Take a Walk on the Dark Side

by R. Gary Patterson

  The Rolling Stones’ newfound interest in voodoo would provide inspiration for both Get Yer Ya-Yas Out and later Goat’s Head Soup. The phrase “Ya-Yas” was said to be an often repeated phrase found in African voodoo. Brian Jones had earlier flown to North Africa, where he recorded the pipes and drums of the Jou-jouka tribe. After staying in Africa for nearly a month he returned with his creative juices flowing and a new mission for the Stones. This is what he said about his experience in Africa: “Their [the Joujouka tribe] music is going to cause a sensation … People are becoming bored with rhythm and blues, and they are looking for something new. I really reckon this could be it. The music has got this incredible, pulsing excitement and I’ve got it all down on tape. It’s going to make the most amazing album.”15 But Jones would also become frightened that a curse had been placed upon him as he did the ceremonial recordings. Ironically, the strange rhythms that introduced the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” would represent the last performance that Brian Jones would undertake with the Rolling Stones. During the production of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, the Stones invited a who’s who of rock royalty to attend and star in what Mick Jagger hoped would be a rock film to end all rock films. Rock greats included John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, the Who, and Jethro Tull. Many of the performers were dressed in costumes: Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts of the Stones were dressed as clowns, Yoko Ono as a witch, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as ringmasters, and Brian Jones in a silver top hat complete with horns. He would represent the devil, complete with his pants legs tucked nicely into his boots to give the appearance of cloven hoofs. The Stones closed the show with “Route 66,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and finally “Sympathy for the Devil.” Brian Jones performed dressed in his appropriate costume. As the song reached a fever pitch, Jagger tore off his red shirt to reveal a “temporary” tattoo of the Prince of Darkness. This was Jones’s last performance with the Stones. On July 3, 1969, a few short weeks after Jagger and Richards had replaced him with Mick Taylor, Brian Jones would be found drowned at the bottom of his swimming pool. Many insiders felt that his death was not accidental.

  To many of the Stones’ followers it seemed odd that the group would perform a large free concert at Hyde Park two days after Brian’s death. Of course, Mick Jagger claimed this to be in tribute to their fallen friend and band mate. Many fans had never guessed the extent of the hatred and rivalry between the three band members, Jones, Jagger, and Richards. Marianne Faithfull, however, realized the importance of her loss and took an overdose of sleeping pills. She would be in a coma for days before fully physically recovering, but would be dropped from the cast of the film Ned Kelly, in which she and Jagger were to star. During her coma, Faithfull was convinced that the spirit of Brian Jones visited her. He was smiling and happy, but told Marianne she would have to return and could not stay with him. Shortly after this vision, she was awakened from her deep coma.

  The concert at Hyde Park went on as scheduled and the English Hell’s Angels served as the band’s security. Hundreds of thousands of fans listened intently with tears in their eyes as Mick Jagger read from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais.” Shelley had written the poem as an elegy for the poet John Keats. Strangely, there were a number of parallels between the life of Shelley and that of Brian Jones. The poem “Adonais” contains several references to drowning. Both men died before the age of thirty, both drowned, both men were considered to be outcasts from society due to their creative forces, both men were cast out by their fathers, both had radical political views concerning anarchy (“Street Fighting Man”), both experimented with drugs, and both were fascinated with the occult. The passages from Shelley were more than appropriate! After the reading, thousands of white butterflies were released from cages positioned upon the stage. Perhaps this was a token to metaphorically represent the freeing of Brian Jones’s soul as it soared ever closer to heaven. Sadly, the heat had been too much for the delicate creatures and many fell into the crowd like gossamer snowflakes, perishing as yet another sacrifice at the altar of the Rolling Stones. The concert was a great success and served as an introduction for Brian Jones’s replacement, Mick Taylor.

