Old Gods Almost Dead

by Stephen Davis

  With Jack Nitzsche, Ian Stewart, and Brian on piano, organ, and harpsichord, the new songs had a bitter, lovelorn tone and a lot of echo. The new singles, “Breakdown” and “Mother’s Little Helper,” were folk rock jump tunes. The others, a sequence of great songs of romantic remorse like “Sittin’ on a Fence,” “Think,” and “Ride On Baby,” would appear over the next two years as album tracks on the two versions of Aftermath, the compilation LP Flowers, and on the flip sides of singles. (One song, “Looking Tired,” was never released.) The long blues jam “Goin’ Home” was recorded at an all-night studio party hosted by Andrew that drew Brian Wilson, dancers from Shindig, and many local friends. There was a black girl wearing a long fur coat and nothing else. Some remembered a white duck walking around the studio. With this audience on hand, Mick, wearing a striped shirt, his collar buttoned up, spent hours on his knees, singing soul riffs into a handheld mike. Keith, in shades and a leather jacket, comped along impassively on guitar, swigging Pepsi from a bottle.

  Each member of the Stones made about $50,000 on the tour. Their money was held by Allen Klein in New York. Bill and Charlie flew home to London. Keith and some tour people went to Arizona, bought cowboy gear and Colt .45s, and spent a few days riding and camping in the desert, sleeping under the stars. Target practice, Apache shepherds in the hills, coyotes howling at the moon: it was Keith’s boyhood Roy Rogers fantasy come to life.

  Brian and Anita flew to the Virgin Islands. Mick headed to Jamaica, then back to New York, where he finally met a comatose, newly married Dylan in Bob’s crowded flat at the Chelsea Hotel. (Dylan’s entourage sniggered at Mick’s foppish black-and-white-checked suit while they tried to revive Bob long enough to say hello.) Brian and Anita came to New York too, hanging (uneasily) with Dylan, who was about to record his masterpiece Blonde on Blonde: the title may have come from his impression of the two dazzling European kids who liked to beat each other up and then parade around the clubs with their black eyes and bruises, a love supreme all black-and-blue.

  We’re making our own statement. Others are making more intellectual ones.

  Brian Jones

  * * *

  King of Clubs

  In 1966, inspired by the formidable women around them, driven by the twin engines of ambition and drugs, the Rolling Stones continued a run of visionary hit singles and began to release albums that stood as crucial works of the era. The influence of a powerful new female energy on the Stones was undeniable. Anita Pallenberg restored the faltering Brian Jones to his place in the band and in the Rolling Stones mythos. Keith Richards fell in love with her too, and their romantic triad realigned the precarious political axis within the Stones, an unresolved fulcrum until Mick Jagger hooked up with Marianne Faithfull late in the year. Marianne’s wild spirit and noble erudition would soon contribute another strong female persona to the band’s creative identity. Now the Stones and their women moved in a glamorous flash of pop celebrity and artistic validity, the vanguard of the new generation’s cultural heroes. Nobody in those times was more beautiful than they, or more doomed.

  At the same time, it was the era of “Stupid Girl” and “Under My Thumb,” misogynist songs of dominance set to the Stones’ darkest, most ardent music. While these were in production, a battle raged between the Stones and Decca over Andrew’s proposed title of their next album, Could You Walk on the Water? This was supposed to be a deluxe gatefold album with six pages of color pix shot on the last American tour and a cover featuring the Stones walking atop a California reservoir like pop messiahs on the Sea of Galilee. But the record company coughed: in the bitterness (over lack of control of their work) that followed, the album was called Aftermath for want of another concept.

  In January 1966, the Beatles’ Rubber Soul was hot with acid imagery and exotic influences, particularly the new sound of George Harrison’s sitar on “Norwegian Wood.” One night George put the massive sitar in Brian’s hands, and within an hour Brian was working out little melodies on the complex twenty-six-stringed instrument.

  In America, the Stones’ version of “As Tears Go By” was a hit single. The U.S. audience hadn’t yet heard Marianne Faithfull’s earlier record, and Jagger’s “Tears” got to no. 6 in January. That month, Keith went on a spree. He bought a dark blue Bentley S Touring Continental that he couldn’t as yet drive. He mounted a Confederate flag on the front bumper, had a record player installed, and named the car Blue Lena, after singer Lena Horne. Then he bought Redlands, a half-timbered, four-bedroom Tudor farmhouse in the country near West Wittering, Sussex, on the south coast of England. The thatched old farm, still surrounded by a medieval moat, needed complete refurbishing. Redlands would become Keith’s refuge and the scene of much drama to come. Keith and his dog, Ratbag, moved into it the following spring.

