The Rolling Stone interviews

by edited by Jann S. Wenner

  Andy: She did? Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought she just got sick.

  Truman: No, no, no, no. She committed suicide. She had this extraordinary sweet quality, but then she was one of those people who would have two drinks . . .

  Andy: I guess you have to be different to be able to be something else.

  Truman: One thing I’ll say about Mick Jagger. He’s fascinating in the sense that he’s one of the most total actors that I’ve ever seen. He has this remarkable quality of being absolutely able to be totally extroverted. Very few people can be entirely, absolutely, altogether extroverted. It’s a rare, delicate, strange thing. Just to pull yourself out and go—Whamm! This he can do to a remarkable degree. But what makes it more remarkable is that the moment it’s done, it’s over. And he reverts to quite a private, sensible, and a more emotionally mature person than most actors and intellectuals are capable of being. He’s one of the few people I’ve seen who’s able to do that extrovert thing, and then revert into another person almost instantly. And so, in that sense, he’s really an extraordinary actor. And that’s exactly what he is because: (a) he can’t sing; (b) he can’t dance; (c) he doesn’t know a damn thing about music. But he does know about coming on and being a great showman. And putting on a fantastic act, of which the vital element is energy. Don’t you think?

  Tell me what you think. You think he can sing?

  Bob: Who are you talking about?

  Truman: Mick Jagger. Well, he can’t sing compared to, say, Billie Holiday. He can’t sing compared to Lee Wiley. He can’t sing compared to . . .

  Andy: Al Green.

  Truman: He can’t compared to Frank Sinatra. I know you think we’re talking about things in separate categories, but we’re not. You know? It’s not that it’s . . . Sound amplification—rock—is carrying a thing forward. The beat thing. But! It’s got nothing to do with the ability of the vocalist actually carrying the thing. Because Mick does not carry the thing. He carries it as performer with his energy, drive and thrust.

  I listen to the records quite a lot. I’m in no way trying to discredit him as a performer, because I think he’s an extraordinary performer. But what I think’s amazing about him is that there is no single thing of all the things he does that he’s really good at. He’s not—he really can’t dance, and, in fact, he really can’t move. He’s moving in the most awkward kind of curious parody between an American majorette girl . . . and Fred Astaire. It’s like he got these two weird people combined together. On the one hand, it’s the majorette strut, and on the other hand, it’s got to be à la Astaire. But, somehow, the combination works. Or at least it works for most people. . . .

  Andy: Did you like traveling around with them?

  Truman: Oh, I enjoyed it. I just didn’t want to write about it, because it didn’t interest me creatively. You know? But I enjoyed it as an experience. I thought it was amusing . . . I like the Rolling Stones individually, one by one, but the one thing I didn’t like was that they had—and especially the people around them—had such a disrespect for the audience. That used to really gripe me. It was like, “Who the fuck cares about them?” Well, these kids have merely stood in line for twenty-seven hours, you know, and whatnot to go to their concert—they adore them and love them. . . .

  Andy: Why don’t we go and sit in a bar? Get a drink?

  Truman: I found the real backstage people nice. The ones who were really doing work. It’s those little fakes like the press agent. There’s a wretched little press agent whose name . . . something . . . who was a great friend of Charlie Manson’s, and who recorded three albums of Charlie Manson’s records, and he believed Charlie Manson was Jesus Christ—this was before Charlie Manson was going. He was a press agent on the rock & roll tour! I mean they had some beauties . . . Marshall Chess . . .

  504

  Andy: Why don’t we go to a bar and I can ask you the six questions that Rolling Stone wants me to ask.

  Truman: Okay. My fingers are frozen.

  000

  [At the Hotel Carlyle Bar]

  Truman: Whose questions are these? Jann Wenner’s?

  Andy: Yes. The first question is —

  Truman: Wait. I want to order something before you do this.

  091

  Truman: I’ll have a J&B on the rocks with a glass of water on the side, please?

  Andy: I’ll have a Grand Marnier.

  Truman: Well, that was a nice walk. I think the nice thing about walking through the zoo in New York is . . . I used to go to school here for two years. I went to a private school here, and I skipped school almost every day. I mean literally, almost every day. At least every other day. I just couldn’t bear to go to school. I was about twelve years old. And I used to spend more time walking in that park around the zoo to use up the time between nine o’clock when I was supposed to go to school and two-thirty when I was supposed to get out.

  Finally, I found three things to do. One was, I’d go for a walk in the park if it was a nice day. Two, I’d go to the New York Society Library. It was there I met Willa Cather, and she became this great friend of mine, when I was, you know . . . only a kid. She took a great interest in me. And the third thing was, believe it or not, going to Radio City Music Hall and sitting through the entire production, starting with the movie at nine, and I’d see two stage shows and the movie.

  Even so I didn’t get my diploma.

  291

  Andy: The first question was “problems.”

  [Truman laughs]

  Andy: Jann wanted to know your problem. With writing the article.

  Truman: Why I couldn’t write the article?

  Andy: Yes.