  The Rolling Stones prepared for their 1969 American tour with the desire to upstage the Woodstock festival. It was the Age of Aquarius and the dawning of a new epoch of peace and enlightenment. But it would turn out to be anything but that! Mick Jagger’s costume designer Ossie Clark recalled the preparations for his stage costume in A. E. Hotchner’s brilliant Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties: “One night I was at Mick’s house in London—I was designing the costumes for this 1969 tour. The principal costume I made for him was dominated by a black and red shirt with streamers—half black and half red with one black streamer and one red streamer, set off by a red white and blue Uncle Sam top hat… He’d put on a tape of the music that would be played on the tour and he’d dance around and say, ‘I’d like to do this and that,’ and we kind of evolved our costume ideas together. But for this trip, our costume night was different. Mick danced around with great intensity and he was telling me in a stream of what seemed subconscious feelings, somewhat incoherent, what he wanted to convey. It was more than just describing costumes or anything like that, it was as if he had became Satan and was announcing his evil intentions. He was reveling in this role. Frightening, truly frightening. I always knew that Mick had several clearly defined personas—talk about a split personality! But this was a side of Mick never revealed before. He was rejoicing in being Lucifer.”16

  Clark also remembered a Stones performance in Los Angeles, November 7, 1969: “We went out and took our seats, the Stones appeared, the first note was played and the whole place erupted like a tiger roaring. I almost blacked out. This was not the wave of adulation I was accustomed to hearing, no, this was like a mob being exhorted by a dictator. And then when Mick went into his Lucifer routine with the black and red streamers flying, the audience seemed to spit out its defiance.

  “He introduced himself as ‘a man of wealth and taste’ who had been around a long time, had taken men’s souls, and achieved a catalogue of Satanic triumphs. I was trembling I was so frightened. And the more the audience’s reaction intensified, the more Mick baited them. I expected a riot, an explosion. I escaped before the concert ended, went back to the house, packed my bag, and immediately left for New York. Even when I got to New York I couldn’t shake off the scary, ominous feelings of that night. It stayed with me. For a week or more after that, I’d wake in the night with a heavy sweat.”17

  If Woodstock served as the birth of the Age of Aquarius, then what was to happen at Altamont Speedway a few weeks later would serve as the death knell. The Stones, perhaps arrogantly, decided that this tour would be filmed as a testament to rock and roll. If they were to give a free concert in San Francisco they could smash the attendance figure set at Woodstock, and the Stones could live up to their reputation as the world’s greatest rock and roll band. But the entire venture was a tribute to ineptitude. There was just no way in which the needs of that large of a crowd could be met. Everything was in short supply. Few doctors, food vendors, or bathrooms; however, the greatest concern was the show’s security. The Grateful Dead had suggested that the Stones use the California branches of the Hell’s Angels. Some sources claim that the Rolling Stones paid the Angels a truckload of beer valued at $500 to provide the security at the concert. Everything was rushed into place so that the concert and documentary could soon be under way.

  At Woodstock, the promoters had consulted astrologers to determine the perfect day for their event. Not so with the Stones. California astrologers warned before the show was under way, “It’s going to be a very heavy day. The Sun, Venus, and Mercury are all in Sagittarius, and the moon’s on the Libra-Scorpio cusp … Anyone can see that, with the moon in Scorpio, it’s going to be an awful day to do this concert. There is a strong possibility for violence and chaos, and any astrologer could have told them. Oh, w
ell, maybe the Stones know something I don’t.”18 The Stones pushed on because to postpone the concert meant to postpone the movie. One thing that disturbed Mick Jagger was the report of an underground college play in which a famous rock performer is stabbed to death in a concert at the conclusion. There was no doubt as to who the character represented as the players screamed, “He’s killed Mick!” (In the early seventies, during the making of Goats Head Soup, Mick Jagger would once again receive a warning concerning an appointment with an early death. Surprisingly, the letter came from a student of the occult in California: “At great length and obvious sincerity the writer set out all the reasons why Jagger was doomed to be the next rock star to die. Though ridiculous, his reasoning was eerie enough to be unnerving; all the rock stars who were doomed to die in the sixties and seventies had the letters I and J in their names—like Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison. Moreover, the order of deaths fitted in with a formula which indicated that the next to die would have I as the second letter of the first name and J as the first letter of the second name. Additionally, the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Franz Hals, who was a celebrated warlock, had painted a picture called ‘The Merry Lute Player’—the central character of which was Jagger’s double.”19 To make matters worse, Mick had received the letter the day before his destined death. According to Tony Sanchez, the next day Jagger stayed in his room all day with a security force in order not to tempt fate.)