  “19th Nervous Breakdown” came out in February, with the powerfully dolorous “Sad Day” on the U.S. B side, and got to no. 2 in both the U.S. and the U.K. (“Sad Day” was an atmospheric experiment never issued on any Stones album.)

  Meanwhile, there was a revolution under way within the Stones. Mick Jagger’s affair with Chrissie Shrimpton was winding down in ever more rancorous public bickering, jealousy, and recrimination. Keith’s girlfriend Linda Keith was dabbling with heroin, and their thing cooled. As these romantic energies subsided, Brian and Anita were launched on one of the great sadomasochistic love affairs of the century. Brian’s new pad in Elm Park Lane, Chelsea, was a silken carnival of sex and LSD, with Brian’s houseguests spreading lurid tales of the two “enchanted siblings” (Terry Southern) beating each other with whips in cross-dressing furies of love. In the clubs they frequented—Dolly’s, Blaises, the Scotch of St. James—Brian would punch Anita in the face at the slightest provocation. The beautiful blond woman took it with a smile and displayed her bruises with seeming pride.

  Some of her friends were appalled, but Anita told them she had never known such love for a man. Their bond seemed unshakable. It’s well known in the literature of sadomasochism that some women believe that to stay in an abusive relationship is to be strong; she takes pride in finding her own voice, even if it means she’ll be hit. Couples like this live through intense cycles of violence and redemption, and their bond is sometimes intractable. The love they share, although some may find its expression perverse, is often profound and very real.

  There’s little doubt that Anita Pallenberg knew that in her, Brian Jones, breaker of women, had finally met his match. By falling in love with Anita, he had finally found a woman so strong he couldn’t destroy her. With this young goddess on his arm, Brian recovered some of his dissipated aura. Dressed as a dandy in sharp pinstripes, outlandish broad-brimmed hats, and flamboyant women’s costume jewelry bought at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York, Brian was the King of Clubs. Even the East End hoodlums stepped back when Brian walked into a club. At Annabels, movie stars and decadent aristos gawked at Brian and Anita like bumpkins. At home, fueled by LSD, he began experimenting with tape recorders, making atmospheric “free-form” tapes of inchoate melodic ideas that he would erase before they had a chance of turning into a song. He told friends that the other Stones would only laugh at him if he tried to bring his ideas into the studio. “I would like to write,” he told an interviewer, “but I lack confidence and need encouragement.”

  Keith Richards was mesmerized by Anita because she scared him silly. “She knew everything and could say it in five languages,” he told Stanley Booth. Plus, Brian had turned Keith on to LSD, and they became close again under its influence. After Anita moved in with Brian in May 1966, she presided over the household with a seductive haze of astrology, magic spells, and hash smoke. Film director Kenneth Anger referred to Brian and Anita as the “occult unit” within the Stones. Keith moved in with them (and frequent guest Tara Browne) later in the year and became a regular member of their blond acid cult, which left Mick Jagger and his unfashionable girlfriend—“you’re obsolete, my baby”—out in the cold. Mick was afraid of acid, hadn’t taken
it yet, and so for a time became the butt of jokes and object of derision as the bourgeois, suburban “straight” man of the group.

  In early 1966, Brian Jones was sitting at the bar in Blaises, flying on acid with a pocketful of speed, when he was approached by a pair of incognito reporters for News of the World, the muckraking Sunday paper with the largest circulation in Britain. One of them politely asked Brian if he was a member of the Stones.

  “That’s right,” Brian said softly, looking at the man from behind a fringe of blond hair almost covering his eyes.

  “Which one are you, then?”

  “Mick Jagger,” Brian lied, and turned away with a sigh, tired of being hassled in clubs. But the reporters settled in and told Brian they’d be honored to buy him a drink. At some point, the conversation turned to LSD, and Brian told them that he’d been tripping a lot lately, but added, “I don’t go out much on it now that all the other cats have taken it up. Do you know what I mean? If too many people get turned on to it, it will just get a dirty name very quickly, do you see?”

  “When did you first try the stuff?”

