Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  You were once asked about the messages in your songs: or, rather, the lack of messages. Only last year, in fact, did you devote an album, Message from the People, to anything but love songs. Was there a particular moment that you thought was right for such an album?

  No, it was a matter of getting material I could handle. Believe it or not, it is very difficult to make an album like that, unless you're just tryin' to throw somethin' together. Remember, I got to first feel the music, do somethin' with the song. And that's why in that album you have a song like `America." I wasn't tryin' to just say the country is all bad, because it ain't all bad. I love this country, man. And I wouldn't live in no place else. So I think when somethin's wrong, it's up to me to try to change it. I was sayin' that America is a beautiful country. It's just some of our policies that people don't dig. That's what "Hey Mister" is all about. How can you live in the richest country in the world-I can see havin' po' people, don't misunderstand me, you always gonna have the po'. But ain't no need to have no hungry people, because if you got a million dollars, and I ain't got say $ 30,000, I'm po' compared to you. But the difference is that in a country with so much, where we pay people not to grow food, ain't no reason for us to have hungry people.

  You said onstage that "I Gotta Do Wrong" is "the story of my life," that "I gotta do wrong before they notice me."

  Well, what I meant was that it seems that out of all the pleading that a people can do, all the crying out and all the conversations, you know, nothin' really happened. They said, well, those people are happy, and they're smiling and dancing, and so they must be cool. And nobody paid them the mind, until the people began to do wrong things. And, of course, what I was really saying is not that this was anything to be proud about. I was saying that it's something to be ashamed of, that you got to do wrong before a country as rich as we are.. .that in order for our leaders to really pay us some attention, we gotta go and burn this down, and we gotta go and break into this, and we gotta go and picket this...that's pitiful.

  On the other hand, you take the Indian. What has he got? We found him here when we got here. But I guarantee you-well, hopefully this doesn't happen. This may be bad for me to say this, because I don't wanna start anything, but you know, the chances are the Indian's never gonna get a damn thing until he go out and scalp a few people...

  There's a man, I understand, who was asking for something that we wanted to throw away. This was Alcatraz or somethin'. We said we don't want the place no more, and the man said, "Okay, this belongs to us anyway, let us have it." We wouldn't even give him that, somethin' we don't want, we wouldn't give it to 'im. That's sick. Sick! I'm gonna get mad now.

  -January 18, 1973

  Rolling Stone

  The Ray Charles interview won the prestigious Deems Taylor Award for Magazine Writing in 1974. I tend to think of it as Ray's award; I provided the Scotch tape. Ray himself would return to Atlantic Records in 1977, and he would tell his story in book form, with the writer David Ritz, in 1978, in Brother Ray.

  The Rolling Stones

  IN PARADISE

  efore the Ray Charles piece went to the presses on December 26th, we were in touch with the Rolling Stones. Having spent a good part of 1972 touring North America, they had mapped out a short Pacific tour, of Hong Kong and Australia. But, as additional stepping-stones to Sydney, they decided to perform a concert in Los Angeles to benefit the victims of a massive earthquake in Nicaragua, as well as a pair of shows in Honolulu.

  I drew the assignment and, exhausted as I was from the previous year, headed into 1973 feeling as if I were about to take a big step. Yes, I'd profiled Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye, conducted additional Rolling Stone Interviews with Leon Russell, Grace Slick, and David Crosby, met personal favorites, ranging from Linda Ronstadt and Joe Cocker to Roberta Flack, Jackie DeShannon, and Boz Scaggs, and covered some of the biggest bands of the day-the Airplane, the Dead, Santana, and the first band crowned a "supergroup" before they'd finished their first album: Crosby, Stills & Nash.

  But these were the Stones. Now we were in Beatles and Dylan territory.

  I honestly can't say that I was nervous, flying down to L.A. to write about the benefit, and then to Honolulu, where I'd hook up with the band for the first time. Having grown accustomed to a regimen of several stories every issue, mixing big names with small, long features with brief Random Notes, I had some of the confidence-others might have called it smugness-that came with being associated with Rolling Stone. In his 1972 song, "If the Shoe Fits," Leon Russell probably spoke for more than a few musicians when he sneeringly portrayed rock writers asking to use his phone, his car, his pad, and more, reasoning, "We're from Rolling Stone so it's OK."

