Martin Cole has been telling the same story at every family gathering since 1979. The story is always the same. Martin Cole had his hand on Keith Richard’s arm for 11 seconds before Martin Cole knew who Keith Richards was. In those 11 seconds, Martin Cole did his job correctly, exactly as he had been trained, exactly as the protocol required.
Martin Cole was professional, firm, and completely wrong. The story ends the same way every time Martin Cole tells it. Keith Richards looked at him, said four words, and walked onto the stage. Martin Cole filed the incident report. Martin Cole left out the name. Martin Cole was 26 years old in September of 1979. Martin Cole had been working concert security since 1974, which meant that by the evening of September 3rd, 1979, Martin Cole had 5 years of experience managing the specific challenges that large live music events produce. the crowds, the
barriers, the restricted access areas, the unauthorized individuals who attempted to access spaces they were not permitted to access, and the professional requirement to handle all of these situations quickly and firmly. Martin Cole was good at his job. Martin Cole had started in 1974 at small venues in Manchester and had worked his way into concert security through reliability and the specific composure the work required.
Martin Cole had been working the Rolling Stones British tour for three nights when the September 3rd incident occurred, which made Martin Cole one of the more experienced members of the security team on that leg of the tour. Martin Cole knew the protocols. Martin Cole knew the credential system. Martin Cole knew which accreditations permitted access to which areas of the venue.
The Manchester Apollo on the evening of September 3rd, 1979 was operating at capacity. The venue held approximately 3,500 people at full capacity. And the Rolling Stones British Tour had been selling out venues of this size with the specific ease of a band that had been filling rooms since 1963 and had never stopped being able to fill them.
The security operation was running with the practiced efficiency of a team that had done the previous night at the same venue and had resolved the specific logistical challenges of that particular building. the narrow backstage corridors, the multiple access points, the credential check positions that the venue’s architecture required to be placed in specific locations that were not always the most convenient locations for the people using them.
The stage access protocol for the Rolling Stones tour was straightforward and had been designed by security coordinators who had been working with the band for years. A specific laminate credential was required for stage access. The credential was checked at two points before the stage steps. Anyone without the correct credential was redirected to the appropriate area.
The system was clear. The system was understood by everyone on the security team. The system had been working without incident for the first 40 minutes of the show on the evening of September 3rd, 1979. Keith Richards had been on stage for 40 minutes when Keith Richards walked off through the stage left exit to the backstage corridor.
This was not unusual. Keith Richards occasionally moved to the backstage area between songs or during extended instrumental passages, and the crew had learned across many years of touring with Keith Richards that these movements were Keith Richard’s own, and required no explanation and no intervention. The stage left exit connected to the main backstage corridor, which connected to the dressing rooms, the production area, the catering space, and through a different route than the one Keith Richards had used on every other
occasion that evening and the previous evening. back to the stage steps on the stage right side. Keith Richards took the wrong corridor. This was the kind of mistake that large venues produce regularly. The backstage geography of concert venues is rarely intuitive, and the Manchester Apollo’s specific layout created a situation where the stage left exit and the stage right entry were connected by two different routes, one of which passed through the cleared zone and one of which did not. Keith Richards took the
route that did not pass through the cleared zone. Keith Richards therefore arrived at the stage right steps from the wrong direction. This was also not unusual in large venues on tour. The Manchester Apollo’s backstage geography was specific to that building, and the stage right approach, which Keith Richards normally used, was physically separate from the stage left exit in a way that required navigating a specific sequence of turns.
Keith Richards had been in the building for 6 hours by that point and had navigated those turns correctly multiple times. On this occasion, Keith Richards took a left where Keith Richards should have taken a right and arrived at the stage steps via the stage right approach from an angle that brought Keith Richards through the credential checkpoint from the wrong direction.
Approaching from outside the cleared zone rather than from within it. Martin Cole was stationed at the stage right steps. Martin Cole had been at that position for the duration of the show. Martin Cole had checked credentials at that point 17 times that evening and had redirected two individuals who did not have the correct accreditation.
