Note: This article originally appeared in the July 12, 1966, editions of the Houston Chronicle. The previous night, the Rolling Stones made their Houston debut at the Sam Houston Coliseum. This was not the first time the Stones played Texas; the band had earlier performed in San Antonio in 1964 and Fort Worth in 1965. The band returned to Houston six years later on its infamous 1972 North American tour. The Stones would return again in 1978, 1981, 1989, 1994, 1998, 2003 and 2005. The band plays NRG Stadium on Saturday. -- JR Gonzales

The Rolling Stones, the rock group favored by those who think the Beatles are too clean-cut, dispensed 30-odd minutes of organized noise Monday night in the Coliseum. Some in the audience screamed as is expected of teen-agers. The majority, however, kept their cool and quietly but enthusiastically dug the Stones' messages about frustration and nervous breakdowns.

Earlier in the evening, the five Stones holed up in a Rice Hotel suite, ate dinner (filets and lobster Newburg, mostly), ordered bottles of shampoo from room service and played Bob Dylan on a portable record player.

"Where are we"

"Where are we now?" asked one Stone, just off the plane from a gig in Chicago.

"Were in 'Hooston'," said Mick Jagger, the Headstone. He then turned his attention to a reporter who was trying Jagger's patience with questions about the Stones' image.

"We don't create images," said Jagger. "We perform hoping everyone will enjoy themselves. You make your own opinion.

"I'm not trying to put you down, but you ask old-fashioned questions," he continued. "People were asking us that two years ago."

That was when the Stones were beginning to draw attention away from the Beatles with their extra-unkempt hair-dos and eye-opening public pronouncements on social attitudes and religion.

More creative

More up-to-date questions, Jagger continued, are those involving the change in the Stones' music which, he said, is becoming "more creative."

The Stones pick subjects for their songs seldom used by other songwriters.

"When I write our songs," said Jagger, "I never think about boy-girl relationships."

The Stones' music also has become the subject for social investigation.

Is "Paint it Black" about blindness?

"No, it's about somebody dying, a funeral," said Jagger. "If you approach our music with one thing in mind, you'll see what you want to see."

"Satisfaction," say the observers, is about sexual frustration. Jagger says it merely concerns "frustration about everything."

But he does little to refute the former interpretation in his delivery of the song.

Jagger is the vocalist for the Stones. His athletic delivery combines elements of Blaze Starr and the Step Brothers. In fact, Miss Starr could learn a little from Jagger's bumps and grinds while singing "Satisfaction."

The other Stones, Charlie Watts, Keith Richard, Brian Jones and Bill Wyman, remained impassive.

The Stones' style is best described as amplified gut-bucket, remindful of Jimmy Reed and other early rhythm-and-blues singers whom Jagger says they first copied and subsequently modified.

Best-received songs included "19th Nervous Breakdown," "Get Off My Cloud," "Mother's Little Helper" (about a housewife on the tranquilizer habit), and "Paint it Black."