True Adventures of the Rolling Stones

by Stanley Booth

  Over the last notes of “Under My Thumb,” Mick sang, “It’s all right—I pray that it’s all right—I pray that it’s all right—it’s all right—”

  “Let’s do ‘Brown Sugar,’ ” Mick Taylor said.

  “ ’Brown Sugah’?” Keith said.

  “ ‘Brown Sugar’?” Bill said.

  “What?” Charlie said.

  “He wants to do ‘Brown Sugar,’ ” Mick said.

  “Wait, let me change guitars,” Keith said.

  “Thank you,” Mick said to the crowd. Charlie was playing rolls. “Thank you. Are we all, yeah, we’re gettin’ it together—we gonna do one for you which we just ah—” pausing, remembering that making the record was breaking the law “—we just ah—you’ve never heard it before because we just written it—we’ve just written it for you—” as Keith was tuning— “I dunno how good this is gonna be, baby—ah, this is the first time we’ve played it—the very first time we’ve played it.” Keith finished tuning and played the song’s first chords. Mick shouted, “We gonna do one f’you now which we did for you, which we haven’t ever played ever before, we gonna play it for you for the very first time, it’s called ‘Brown Sugah.’ ”

  Stacked like cordwood at the sides of the stage were bouquets of red and yellow long-stemmed roses. As the Stones played, Angels threw the bouquets into the crowd as if pitching babies out of airplane windows.

  Scarred old slaver knows he’s doin’ all right

  Hear him whip the women, just around midnight

  Oh—brown sugar—how come you taste so good

  Oh—brown sugar—just like a black girl should

  It was a song of sadism, savagery, race hate/love, a song of redemption, a song that accepted the fear of night, blackness, chaos, the unknown—the fear that the mad-eyed Norsemen, transplanted from Odin-drunk mead halls to California desert, were still seeking mad-eyed to escape.

  “Ahhh, one mo’ time—whoo, baby. Yeah—’ang you—awww—” Taking a harp from Stu, Mick played a few menacing riffs of “Midnight Rambler.” Keith had changed guitars and was tuning again. Mick played soft harp notes that trailed off as, head bent over the mike, he began singing lullaby phrases, trying to soothe and gentle the great beast. “Aw now, baby baby—hush now, don’t you cry.” His voice was tender, a tone of voice that Mick Jagger had never before used in public and maybe never in his life. “Hush now, don’t you cry—” A few more notes on the harp, and then, as if he were coming out of a reverie, gaining strength with each word, Mick said, “We gonna do you one which we hope you’ll dig—which is called ‘The Midnight Rambler.’ Wshoo!” (expostulation of a field hand stripping the sweat off his forehead with a dusty forefinger)

  Sighing down the wind so sadly—

  Listen and you’ll hear him moan

  The song had scared me when I first heard it, because it was true, as nobody at Altamont could deny, the dark is filled with terror, murder and evil ride the night air. “I’ll stick my knife right down your throat, honey, and it hurts!”

  Things seemed to be settling down, as if the killer-lover lament had worked some psychic release on the crowd.

  “Aw yah! Aw yah! Stand up if you can stand up,” Mick said. “Stand up if you can keep it cool.” He raised the Jack Daniel’s bottle. “One more drink to you all.” He drank and spoke again in his lullaby tone, “Awww, babies.” Then, as if he were coming to again, he said, “It’s so—sssweet! It’s really sssweet! Would you like to live with—each other? I mean, you’re really close to each other.” He stared into the crowd and seemed to drift away again. “Wow,” he said.

  “You ready?” Keith asked

  “Yeah, I’m ready,” Mick said.

  “One two three faw,” Keith snarled, and they started “Live with Me.”

  Around the stage people were dancing, but in front of the stage, staring at Mick, one curly-haired boy in a watch cap was saying, Mick, Mick, no—I could read his lips. Behind the boy a fat black-haired girl, naked to the waist, was dancing, squeezing her enormous breasts, mouth open, eyes focused on a point somewhere north of her forehead. As the song ended, the girl, her skin rose-florid, blinking off and on like a pinball machine in orgasmic acid flashes, tried to take the stage like Grant took Richmond. Completely naked now, she was trying to climb over the crowd to get a foot onstage, where five Angels were at once between her and the Stones, kicking and punching her back, her smothering weight falling on the people behind her.

