Staff at the 600-person capacity club were sworn to secrecy about the night's headliners as fans started lining up outside for non-existent tickets on Wednesday afternoon - three days after Mick Jagger and his bandmates performed to a sell out crowd at nearby PetCo Park in San Diego, California.

But photos of the band onstage and tweets from the few lucky fans who were invited to the party have since been posted on social media.

Reports suggest the gig was organised by local investor Ralph Whitworth, who previously agreed to donate $1 million (£667,000) to the Adopt-A-Minefield charity in 2003 for a brief Paul MCCartney set at a birthday party for his then-wife, Wendy Walker.

It's not clear how much he may have paid to book the Stones, who kicked off the show with Start Me Up and closed with Otis Redding's Can't Turn You Loose - a similar set to the one they played at a last-minute surprise gig in Los Angeles last week (ends22May15).

The band's next scheduled show on the Zip Code Tour is in Ohio on Saturday (30May15).

The Belly Up Tavern hit headlines at the beginning of 2015, when a couple was caught performing a sex act onstage during a punk gig at the venue.

An unnamed woman stripped off and stretched out naked on the stage while a male fan performed oral sex on her during the Dead Kennedys concert. The couple was caught on camera and the photo was uploaded to social media site Reddit.com.