“He’s got worries,” the man said.
None of us talked much during lunch. Finally somebody paid the bill, and we went out. The Ship was on a corner, and as we passed the narrow old cobblestone cross street I noticed its name: Stones End. While I stood there looking at the sign, the photographers passed me, walking backwards, snapping shots of Woman Detective Sergeant Wag-staff, Temporary Detective Constable Prentice, and Detective Sergeant Robin Constable as they strolled back to the courthouse, trying to look modest.
In session once more, Mr. Frisby cross-examined Brian: “Mr. Jones, you have said that when the police arrived at the flat your conscience was clear—”
“Yes, entirely.”
“—so why did you not open the door?”
“Because,” Brian said, “I saw the . . . three large gentlemen, as I mentioned before. I was afraid.”
“Why were you afraid?” Mr. Frisby asked, his tone implying how very strange it was that any citizen should fear the police.
“Well, the events of last year,” Brian said, “and there had been so many drug raids in the Chelsea area—I was just worried, I wanted advice.”
“Surely you knew what that would be. You would have to let the police in eventually. If you were innocent, there was nothing to fear. Yet you deliberately kept them out for as long as you could. And it’s no good, you know, saying you could have got rid of anything in that time—for do not the windows of the flat open onto the King’s Road, where there might have been police stationed outside, watching?”
“I expect,” Brian said, “there might be other ways to dispose of it—”
“Could one way,” Mr. Frisby asked, “have been to hide it in the wool?”
Brian shrugged. “It could have been.”
Mr. Frisby walked over and touched the table where he had been sitting. Then he turned and asked Brian to tell the court who, if he had not done it, put the cannabis in the bureau?
Brian said that a lot of people had come in and out while he was living in the flat, but he had no reason to suspect any one person. He had no idea how the cannabis got there, and had denied it since the cannabis had been found.
“Denied what?”
“Knowing about the cannabis.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“Of course I did.”
“Your counsel has cross-examined the police officers, they said nothing about your denying it.”
“I did deny it,” Brian insisted. “I said, ‘You can’t do this to me again.’ ”
Mr. Frisby smiled, walked back, and touched the table. When he turned again, he asked whether Brian had ever used the bureau where the cannabis had been.
“No,” Brian said.
“And you have no explanation for its being there. The whole thing, I take it, is a complete mystery to you?”
“Yes,” Brian said thoughtfully. “A mystery.”
“And so,” said Mr. Frisby, turning a three-quarters profile toward the jury, “it must remain to us, unless we accept the only explanation that will accommodate the facts. What I am suggesting, you see, is that the cannabis was yours, that you knew it was there all along, and that you are now lying to us.”
Brian’s expression as he regarded Mr. Frisby seemed to imply that under different circumstances such an accusation would inevitably result in a duel. “I am not guilty, sir,” he said quietly. “I believe that my whole conduct while the police were in the flat points to a denial.”
The only other witness for the defense was Dr. Harvey Flood, Brian’s psychiatrist. Dr. Flood told Mr. Havers that he had written a glowing report on Brian’s character for the United States Department of Immigration. He repeated what he had said of Brian before the Court of Appeals: “I believe that if you put a reefer cigarette down beside this young man, he would run a mile.” But before being dismissed, he admitted to Mr. Frisby that there was no way he could be certain Brian was not still using cannabis.
Mr. Frisby touched the table once more and began his summation. He told the jury that it was impossible to look into a man’s head and heart to see if he were innocent: he must be judged by his actions. And perhaps the only way to judge a man’s actions would be to compare them with one’s own. He doubted whether any member of the jury would be afraid to see the police at the door. Even a person with a record of arrests would have no reason to be afraid—if only he were innocent. Indeed, such a person should be particularly glad to see the police, and would say to them, “Come in, gentlemen,” and “Have a look round,” gloating a little, perhaps, because he knew that this time he was innocent. Is this what Brian Jones did? Quite the contrary. “He behaved like a man,” Mr. Frisby said, “caught red-handed.”