  “Hold it,” Mick said.

  “Stop that one,” Keith said.

  “Hey—heyheyheyheyheyheyheyhey! One cat can control that chick, y’know wot oi mean. Hey fellows, hey fellows. One of you can control her, man,” Mick said, speaking the last sentence to the Angel nearest him onstage.

  “Yeah, we’re gonna do it,” the Angel said, in a world of his own, as were all the Angels looking down into the crowd, trying to reach the girl with fists or boots, wanting to get down there and smash her face, stomp her throat, kick her tits off and send them sailing over the heads of this dumb sheeplike crowd, and kick her in the pussy till she bleeds to death.

  “Hey, come on, fellows,” Mick was saying, getting a bit frantic, “like one of you can control one little girl—come on now, like—like—like—just sit down, honey,” he said to the girl, who was still on her back, flashing her black-pelted pelvis, her eyes black whirlpools staring at the sky as if she were trying to get above the stage, above the lights. If she could come up to there and keep coming into the night, above the world, she would shed her grossness like a chrysalis and be reborn, airborne, an angel of God. The Hell’s Angels leaned out over the stage to stop her, to grab her, to slap her teeth out and smash her goddamn gums, thumb her crazy eyes out, pop her eardrums, snatch her bald-headed, scalp the cheap cunt.

  “Fellows,” Mick said, trying gently to move the Angels away, “can you clear—uh—and she’ll—let—let—let them deal with her—they can deal with her.” The people down front were managing to crawl out from under the girl, the Angels wanting to stay and get their hands on her. “Fellows, come on, fellows,” Mick said, “they’re all right.”

  Keith started playing and Wyman and Charlie and Mick Taylor joined in, as the Angels slunk bloodlusty to the side. Mick was singing:

  Yeah, I see the storm is threatening

  My very life today

  If I don’t get some shelter

  I’m gonna fade away

  War, children, it’s just a shot away

  The Angels were cracking their knuckles, looking around red-eyed for flesh to rip. How are we gonna get out of here? I wondered. Will we get out, or will we die here, is it going to snap and the Angels like dinosaurs kill themselves and all of us in a savage rage of nihilism, the plain to be found in the morning a bloody soup littered with teeth and bones, one last mad Angel, blinded by a comrade’s boots and brass knuckles, gut sliced asunder by his partner’s frogsticker, growling, tearing at the yawning slit under his filthy T-shirt, chomping on his own bloody blue-white entrails.

  “Rape—murder—it’s just a shot away,” Mick sang over and over. In the crowd by stage left, where the trouble with the black boy in the green suit had taken place, an Angel was punching someone, but the victim went down fast and it was over. Standing close by, looking on, was a girl with phosphorescent white hair, a chemical miracle. It was impossible to tell whether she was with the Angel or the victim. “Love, sister, it’s just a kiss away,” Mick sang as the song thundered to a stop.

  “Yuhh,” Mick said, very low, then “Yuhhh,” again, lower, like a man making a terrible discovery. “Okay . . . are we okay, I know we are.” He was looking into the crowd. As if he had waked up once again, he shouted, “Are y’havin’ a good ti-i-ime? OOH-yeah!”

  “Little Queenie” was starting; it was the moment in the show when the lights went on to reveal rapt fresh faces. But not tonight. Even the people who were dancing in spite of the danger looked unhappy. At times Mick’s voice sounded light, as if he ha
d lost the bottom part of it, but Keith was playing like a man ready to dance on his own grave.

  The song ended to cheers from the crowd, some people perking up. “I—I—I thank you very much,” Mick said. “Thank you very much.” The opening notes of “Satisfaction” turned on like a current of electricity. It would probably never be played better. Charlie kept a straight boogaloo like the Otis Redding version and it went on and on, Mick chanting, “We got to find it—got to find it—got to find it—early in the mornin’—late in the evenin’—” He shouted the song to an end, gave three Indian-style war whoops, and as his voice died to a whisper, looked out at the multitude, hundreds of thousands of people who had come because he had asked them, and he could give them nothing better than this, mayhem and terror.

