reading: Rolling Stones show violent and vulgar. The article read, "Maple Leaf Gardens looked and sounded like an overcrowded dog pound last night. A frenzied 10,200 Toronto teenagers, incited by their singing idols, Britain's hairy Rolling Stones, did the yelping."

• Some famous women who have been associated with the Rolling Stones include Margaret Trudeau, Marianne Faithful, Bianca Jagger, Patti Hansen and Jerry Hall.
• Keith Richards once introduced Mick Jagger as "a man with a reputation longer than Yonge St."
• The Rolling Stones were described as having "the longest hair styles seen in Britain since the days of King Charles II."

• In 1965, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones were fined five pounds each for "public insult." The three members had been caught urinating against the wall of a gas station in East London.
• Brian Jones drowned in his pool in 1969 soon after he left the Rolling Stones. Officially Jones's death was cited as "an accidental drowning precipitated by drug and alcohol abuse." But rumours of suicide and even murder persist to this day.

Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?

Medium: Television

Program: This Hour has Seven Days

Broadcast Date: Nov. 14, 1965

Guest(s): Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts

Reporter: Larry Zolf

Duration: 2:20

Last updated:
March 6, 2008