Martin Cole saw a figure approaching the stage steps from the wrong direction and took the same action Martin Cole had taken twice before that evening. Martin Cole stepped forward. Martin Cole placed his hand on the approaching individual’s arm. Martin Cole said, “Sir, please leave the stage.” The individual was Keith Richards.
Keith Richards was wearing the stage clothes Keith Richards had been performing in for the previous 40 minutes and was carrying nothing that Martin Cole could see. Keith Richards looked at Martin Cole’s hand on his arm. Keith Richards looked at Martin Cole. Martin Cole looked at Keith Richards. Martin Cole has described the 11 seconds that followed as the most concentrated period of professional assessment he has experienced in a career that has now spanned more than four decades.
In the first 3 seconds, Martin Cole was processing the resistance or lack of it from the individual he had stopped, which was not the resistance Martin Cole normally encountered in unauthorized access situations. In the next 3 seconds, Martin Cole was registering something about the individual’s appearance that did not fit the category of unauthorized stage access, though Martin Cole could not yet identify what specifically was wrong about the categorization.
In the final five seconds, Martin Cole’s recognition mechanism was producing a result that Martin Cole’s professional training was actively working against. Because the result the recognition mechanism was producing was that the person Martin Cole had his hand on was a member of the Rolling Stones who were performing on the other side of the stage steps that Martin Cole was preventing him from accessing.
Keith Richards said four words. Martin Cole has never repeated those four words publicly on the grounds that the four words were said privately and that the privacy was appropriate given the circumstances. What Martin Cole has said is that the four words were neither aggressive nor sarcastic. Keith Richards said four words that contained in Martin Cole’s description a complete and accurate account of the situation.
who Keith Richards was, where Keith Richards needed to be, and the specific logistical explanation for why Keith Richards was approaching from the wrong direction. Four words. The account was accurate. The account was also given that Martin Cole had his hand on Keith Richards arm, and Keith Richards had been performing on the other side of those steps for the previous 40 minutes, delivered with a patience that Martin Cole has spent 40 years considering more than he deserved.
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Martin Cole removed his hand from Keith Richards’s arm. Martin Cole stepped aside. Keith Richards walked up the stage steps and back onto the stage of the Manchester Apollo where Mick Jagger and the rest of the band were in the middle of a song that they had extended to accommodate Keith Richard’s absence in the practiced way of a band that understood that Keith Richards absences were occasionally logistical rather than intentional.
The crowd did not know any of this had happened. The crowd saw Keith Richards return to his position and the song continued and the show continued and the remaining hour and 20 minutes proceeded without further incident. Martin Cole stood at the stage right steps for the remaining hour and 20 minutes of the show.
Martin Cole stood there and did his job and checked credentials and redirected three more individuals who did not have the correct accreditation. Martin Cole did all of this with the specific focused efficiency of a professional who has decided that the best response to an error is to do the job correctly for the remainder of the shift and address the error afterward rather than dwelling on it while the shift is still running.
Martin Cole was a professional. The remaining hour and 20 minutes of the Manchester Apollo show on September 3rd, 1979 passed without further incident at the stage right steps. Martin Cole checked every credential that was presented to him and redirected every individual who did not have the correct one. Martin Cole did not make the same mistake twice.
Martin Cole did not make any mistake for the rest of the evening. The show ended. The crowd left. The crew began the breakdown. After the show, Martin Cole filed his incident report after the show. The incident report was the standard document that security personnel on the Rolling Stones tour completed after each event, noting any situations that had required intervention and their resolution.
Martin Cole described the situation accurately. Unauthorized individual approaching stage access point from restricted direction. Intercepted per protocol. Situation resolved. Martin Cole described the resolution accurately. Individual confirmed as credentialed. Access granted. No further incident.
Martin Cole did not include the name of the individual in the individual description field. Martin Cole has said in the 45 years since he filed that report that he left the name out not to protect himself from professional consequences. The situation had been resolved correctly once Martin Cole had identified the individual and there were no professional consequences to protect himself from but because including the name would have made the report about something other than the security operation.
The security operation had functioned correctly. The stage access protocol had been followed. A non-credentialed approach had been intercepted. The situation had been resolved when the individual’s identity was confirmed. That was the story the report was supposed to tell. Martin Cole told that story accurately.