Mr. Havers, in his closing statement, contended that the cannabis the police found was not evidence of Brian’s guilt, but of his innocence. It did not matter where the windows of the flat opened; Mr. Havers had not seen the flat, but he felt safe in assuming that it was equipped with a bathroom, and that in the bathroom there was a toilet. It would not have taken ten minutes, or even one, for a person to flush away a small lump of cannabis. Nobody could object to one’s going to the lavatory on getting up in the morning. If Brian had known about the cannabis, he would surely have got rid of it.
Then Mr. Havers discussed the emotional complications of the case. Brian Jones, he said, was a member of a group which had met with tremendous success among teenagers, and tremendous prejudice from older people. Many of us, he continued, find pop music and the antics of pop musicians irritating and even maddening. Our own sons are wearing their hair long and down their faces, and are sporting fanciful shirts, which we sometimes find objectionable. But we must put these things out of our minds and look on the defendant as, say, Bill Jones—an ordinary young man. And we must attempt to put ourselves in a situation similar to his: What if one of our sons brought home a friend who left cannabis in the house, and later the police came and found it? What could anyone say except, “I did not know it was there.” That is what Brian Jones had said. He can do nothing more.
Mr. Havers had just completed his summation when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards came into the gallery. Everyone—spectators, counsel, jury—turned to look: it was as if the outlaws Cole and Jim Younger had walked into a court where Judge Roy Bean was trying their brother Bob. Keith was dressed in a tan suede jacket, white T-shirt, and brown leather pants with, clearly, no underwear. Mick was wearing a long green velvet coat, a yellow scarf, and a wide-brimmed black hat. They sat down front with the schoolgirls. The one sitting next to Mick, a thin girl with a grey cloth coat and no makeup, turned to the others and her lips formed the words, “I can’t stand it.”
Chairman Seaton watched them until Mick removed his hat, and then he began the final address to the jury. He said that the burden of proof rested not on Brian but on the police, and that their case was entirely circumstantial. No evidence of using cannabis had been found—no ashes, no cigarette ends. There was only the cannabis itself, and the jury could decide for themselves whether it might have been disposed of before the police entered. “If you think the prosecution has proved without a doubt that the defendant knew the cannabis was in his flat, you must find him guilty. Otherwise, he is innocent.”
Almost incredulous, David Sandison whispered: “Brian’s going to get off.”
Mr. Seaton’s summation made it very hard to expect anything else. He concluded by saying that only a person completely ignorant of the qualities of an English jury could think that a man’s style of dress or hair would prevent his receiving an impartial hearing.
The court recessed while the jury went out to make its decision. Mick stood up, clapped his hat on his head, and said, “Here come de judge.”
Downstairs, Tom Keylock said, “Well, ’e just fuckin’ told ’em what to do, dinne?”
“Sounded like it,” Keith said. We were all lounging around the entrance hall, Mick was surrounded by schoolgirls, and for the first time that day, no one looked worried. Since B
rian’s arrest, a cloud of doubt had hung over the Stones’ future. Now it looked as if all the worry had been unnecessary. Everyone was confident of winning. Somebody remarked that the jury was staying out a long time. Forty-five minutes had passed before the jury came back and we went to the gallery to hear the good news. It was not long coming. The foreman was asked if the jury had arrived at a verdict. “Yes, we have, Your Honour,” he said. “We find the defendant guilty.”
The London newspapers reported that “There were gasps from the public gallery when the foreman announced the verdict.” Suki started to cry. Keith’s shoulders were trembling. Brian slumped to his seat in the dock, his head in his hands.
Later, Tom Keylock said: “I’ve known Brian for years, and I love him. He’s cheated me, he’s lied to me. And the one time in his life the little bastard tells the truth, he gets done for it.”
Mr. Seaton rapped with his gavel for silence. He looked very stern as a guard raised Brian to his feet. Last year he was a bastard. And at that time, Brian had not broken probation. “Mr. Jones,” the Chairman said, “you have been found guilty. I am going to treat you as I would any other young man before this court. But last year Mr. Seaton had thought Brian guilty. “I am going to fine you, and I will fine you relatively, according to your means. Fifty pounds, and one hundred guineas court costs. You will have,” the Chairman added in delicious irony, “one week to get up the money. Your probation order will not be changed. But you really must watch your step, and stay clear of this stuff.”
