The Rolling Stones' first Phoenix concert in 1965 was a fever dream: 'So raw and so real'

The Rolling Stones were fast emerging as “the HAIR-apparents to the Beatles’ throne,” as The Arizona Republic put it, by the time they made their first appearance on a Phoenix stage.

It was a Tuesday night, Nov. 30, 1965, and the British Invaders were nearing the end of their fourth North American tour in support of an album called “Out of Our Heads,” as they took the stage of a new multi-purpose arena situated on the north side of the Arizona State Fairgrounds.

Earlier that month, the Stones had spent two weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. “Get Off of My Cloud” was their second classic hit to top the U.S. charts in 1965. They’d spent four weeks at No. 1 that summer with one of the British Invasion’s most iconic moments, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

The Stones drew 'a screaming mass of 7,500 hysterical teen-agers'

The Stones arrived for their performance in an armored car a local bank supplied for the occasion.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

“The new fairground coliseum became a screaming mass of 7,500 hysterical teen-agers,” The Republic’s Pete Marinovich reported.

“Ridiculous? Remember Sinatra? Remember the fainting, screaming girls willing to be trampled into the hospital for just one touch of the skinny singing sensation? That was another time, another place, but what’s the difference?”

Cindy Smith Dunaway, then 16, was among those screaming girls.

She attended the show with some friends and her brother, Neal Smith, who would go on to be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of a group called Alice Cooper alongside Cindy’s future husband, Dennis Dunaway.

'My girlfriends and I were crying so much. It was like a dream come true'

“My girlfriends and I were crying so much because we couldn't believe we were actually finally seeing the Stones,” she says.

“I mean, it was really one of those moments like in 'Hard Days Night,' where the girls were crying and screaming because we just loved them so much and thought they were so cool. I loved the Beatles, but I was always a bigger Stones fan.”

The concert itself was “amazing,” she says.

“We couldn't believe they were actually there on stage in front of us. It was like a dream come true. And it was pandemonium. We were all like, ‘Oh, my God. We're here. And they're here.’”

And Alice Cooper was there

Alice Cooper remembers it well. He was 17 and still attending Cortez High School, where his classmates knew him as Vince Furnier.

“There was no lights, no special effects, it was these five guys standing sort of like they would be at a bar,” he says.

“And they were the Rolling Stones. Which that was all you had to know. It was at that time when the Beatles were still the greatest, but here comes the Stones, which is like, ‘Oh my gosh, this changes everything.’ They were the people’s band, the band every kid on the street could relate to.”

Cooper still thinks of Mick Jagger as the prototype of what it even means to be the singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band.

“Every lead singer on this planet owes everything to him,” he says. “Think of it. Before that, bands were a unit. Mick Jagger broke away from all that and did his little James Brown and his Mick Jagger rooster. He created his own character that is still the best in the business.”

And that was very much the Jagger he saw in Phoenix that night.

“It was so raw and so real,” he says. “It was like seeing them in a giant club. It was really exciting, the fact that you got to see them when they were the young, nasty Rolling Stones. The music was nasty, the look was nasty, the attitude was nasty and that just made it perfect.”

The local fan club president gave Mick Jagger a big wooden key to the city

Marianne Gilbert was 13 at the time. She loved the Rolling Stones enough to be co-president of the local Stones fan club.

“I walked around downtown Phoenix asking people to sign a petition to bring them to Phoenix,” she recalls. “Most people didn’t even know who they were yet. Embarrassingly, I had a roll of adding machine tape and I used that for my petition. There were thousands of names collected over many months, and it was sent to their official fan club in London.”

It seemed to take “forever” for the Stones to make their way to Phoenix, Gilbert says. But one day, KRIZ Boss Radio announced that they were bringing them to town.

Tickets were $4.50, tax included.

The concert was originally booked for Phoenix Union High School’s Montgomery Stadium (near where Arizona Center now stands) but moved to the just-opened Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where Phoenix police were out in force, should all that adulation boil over.

“If all the policemen had bought tickets, it would have been a sellout,” Marinovich quipped in The Republic. “A hundred men in blue threw a human barricade around a state eight feet off the floor, patrolled the aisles, the exits and the driveways leading to the rear, where ‘the messiahs’ would enter.”

