Barry May, author of the first Rolling Stones article, dies

British journalist Barry May, who wrote the first article about the Rolling Stones when the newly formed group played a small club in Richmond-upon-Thames, died on the 1st aged 80, his family said this Friday.

Barry May died in Richmond, his hometown, his wife Dolly May told Lusa.

The journalist, who later became one of Reuters’ chief international correspondents, whose missions included apartheid South Africa and Khomeini’s Iran, was 19 years old and working for the local weekly Richmond & Twickenham Times in April 1963 when he was asked to write about the “music scene” » in the southern suburbs of London.

The Stones, also early in their career, after wandering around parts of the British capital, achieved their first residency status at the newly opened Crawdaddy club in Richmond, where they had been performing since February, playing the most popular songs of Rhythm’n’Blues (R’n’ B), which were at the time of discovery in the United Kingdom.

Less than a year had passed since Brian Jones placed the ad in Jazz News that launched the Stones, and everything changed with the publication of Barry May’s full-page article on April 13, 1963: The Beatles had been heard. them the next day, the contract with Decca was signed a few weeks later, and the group’s first album, featuring a version of Chuck Berry’s “Come on,” was to be released on June 7, already under the name The Rolling Stones, two months after the young intern went to his concert.

In this article, Brian Jones appears as the leader of the Rollin’Stones, whose original name comes from Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’Stone Blues”, and the musicians themselves call themselves “semi-professionals”: Brian Jones, the “architect” of the group. , pianist Ian Stewart, an employee of a pharmaceutical company, Mick Jagger, a student at the London School of Economics, and Keith Richards from Sidcup College of Art, Bill Wyman, bassist of the Cliftons and musician indefinitely since the end of his military service, and designer Charlie Watts, a jazz drummer in his spare time time.

The article focuses on the R’n’B phenomenon that the band set up in the back of the old and abandoned Station Hotel in Richmond, which led to the Crawdaddy club’s regular audience growing from 50 to over 300 people a night in just a few minutes. few weeks. .

The report says that Mick Jagger had difficulty moving on stage, the club hall was so crowded that it took its name from the success of Bo Diddley, the representative of R’n’B in the USA. As Barry May predicted at the end of the article, the hotel was demolished, the club had to find a new headquarters, and the Stones continued to ride. May continued to cover the “pop music scene” for a time, but soon opted for “more orthodox journalism,” as he admitted 55 years later to News Decoder of the educational network Nouvelles Découvertes. In London he began working for The Scotsman newspaper, then the Associated Press and then Reuters, where he joined in 1968 and where he worked for more than 30 years. Agency journalism never left his life again.

Barry John May was born in August 1943 in Richmond-on-Thames. He has been a correspondent in Pakistan, South Africa and the United States. In July 1981, he was one of three Reuters journalists expelled from Iran by the forces of Ayatollah Khomeini.

It was about news that Iranians were “disillusioned with the way the anti-Shah and anti-American revolution of 1979 was turning into an Islamic coup,” Scottish journalist Phil Davison, then head of the Reuters delegation in Tehran, told Lusa. . “Under threat from Khomeini’s supporters,” the three correspondents – Adam Philps, Barry May and Phil Davison – had “only time to pack their bags and catch the first plane” on the day of the shooting in the Iranian capital.

May also led the UK agency’s delegation to the Gulf and was responsible for the economic sector, being the founder and first editor of Reuters Business Report in Europe. In retirement, he created The Baron, a website dedicated to Reuters employees, managed the agency’s pension fund, chaired the Richmond Society, was elected to the Royal Society of Arts and received the title of Freedom of the City of London.

Phil Davison told Lusa that Barry May’s “most influential story”, despite his “long and distinguished” career, was probably his first article on the Stones, recalling how Bill Wyman had witnessed the “pride of the band” on several occasions when I saw the text. published, and how Brian Jones made it a point to keep a copy of this page in his wallet.

“My article about them was the first to be published anywhere,” Barry May recalled to News Decoder in 2018. “The Stones continued to play despite hit albums, world tours and broken marriages. And my musical tastes returned to their former self.” The genre I learned to appreciate from my father was jazz.”