  Truman: The reason was—twofold. One: As the thing progressed, I saw more and more trash written about the entire tour, and ordinarily that sort of thing doesn’t bother me: I mean, for instance, I could cover a trial that’s being covered by seventeen or eighteen newspapers at the time, and it doesn’t faze me in the least because I know it has nothing to do with what my own insight is.

  But my trouble with this was that especially in journalistic writing . . . au reportage . . . there has to be some element of mystery to me about it. And the problem with me with this piece was that there was no mystery. There was not a thing about it that set some mystery going into my mind as to why this should be or that should be, because it was all so perfectly timed . . . staged—I mean psychologically—I’m not talking about the performance itself. Just the whole combination of the thing was so perfectly obvious. The people were so obvious, and so they really had no dimension beyond their own. I mean, Mick Jagger has a certain mystery to him, but simply because he’s a bit of a doppelganger. I mean, he’s a highly trained performer, and on the other hand, he’s a businessman par excellence. And the whole thing is perfectly obvious, and so it had no mystery to it. Since there was nothing to “find out,” I just couldn’t be bothered writing it. Does that make sense to you?

  Andy: Backstage people. You sort of talked about it before.

  Truman: The only thing I have to say about it is Marshall Chess [the president of Rolling Stones Records] and all those people have themselves confused as being one of the Stones. I mean, they’re always up on the stage sort of edging nearer and dearer into the spotlight. It’s always been conceded that just something barely is restraining them from rushing onstage, grabbing the microphone from Mick and starting to really strut . . . Also, they’re very cantankerous and jealous of each other, and they’re so jealous of their relationship with the Stones, with who’s closer, who’s nearer, who’s more . . . this sort of thing. I mean it’s really sort of pathetic. Well, not “sort of.” It is pathetic.

  Andy: Then the next question was, “The Plane Fuck.”

  Truman: They had this doctor on the plane who was a young doctor from San Francisco, about twenty-eight years old, rather good-looking. He would pass through the plane with a great big plate of pills, every kind you could imagine, everything from vitamin C to vitamin coke . . . I cou
ldn’t really quite figure out why. He had just started practice in San Francisco, and this seemed sort of a dramatic thing to be doing, traveling with, uh . . . I mean, especially since he wasn’t particularly, as I could figure out, a great fan of theirs.

  It developed that he had a super-Lolita complex. I mean thirteen-, fourteen-year-old kids. He would arrive at whatever city we would arrive at, and there would always be these hordes of kids outside and he would walk around, you know, like a little super-fuck and say, “You know I’m Mick Jagger’s personal physician. How would you like to see the show from backstage?” And they’d go, “Oooo! Wigawigawigawa!” He would get quite a collection of them. Backstage, you know, he would have them spread out, and every now and then he would bring one back to the plane. Usually someone slightly older.

  The one I remember the most was a girl who said she’d come to the Rolling Stones thing to get a story for her high school newspaper, and wasn’t this wonderful how she’d met Dr. Feelgood and got backstage . . . Anyway, she got on the plane, and she sure got a story, all right [laughs], because they fitted up the back of the plane for this. You know Robert Frank? He was on the tour. Robert Frank got out all of his lights, the plane was flying along and there was Dr. Feelgood screwing this girl in every conceivable position while Robert Frank was filming, and as the plane was flying back to Washington it was flying at some really strange angle. And the stewardess kept saying, “Would you please mind moving forward?” [Laughs] And then the plane landed and they always brought these authorities on board for checkout, and Dr. Feelgood had a terribly hard time getting his trousers on. And in the end he had to come off the plane holding his trousers in his hand . . . with Robert Frank photographing it all. I mean the whole thing had rather a belle epoque quality.

  Andy: Well, but how long was the fuck?

  Truman: It was a very short flight. About thirty-five minutes. Everybody kept switching and changing camera angles. Robert Frank was photographing for a movie he’s making about the tour, and said, “Well, I hope you’re going to leave that in.”

  Andy: Did the girl know that she was being photographed?

  Truman: Of course! They had lights up and everything. She was enjoying it! I said to her, “Well, you came to get a story for your high school newspaper and you’re sure getting one.” She got off at the next stop. I must say they were always very nice about these kids.

  Andy: You mean there were more instances like this?

  Truman: Well, it was going on continuously, day and night. And not just girls, but boys. The girls and boys, flocks of them went off with . . . There were, uh . . . mmm . . . a lot of people connected with the tour that used to do that. Um, went off with the boys. Very attractive sort of college kids that showed up, they’d get out there, get involved with everything from an electrician to, mmmm, to—They would go with anybody who was connected with the tour. A carpenter. A lightman. Anyone connected with the tour, no matter who it was. They didn’t care. Boys, women, dogs, fire hydrants. I mean, the most extraordinary things you’ve ever seen.

  Andy: Mostly outside New York, right? Not in New York. Because I didn’t see any of it happening. . . .

  Truman: The things that went on in Texas. I’ve never seen anything equal to it.

  There’s sort of all-night partying. One night . . . in Texas—I mean I never did it, because in my own mind I was working at the moment, even though subconsciously I knew I was not going to do it. But they would come off and be wagged up, and one night about four o’clock in the morning when I was in bed but wasn’t asleep (and I guess in a way this is the key to first question about why I didn’t do it), Keith Richards came and he knocked on my door, and I said, “Yes?” and he said, “It’s Keith,” and I said, “Yes, Keith.” He said, “Oh, come out, we’re having a terrific party upstairs.”

