“Mick went off to Australia—he was in a really bad state—and Bill and Charlie and Astrid and Shirley went to the funeral. There were so many flowers from the fans. I ordered a spaniel, ’cause that was his favorite dog. It was fantastic, it looked just like a dog, all in flowers.
“On the morning, the Thursday after Hyde Park, Fred picked me up at the office, and we went down to the Londonderry for Bill and Astrid, they were going down with us, and Suki was coming with us as well, we had a big limousine. Charlie and Shirley were making their own way with Stu and his wife. We get to the Londonderry and Suki walked in with a sad face, but the sun was shining, it was a great day for a funeral. We had this long drive to Cheltenham, talkin’ all the time, mostly about Brian, but happy things. When we got to Cheltenham, as we pulled up outside the house, there’s a big lawn, and that was covered with flowers, and there were so many people around. We expected to stay in the cars, wait for the other cars to come and get in the funeral cars and go along, but there was Mr. Jones and Tom Keylock at the door. Mr. Jones wanted to meet everyone, and they had a room for us with cakes and sandwiches and tea, which you really appreciate after bein’ in a car for hours.
“Bill and Astrid went in and shook hands, and Tom said, ‘This is Shirley Arnold.’ Mr. Jones got hold of me and cried, which started me off again. He got hold of me and he wouldn’t let go. Mr. Jones said that Brian had told him about me.
“Charlie and Shirley arrived, then the cars arrived and we walked out. We saw the coffin—it was bronze, really a lovely coffin—and we got into the cars. Hatherly Road, where Brian lived, goes on for about two miles, and going slow down the road, there were what seemed to be lots and lots of people. When we went past the school, all the little boys and girls were standing there looking, their teachers had let them come out into the playground. Then we got down into the town itself. There were so many people—the whole of Cheltenham came out just to stand and watch, whether they were sincere about it or whether it was just a nice day and we’ll go look at the flowers.
“We all started to walk in behind the coffin to go into the church. Shirley Watts was walking with me, and she was crying and I was crying ’cause where we were walking, we could’ve touched the coffin, and Brian was in there. They brought the coffin in and put it on an altar, and the priest—I heard some of the things he said, about how Brian used to sing in the choir in this church. It was nice, the choirboys were singing, you could imagine that Brian was once a choirboy as well. They did a long service. Then the priest said, ‘Mr. Jones has asked me to read you this telegram.’ It was a telegram that Brian had sent to his parents about three years before when he was on a drugs charge. The priest said, ‘I think Brian sums up everything he wants to say in this telegram: “Please don’t judge me too harshly.” ’ He could’ve written it the day before he died, to be read when he died.
“Then we came out of the church and had about a five-minute drive to the cemetery, and things got out of hand, because there were so many people there with their children, lickin’ ice lollies. It wasn’t very nice, all these people trying to push to look down the hole. We were sort of ushered along with the parents. There was Fred and me and Bill and Charlie and Suki and Brian’s sister Barbara and Julian standin’ there with Linda, the image of Brian. The priest did another sermon, ever such a long one, and then they started to lower the coffin. It was so pretty, the sun was shinin’ on the coffin. Usually you’re gonna go down in a hole that’s dark, this was covered in imitation grass and it was a really deep hole. We all stood over the side to watch, you’re supposed to watch the coffin go down. It was hot, cameras were clickin’, it was so sick, takin’ photographs. I remember seeing the coffin going down and it was going such a long way. I thought I was going down the hole—”
31
Jerry Lee Lewis: H-E-L-L!
Sam Phillips: I don’t believe it.
Jack Clement: Great God Almighty, great balls of fire!
Billy Lee Riley: That’s right!
SP: I don’t believe it.
JLL: It says, “Make merry! with the joy of God! only!” But when it comes to worldly music, rock and roll—
BLR: Rock it out!
JLL: —anything like that, you have done talked yourself into the world, and you’re in the world, and you hadn’t come from out of the world, and you’re still a sinner. You’re a sinner and unless you be saved and borned again and be made as a little chile and walk before God and be holy—and, brother, I mean you got to be so pure. No sin shall enter there— no sin! For it says no sin. It don’t say just a little bit; it says no sin shall enter there. Brother, not one little bit. You got to walk and talk with God to go to Heaven. You got to be so good that it’s pitiful. I’m tellin’ you what I know.
