"I received a phone call in the morning from our office in Chicago," said Fetters, who was chief operating officer of Gibson Guitar Corp.'s original plant at 225 Parsons St. in Kalamazoo. "They said The Rolling Stones would like a factory tour that day and I was to rent a limo and go to a private hangar at the Kalamazoo airport. They were coming in on their private plane."
That happened in mid-July of 1975, when Gibson was owned by Chicago-based musical instrument company Norlin Inc.
"It was really a spur-of-the-moment deal," said Fetters.
The visit was not to be announced and Fetters said he was told not to tell anyone. But he estimated that about 200 Rolling Stones fans were outside the airport terminal looking for the band when he arrived and drove past them. He said he assumes the band's publicist leaked information to generate the attention.
Fetters led the tour after picking up guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood along with four or five members of The Rolling Stones' entourage at the Kalamazoo County Airport.
What happened to Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, the other members of the band? Fetters said he was told the band was on the plane. But he said he never saw the others and they never surfaced for the plant tour.
At that time, Wood was a new addition to the band, replacing Mick Taylor.
Fetters said no one was outside the Parsons Street plant on Kalamazoo's north side when the limo arrived and no one at the factory knew about the visit until the entourage walked in. After that, he said, "We didn't get much production done that day."
"They (workers) all wanted to come talk to them, particularly our female employees," Fetters said. "We would allow them to do that."
The Rolling Stones were, and continue to be, one of rock 'n' roll's premier bands. They were in the midst of their "Tour of the Americas '75" summer tour and Fetters said he was told they had played in Chicago the night before their visit and were heading out to play other Midwest dates, including Detroit.
Setlist.fm shows the band played Chicago Stadium from July 22-24; Bloomington, Ind., on July 26; and Detroit's Cobo Arena on July 27-28.
The band's hit song "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)" was released late in 1974. And the 1970s were days when drinking, drugs and wild parties were everyday events in the music industry.
Jack French is pretty diplomatic when he describes Keith Richards' condition.
"We didn't get much production done that day." - Tom Fetters, former Gibson chief operating officer
"He struggled," French said with a laugh. "He'd walk a few feet and then fall down."French has been an instrument repairman for 54 years, with Gibson from 1961 until 1984 when the company closed in Kalamazoo and moved all of its production to Nashville, Tenn. He has continued since 1985 with Heritage Guitar Co., a business started by former Gibson guitar makers who decided not to relocate to Tennessee.
French remembers that Richards was escorted by a couple of Gibson "higher-ups."
"They would pick him up when he fell and they helped hold him up," French said. "But he kept falling down."
He said, "I'll never forget that he was wearing leather pants. I raced motorcycles back then and I knew leather pants were good."
He said he remembers thinking the pants might help protect Richards when he fell.
Fetters was also diplomatic in his descriptions.
"I just remember that on the way, they had a request," he said. "We had to stop and get them some chocolate milk and other things because their stomachs were bothering them."
"They were rather ragged," Fetters said of their physical condition, but they "were very interested in the process required to manufacture guitars and they interacted directly with the people on the manufacturing floor."
The tour lasted about 90 minutes. The best part, Fetters said, may have been Richards and Wood playing guitars in the sound-proof booth that was part of the factory's final testing area.
They were relaxed and lit cigarettes in what was a no-smoking environment, he said. "But nobody was going to tell them they couldn't light up," he said.
Fetters, now 75, is retired and lives near Burlington, Vt. He worked for Gibson from 1971 to 1976 and relocated with his family back to his home state of Vermont. He owned and later sold a factory that made the little wooden pieces for Milton Bradley's game Scrabble.
French, now 72, said there were so many famous people coming and going to the original Gibson factory during the 1960s and 1970s that he has a tough time remembering what happened when.
"It often happened," Fetters agreed about celebrity visits. "One reason was we had a department of 40 to 50 people who customized guitars and a lot of time people would want to have their guitars customized and they would actually come pick them up."