  “I’m tired. I’ve had a long day and so have you and I think you should go to bed.”

  “Aw, come out and see what a rock group’s really like.”

  “I know what a rock group’s really like, Keith. I don’t have to come upstairs to see.” And apparently he had a bottle of ketchup in his hand—he had a hamburger and a bottle of ketchup—and he just threw it all over the door of my room. [Laughs]

  Andy: It sounds like fun. Oh, I’ve gotten to like ketchup so much! I just can really eat it.

  Truman: What?

  Andy: Ketchup.

  Truman: Oh, ketchup.

  Andy: But it seems like there’s just so much material on that trip, and the way you describe things is wonderful.

  Truman: Yes, there’s material, but it’s just that. Material. It’s just that. It doesn’t have any echo. It isn’t that you want to forget about it because of any unpleasantness; it’s just because it doesn’t have any echo. Nowhere in this whole story of the Rolling Stones could I find anything sympathetic except the naïveté of the kids . . . which wasn’t—maybe in itself—true, either. Maybe it was just sentimentality.

  There was this thing about the Stones that I hated. Which was that the kids would be staying there—they’d end the performance. . . . [Lighting director] Chip Monck would say, “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. The Rolling Stones—” And the lights would go up—or had been up actually—and the kids are standing there and they’re just—breaking their hearts applauding . . . And there they are in this dreary Mobile, Alabama, ghastly—Fort Worth, Texas. I mean, they waited months and months for this thing. They wanted it, you know . . . for such a long time. And then , the Rolling Stones—Not only have they left, not only have they no intention of giving an encore, they are already on their airplane up in the sky while the kids are down there applauding and applauding and pleading, saying, “Please come back, please come back!” and everybody knowing that they’ve long since gone their way . . . Twice I didn’t go on the plane because I wanted to watch this phenomenon. It was heartbreaking. I mean, they would stay for half an hour, and nobody would come out and tell them that they aren’t going to come back. And then they would finally drift out . . .

  That was the one thing in it . . . But, you see, I wrote this thing about these kids in Fort Worth virtually realizing that they weren’t going to come back and that the big moment was over and the whole thing, and then they’re drifting out into this ghastly July heat, gradually fading away into these dark nights with a street lamp on every other street.

  Andy: Well, who is like the number one person? How does it go down there? Is Mick really considered the whole thing?

  Truman: Mm. Hmm.

  Andy: He is?

  Truman: Yes. Mick and Keith Richard. I mean, they are the Rolling Stones. . . .

  Andy: But the other kids are really nice. I mean, Charlie Watts is really nice. . . .

  Truman: Oh, he couldn’t be nicer, yes. But that’s not the point. When you get right down to it, the two people who really are running the show . . .

  Andy: But then it goes back to your idea when you were saying that you felt sorry for the audience, because when the Stones left them, it was negative stuff. Well, the audience wants that.

  Truman: The audience wants to hear the music. The audience wanted to keep on feeling good. The audience wanted to keep on dancing and huggin’, shakin’, rockin’, rollin’ . . .

  Andy: But they did it themselves on stereo while they were gone.

  Truman: But it’s ridiculous. I think Mick’s one of those people who has that peculiar androgynous quality, like Marlon or Garbo, transferred into a rock & roll thing, but it’s quite genuine. I mean, there’s nothing transvestite about it—it’s just an androgynous quality. And it has something that’s very sexy and amusing about it, and it appeals to both boys and girls in the audience, aside from just natural talent. It’s a very special sort of quality. Brando has it par excellence. And Garbo always had it—it was always the secret of her great success. And in his own strange way, I don’t know, Montgomery Clift had it. He just has it. There’s something totally asexual about it. But it doesn’t offend the boys in the audie
nce or even excite them, to some degree, and it turns on the girls to a great degree, and it’s part of the whole unisex syndrome. Don’t you think?

  Andy: Yes. Does it have morbidity?

  Truman: Not for me. I just don’t know where it goes from here, because I don’t know where the Rolling Stones go from here. I don’t know if that particular group and the particular thing that they do can go on for more than a year or two. I think Mick’s whole career depends on whether he can do something else. I’m sure he’ll go on. I just don’t know in what area.

  Andy: Why did you go on the tour in the first place?

  Truman: I was talked into it . . . ohhh, I don’t know . . . Jann Wenner kept sending me these telegrams about it. And then I just sort of thought, “Oh, well . . .” And then I just got kind of caught up in it. And then about halfway through, I knew I wasn’t going to do it, and from that point on it was just sort of gradually phasing it out.

  I think they have a fantastic drive and professionality that holds up in its way. I’ve always liked, basically, rock & roll per se, and of a certain kind of band, they’re the best. Now everybody says, “Oh, they’re over the hill,” and this and that, and I don’t agree with that. How much can you say? The Rolling Stones are first-rate. I personally prefer them on records to the performances. . . .