THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ROLLING STONES
THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ROLLING STONES
Stanley Booth
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Booth, Stanley, 1942-
The true adventures of the Rolling Stones / Stanley Booth.
p. cm.
Originally published: 1st Vintage books ed. New York : Vintage Books, 1985, c1984.
ISBN 1-55652-400-5
1. Rolling Stones. 2. Rock musicians—Biography. I. Title.
ML421.R64 B66 2000
782.42166’092’2—dc21
[B] 99-048688
Thanks to the Colonel Bobby Ray Watson Archives for the words of Joe Callicott, to Stanley Kesler and Roland Janes for deciphering the conversation at Sun Recording Studio, and to David Maysles for his technical assistance.
Lyrics from “Midnight Rambler,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1969, 1970 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Street Fighting Man,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1968, 1969 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1968 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Sympathy for the Devil,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1968, 1969 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Under My Thumb,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1966 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “19th Nervous Breakdown,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1966 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “I’m Free,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1965 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Brown Sugar,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1971 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Gimme Shelter,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1969, 1970 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Stray Cat Blues,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1968, 1969 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “Ruby Tuesday,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1967 by ABKCO Music, Inc. Lyrics from “The Last Time,” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. Copyright © 1965 by ABKCO Music, Inc.
Chappell and Co., Inc.: excerpt from the lyrics to “He’s a Rebel,” by Gene Pitney. Copyright © 1962 by Six Continents Music Publishing, Inc. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used By Permission.
Doubleday & Company, Inc.: excerpts from Jazz by Robert Goffin. Copyright 1944 by Robert Goffin. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Fischbach, Fischbach & Weiner: excerpt from the lyrics to “Hickory Wind.” Lyrics and music by Gram Parsons and Bob Buchanan. Copyright © 1969 WAIT & SEE MUSIC. Used By Permission. All Rights Reserved.
The Goodman Group: excerpt from the lyrics to “Carol,” words and music by Chuck Berry. Copyright © 1958 by Arc Music Corp., New York, N.Y. Used By Permission. All Rights Reserved.
Peer International Corporation: excerpt from the lyrics to “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle.” Words and music by Hank Williams and Jimmie Davis. Copyright 1951 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright renewed. All rights in the U.S.A. controlled by Hiriam Music, Inc., Fred Rose Music, Inc., and Peer International Corporation. All rights for the world outside the U.S.A. controlled by Peer International Corporation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used By Permission.
Random House, Inc.: excerpt reprinted from The Birth of Tragedy, by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated with commentary by Walter Kaufmann. Copyright © 1967 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc.: excerpt from Rolling Stone Magazine—January 21, 1970. Copyright © 1970 by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted By Permission.
Tradition Music Co.: excerpt from the lyrics to “You Got to Move,” by Fred McDowell. Copyright © by Fred McDowell & Gary Davis (Tradition Music Co. & Chandos Music Co.). Used By Permission.
Photograph on page 384 copyright © Jim Marshall.
Cover design: David Scott. Cover photo: The Rolling Stones in Gimme Shelter, a film by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin; film still from Michael Ochs Archive.
This edition of The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones is an unabridged republication, with minor emendations and a new afterword, of the edition published as Dance with the Devil in New York in 1984.
It is published by arrangement with the author.
Copyright © 1984, 2000 by Stanley Booth
All rights reserved
Published by A Cappella Books
An imprint of Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN-13: 978-1-55652-400-4
ISBN-10: 1-55652-400-5
10 9 8 7 6 5
FOR ALL THE CHILDREN
We want the heats of the orgy and not its murder, the warmth of pleasure without the grip of pain, and so the future threatens a nightmare, and we continue to waste ourselves . . . we are the cowards who must defend courage, sex, consciousness, the beauty of the body, the search for love, and the capture of what may be, after all, an heroic destiny.
NORMAN MAILER: Advertisements for Myself
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without the love and sustenance of my mother and father and the inspiration of my daughter, this book would not exist. The efforts of Robert Green also made it possible. Any good qualities of the writing are due in great measure to my teachers, Walter Smith and Helen White. During the years of work on this book I was assisted in various ways by Paul Bomarito, Gerald Wexler, Arthur Kretchmer, Jann Wenner, Aubrey Guy, Edward Blaine, Charles Baker, James Allison, Lucius Burch, Irvin Salky, Saul Belz, George Nichopoulos, Joseph Battaile, the late John Dwyer, the late Colonel Thomas Thrash, and the late George Campbell. Peter Guralnick and Gary Fisketjon have given me help beyond the call of sanity. Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, James Dickinson, Helen Spittall, Shirley Arnold, Georgia Bergman, the late Alexis Horner, and the late Leslie Perrin have the writer’s permanent appreciation. Many people encouraged the writing of this book, and a few tried to stop it, making it inevitable. For the book’s contents, only the writer is to blame.