  Jagger knew of the existence of a lunatic fringe element in California, but felt safe in a city of peace and love where gentle people lived “with flowers in their hair.” Little did the group know that that night all hell would break loose! The Rolling Stones arrived at the Altamont Raceway in a helicopter. Everything seemed to be quite normal, so the Stones retired to their tents.

  The Stones absolutely refused to take the stage until night fall. Jagger was sure that the lighting was one of the most important aspects of the show and that it was imperative to the creation of the film. What would be filmed, however, was violent murder. Meredith Hunter, a black man, had dared come to the concert with a white girl, and for this he was singled out. The Angels started to beat him while the Stones started the hypnotic beat to “Sympathy for the Devil.” Tony Sanchez recalled naked audience members trying to crawl onto the stage only to be pummeled with crushing blows from heavy pool cues. This he referred to as offerings to some Satanic altar. Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane was knocked senseless by one of the Angels as he tried to rescue an onlooker. The bad vibes were everywhere, but now the bitter smell of blood was in the air. The frenzy had begun. Don McLean in his “American Pie” chronicled the tragedy at Altamont. The reference to “Jack Flash” would refer to the Stones’ opening song at the concert. McLean also sang, “As the flames climbed high into the night/To light the sacrificial rite,/I saw Satan laughing with delight/The day the music died.” These fires represented the bonfires lit by the audience and what was to be the terrible death of Meredith Hunter. While performing, Jagger saw a black man in a green suit point what appeared to be a gun at him from the crowd. Obviously, Jagger remembered the death scene from the underground play and retreated to the back of the stage. The eighteen-year-old Meredith Hunter disappeared under an avalanche of Hell’s Angels. The Angels stabbed him. They beat him. They kicked him. One Angel ground a steel bucket into Hunter’s eyes and they left him to die in the midst of the crowd. Blood was spurting everywhere and when some of the onlookers tried to aid the dying man, one Angel said, “Leave him alone. He’s going to die anyway.” The cameras kept rolling and captured the carnage firsthand. The documentary to the Stones was now a tribute to unnecessary death. A film to glorify rock had now become a legitimate snuff film to showcase a sacrifice to the dark forces that contolled the fate of those present. When the festival had ended the price had been high: “four dead—one murdered, two run over (some of the Angels drove their bikes into the crowd), one drowned in a drainage ditch—and hundreds injured, some seriously.”20

  One audience member wrote a letter to Rolling Stone magazine: “To those that know, it’s been obvious that the Stones, or at least some of them, have been involved in the practice of magick ever since the Satanic Majesties Request album. But there at least the colour was more white than black. Since then the hue has gone steadily darker and darker. At Altamont He appeared in his full majesty with his consort of demons, the Hell’s Angels. It was just a few days before the Winter Solstice when the forces of darkness are at their most powerful. The moon was in Scorpio, which is the time of the month when the Universal vibration is at its most unstable. It was held in a place dedicated to destruction through motion. Then Mick comes on only after it is dark enough for the red lights to work their magick. I don’t know if they are sadder and wiser from the experience. But an agonizing price was paid for the lesson. And we were all guilty because we have eaten of the cake the Stones baked.”21

  The resulting movie was entitled Gimme Shelter, taken from a song the Stones played during the beatings. The lyrics ran like a prophecy: “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away.” After their return to England a black cloud seemed to follow the Stones. Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg’s young son died tragically. Sanchez says that their addictions to drugs, especially heroin, became so extensive that Richards underwent a radical treatment. According to Sanchez, Richards had a complete blood transfusion to temporarily rid him of his heroin addiction. (Of course today this is considered one of rock’s greatest urban legends.) Following this, Anita and Keith split up, and Richards finally decided that his music was much more important than his drugs. He married model Patti Hansen and says that he is now finally straight. Anita Pallenberg was connected with another tragedy. It seems that a young boy died from a gunshot wound to the head while he was in her bed. At the inquest it was determined to be a suicide, although Sanchez reports that many neighbors testified to hearing strange chants and seeing dark cloaked figures on the night of the tragedy. Mick Jagger followed the advice of Doctor Faustus. He burned his books on magic, and stopped taking calls from Kenneth Anger. Anger even mentioned that in Mick Jagger’s wedding to Bianca that “he wore a rather prominent cross about his neck.”