  The fact that our magazine was invoked in a song was one sign of our place in pop culture. (Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, at that moment, were on the charts with "The Cover of Rolling Stone.") We were also being portrayed in a Marvel comic. There was a parody issue called "Ruling Stooge." I was "Ben Virgo-Taurus." A ragtag television documentary crew took up residence at our offices for several days, looking to do a critical piece on the magazine. Back in the late Sixties, mainstream magazines and papers like Time, Newsweek, and the Washington Post, as well as media publications like the Journal of Communications Arts, wrote admiring stories about this long-haired upstart. Jann Wenner was being called the rock generation's Hugh Hefner.

  Now, as the little rock paper, born on an investment of $9,500, hit the 250,000 circulation mark and reported revenues of some $2.5 million, we became targets. Wenner didn't care. He'd founded Rolling Stone as a business, and his mission was to grow it. He had already tried other magazines, with varying degrees of failure. We'd begun issuing anthologies of interviews, articles, and reviews, and I got the call to edit several of the paperback books.

  As for the magazine: We had just switched to four-color printing in January. Now, in spring, Wenner was thinking about switching from the tabloid format to a full-size magazine in order to accommodate more pages and please mainstream advertisers. Although the publication reported on record companies and reviewed their artists, Wenner had no qualms about forging partnerships with labels-about becoming friends and partners with, among others, Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stone helped Rolling Stone to establish a British edition of the magazine.

  It was all very cozy. But whatever arrangements were being made from Jann's corner office, we, the staff, were rarely involved.

  I had enough on my hands, though, shuffling through articles about the Stones as I flew to Honolulu. All right: I was intimidated. If any band was going to have me in awe, it might as well be The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

  THE ROLLING STONES ARE IN HAWAII. Aloha means hello and goodbye.

  Mick Jagger hoists his first glass of 19 5 7 Chateau Margaux to a table of twenty. "To the shortest American tour in history," he says.

  The Rolling Stones, the heart of their Pacific tour cut out when Mick Jagger was refused a Japanese visa because of a 1966 marijuana conviction, are in Hawaii, where on January 1st, by previous vote of the electorate, possession of two ounces or less of marijuana was no longer a felony but, rather, a petty misdemeanor with maximum punishment set at thirty days and/or $500. "More likely a $25 fine, like a traffic ticket," according to one resident.

  Thank you for your wines, Ah-no Lew-loo,

  Thank you for your sweet and bitter fruit...

  -Mick Jagger, "Sweet Virginia," first show, January 21st, Honolulu International Center

  BY THE TIME DINNER BREAKS UP, AT 4 A.M., the Stones will have rung up a bill of $1, 700, mostly because Mick cleaned out all the `5 7 Chateau Margaux left in the cellar here at Nick's Fish Market, something like sixteen bottles at $85 the bottle, plus other spirits and plenty of continental seafood. And yet it was kind of a high, pointless night, everybody silent and nibbling, Charlie Watts and Mick Taylor smoking and drinking and chatting, ignoring the silver platters of hors d'oeuvres spread out in front of them; Keith Richards and Mick Jagger s
itting together nearby, almost formal in their quiet. Keith looked wasted; he still had some of his nasty, pasty, deadeye makeup on. Mick's was washed off, and he looked older, more fragile than he does onstage. When he smiles, he puts his whole face into the effort, teeth bursting up front over the famous labial-lookalike lips, sometimes a hand moving up to cover the throaty laughter while the eyes close or glisten, childlike.

  But here, at 1:30 A.M., he is yawning, the hand keeps moving up...

  On a warm Monday evening at five o'clock, this voice comes rising out from the patio of the Hawaiian Hilton. No guitars or ukuleles; no gourd rattles or coconut drums; just this lone voice from the bandstand, singing out to a cluster of tourists. All the matched and screaming shirts and blouses are stilled for the moment. It is the traditional torch lighting ceremony, and today it is being preceded by the singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner." Somewhere in Texas, the 36th President lay dead (Hey, hey, LBJ...). And I'm looking down at this frozen little luau from an eleventh floor balcony of the Hilton's Rainbow Tower, where I'm still waiting for word from those five tourists, W. Grace, F. Truman, P. May, L. Hutton and T. Bailey, known up on the 30th floor as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts. Because aside from whatever else is happening, the Rolling Stones are in town.