BLR: Hallelujah!
SP: All right. Now look, Jerry, religious conviction doesn’t mean anything resembling extremism. All right. You mean to tell me that you’re gonna take the Bible, that you’re gonna take God’s word, and that you’re gonna revolutionize the whole universe? Now, listen. Jesus Christ was sent here by God Almighty—
JLL: Right!
SP: Did he convict, did he save all of the people in the world?
JLL: Naw, but he tried to!
SP: He sure did. Now, wait just a minute. Jesus Christ came into this world. He tolerated man. He didn’t preach from one pulpit. He went around and did good for others.
JLL: That’s right! He preached everywhere!
SP: Everywhere. That’s right.
JLL: He preached on land!
SP: That’s right.
JLL: He preached on the water!
SP: That’s exactly right! Now—
JLL: Man, he done everything! He healed!
SP: Now, now, here’s, here’s the difference—
JLL: Are you followin’ those that heal? Like Jesus Christ did?
SP: What d’you mean . . . you . . . what . . . I, I . . .
JLL: Well, it’s happenin’ every day!
SP: What d’you mean?
JLL: The blind had eyes opened.
SP: Jerry—
JLL: The lame were made to walk.
SP: Jesus Christ—
JLL: The crippled were made to walk.
SP: Jesus Christ, in my opinion, is just as real today as he was when he came into this world.
JLL: Right! Right! You’re so right, you don’t know what you’re sayin’!
SP: Now, I will say, more so—
BLR: Aw, let’s cut it! It’ll sell!
JC: It’ll never sell, man, it’s not commercial.
SP: Wait, wait, wait just a minute. We can’t, we got to—now, look, listen, I’m tellin’ you outa my heart, and I have studied the Bible a little bit—
JLL: Well, I have too. I studied it through and through and through and through, and I know what I’m talkin’ about.
SP: Listen, Jerry. If you think that you can’t, can’t do good if you’re a rock and roll exponent—
JLL: You can do good, Mr. Phillips, don’t get me wrong—
SP: Now, wait a minute, listen. When I say do good—
JLL: You can have a kind heart!
SP: I don’t mean, I don’t mean just—
JLL: You can help people!
SP: You can save souls!
JLL: No! No! No! No!
SP: Yes!
BLR: You’ll never make it.
JLL: How can the Devil save souls? What are you talkin’ about?
SP: Listen, listen—
JLL: Man, I got the Devil in me! If I didn’t have, I’d be a Christian!
—Conversation at Sun Recording Studio, 1957
IN THE LOBBY of the Huntington Hotel, waiting for the elevators, we heard a noise from the staircase and looked up to see a woman of some years, with copper-colored hair, dressed in a bright green wrapper, screeching at us. “I wish you’d take ’em all and clear out of here,” she said. A girl with a tape recorder and two young men with cameras, underground press people who had
been waiting for us in the lobby, looked at the woman, then at us, none of whom gave any sign of having heard her, and the girl and one of the men said, “Wow. Far out.”
The press and the Maysles brothers were filming as we left the elevators to invade the upstairs corridors. “Is my local groupie in?” Keith asked, opening the door of his suite, throwing in his suitcases. “Ah, hello, dahling.”
We found our rooms, stowed our bags and soon were back with Keith, listening to the Alabama tapes, Mick and Keith and me dancing around the furniture. Jo and Ronnie and the West Coast Promo Man David Horowitz were sitting around the room, all of us together again, Horowitz filled as usual with prissy, uncomprehending concern. Keith turned off the tapes so we could hear a TV news report that made the concert sound like a fine charitable act. “Will you be going?” the announcer asked his partner, who said, “Not me. I hear there’s a scarcity of toilets, about one to every thousand people—and it’d be just my luck to be number 999 in line.”
Mick, talking on the telephone to a San Francisco radio station, was asked about the changing locations, is everything all right, is it gonna happen?