CONTENTS
THE KILLING GROUND
THE ELEPHANTS’ GRAVEYARD
DANCE TO THE DEATH
CODA
AFTERWORD : ONE HALF OF FOREVER
THE KILLING GROUND
It is late. All the little snakes are asleep. The world is black outside the car windows, just the dusty clay road in the headlights. Far from the city, past the last crossroads (where they used to bury suicides in England, with wooden stakes driven through their hearts), we are looking for a strange California hillside where we may see him, may even dance with him in his torn, bloody skins, come and play.
A train overpass opens in the sky before us; as we come out of it there is an unmarked fork in the road. The Crystals are singing “He’s a Rebel.” The driver looks left, right, left again. “He don’t know where he’s going,” Keith says. “Do you—are you sure this is the way?” Mick asks. Turning left, the driver does not answer. The radio is quite loud. “Maybe he didn’t hear you.” Mick closes his eyes. Certain we are lost, but so tired, with no sleep for the past forty hours, less able each moment to protest, to change direction, we proceed in a black Cadillac limousine into the vastness of space.
See the way he walks down the street
Watch the way he shuffles his feet
Oh, how he holds his head up high
When he goes walkin’ by
He’s my guy
When he holds my hand I’m so proud
’Cause he’s not just one of the crowd
My baby’s always the one
/>
To try the things they’ve never done
And just because of that they say
He’s a rebel
And he’ll never ever be
Any good
He’s a rebel
’Cause he never ever does
What he should
“Something up ahead here,” the driver says. Parked by the road is a Volkswagen van, a German police dog tied by a rope to the back door handle. The dog barks as we pass. Farther on there are more cars and vans, some with people in them, but most of the people are in the road, walking in small groups, carrying sleeping bags, canvas knapsacks, babies, leading more big ugly dogs. “Let’s get out,” Keith says. “Don’t lose us,” Mick tells the driver, who says, “Where are you going?” but we are already gone, the five of us, Ron the Bag Man, Tony the Spade Heavy, the Okefenokee Kid, and of course Mick and Keith, Rolling Stones. The other members of the band are asleep back in San Francisco at the Huntington Hotel, except Brian, who is dead and, some say, never sleeps.
The road descends between rolling dry-grass shoulders, the kind of bare landscape where in 1950s science fiction movies the teenager and his busty girlfriend, parked in his hot rod, receive unearthly visitors, but it is crowded now with young people, most with long hair, dressed in heavy clothes, blue jeans, army fatigue jackets, against the December night air that revives us as we walk. Mick is wearing a long burgundy overcoat, and Keith has on a Nazi leather greatcoat, green with mold, that he will leave behind tomorrow or more accurately today, about sixteen hours from now, in the mad blind panic to get away from the place we are lightly swaggering toward. Mick and Keith are smiling, it is their little joke, to have the power to create this gathering by simply wishing for it aloud and the freedom to walk like anybody else along the busy barren path. There are laughter and low talking within groups, but little cross-conversation, though it seems none of us is a stranger; each wears the signs, the insignia, of the campaigns that have brought us, long before most of us have reached the age of thirty, to this desolate spot on the western slope of the New World.
“Tony, score us a joint,” Keith says, and before we have been another twenty steps giant black Tony has dropped back and fallen into stride with a boy who’s smoking and hands Tony the joint, saying “Keep it.” So we smoke and follow the trail down to a basin where the shoulders stretch into low hills already covered with thousands of people around campfires, some sleeping, some playing guitars, some passing smokes and great red jugs of wine. For a moment it stops us; it has the dream-like quality of one’s deepest wishes, to have all the good people, all one’s family, all the lovers, together in some private country of night. It is as familiar as our earliest dreams and yet so grand and final, camp-fires flickering like distant stars as far as our eyes can see, that it is awesome, and as we start up the hillside to our left, walking on sleeping bags and blankets, trying not to step on anyone’s head, Keith is saying it’s like Morocco, outside the gates of Marrakech, hear the pipes . . .
The people are camped right up to a cyclone fence topped with barbed wire, and we are trying to find the gate, while from behind us the Maysles film brothers approach across sleeping bodies with blinding blue-white quartz lamps. Mick yells to turn off the lights, but they pretend to be deaf and keep coming. The kids who have been looking up as we pass, saying Hi, Mick, now begin to join us; there is a caravan of young girls and boys strung out in the spotlights when we reach the gate which is, naturally, locked. Inside we can see the Altamont Speed-way clubhouse and some people we know standing outside it. Mick calls, “Could we get in, please?” and one of them comes over, sees who we are, and sets out to find someone who can open the gate. It takes a while, and the boys and girls all want autographs and to go inside with us. Mick tells them we can’t get in ourselves yet, and no one has a pen except me, and I have learned not to let go of mine because they get the signatures and go spinning away in a frenzy of bliss and exhilaration, taking my trade with them. So we stand on one foot and then the other, swearing in the cold, and no one comes to let us in, and the gate, which is leaning, rattles when I shake it, and I say we could push it down pretty easy, and Keith says, “The first act of violence.”
