Mick sometimes had the use of his parents' Triumph Herald at the weekend, and I remember we went to Manchester to see a big blues show, and there's Sonny Terry and there's Brownie McGhee, and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. He was the one we wanted to see particularly, but also we wanted to see John Lee. There were others, like Memphis Slim. It was a whole revue that was going through Europe. And Muddy came on, acoustic guitar, Mississippi Delta stuff, and played a magnificent half an hour. And then there was an interval and he came back with an electric band. And they virtually booed him off the stage. He plowed through them like a tank, as Dylan did a year or so later at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. But it was hostile--and that's when I realized that people were not really listening to the music, they just wanted to be part of this wised-up enclave. Muddy and the band were playing great. It was a knockout band. He had Junior Wells with him; I think Hubert Sumlin was on there too. But for this audience, blues was only blues if somebody got up there in a pair of old blue dungarees and sang about how his old lady left him. None of these blues purists could play anything. But their Negroes had to be dressed in overalls and go "Yes'm, boss." And in actual fact they're city blokes who are so hip it's not true. What did electric have to do with it? Cat's playing the same notes. It's just a little louder and it's a little more forceful. But no, it was "Rock and roll. Fuck off." They wanted a frozen frame, not knowing that whatever they were listening to was only part of the process; something had gone before and it was going to move on.

K.Richards. Life.