A reporter who had covered trials in London for many years said, down in the entrance hall a few minutes later, that he had never seen a magistrate show so clearly his contempt for a jury. Brian came out, Suki on his arm, and grinned lewdly at the schoolgirls. The children are singing, “Ha, Bou Jeloud!” At the street they posed for the photographers, Brian, Suki, Keith, Mick, and the little girl who had been sitting next to Mick and who was now clinging to his arm.
Two men in working clothes stopped on their way down the sidewalk. One of them, who had red hair, asked what sentence Brian had got. Told that Brian had been fined, he said to the other man, “Crikey, you or I’d have got thirty years.”
In a minute the Stones’ cars were brought round. Brian and Suki were in Brian’s Rolls-Royce. Mick and Keith got into the back seat of Keith’s blue Bentley. “Give him some bird,” yelled the red-haired man. (“Bird,” in cockney rhyming slang, is short for birdlime, and stands for time.) “And a bath as well,” his friend added, as the Stones drove away, the rebel flag of the Confederate States of America on the Bentley hood flapping gently in the breeze.
29
By the blazing creosote logs feverish men lie down to dream of a Savior riding on a great white Catholic mule and freeze.
. . .
The rain gently lays its head
Across the rail,
It is almost a lifetime
Before the six o’clock flyer.
CHARLIE BROWN: “John Jack Kerouac 1922-1969”
“ I HOPE we made up for it.” The stewardess, who had done little and nothing special, sounded as if this were a permanent part of her routine. When we got off the plane, it was near the end of the day, the month, the decade, our youth. We were standing on the cold blown concrete of the dark deserted West Palm Beach Airport, where there was no snow, but the wind sought you out and chattered your jaws.
Stu, who’d flown down earlier, emerged out of the night with the news that two helicopters were coming to pick us up. While we waited, Stu said to me, “A friend of yours was down here looking for you, Charlie Brown, very helpful guy. The equipment came in on the plane and we had no way to take it to the gig, so I asked him where we could rent a truck, and he just happened to be driving one. Very helpful guy. You must thank him for us, ’cause we might not have made it otherwise.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He went back to Miami.”
When the helicopters arrived, we crept out to them, bent over, hunch-backed under the whipping blades. They took us up and down again a bit soon, hitting hard on the beach. We slogged through soft sand, crossed a lawn, climbed a spiral staircase, and entered the swank Colonnades’ swankest suite, the Bob Hope, caves of ice glittering with crystal chandeliers, polished marble, gilt-laced mirrors. It was as tasteful as anything Las Vegas had to offer, and its mirrors had never reflected anything that looked like the group coming in with the Rolling Stones. Past velvet couches, a piano, a bar with drinks and food, we found waiting for us in a big bedroom, seeming rather out of place themselves, the festival promoters, Dave and Sheila Rupp, a compact, sunburned man in a khaki jumpsuit and a small, shapely brunette in a splendidly whorish red vinyl raincoat.
Dave owned a fast-car shop and Sheila was a schoolteacher. They couldn’t have been more gracious, especially considering that the Stones were by now about eight hours late. The Stones were the least of the problems that the festival had brought into the Rupps’ lives. “Since the festival my business has been firebombed and burned down,” Dave said. “My fire insurance has been cancelled, the John Birch Society have been calling me and saying they’re going to kill my wife and child.”
The Maysles brothers’ lights were going on as Dave went out to see about the rest of the group. I sat on the bed beside Sheila, whose lip-stick matched her raincoat. “The parents call and say that the kids are like they are today because they have teachers like me,” she said.
“They’re right about that,” Michael Lydon said.
“That was a compliment,” I said.
“Where have you all been?” she asked.
I started telling her about the crippled plane and Air Force One as Mick, wandering into the room, heard what I was saying and in a glance communicated the hopelessness of explaining or even knowing where we had been or what we had been doing. He collapsed beside me on the bed as we laughed with determined impotence and indecision. The next question to which nobody knew the answer was whether the Stones should go on now in the dead vast and middle of the night or wait for sunrise. We amused ourselves the best we could while whatever combination of energies that propelled the Rolling Stones took its time deciding.