“We said we’ll do it and we will,” Mick said. “We’re goin’ out in a helicopter soon to look at it—let you know more from the scene of the havoc.”
Bergman, Schneider, and Horowitz were leaving. “We’ll let you know about the helicopter,” Horowitz said.
“Thanks,” Mick said. The door closed. “Silly queen.”
While Mick went to take a bath, Keith and Charlie and I smoked our last wisps of grass in a little brass waterpipe Charlie Brown had given me, listening to blues tapes. Keith answered a knock at the door, letting in two boys and a girl, who appeared to have wandered in off the street. I asked them if they had any dope and they said no.
“Isn’t there any grass in this town?” Keith asked.
One of the boys left, coming back a few minutes later with a plastic sandwich bag of marijuana. We smoked it, rolled into great cigars, listening to Elmore James. Mick returned, wearing green trousers, an orange tweed sweater, and a camouflage jacket.
“Have some of this grass these people have been nice enough to give us,” Keith said. They sat and watched us and said nothing, except that after we heard Jimmy Reed sing “Can’t Stand to See You Go,” one of the boys asked, “Can you get this record here? In this country?”
The tape ended and for some reason Mick and I sang “Lonely Avenue,” remarking that it was written by Doc Pomus. “Though I’m not a walking Ray Charles discography,” Mick said. “That country and western album turned me off.”
We waited, smoking, ashes falling on Mick’s pants. Finally Ronnie came back and said there were no helicopters available, we’d have to ride out in a limousine, it would take over an hour to get there. We wavered—maybe we won’t go—Mick went to get his long coat, Keith and I started down the stairs. At one point we were all separated, so uncertain was our resolve. We kept calling to each other: “Are you coming?” We stood on the sidewalk, thinking about no sleep last night and how late it would be when we got back, but still we piled into the car and set out, though the driver wasn’t sure how to get there, for Altamont, to the dusty road and the Crystals ringing in our ears and the dogs and the people and the fires on the hillside and the sound of the pipes, it was like Morocco, but it was also like anything you wanted it to be like, an imaginary landscape in the dark night of the soul where strange signs might be seen. Keith chose to stay here, while Mick and I elected to return to the city for what was left of the night.
Back at the hotel we stopped by Keith’s room. “I’ve got some grass if you want a bedtime joint,” I said.
“Naw, I’m gonna crash,” Mick said, taking a sheet of paper from the desk to write Charlie a note about how nice it was at the concert site. We said good night, went to our rooms, and just before light broke through my window I fell asleep.
Four hours later Ronnie called to say that the limousines would be leaving early. I showered to wake up and dressed in the same clothes I’d worn for warmth the night before, old blue jeans, denim cowboy shirt, leather jacket. Downstairs Ronnie was waiting on the sidewalk by the limousines. Mick came along wearing knee-high burgundy suede boots, yellow crushed-velvet pants, a red silk shirt, a brown suede vest with red piping, and a leather cape of Keith’s with a collar of what appeared to be chicken feathers.
With Charlie and Mick Taylor—Wyman wasn’t ready to leave and would join us later—we drove to a pier where a helicopter would meet us, Mick talking about Cecil Beaton, who’d photographed him in New York. “ ‘Could you twirl once more, oh, lovely, yass, once again closer to me.’ I asked him about Nijinsky,” Mick said, “and he said, ‘Oh, Nijinsky, yass, I’ll never forget when he and Diaghilev broke up.’ ”
“We all felt it,” Charlie said. He regarded Mick’s velvet and leather and feathers. “Never top Brian Jones at Monterey.”
“I’d never try to top that,” Mick said, tossing his hair. “So overdressed.”
“Brian at the London Palladium, then,” Charlie said.
“That was the purity of that style,” Mick said. “After that he lost all sense of simplicity.”
“Have you noticed,” Mick Taylor asked, “there’s kind of an atmosphere over the whole city like a carnival?”
“Kind of festive, you mean?” I said.
“Yeah, it’s great.” He smiled, but no one else did.