  “On tour,” Brian answered. “With Bo Diddley and Little Richard.” This was absurd, but Brian loved to put people on. He still told people he was the leader of the Rolling Stones. Meanwhile, he was popping pills, and after some more desultory drug talk he was joined by some friends. Brian took a foil-wrapped chunk of Moroccan hash out of the pocket of his velvet-trimmed jacket and showed it to his pals, inviting them to his house for a smoke. As they left, the two reporters called out, “Bye, Mick!” Brian and his gang had a good laugh at this.

  February 1966. To New York, with the band staying at different hotels for the first time. The next day, there was a photo session for the new album at Jerry Schatzberg’s studio, followed by a party for the Manhattan hipoisie in the Stones’ honor. Andy Warhol arrived with a huge entourage. Smoke and music: Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight”; Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

  On February 13, they arrived at Ed Sullivan’s theater (Studio 50) on Broadway for the morning rehearsal to find a crush of girls waiting for them. They ran for the stage door, but the doorman wouldn’t open up and the Stones were roughly mobbed, their hair pulled, clothes torn by the devouring young Bacchae. When the badly rattled Stones finally got in, Keith threw a trash can at the doorman. There was another row when Sullivan’s producer wanted to bleep out the “trying to make some girl” line from “Satisfaction” (this had been done on Shindig), but Andrew threatened to walk out and the line went out uncensored. That night, they managed to build some energy for “Satisfaction” amid squeals and screams from the girls in the audience, followed by Mick and Keith duetting on “As Tears Go By.” The show’s finale was a hectic, riffing take on “19th Nervous Breakdown” that put the Stones’ rude 1966 insolence over to Sullivan’s huge national audience.

  After two days in Los Angeles, the Stones flew to Australia to tour. They played to 25,000 people in Sydney and suffered through a riot in New Zealand on Brian’s twenty-fourth birthday. Keith’s face got cut and Brian hurt his leg when a phalanx of hysterical girls stormed the stage. Bill Wyman scored a career-high total of thirteen girls on this tour, one of whom told him that she’d had his baby the year before. Around this time, Wyman and the band tallied their chick scores thus far. Bill came out with about 250, Brian 130, Mick about 30, Keith 6, and Charlie Watts none.

  On the way back to California afterward, the group stopped in the South Pacific paradise of Fiji for a brief holiday. Brian took advantage of Fiji’s large Indian population and culture, buying a beautiful new sitar in a music shop in downtown Suva. The fragile instrument developed a big crack almost immediately; Brian taped it up and kept playing it anyway.

  During a day at the beach in Fiji, Brian amazed them all—Keith, Mick, Stu, Charlie, and Shirley—with his swimming prowess, venturing far out into the rough, breaking waves like a porpoise, without a care in the world.

  * * *

  What a Draaag It Is, Gettin’ Old

  Back in L.A., the Stones recorded the rest of their dark masterpiece, Aftermath, in four days (March 6–9, 1966). The eleven songs included “Paint It, Black,” with Brian deploying his new sitar’s mystical tones. Two versions of “Out of Time” were cut, along with “Stupid Girl” and “Under My Thumb.” These angry, hard-core, proto-rock songs were softened by the madrigal-like “Lady Jane” and “I Am Waiting.” Jack Nitzsche played harpsichord on both. Rejuvenated Brian used a whole palette of instruments—dulcimer, piano, vibraphone—to add subtle shades and sophisticated, flickering lights to the new music.

  Keith: “Brian had pretty much given up on the guitar by then. If there was [another] instrument around, he had to be able to get something out of it, just because it was there. At that point it was a great thing; it gave the Stones on record a lot of different textures and sounds we wouldn’t have done otherwise . . . little touches that make you think at the time, ’Oh no—he’s gonna play the bloody marimbas,’ but afterwards you think, ’Yeah, right, that did it.’ ”

  Even Andrew Oldham paid tribute to Brian’s work: “His contribution can be heard on every track, and what he didn’t know how to play, he went out and learned . . . It was more than a decorative effect. Sometimes Brian pulled the whole record together.”

  Later in March, the compilation album Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) was released in the United States, using the Could You Walk on the Water? package and photos. Here the Stones glared on the shore of the reservoir, instead of walking on it. The concert and studio photos included a very unflattering shot of Brian in half-nanker pose as if to say, “Look at what a snotty asshole we have to deal with every day.” With its mix of old songs and “19th Nervous Breakdown,” it got to no. 3 and sold well for the rest of the year.

