The Ealing Club Meeting: How Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards Became the Rolling Stones

The story goes that Brian Jones was already the driving force behind the band that would become the Rolling Stones—he’d even chosen the name from a Muddy Waters lyric. But the band didn’t fully click until a rainy night at the Ealing Club in West London, early 1962. Jones was playing slide guitar with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, and in the audience were two young blues fanatics: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

The most interesting part of that first meeting is that it wasn’t a formal audition