Dartford Station — where Jagger and Richards met

On a morning in October 1961, Mick Jagger boarded a train at Dartford railway station carrying a stack of records — Chuck Berry's Rockin' at the Hops, The Best of Muddy Waters, and other Chess Records imports he had mail-ordered — and encountered Keith Richards on the platform. The two had known each other as children in Dartford before Richards's family moved to a different part of town; they had not seen each other for several years. Richards noticed the records. The conversation that followed led to Richards meeting Brian Jones through Jagger, and to the formation of the Rolling Stones.

Both Jagger and Richards were born in Dartford in 1943, within six months of each other — Jagger on July 26, Richards on December 18. They attended the same primary school, Wentworth Primary, as children. Dartford is a commuter town in northwest Kent, twenty miles southeast of London: entirely unremarkable, the kind of place that produces people who leave it. The two most famous people it has produced met again at its railway station carrying the American music that would define their lives, and the Rolling Stones began in that specific coincidence on that specific platform.

Dartford station is still operating as a commuter rail hub on the Southeastern network. A blue plaque has been installed acknowledging the meeting. The platform where Jagger and Richards reconnected is indistinguishable from any other platform on any other commuter line in southern England, which is entirely consistent with the way important things happen: in ordinary places, between people who did not yet know what they were beginning.