Is Everybody Ready For The Next Band?

In November 1969the Rolling Stones toured the United States for the first time in three years.Gone from the band was founder member Brian Jones, replaced by Mick Taylor fromJohn Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Gone too were the Top Ten-laden 30-minute sets playedover inadequate PA systems to crowds of screaming, gawping teenagers. In theirplace was a fully-fledged 75-minute rock show drawing heavily on the new Stonesalbums Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed, utilising innovative lighting andstaging. Led by the Glimmer Twins – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – theRolling Stones rocked across America on a 24-date tour whose essence iscaptured in the live album Get Yet Ya-Ya’s Out, heralded by many as the finestlive rock album of all time.  From anunpublicised opening night in Fort Collins, Colorado through to the tragicevents at Altamont, California a month later, Everybody Seems To Be Ready(taking its title from Chip Monck’s nightly stage introduction for the band)mixes contemporaneous press reports with previously unpublished first-handaccounts to present the story of a tour that has gone down in history as thefirst rock tour of the modern era in the words of the people who were there.