  For the first show Monday night, Mick Jagger wears a vintage LAND OF ALOHA shirt, a bluish silkie complete with hula dancers, surfers and sunshine, gathered at the waist, over his velvet jumpsuit. The shirt begins to look ludicrous soon enough, as Jagger suddenly begins a dramatic, nearly a capella introduction to "You Can't Always Get What You Want," searing and reminiscent of Turner in performance. Which is to remind us that, after all, Jagger is an actor. Mick, this time with yellow makeup above the eyelids, looks like an aged Fellini vamp. The set seems slow, the audience holds back. A young girl, having stood for the first number, is soon slumped back in her seat. "I think he looks tired and old," she says to a friend.

  The limos are ready to whisk the Stones back to the hotel between shows; Keith, moving quickly down the stage steps, pauses at the door, recognizes a reporter. "We'll see you at the hotel, right?"

  At the hotel, I'm told by someone in Keith's room that he is busy... something about a TV interview. At the suite where the Japanese crew is set up and waiting, all is hushed. At 9, on time, Jagger arrives, all washed up and dressed in white football jersey, number 86, and chartreuse bellbottoms. For the next fifteen minutes, he is terribly civil, smiling in anticipation of each question, telling his Japanese audience how their government's refusal of a visa for him made him "unhappy, very dishonored," how he would still like to visit Japan, even if just as a tourist, "to go to the country as well as the town." Asked about chopsticks, Mick formed his biggest smile, flashed the diamond set into one of his front teeth, leaned forward, and told how an "old Chinese gentleman" taught him to handle the sticks, how Mick still hadn't learned to eat without letting the sticks touch his lips. The Japanese interviewer smiled automatically and moved on to the next question.

  In the elevator, Mick laughed it up with Marshall Chess, president of Rolling Stones Records, imitating a Japanese accent. "That chopstick bit," he said, giggling, hand to the face, "that's bullshit. I made it up." He said we could talk at the party after the second show.

  The second show Monday night is the upper, the breakthrough the Stones needed. All the charter-flown audiences are here raving it up.

  Chip Monck has the overhanging 10-by-40 Mylar mirror tilting back and forth, so that from backstage, where the seven Super-trouper spotlights are fixed like anti-aircraft machinery, you see the people in repetitive waves, all seemingly flying backward, now forward, as they stand on their chairs. The house lights are up and the kids are allowed, as they have been the previous two shows, to move towards the stage. On "Street Fighting Man," Keith pounds and sashays away on his five-stringer, completes his break and rolls his eyes toward Mick, proud. Rose petals and orchids fly out to the audience, and the band members march down the stairs, into the sleek limos, one blue, one white, one black, sweeping out behind the flashing blue lights of the Honolulu police escorts. The Rolling Stones' 1973 American tour is over.

  Back at the hotel, the word spreads: There is no party. Instead, Nicky Hopkins will leave his wife Lynda and come down for a drink.

  People have been wondering about this strange man who spells him on the piano now and then, this man with the middle-American look, with the monster-mashed face. There's even a blowup photo of him pasted up in Peter Rudge's suite, right next to the ice box. It is, of course, Ian Stewart, the Stones' first roadie, a friend of theirs as long as Nicky's been, and Nicky knew them back in 1962, when he was with the Cyril Davies group at the Marquee and the Stones were the "interval band" on R&B nights. "Stew," Hopkins explains, "did `Sweet Virginia' on the record; he recorded part of Let It Bleed. I was touring with [Jeff] Beck during Sticky Fingers, and he did that, except `Sway' was mine. So he plays them onstage. Stew is a boogie piano player, an incredible rock and roll player. He knows every boogie piano record; he has every boogie piano record."

  And Mick Jagger?

  "I think people just accept him for what he is."

  And what is he?

  "I don't know. Whatever people want him to be, or expect him to be."

  Of all the Stones in Hawaii, it appears that Mick Jagger is the most resistant to sunshine. Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman had found some time to go speeding around on a catamaran, and everyone had ventured out of the Hilton Hawaiian Village at least once, to go shopping.

  "Sho-ping," sneers Mick. "What's there to fucking buy in Hawaii?"