J. P. ALLEY: Hambone’s Meditations
1
Something about the curious wanderings of these griots through the yellow desert northward into the Maghreb country, often a solitary wandering; their performances at Arab camps on the long journey, when the black slaves came out to listen and weep; then the hazardous voyage into Constantinople, where they play old Congo airs for the great black population of Stamboul, whom no laws or force can keep within doors when the sound of griot music is heard in the street. Then I would speak of how the blacks carry their music with them to Persia and even to mysterious Hadramaut, where their voices are held in high esteem by Arab masters. Then I would touch upon the transplantation of Negro melody to the Antilles and the two Americas, where its strangest black flowers are gathered by the alchemists of musical science and the perfume thereof extracted by magicians. . . . (How is that for a beginning?)
LAFCADIO HEARN:
in a letter to Henry E. Krehbiel
SHE WAS SITTING on a cream-colored couch, pale blond head bent over a red-jacketed book, legs crossed, one heel resting on the marble coffee table. Behind her in the picture window there was a thick green hedge and then, far away below, the City of the Angels, bone-white buildings reaching out to where, this being a fairly clear day, the Pacific Ocean could be seen, glinting in the sunlight through the poison mist that the land and sky became at the horizon. There were other people on the matching couches of the room, the lobby of that motel-like mansion, and more coming in now, but she did not look up, not even when I said “Excuse me” and stepped over her extended leg to sit down next to her husband, Charlie Watts, one of the Rolling Stones.
“Do you remember him, Shirley?” he asked.
A fast glance. “No.”
“A writer. You remember.”
“I hope he’s not like one who came to our house,” she said. Then she looked at me again and something happened in her green eyes. “You’re the one.” She closed the book. “You wrote about me in the kitchen.”
“Somebody else,” I said. “You’re reading Priestley? Prince of Pleasure. Do you know Nancy Mitford’s books?”
“You said I was washing dishes. I have never been so insulted.”
“But Shirley, you were washing dishes. What else could I say?”
“You should have made something up.”
“Where was this?” asked Bill Wyman, another Rolling Stone, sitting with his girlfriend, Astrid Lindstrom, the Swedish Ice Princess, far away from me at the end of the couch. “Great bass sound, ennit?” A portable phonograph in a corner of the room was playing 1930s records by the Kansas City Six.
“Yeah, Walter Page, really good,” Charlie said. “An American magazine. They had it at the office.”
“Was it about all of us? We never saw it,” Astrid said. Wyman kept scrapbooks.
“I shouldn’t want to, if I were you,” Shirley said.
“Never get a sound like that with an electric bass,” said Wyman, a bass player whose hands were too small to play the acoustic bass.
“The electric bass is more flexible,” I said, trying to help divert the conversation. “You can do more things with it.”
“You can’t do that,” Wyman said. “Can you, Charlie?”
“Never,” Charlie said as Page’s bass and Jo Jones’ brushes blended with Freddie Green’s guitar, their rhythm steady as a healthy heartbeat.
“Sorry,” I said.
“We’ve had you on the defensive since you got here,” Charlie said. “Did you happen to bring the paper with Ralph Gleason’s column? We haven’t seen it.”
“I read it on the way in.”
“Was it bad?”
“It could have been worse, but not much.” Once I asked Charlie how he felt about the many press attacks on the Stones, and
he said, “I never think they’re talking about me.” And Shirley had said, “Charlie and Bill aren’t really Stones, are they? Mick, Keith, and Brian, they’re the big bad Rolling Stones.”
Charlie smiled, pulling down the corners of his mouth. “I always liked Gleason’s jazz pieces. I know him, actually. I mean I met him, the last time we played San Francisco. I’d like to ask him why he’s become so set against us.”
A man with receding black curly hair and bushy scimitar sideburns was coming into the room from the open doorway at the far end, wearing white shorts, carrying two tennis rackets and a towel. “Tennis, anyone?” he asked in a voice it would hurt to shave with.
I had never seen him, but I knew his voice from suffering it on the telephone. He was Ronnie Schneider, nephew of Allen Klein, the Rolling Stones’ business manager. Almost before I knew it I was standing between him and the door. “Did you get my agent’s letter?” I asked after telling him who I was.
“Yeah, I got it,” he said. “There are some things we have to change. Tell your agent to call me.”
“He says he’s been trying to get you. There’s not much time.”
“I know” Ronnie said, his voice a fiend’s imitation of girlish delight. He gave me a bright smile, as if I had just swallowed the hook. “Doesn’t anybody here want to play tennis?”
“I’ll play,” Wyman said.
“Here, this one’s warped.” Ronnie handed him a racket shaped like a shoehorn, and they went out across the patio and the juicy Saint Augustine grass to the tennis court. I watched them through the glass door as they walked; then I noticed that my hat was in my hand, and I decided to sit down and try to relax.
Serafina, the Watts’ eighteen-month-old daughter, came in with her nanny, and Shirley took her out to the kitchen for something to eat. Astrid went along, possibly to chill the orange juice. The Kansas City Six were playing “Pagin’ the Devil.”
True Adventures of the Rolling Stones Page 1