The audience began arriving at 4 in the afternoon.

Gilbert and her friends skipped school the day of the show and took a taxi to the Executive House in Scottsdale, where the Stones were staying, to present them with a big wooden key to the city her mother had made and a large cardboard “Welcome to Phoenix Rolling Stones - We Love You” sign.

They were about to give up and head to the concert when she saw Jagger standing in the window of the coffee shop blowing kisses at them.

“Charlie Watts was with him in a booth, and they were getting ready to eat,” she recalls. “We very awkwardly presented them with the key that we had been carrying everywhere with us. It was heavy, and I have no doubt that they most likely left it at the coffee shop when they were finished eating. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything to them.”

KRIZ left special tickets at the box office for Gilbert and her friends.

“We didn’t really believe we had special tickets, so we ran down to the stage like everyone else,” she says.

'We watched the show of a lifetime'

“I broke the heel off my shoe and my purse strap broke as I ran. At that time, no one in Phoenix had shoulder strap purses, but they were big in England.”

It wasn’t until the usher showed them to their seats that Gilbert realized she was front-row center for the Rolling Stones.

“I had the now-tattered sign I’d been carrying all day, and put it in front of me,” she says. “And from there, we watched the show of a lifetime.”

She remembers screaming a lot “like a typical 13-year-old” and how special it felt to see the Rolling Stones in person.

“Brian Jones wore a pair of green plaid pants and a turtleneck shirt,” she says. “Later, I bought some green plaid fabric and my mom made me some pants like his.”

Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway said they were 'the most exciting band we'd ever seen'

Three acts performed before the Stones: The Vibrations, the Rockin’ Ramrods and Patti LaBelle and her Blue Belles. Pat McMahon of “The Wallace and Ladmo Show” introduced the Stones.

Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway was there with guitarist Glen Buxton. At the time, they were both in the Spiders, a group that formed at Cortez High School (as the Earwigs) with Cooper on lead vocals.

“Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles were so good,” Dunaway recalls.

“We thought they were amazing. It seemed like an hour before the Stones finally came out. They kept the crowd waiting forever. I was thinking, 'Well, either they're doing interviews or they want to wait until the excitement over Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles dies down before they hit the stage.'"

Dunaway recalls “just this explosion of excitement” when the Stones took the stage. “And a very short set. I mean, half an hour maybe. But you didn't care because you saw the Stones. They were the most exciting band we'd ever seen.”

When Cindy Smith Dunaway wrote about it in her diary after the concert, she wrote that they did eight songs.

A setlist for the tour on Wikipedia.com says they would’ve played “She Said Yeah,” “Hitch Hike,” “Heart of Stone,” “Mercy, Mercy,” “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” “Play With Fire,” “The Last Time,” “Good Times,” “Oh Baby,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” “I’m Moving On” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

Regardless of what songs they played, the screaming nearly drowned them out.

It was hard to hear the Rolling Stones over the crowd

“Even though it was this giant coliseum building, PA systems were just terrible in those days,” Dunaway says. “They were more for someone to announce the license plate number of a car that needed to be moved in the parking lot. So it was pretty much just screaming. You could distinguish what the songs were, but it was more of just this unbelievable excitement and screaming than actually listening to what songs they were playing.”

Dunaway recalls the Stones’ performance being very much like he’d seen them do in “T.A.M.I. Show,” a legendary concert film released in 1964 that featured a mix of rock and R&B stars.

“Brian Jones looked the coolest,” he says. And Jagger brought his A-game to the coliseum as a frontman.

“He was all over the stage, like you would imagine,” Dunaway says.

“They had already done the T.A.M.I. Show, where they had to follow James Brown. They were up upstairs watching his performance before they went on. And according to legend, that was the first time Jagger started jumping around the stage.”

'It seemed like everyone we knew was there'

Skip Ladd was there with future Alice Cooper drummer Neal Smith. They were bandmates in a high school surf band called the Laser Beats.

“I ditched school that day to be the first in line,” Ladd says. “I brought a portable battery-operated record player to play ‘12 X 5’ while waiting."