Charlie was looking away, distracted, as if he weren’t seeing the buildings rush past. “Brian had a whole trunk full of jewelry,” he said. The contents of the trunk, like most of Brian’s possessions, had disappeared after his death. “It was like pirate treasure, a whole trunk full of little trinkets.”
While the luggage was shifted into the helicopter, Mick led the film crew around the pier. Among the people watching was a fat, blond, white-stockinged, cross-eyed groupie. “Charlie,” Mick said, “get in the film, Charlie.”
“Kiss the girl,” the cameraman said.
“No,” Charlie said.
“On the cheek.”
“No,” Charlie said, with his turned-down smile. “Love’s much deeper than that, it’s not something to be squandered on celluloid.”
We climbed into the helicopter and cranked off over the bay. “Did we remember the brandy?” Charlie asked, wearing the pilot’s olive-drab bill cap. “We get the food in?”
“Yes,” Mick said, “the loaves and the fishes.”
As we flew over the California countryside in the shaking helicopter, I scrawled in my notebook, “dun-colored contours of earth below laid out like the kids last night but like giants in khaki sleeping bags.” Long before we reached Altamont we could see lines of cars backed up on the highway and parked cars and then great swarms of people. We descended at a crazy angle to a spot a long way up the hill behind the stage, coming down with a bump. The doors opened and we were out-side in the crowd. Mick and Ronnie got out first and a boy ran up to Mick and hit him in the face, saying, “I hate you! I hate you!” I couldn’t see it, I just saw a scuffle and heard the words. I grabbed Charlie and held on to him, because I didn’t want him to get lost, God knows what might happen to him.
I don’t know how Mick and Ronnie and little Mick moved so fast, but they disappeared, leaving me with Jo and Charlie Watts, the world’s politest man. I tried to move him through the sea of sleeping bags, wine bottles, dogs, bodies, and hair. Like a mule in quicksand, he didn’t want to go forward, didn’t want to go back. “Come on, Charlie,” I would say. “Just step right on them, they don’t mind, they can’t feel a thing.” The ones who were conscious and moving about said, “Hello, Charlie,” and Charlie smiled hello.
As we moved along, heading down toward the stage, we heard the Burritos playing in the distance, “Lucille” and “To Love Somebody” driven to us on steel-guitar beams. It was chilly but the sun was shining, there were Frisbees in the air. We learned later that the Jefferson Airplane, who played just before the Burritos, had
been disturbed by Hell’s Angels punching a black man in front of the stage. Marty Balin, the Airplane’s lead singer, intervened and was knocked unconscious. We were pushing through the crowd, stumbling, trying to avoid the big dogs. People were tossing us joints and things. Looking at a yellow-green LSD tab, Charlie asked, “D’you want it?”
“I ain’t too sure about this street acid,” I said.
“Maybe Keith will want it.”
We were getting into the backstage area, trucks and trailers all around, the people there standing up, but it was still crowded. We moved quickly now, glimpsing faces painted with crescents and stars, one big naked fat boy whose nostrils were pouring blood. The trailer we were headed for was surrounded by little girls, people with cameras, and Hell’s Angels. Once up the steps and inside, we were in the eye of a hurricane, peaceful and redolent of ozone.
The Burritos’ set had ended, and Gram and Keith and I sprawled on a bed in a corner of the crowded trailer with a two-year-old girl who sat on my lap and told Keith, “I’m gonna beat you up.”
“Don’t beat me up,” Keith said. He had been out here all night, taking LSD, smoking opium, and seemed clear-eyed and content.
“I’m gonna beat you up,” she said again.
“Is that a promise?” I asked.
“I beat both of you up,” she said.
This trailer was where we had eaten chocolate chip cookies and sniffed cocaine in the early morning hours, but now the air was so thick with marijuana smoke that Jo, sitting at the fold-out table with Ronnie, taking turns on the phone as they tried to get a helicopter to pick up Wyman, started hyperventilating, shaking and quaking. Some of the New York heavies were outside the trailer, and I took them drinks, beer and coffee. Tony was there, his right hand bandaged with splints. “I punched a couple of guys out,” he said, taking with his left hand out of his pocket a big Buck knife. “I got this to compensate.”
True Adventures of the Rolling Stones Page 46