At Tony’s request (“I got some other things to do”) I rolled some joints for the gig, sitting in a black marble bathtub. The scene was filmed by David and Al, which alarmed Tony. You couldn’t blame anybody for being confused about what was permitted. Then, finding a quiet bedroom, I called Charlie Brown, who came to the telephone from his little Coconut Grove snake-trapper’s hut and read me his Kerouac poem. I told him I’d talk to him later and went out to the bar, where a waiter was heating soup and pouring drinks. As I approached, Mick and Charlie Watts were exchanging mutters. Charlie strolled away, and Mick turned to me. “Charlie’s such a bitch,” he said. He was naked to the waist, wearing a wooden cross on a leather thong around his neck.
“I’ve never thought of Charlie as a bitch,” I said.
“You don’t know him as I do.” We ate soup and drank Scotch, standing at the bar, the Maysles brothers filming. Mick went behind the bar to get closer to the cold cuts, and in my dim awareness I remembered to ask Dave Rupp why he was doing this thing that was hurting him in so many ways. He started by telling me that as a teenager he had won nineteen world championship drag races. Later he had owned a nightclub in his hometown, Wichita, Kansas, where B. B. King and Bo Diddley worked and the Kingsmen (who recorded “Louie Louie,” one of the all-time great brainless rock and roll songs) were the house band. “But this festival is the biggest thing we’ve ever done. The cops are pigs and the kids are great,” Dave said, not loud enough for any of the cops in the Stones’ entourage to hear. “I learned that when I was thirteen and outrunning the cops in a hot rod. We’ve lost our business, we’ve lost probably altogether a quarter of a million dollars, but it’s been worth it because of the kids, the kids are great.”
We broke off as the sound of a helicopter descending onto the lawn just outside the big windows dr
owned all talk. Dawn might never come, and it was time to go see these young people who for the last three days, in the mud, had been skirmishing with the authorities. Ethan, Michael, the Maysles brothers, and I went down the spiral stairs, out of the building’s shadow into the yellow glare of the landing lights, and got on board. The Stones would follow in another helicopter. Palm trees thrashed in our wake as we lifted off for a ride above beach motels, each with its green-glowing chlorined pool, and away from city lights, over darkness, moonscape, empty marshes, until we saw a tiny clump of lights twinkling in the distance.
We were over the lights and then coming down to land on the dirt at the Palm Beach International Raceway, the Rupps’ little drag strip. The surrounding countryside seemed only barren fields with standing mud puddles. A path toward the stage area had been made by laying planks and pieces of plywood across the puddles. We walked on the boards till we came to a dirt road where Bill Belmont was waiting in a blue Chevrolet. He drove us up behind the stage, which looked out over the Raceway. Inside a backstage trailer a suntanned, blond, waterskiing kind of girl named Rhonda was serving excellent tea with cream and sugar. Inside the cyclone fence a few yards away were thirty thousand people. Rupp had told them to use the fence’s wooden supports for firewood. As the Stones came in and were being wrapped in blankets, I went out and walked beside the very tall stage down to the fence, where I told a security guard that I was going into the crowd and coming back.
“You can’t do that,” he said. I pushed past him, but the kids were pressing up to the fence, and as soon as I was among them a boy came up to me and said, “Don’t I know you from Oklahoma?”
“Not me,” I told him.
“Yeah, I know I’ve seen you down in Oklahoma, New Mexico, some-place—”
“I’m sorry.”
People were chanting “Wavy Gravy! Wavy Gravy!” and incomprehensible shouts came from the public address system. The place had the desperate atmosphere of a refugee camp. Some people were standing, some were sitting, some were sleeping, wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets. The ones sleeping looked helpless, like corpses, lying on the wet dirt. Onstage there was a great whaling of drums and a fireworks rocket went off, streaking high above the dismal mud, purple, yellow, blue. Then Sam’s voice, amplified, was saying, “Sorry for the delay, sorry for the hangups. We’re here—will you give a warm welcome to the Rolling Stones?”
True Adventures of the Rolling Stones Page 41