Dunaway says he and Buxton talked their way into the concert without buying tickets. They showed up early with empty cardboard guitar cases and knocked until somebody opened the door.

“We told him we were the Rolling Stones and showed him our guitar cases,” Dunaway says. “Plus we had long hair. And he let us in. We ditched the cases under the bleachers and laid low until they let the paying crowd in.”

There were a lot of young musicians in the coliseum taking notes that night.

“It seemed like everyone we knew was there,” Dunaway says. “All the Phoenix bands. All the guys in the Tubes. Mike McFadden. The guys from P-Nut Butter. Everybody that was old enough for their parents to allow them to go to a concert.”

A lot of parents did not want their kids going anywhere near the Rolling Stones in 1965.

“The Stones were pretty controversial,” Dunaway says. “They were the bad boys of rock. First, people thought the Beatles were a bad influence on the youth. Then when the Stones came out, all of a sudden the Beatles looked squeaky clean.”

Alice Cooper drummer Neal Smith: One of the top live shows he's seen

"The Rolling Stones climbed out of the back of an armored truck to go onstage! Cool entrance," Ladd recalls. "Brian Jones was with them, perfect blonde bangs. Keith Richards had his new Fuzz Tone. He’d step on it and get this big grin on his face, turn towards the amp for controlled feedback, then turn back on ‘Satisfaction.’ Girls were screaming and didn’t want to leave, lost control! Mick Jagger had most of the girls going crazy. Bill Wyman was like the anchor on stage synced up with Charlie Watts.”

Smith’s memories of that day are mostly focused on the member of the Stones whose long blonde hair inspired him to grow his own hair even longer.

“I was such a Brian Jones fan,” Smith says. “To me, he was the No. 1 guy in the Stones. As I recall, in that show, he had on tight green jeans, a long-sleeve green turtleneck shirt through his sweater and pink bedroom slippers. I just thought that was so (expletive) outrageous. I was like, 'You gotta be kidding me.’”

Smith loved their whole bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll image. “Compared to everything else in those days, the Beatles were pretty outrageous,” he says. “But the Stones were more uncouth, unkempt."

The crowd reaction also left a huge impression on Smith. This was his second concert, having seen the Beach Boys at the Fairgrounds in the summer of ‘64.

“The girls are going crazy, screaming all around me,” he says. “So it's all starting to sink in. The screaming was so loud, the music was almost inaudible. It was just the whole experience. To see them up there playing and hearing more screaming than music. That was probably one of the top five live shows I ever saw in my life.”

'You wouldn't think that they would come to Arizona, but they did'

Smith’s sister Cindy and her friends also hit the Executive House in the hope of meeting the Stones when the concert was over. At one point, she hid in the closet of one of the rooms where the Stones were believed to be staying, having entered the room through a sliding glass door.

“I was like, 'Well, this is awkward,’” she says.

“And then at one point I heard everybody starting to come down the hall. And I just I got too scared. I was like, 'Oh my God, what if they think I'm here for some other reason?' So I was like, I'm not staying in here.' I ran out of the room. And then we all we all went home.”

The next morning, Cindy and some of her friends ditched school and returned to the Executive House to try again. This time, they saw Jagger playing golf and befriended a maid who gave her the Do Not Disturb sign and a sheet from Jagger’s hotel room.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” she says.

“That sheet stayed in my mom's cedar chest for years and years. I never washed it. Finally, my mom was like, 'We gotta wash this.' But anyway, that was my adventure. And I don't think we ever got caught for ditching, which is the amazing part.”

It was the perfect ending to a life-changing experience.

“It was one of those magical moments when you got to see one of your fave bands in the whole world,” Cindy says. “And you wouldn't think that they would come to Arizona, but they did, which was amazing.”

The Rolling Stones will perform at State Farm Stadium on Tuesday, May 7. It's their third time at the Stadium.

Rolling Stones 2024 tour at State Farm Stadium in Glendale

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 7.

Where: State Farm Stadium, 1 Cardinals Way, Glendale.

Admission: $63 and up.

Details: 800-745-3000, SeatGeek.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @EdMasley.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.