42 Years Ago Today, The Stones in the Park...

I won't bore you all with a detailed description of the Rolling Stones' performance at Hyde Park two days after Brian Jones's mysterious death-by-misadventure (aka Frank Thorogood accidentally killed him by drowning him in Brian's pool).  Musically, it's not that impressive, and you can barely hear poor Mick Taylor, who at 20 years old, was performing with the Stones for the first time, and under such circumstances! And then Mick in his silly dress ensemble and his reading of "Adonais" and the release of those thousands of butterflies into the air (most of whom were dead, ironically). No Stones fan worth their skull rings doesn't own a battered VHS copy of this concert, or at least seen it several times, so if that's you, these pictures won't mean anything to you anyway.  I've scanned MANY photos of the Hyde Park show, as almost every Stones book has one or two in there, but perhaps some of these will be new to you, so, enjoy. Naturally, I focus on photos of Marianne and Anita taken during the concert, Anita stylin' despite being eight months pregnant, and Marianne haunted by Brian's death and completely dope-sick.  She and Mick went to the show together (with Nicholas in tow, of course), but Mick left that evening with his brown sugar Marsha Hunt, with whom he was already involved in an affair.  The next day, the 6th of July 1969, Mick and Marianne flew to Sydney to begin the filming of the abysmal "Ned Kelly", but Marianne, as we all know, took 150 Tuinals upon arriving and was in a coma for six days. Mick, ever the workhorse, still turned up to the set, but afterwards, he was there at Marianne's side, and when finally she opened those sad, enormous, oceanic eyes of hers, Mick, moved and relieved that she had come out of the coma, grasped her hand and said, "Oh, Marianne, I thought I'd lost you", and she whispered, "Wild horses couldn't drag me away..."  Anyway, we'll save that for another post...

Keith on the morning of the Hyde Park show (5th July 1969):

Marianne, outside of her and Mick's Cheyene Walk home, getting in the car to go to the show with son Nicholas and Mick:

Arriving at the concert:

Robert Fraser (standing, left) and Marianne:

The crowd (about 250,000):

God, I wish I could look this pretty with short hair and detoxing from heroin:

all photos = my scans. please credit if you repost.

photos 1-3, 19, 36-39 and 50-54 taken by Michael Cooper.