  At two o'clock, Tuesday, he has finally awakened, and we're about to kill two birds: let Mick have a good time and do a photo session. Jagger has been invited to take a cruise on The Flying Cloud, an 82-foot, restored 1929 schooner owned by George Walker, who came in from Kona, one hundred miles away, to accommodate Mick Jagger.

  Now, the captain of the ship meets the Rolling Stone. George proceeds to fill Mick in on all the Hawaiian legends... about Captain Cook, and the Forbidden Island of Niihau, and Mick takes it all in. He's come prepared for the sea. He's wearing his aloha shirt, his lime pants, track tennies, sports watch, and a turquoise Afro/jockey cap to catch the wind. He meets the vegetarian crew, six men, two women, inspects the laboriously rewooded deck, checks downstairs in the forecastle and the galley, where a tape is playing Crosby, Stills & Nash. As the ship moves off from the Ala Wai Harbor and smoothly gathers up speed, Jagger easily roams the deck, staying quiet, looking fragile. The ship heads out past Koko Head, into the Molokai Channel, begins to hit the wind, has to slice through mounting swells. Jagger holds on to the shrouds, posing here and there, old Mick and the sea.... Six miles out, Walker turns The Flying Cloud around and offers the wheel to Mick. Jagger sits down, consults for a moment-`Aim for that big white building," Walker instructs-and Mick becomes captain for the next two, three miles, discarding his floppy cap, leaning from side to side, surely guiding the schooner through the 20-knot-per-hour winds back toward Honolulu. He is, he says, relaxed, and ready for dinner.

  We decide on Chinese food. At the hotel, Charlie Watts and Mick Taylor are hanging around, nothing to do, shrugging, almost, to show their helplessness. It's dinner for five at Wo Fat, this garish red and gold facility for baby luaus and Cantonese food. It is a social gathering and the talk is light. Taylor tells why he's so quiet on the stage: "I don't want to upstage Mick." Jagger talks about the time he visited the gay Continental Baths in New York, and why he split in such a hurry: "Well, these guys in these towels, they'd walk up to me and drop their towels and just stand there." He laughs about promoter Bill Graham: "You remember that dinner at Nick's?" Ah, yes-Honolulu on $1,700 a night. `And Bill and Barry Fey [co-promoter] are sittin' there at the end of the table. And all they do is tell these promoter jokes that nobody else could understand. [Adopting a rough American accent:] 'Hah1 I booked so-and-so and paid this much, hahahaha.' And that
's it, all night!"

  Mick Jagger is seven months away from age 30, and he acts it, constantly on the edge, on stage and off. Writers have had out-and-out field days figuring him out, but almost always from a distance-the distance between stage and loge seat; the distance between protected pop figure and inquiring reporter; so that he is a devil, a unisexual zombie, a cockteaser, a man by turns ruthless, unhappy, fey, charming, quiet, generous, and sensitive. That's what I had read, anyway. On the mid-high seas, in Chinatown and, now, in his hotel room with an hour to kill, Mick Jagger is neither devil nor angel; yes, he looks like he's got nasty habits: yes, it's difficult to pin him down when the question hits too close to the nerve: and he does carry a mask at all times, he sashays, twenty-four hours a day. But also, he cares so little about what people say, and guess, about him. "The whole Mick Jagger thing," indeed. In conversation, he smiles through my questions and through his own answers, implying, "You ain't got much of a story, do you? Well, neither have I. But we both got a job, don't we? [American accent:] AFTER ALL, THE PUBLIC WANTS TO KNOW"

  First, he denies the Stones being depressed, pissed, about the Japanese cutoff. "It's just a minor sort of frustration. The main thing that bugs us is we got nothing to do for ten days, but that's about all. It's not a great financial loss."

  Second, there's the live album, expected last November, from the U.S. tour, one album of the Stones, one album of Stevie Wonder, and somewhere in there a couple of jams, Stevie singing "Satisfaction" and Mick winging "Uptight." Then, according to Mick, Allen Klein and Decca, the Stones' old business manager and British label, stopped the album. By contract, the Stones were prohibited from recutting any songs previously licensed to or released by the original label. And besides, ABKCO and Decca and London had Christmas plans of their own: More Hot Rocks.