102 Edith Grove — where the Rolling Stones were formed

The flat at 102 Edith Grove in Chelsea was where Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards lived together through the winter of 1962 into 1963, in conditions that Keith Richards later described as actively squalid — the gas cut off, no food, the place gradually filling with the detritus of three young men who had decided to do nothing but play blues records and learn how to play blues music. Jones had come to London from Cheltenham determined to become a musician; Jagger and Richards had known each other since childhood in Dartford. The Edith Grove flat was where those separate trajectories converged and the Rolling Stones were effectively formed.

The routine at Edith Grove was practice, records, and the occasional trip to the Marquee or Ealing Jazz Club to play in front of people. They listened obsessively to Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry — the American blues and rock and roll records that had arrived in England via merchant seamen and specialist importers and a handful of jazz fans who knew what the music was. Dick Taylor was also part of the household for a period; Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman joined later. The first Rolling Stones gig was played at the Marquee Club on July 12, 1962, while the Edith Grove winter was still ahead of them.

The building at 102 Edith Grove is a private residence with no plaque on the exterior. The street itself is a quiet Chelsea terrace, largely unchanged in character from 1962 — the kind of street that in any other context would attract no notice. What makes it significant is that the people who lived in that flat over one cold London winter willed something into existence through sheer repetition and obsession, the way all bands do, and then went on to become the Rolling Stones.