Video: 'The Rolling Stones - in the Park 1969'

(Saturday, July 5, 1969, 5:25 p.m. BST) — The Rolling Stones, just three days after the death of founding member Brian Jones, performed a free live rock concert today in front of at least 250,000 fans (and by some estimates, almost 500,000) at Hyde Park in London.

The event was their first public concert in more than two years, and had originally been planned as the debut of guitarist Mick Taylor, who had joined the Stones after Brian Jones was kicked out of the band in June.

Lead singer Mick Jagger opened the show with a short eulogy, reading two stanzas of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem on John Keats’s death, Adonaïs, from a calf-bound book. After this recital, several hundred cabbage white butterflies were released.

Paul McCartney of The Beatles, taking a break from the sessions for his band’s Abbey Road album, was among the thousands of attendees.

Video: 'Paul McCartney at Hyde Park Rolling Stones concert // 5 July 1969'