Credit: Dangerous Minds / Album Cover

There’s an endless debate about when The Rolling Stones lost the plot.

Goat’s Head Soup? Some Girls? Honestly, by the time Black and Blue dropped, things were already getting a bit swampy. The riffs were there, but they didn’t cut quite the same way. And even if you’ve still got love for the later records, no one is defending Mick Jagger’s fashion choices from this period.

For a guy who dressed so damned cool in the 1960s, by the time this short live show was shot at London’s famed Marquee Club in 1971, Jagger’s much-vaunted fashion sense had clearly turned to shite. The guy who looked so spooky and satanic in the Uncle Sam top hat and cape get-up during the 1969 tour was now wearing a glittery mid-drift “top” with a sideways-cocked, multi-colored silk baseball cap?

The Marquee Club wasn’t some anonymous dive, it was the crucible of British rock at the time. From the early ‘60s on, it was where the sharpest bands got their start, where walls sweat and speakers bled. Everyone who mattered stepped onto that stage at some point—whether you were chasing stardom or just trying not to get bottled off by a hostile crowd.

Playing the Marquee meant something. Even after you’d filled Wembley twice over, going back to that tiny stage was like stepping into the ring. No gimmicks. No distractions. Just volume and nerve.

So in 1971, when the Rolling Stones dropped in for what was essentially a private gig filmed for European TV, it wasn’t nostalgia, it was more of a flex. This was the Sticky Fingers era. The first record on their own label, full of barbed wire riffs and sleazy swagger. They were also beginning to scatter across Europe to dodge tax exile status. Musically, they were still hungry – Keith was still in his vampire prince phase, and Mick hadn’t yet fully morphed into a peacock.

But the cracks were forming. The party was beginning to outpace the music. You can almost feel that tension in this performance—it’s tight, it’s mean, it’s the Stones still at full voltage. But Jagger’s glittery torso says otherwise. It’s a strange moment caught between worlds.

The band? They’re cooking. Mick Taylor’s guitar slices like a scalpel, Watts is swinging, and Keith is, well, being Keith—immortal and unbothered. But Jagger… Lord help us. The man looks like he mugged a go-go dancer on his way to the stage. Sequins, belly out, hat askew—he looks like a glam-rock court jester who lost the instructions.

Imagine what the rest of them thought when they realised they had to go onstage with this git dressed like this… It’s a great set; Mick Jagger just looks like a bit of a dork here.

The Rolling Stones setlist at the Marquee Club:

• Live With Me’
• ‘Dead Flowers’
• ‘I Got The Blues’
• ‘Let It Rock’
• ‘Midnight Rambler’
• ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’
• ‘Bitch’
• ‘Brown Sugar’