  “Justliketosaaaayyy,” Mick said, then paused and seemed to lose himself once more, wondering what it was he’d like to say. After a moment he went on briskly: “Well there’s been a few hangups you know but I mean generally I mean ah you’ve been beau-ti-ful—” in a lower tone— “you have been so groovy—aw!” (brisk again) “All the loose women may stand and put their hands up—all the loose women put their hands up!” But the loose women were tired like everybody else. A few girls stood up, a few hands were raised into the murk. On this night no one would think of playing “I’m Free,” though that had been the whole idea of the concert, to give some free glimmer to Ralph Gleason’s rock-and-roll-starved proletariat and to get away from the violence of the system, the cops’ clubs, Klein’s mop handle. The biggest group of playmates in history was having recess, with no teachers to protect them from the bad boys, the bullies, who may have been mistreated children and worthy of understanding but would nevertheless kill you. The Stones’ music was strong but it could not stop the terror. There was a look of disbelief on the people’s faces, wondering how the Stones could go on playing and singing in the bowels of madness and violent death. Not many hands were in the air, and Mick said, “That’s not enough, we haven’t got many loose women, what’re ya gonna do?”

  The band started “Honky Tonk Women,” playing as well as if they were in a studio, Keith’s lovely horrible harmonies sailing out into the cool night air. Nobody, not even the guardians of public morality at Rolling Stone who pronounced that “Altamont was the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude, money manipulation, and, at base, a fundamental lack of concern for humanity,” could say that the Rolling Stones couldn’t play like the devil when the chips were down.

  When “Honky Tonk Women” was over, the sound system stopped working, then started again. “Hello—I got it back,” Mick said. “Yahh—come back to—ah—we gonna, ah, we gonna, ah—we gonna kiss you goodbye—and we leave you to kiss each other goodbye—and—you—we’re gonna see ya, we’re gonna see ya, we’re gonna see ya—again. . . .” And with that sudden softness he asked “All right?” in a voice as small as a kitten’s. “Kiss each other goodbye—sleep—good night—”

  The last song, “Street Fighting Man,” started. “. . . the time is right for fighting in the street,” Mick sang, a leader with an international constituency, unable to save anyone.

  Ah, but what can a poor boy do

  But to sing with a rock ’n’ roll band

  The music pounded hard enough to drive even the naked fat girl to Heaven. “Bye bye bye bye,” Mick sang. “Bye bye bye bye.” Stu handed me Keith’s twelve-string guitar and told me the station wagons to take us to the helicopters would be at the top of the hill, straight back and up to the left. I slipped off the truck, taking the guitar by the neck, and struck out into the night, trying to get the people in the passageway between the backstage trucks to move and let me out. “Please let me through,” I shouted.

  A boy about seventeen walked backwards ahead of me, saying, “We’re gonna build a superhighway, man, never built one before but we’re gonna build one on our own to show we can do it without grown-ups—”

  Behind me Mick was saying, “Bye—by-y-y-y-e—bye,” as I plunged on among shouts from unknown voices, trying not to run into people. I heard the Stones coming and Gram and Michelle’s voices and called to them, all of us stumbling through the fucking blackness. At last, with our lives, we were off the stage, struggling through the dark, trying not to lose anyone. “Regroup!” Ronnie’s voice rasped, and then we had reached the hillside, a steep slope that we were scrambling up through dusty clay and dead grass, me on one hand, elbow, and knees, holding the guitar. At the top of the hill was a cyclone fence, but we passed through a hole in it, still running, to a car and an ambulance. I got into the back of the ambulance, followed by a half-dozen or so New York heavies. Blowing the horns, we drove through the crowd that swarmed around us, moving as fast as we could. When we stopped near a helicopter and got out, I gave the guitar to Sam. The Stones, Astrid, Jo, Ronnie, Sam, Tony, David Horowitz, Jon Jaymes, Mike Scotty, Ethan Russell, among others, boarded the small aircraft. Gram, Michelle, and I stood just outside the spinning blades wondering what would happen if we were left, lost in the blackness in this crowd, but Sam called, “Come on!” Gram helped Michelle on and got on himself and I got on. The little bulbous capsule was packed with heads and knees and I gladly hopped onto the only place where there was room to sit, the lap of David Horowitz, silly queen or not. The helicopter was shaking and lifting like an ostrich waking up, its hums and rattles drowning out everything except shouts. Mick and I exchanged glances, his eyes wide, lowering, lips pursed to whistle. I looked up and away, indicating how I wasn’t even ready for glances.

