On this day: May 10, 1963

The Rolling Stones were off to kind of a rough start in May of 1963. Although they were building a pretty large fan base around London, nobody wanted to give the group a record deal. Earlier in the year, they had recorded five different tracks in a three-hour session, but getting a label to sign them was proving difficult.

Finally, the group was 'discovered' by ex-Beatles publicist Andrew Loog Oldham who soon became their manager, along with his boss Eric Easton. Oldham used his cunning to effectively frighten A&R man Dick Rowe into signing the group. Rowe is most famous for being the man to pass on the Beatles, and Oldham convinced him to not be that man twice in a row.

Luckily for Rowe, and everyone else, the Stones were a smash. After being signed to A&R on May 6, the group began their first formal recording session on May 10, 1963. Although the group at the time favored covering songs by the great Chuck Berry, they were encouraged for this session to avoid such already well known songs. Instead, they recorded Come On, a much more obscure Berry classic. The original was dubbed dreadful, but when the group re-recorded it a month later, it would become the song that broke the Stones into mainstream music, and lead them down the path to history.

Other notable events for May 10:
-Bob Dylan arrived in Britain on May 10, 1964 for his first tour
-Mick Jagger and Keith Richard were prosecuted on May 10, 1967 on drug charges, and Brian Jones was charged with possession of marijuana
-Both the Turtles and the Temptations are believed to have snorted cocaine in the White House after performing there on May 10, 1969
-The Who sold out Madison Square Gardens, in New York on May 10, 1974 for four nights. All 80,000 tickets were sold in just eight hours