  The tragedy of Altamont ended the sixties in a blazing funeral pyre. A generation dedicated to peace and love melted into the sure realities of the Vietnam War, civil injustice, and senseless death. The magic was gone. It would never be rekindled.

  6 THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE

  —Led Zeppelin, “No Quarter” Walking side by side with death, the devil mocks their every step.

  THOUGH THE LATE 1960S PRODUCED A NUMBER OF STELLAR ROCK GROUPS, none came close to unleashing the tumult of musical sound and fury that was Led Zeppelin. Zeppelin’s sound appeared to be conjured forth from the seething rural blues of the American South and then combined with the omnipotent force of John Bonham’s thunderous drums. If Steppenwolf was the first band to use the term heavy metal, Led Zeppelin became the epitome of the very genre. As the group grew in legend, fantastic rumors surfaced, tales of Celtic mythology and a hint of something dark that beck-oned ever so softly from the electrifying rhythms of the band’s music. The music became the master and Zeppelin, like Icarus, soared to incredible heights only to plummet to a horrifying and premature death. The Led Zeppelin mystique involved whispered innuendos of undisclosed blood pacts and mortal curses, and as in most classical legends, this echoed the all too familiar fate of those who dared to fly too high by seeking unobtainable, forbidden knowledge. In the beginning, however, there was innocence.

  In 1957, on a British television variety show, two young boys performed “Mama Don’t Wanna Play No Skiffle No More.” One of the guitarists was twelve-year-old James Patrick Page, who had just received his first guitar: “When I was at school, I had my guitar confiscated every day. They would hand it back to me each afternoon at four o’clock. I always thought the good thing about guitar was that they didn’t teach it at school.
Teaching myself to play was the first and most important part of my education.”1 Page, as well as many other British guitarists, had been inspired by Elvis Presley’s “Baby, Let’s Play House,” but for the young musician who grew up with memories of his great uncle’s pastoral manor farm combined with the family moving into the suburban shadows of London’s Heathrow Airport, a musical career was not the foremost goal of his young dreams. According to the PBS History of Rock and Roll series, when the television host asked what Jimmy Page’s future would hold, the young guitarist answered shyly that he would like to become “a biotechnologist and work with germs.” Page actually applied for the position of a lab technician, but his love of music would eventually lead him to the path of rock superstardom.

  Jimmy Page first went on the road with Neil Christian and the Crusaders in the early 1960s. Even though he was still in school, Page talked his parents into giving him the opportunity to fully explore his musical dreams. However, after becoming ill and suffering from glandular fever from the hardships of the never-ending cycle of night clubs, Jimmy Page decided that he should return to school. He chose a major in art and put his guitar down for two years while he wielded an artist’s paintbrush instead. But Page’s reputation as a first-rate guitarist grew and it would not be long before he would pursue his vocation as a studio guitarist. Some critics have claimed that from 1963 until 1965, Jimmy Page performed on 50 percent to 90 percent of all recordings released in Britain in those years.2 This was obviously an exaggeration, since the top session guitarist was Big Jim Sullivan. The number of sessions credited to Page is legendary. Was it Page who played on Van Morrison and Them’s “Baby, Please Don’t Go”? Did he perform on Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” and “Hurdy Gurdy Man”? Page remembers playing rhythm guitar on the Who’s “I Can’t Explain,” but for some rock stars, crediting Jimmy Page with their recordings became a monumental clash of egos. The best case in point involves Ray Davies and the Kinks. It has long been rumored that Page had played the rhythm and lead guitar parts to “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night.” Davies contradicts this assumption, saying that Page only contributed a tambourine section to “You Really Got Me,” and that Dave Davies, Ray’s brother, performed the lead guitar solo while a disheartened Page frowned and squirmed throughout the playback. Professional jealousies helped add to the résumé of the budding superstar guitarist.