London: Edith Grove 102 and Why the Rolling Stones Still Live There
Edith Grove 102, SW 10 Chelsea, London. For every music lover, a special address. And the starting point of a new chapter in music history was in the early sixties. I recently passed by there. At the front door hung a note with the text: “The council has complained about rubbish bags being left at the front of the building”. The note could just as well have hung there in 1962. Addressed to Mick, Keith and Brian.
The row of houses next to and around Edith Grove 102 was built in the early nineteenth century. In the early sixties, it was a student house. And if you ask me, it still is.
From May 1962, two music friends, Brian Jones and economics student Mick Jagger, rented a furnished flat on the first floor of number 102. A few months later, Keith Richards also moved in with them. They had yet to give themselves the name Rolling Stones. That came later that summer, when they performed together for the first time. But more about that later.
16 pounds and the coldest winter since 1740
The rent for the flat at Edith Grove 102 was 16 pounds per month. Excluding electricity. “You got that by putting coins into a green meter” as can be read in one of the many biographies of Mick Jagger.
“We lived there during the coldest winter since 1740, and the shillings for gas, heat, and electricity were not so easy to come by” according to Keith Richards in his autobiography “Life”.
Making music 24 hours a day
The three friends, aged 20 and 18, really had only one common goal, interest and occupation: making music. Preferably 24 hours a day. Because it was through and for their shared passion for music that they were friends, and Mick and Keith had traded their parental home for Chelsea in London. To make music, to listen, to watch bands, to meet musicians and possibly to perform themselves.
Mick Jagger paid the rent
All three had hardly anything to make do with. Brian Jones occasionally had a job but was constantly being fired, and Keith had only worked one day in his life as a temporary worker at the post office.
The rent was paid from Mick’s student grant, the only student of the trio. He was the only one who had a bank account and was the official tenant of the flat. While Keith and Brian practised guitar riffs from artists like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf all day, Mick still went to school from time to time. He even got his bachelor’s degree.
Moldy milk bottles
They kept their heads above water by stealing milk bottles from people’s doorsteps and stealing potatoes and eggs from local shops or neighbours. And they “fiddled” with the electricity meter, as can be read in one of the many books about the Rolling Stones. The house of the three friends was a complete mess. “There was no furniture, there was a worn carpet, we took turns sleeping on two beds and in the middle stood a radiogram belonging to Brian Jones”, according to Keith in “Life”.
“There was a shabby bathroom with a yellowed bathtub, hardly any water came from the tap, and the only toilet was one floor down. The sink was full of dirty dishes and mouldy milk bottles, the ceilings were blackened with soot, and the walls were scribbled on. The layer of dirt on the windows was so thick that from outside,e they looked like curtains. You have to wonder how the normally super-neat Mick could live here,” writes Chris Norman in his acclaimed biography of Mick Jagger.
Groninger Museum
“It was disgusting. We didn’t care about the mess. We just wanted to make music,” as can be read in Keith Richards’ autobiography, whose mother Doris occasionally came by to do the laundry. Keith and all of us owe a lot to his mother, who died in 2007. Because for his 15th birthday, she gave her only son a guitar as a present.
The “reconstructed” version of the Edith Grove 102 flat of the three Stones members could be seen in 2023 and 2024 at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, at Unzipped, the first international exhibition about the Rolling Stones.
The flat was also reconstructed at an exhibition in London in 2016. “Based on memory, because there were no photos”, according to Ileen Gallagher, the American curator of that exhibition, in an article by Tim de Wit for Dutch TV broadcaster NOS.
July 12, 1962: first performance
On July 12, 1962, the three Edith Grove residents stood together on stage for the first time. At the Marquee Club on Oxford Street. Quite quickly and unexpectedly, they had to fill in for another band. They named themselves after “Rollin’ Stone”, a song from 1950 by Muddy Waters. The three were joined by Ian Stewart, Dick Taylor and future Kinks drummer Mick Avory. The second performance was at the Ealing Club in Chelsea, not far from Edith Grove.
First photo
Many performances and band member changes later, the first real official photo of the Rolling Stones was taken in front of the door of where else but Edith Grove 102. In the legendary photo from 1963, we see not only Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones but also bassist Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts. The latter two found the house too filthy and too squalid to go inside.
Ringing the doorbell
Not much later, Brian, Keith and Mick (who turns 82 next week) moved to other places in the city and the Rolling Stones rolled on. The rest is history.
I think back to the warning note on the door in June 2025. “The council has complained about the rubbish,” and I fantasise about the best-kept secret ever. I believe the Rolling Stones still live there and never moved out. I should have rung the doorbell.
Photos (c) Rene Hoeflaak