  Late March. Ten-day Euro tour started with another riot in The Hague. Anita joined up in Paris. The shows began with “The Last Time” and moved through older soul covers and hits like “Time Is on My Side” and “Play with Fire.” Then it built through “Breakdown” and “Cloud” before the “I’m All Right”/“Satisfaction” meltdown. Smoke bombs were thrown at L’Olympia in Paris during the second show: sixty fans were arrested by the gendarmes. The aftershow party at the hotel featured Françoise Hardy and Brigitte Bardot, reigning European movie sex bomb since her 1956 role in And God Created Woman. Bardot asked Mick and Keith to write a song for her next film. Marianne Faithfull was at the party too, at the height of her beauty and pop stardom, twenty years old, without her husband, famously promiscuous. (She had a role in Jean-Luc Goddard’s new film Made In U.S.A.) Brian moved around Paris like a national hero, mobbed for autographs wherever he went.

  Decca released the (superior) British version of Aftermath in April. It had a rose-tinted cover shot of the band by Guy Webster, with four shots from Jerry Schatzberg’s intimate New York photo session on the back. Dave Hassinger’s liner notes talked about the Stones’ cool professionalism at RCA, taking note of the long hours it took to build a song, from the moment Mick and Keith ran it through for the band to the final track.

  After-Math (spelled this way on the jacket) had fourteen tracks and ran longer than contemporary pop albums usually did. For the first time, all the songs were Jagger/Richards compositions, making this, for serious fans, the first real Rolling Stones album. By turns tender and offensive, Aftermath disturbed and delighted everyone who listened to the Stones’ blatant attack on motherhood and the common decencies of traditional courtship and other sexual mores. “Mother’s Little Helper”—set to the same frantic rockabilly rhythm that Keith used for “Breakdown”—used sci-fi guitars and the sitar, plus the weird “doctor, please” C&W bridge, to talk about tranquilized suburban housewives. “What a draaag it is, gettin’ old” seemed like an attack on middle-aged values and echoed Pete Townshend’s “Hope I die before I get old” line from the Who’s “My Generation.”

  “Stupid Girl” was a 4/4 stomp about Mick Jagg
er’s love life. “I wasn’t in a good relationship,” he said later. “Or I was in too many bad relationships.” Describing someone as “the sickest thing in the world” can be seen as a stake in the heart of his long affair with Chrissie Shrimpton, but shouldn’t be taken so literally. “It’s a caricature,” Mick said, “and it’s in reply to a girl who was a very pushy woman. I had so many girlfriends at that point, I was obviously in with the wrong group.”

  The mood lifted a bit for “Lady Jane,” Mick’s “unconscious” pastiche of a Tudor love song. Brian Jones played an amplified dulcimer over Jack Nitzsche’s harpsichord, as Mick sang lines supposedly inspired by Henry VIII’s love letters to Lady Jane Seymour. (Some related the song to Mick’s friend Jane Ormsby-Gore.) Others heard “Lady Jane” as marijuana, “Lady Ann” as amphetamine.

  Then back to the dirty business of male chauvinism with “Under My Thumb,” Brian’s marimba playing lead to a gentle rocking beat that accelerated into a groove toward the end. “Thumb” had serious, fuzz-tone guitar, a lyric that mixed love and hate—“under my thumb’s a squirming dog who’s just had her day”—and Otis-type soul riffing at the end. Mick later called this searing song “a jokey number,” but it stirred a sense of outrage in many of the women who heard it as a triumphalist expression of domination. They followed this with “Doncha Bother Me,” a Chicago-style R&B tune with slide guitar and harmonica. Mick’s sneering vocal—“Not knowing why / Trying to get high”—was flush with bad attitude.

  “Goin’ Home” finished the side with a landmark blues jam, mostly Mick riffing over understated layers of harmonica and guitar, building momentum over eleven tense minutes. The song had been recorded at an all-night studio party during the first Aftermath sessions the previous December, and carried the crack-of-dawn feeling of the best white blues. “Goin’ Home” was an homage to Wilson Pickett and the other soul shouters the Stones loved, a way for the Stones to crack open the short form demanded by the standard song formats of the time. The drums even drop out at one point, when someone threw something at Charlie Watts and the band kept playing.