The name was not part of that story. Martin Cole’s supervisor reviewed the incident report the following morning and noted it without comment. The supervisor was a woman named Patricia Voss who had been coordinating security for touring productions for 8 years and who had reviewed thousands of incident reports across that time.
Patricia Voss noted the absence of a name in the individual field and moved on to the next report. Martin Cole has worked concert security for 46 years. Martin Cole has worked events at venues across Britain and Europe, small clubs and theater venues and midsize arenas, and on several occasions in the 1980s and 1990s, the kind of stadium shows that require security operations of a scale that Martin Cole had not imagined when he took his first security job in 1974.
Martin Cole has been part of security operations for performers at every level of the industry. From emerging local acts in Northern England to the international tours that filled the largest venues in the country. Martin Cole has managed situations that his training prepared him for and situations that his training did not prepare him for and has developed across four and a half decades of work.
The specific kind of judgment that no training program can produce. The judgment that comes only from the accumulated experience of having been in enough rooms and having made enough decisions and having understood over time which decisions were the right ones. Martin Cole retired from active event security in 2018, but still consults occasionally for large events in the north of England and has trained several hundred security professionals across his career.
Martin Cole is regarded in his industry as one of the most experienced and thorough practitioners of his entire generation. Martin Cole tells the story at every family gathering. Martin Cole’s children have heard the story more times than they can count. Martin Cole’s son-in-law has heard it enough times to tell it himself.
Martin Cole tells it to new security professionals as a training example, specifically as an example of the difference between following a protocol correctly and understanding the context the protocol is operating within. Martin Cole says that the incident at the Manchester Apollo taught him that a security system can function exactly as designed and still produce a result that is wrong and that the difference between the system working and the system working correctly lies in the judgment of the person operating it.
Martin Cole says that protocol and judgment are not the same thing. That protocol tells you what to do in the categories of situation it was designed for and that judgment is what you need when the situation does not fit the designed categories. Martin Cole says that on the evening of September 3rd, 1979, Martin Cole had the protocol right and the judgment wrong and that knowing the difference between those two things has informed every security decision Martin Cole has made in the 46 years since. Martin Cole says that the 11
seconds at the stage right steps in 1979 are the most instructive 11 seconds of his professional life. Martin Cole says it with the equinimity of a person who has made peace with a mistake by making it useful. Keith Richards has never mentioned the incident. This is consistent with how Keith Richards relates to the thousands of logistical events that constitute a touring life.
The vast majority of them are processed and released rather than held and repeated. Keith Richards walks off stages and back onto them as a routine part of performing. And the specific occasion on which a security guard briefly prevented that return at the Manchester Apollo in September of 1979 is not from Keith Richards perspective a story that requires telling.
Keith Richards said four words. The guard removed his hand. Keith Richards walked up the steps and back onto his stage and played for another hour and 20 minutes in front of 3,500 people, none of whom knew that any of this had happened. From Keith Richard’s perspective, the story is a minor logistical incident that was resolved in 11 seconds.
From Martin Cole’s perspective, it is the most instructive 11 seconds of a 46-year career. Both of these things are simultaneously and completely true. That is very often how the same event looks from different sides of it. Small from one side and enormous from the other, formative from another. The kind of 11 seconds that one person processes and releases and another person carries for 46 years and tells it every family gathering and uses in every training session and begins the same way every time. I nearly threw Keith Richards off
his own stage. Martin Cole filed the report without the name. The report is in an archive somewhere. The name is not in it. The story is in Martin Cole’s family and in the training sessions Martin Cole has conducted across four decades and in the specific institutional memory of everyone who has heard Martin Cole begin a story with the same sentence every time.
I nearly threw Keith Richards off his own stage. He didn’t. He had his hand on Keith Richards arm for 11 seconds and then he didn’t. Martin Cole stepped aside. Keith Richards walked up the steps. The show continued. That is the whole story. If this story made you smile, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever followed every rule exactly and still gotten things completely wrong? Tell us about it in the comments.
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