  In a few minutes the overloaded helicopter descended at the Tracy or Livermore airport, dropping too fast, the ground rushing up at us, instead of settling down gently like a hummingbird we came in on the skids at an angle like an airplane. We hit sharply but kept upright and bounced flat. We climbed out and as Keith, walking under the blades, headed for the airport building, he was denouncing the Angels: “They’re sick, man, they’re worse than the cops. They’re just not ready. I’m never going to have anything to do with them again.” He sounded like an English public school boy whose fundamental decency and sense of fair play had been offended by the unsportsmanlike conduct at soccer of certain of his peers.

  Mick sat on a wooden bench in the little airport, eyes still hurt and angry, bewildered and scared, not understanding who the Hell’s Angels were or why they were killing people at his free peace-and-love show. “How could anybody think those people are good, think they’re people you should have around,” he said.

  “Nobody in his right mind could,” I said, “that’s why—” I started to say, That’s why I said last night that you believe too much of the hype, but I didn’t. He had paid for his beliefs and nobody had the right to condemn him.

  “Some people are just not ready,” Keith was saying, but how ready was any of us to live in the real world, a world that would each year become more like Altamont?

  “I’d rather have had cops,” Mick said.

  “The Angels are worse than cops,” Gram said. “They’re bozos, just a bunch of bozos. They’re so dumb. Michelle and I were standing by the right-hand side of the stage not bothering anybody, just standing as far away as we could be and still see, and one Angel kept trying to push us back, every two minutes. Every two minutes I’d have to explain to him all over again just like the first time that we were supposed to be there.”

  “Some people are just not ready,” Keith said again. He had taken off the red Nudie shirt he’d worn onstage and slung it over his shoulder, and he was starting to shiver. “Hey, where are my jackets? Hey, Sam! Sam! Did you get my jackets out a the caravan?”

  “They’re on the helicopter,” Horowitz said, without any idea where in hell the jackets were.

  “Don’t let it take off,” Keith said, “a black velvet jacket and a Hungarian sort of gypsy jacket,” forgetting the moldy Nazi greatcoat. “They both cost a fortune, don’t let the copter take off with them.”

  Horowitz looked in the helicopter and came back wit
h an old sheep-skin jacket, saying, “They weren’t there, they must be in the trailer, we’ll get them, don’t worry, please, we’ll get them but for now will you just put this on just for the moment, please?”

  Keith did finally deign to toss the jacket over his shoulders, whereupon Horowitz, ever desperate to do the wrong thing, said to Gram and Michelle, “There’s limited seating on the plane”—which had just landed—“but there’s already another one on the way. You won’t mind staying, will you, it’ll only be about ten minutes.”

  Hearing this, I said, “Just a minute,” to Gram and walked over to Keith. “There’s room for Gram and Michelle on the plane, isn’t there?”

  “Sure,” Keith said.

  We went out to the plane, a fifteen-seater. After so many, the names all blend together and it doesn’t matter if they’re red and white or white and gold or if the seats are brown or two-tone green. It was a short ride to San Francisco and a not so short ride in limousines back to the Huntington, safe and more or less sound. Gram was kissing Michelle, trying to make out with her, and she seemed to be enduring it like a high school senior making do with a sophomore boy on the way home from a church hayride. “We wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you,” Gram said to me. “Thanks a lot.”

  “It was nothing,” I said. We grew quiet as we approached the hotel. It was beginning to dawn on us that we had survived.

  By the elevators was an Examiner with the headline, 300,000 SAY IT WITH MUSIC. Say what?

  Keith was walking around his suite like a whippet, saying, “If Rock Scully don’t know any more about things than that, man, to think the Angels are—what did he say? Honor and dignity?”