A Prince Among Stones (23 page)

The band managed to put out one group studio album during this period,
Dirty Work
, which performed well, and included a hit single in ‘Harlem Shuffle', but it also contained four tracks which had Ronnie's name on the credits, which he himself admitted was proof that the songwriting partnership of Mick and Keith, the creative mainspring that had driven the band since the 1960s, was not functioning at all well.

 

However, in the event, Mick's two solo albums – he also released
Primitive Cool
in 1987 – did not set the world on fire in the way he would have hoped. Maybe he did need the rest of the Rolling Stones after all.

Oddly enough, the person who in many ways helped to bring the Stones back together again, although he was intending to achieve exactly the opposite effect, was our old adversary Allen Klein. Since the original settlement which we had concluded following that all-night meeting with him in New York in 1973, the litigation between us and Klein had rumbled on and on, breaking out sporadically into intense flare-ups of legal activity, which created boxloads of paperwork as well as spiralling costs which helped line the pockets of the lawyers' expensive (and frequently brand-new) suits.

There had been four or five further settlements in the intervening years, and we were experiencing constant interference from Allen Klein, who said that he would not pay the royalties that were due and was generally making a major effort to disrupt any co-operation between the parties. By the late 1980s he was still twisting and dodging. I think he sensed, astute and as wily as ever, that the Stones were currently at their least cohesive point, and that they might well be ripe for tackling at the very time they were looking inwards to their own individual rather than communal interests.

It didn't work. Allen Klein certainly brought things to a head but succeeded only in drawing the band together, since I had to organise a number of meetings to discuss the latest flurry of legal matters with them. As Klein became once again the common enemy, it gave me an opportunity to spell out a few truths to the band, not least that Klein was far more dangerous than they had expected, given all the money and time spent litigating.

I was also able to reinforce an important message, which I now had the figures to back up: ‘The way you make money is as a band. You have to do group work. That is what the world wants from you . . .'

There was a band meeting in the Savoy Hotel in May 1988 that allowed us to work out the strategy for a seventh (and this time genuinely final) settlement with Klein in 1989. It also marked the beginning of the conversations between the Stones that led to the band reuniting at George Martin's AIR studio in Montserrat, and the pencilling in of a major tour to start in 1989.

It was clear once they got back together in the Caribbean, a part of the world which both Mick and Keith loved – apart from being a location with some taxation benefits – that they realised what fun they were having recording the new album and that they were once again creating satisfying music that they enjoyed just as much as their public.

It made me recognise that, although there had clearly been a lot of friction between Mick and Keith, it had been magnified and distorted because they simply had not been spending time together making music. Even during the recording of
Dirty Work
in Paris, I had had telephone calls from Alan Dunn in which he said that it was very difficult to get the two of them to turn up at the same time when the recording studio was booked and he was getting very concerned about what was going to happen to the album. That was a time when I had to speak to them separately and say, ‘Look, you are risking throwing away a very remunerative contract, which is the last thing you want.'

The truth is that the pair of them were just going through a bad patch. These periodic problems can happen to all business partners. Mick and Keith, it must be remembered, had by this point been working together – and working
hard
together – for nearly twenty-five years, much of that spent under intense media scrutiny, constantly obliged to preserve their status with younger bands trying to challenge them and assume their mantle. In retrospect it was hardly surprising that they had a major wobble.

The bad temper and the remarks they made about each other – in private or to a third party – were a way of venting some steam. The whole process, Keith's ‘World War III', in the end allowed them to emerge wiser, battle-hardened and with a much greater appreciation of what each of them and the other Stones brought to the group.

That said, there is a note I made in one of my tour journals in 1989 at the time the
Steel Wheels
tour had just got underway: ‘The boys are back to scrapping, which perhaps they need. It is of course maddening for Mick that Keith is still addicted to the physical props of twenty years ago as well as the attitudes.' I remembered what one of my relations who dabbled in psychoanalysis had once told me. ‘How right Uncle Werner was about Mick and Keith's trouble. His view was that a dispute like theirs – a form of divorce – is enormously complicated by being between two men each fighting to prove his male sexual dominance, whereas at least among a man and woman, or indeed a homosexual couple, that is usually clear.

‘In a way Keith is coming out as the winner on a human level – Mick on a professional one. Alas! Keith is right and that is the problem. Mick has no real career which is to project his gigantic star quality, other than through his vast, and in my view, unique talent as a rock performer
with
Keith.'

Whenever problems did occur, I did not have to be unduly careful about worrying whether I was spending more time with Mick or Keith, which was fortunate as I probably saw more of Mick, especially when we both found ourselves together in Mustique. By and large this was not a big deal for Keith. He was certainly capable of losing his temper with me if he thought I was looking after Mick or the group without underlining his own essential importance, but otherwise he felt that my relationship with Mick was beneficial, maybe even necessary, in that there was somebody like me who had an independent influence on Mick. He knew that I would, like an ambassador, represent and articulate his views fairly to Mick.

I always found that, if I kept things on a business footing, it would diffuse much of the emotion. I did spend a great deal of time trying to eradicate emotion, just stating straightforwardly how and where they would make more money. Although Keith has described himself and Mick as a ‘mom and pop' operation, they are not a married couple with a child. They are entertainers in a group. It nearly always comes down to a business decision.

There was one very embarrassing time when Mick wanted to have an extra remuneration on everything, on the basis that, in his view, he was the quasi-manager. I had a call from Keith a couple of hours later saying, ‘Rupert, do you think that Mick's interventions in the things that you do make us money or lose us money?' I reassured him: ‘I know what you mean – it won't happen.' But that proved to me that Keith knew what it was about, and could, if he did not succumb to a purely emotional response, deal with issues calmly and rationally.

Generally, when they were together in Montserrat, the work went smoothly. Even so, sometimes Keith could still not turn up until late or Mick might not be around when he was expected, and things could blow up off and on. Rather like the island's volcano, the recent eruptions continued to bubble up intermittently. But everyone in the entourage working with the band went out of their way to calm any moments of difficulty and ensure that the important business of making the album would continue.

While they were in Montserrat, Jerry Hall found herself in a potentially dreadful situation. She had asked for some suitcases to be sent over from Mustique via the airport in Barbados. Luckily she had not physically touched any of the suitcases, merely described them, because when the suitcases arrived they were found to be full of drugs. She was arrested and put into a jail in Barbados, which as a very good-looking blonde girl was not an ideal situation. She told me that she spent a terrifying night in prison with the Barbadian policemen slapping their thighs with their riding crops in a menacing way.

She had a very difficult time. I headed over there with the lawyers until it was revealed that this was all a (suit)case of mistaken identity. A porter in Barbados who was in league with the drug dealers in St Vincent had been off duty, and so somebody else had placed a drug parcel in her bags. Thank goodness she hadn't touched the luggage; had she done so, the ramifications could have been awful.

One of the key discussions during the recording was about the tour to follow the release of the new album, which was clearly going to be a major undertaking. I was scheduled to go out to Montserrat in a couple of weeks to talk about the tour with the band. Bill Graham, who had handled the previous tours, was the front-runner and had already made an offer of an advance.

I took a telephone call in the office one day. ‘This is Michael Cohl. You won't know me, but I am a rock promoter. In fact I have promoted some of the Stones' dates in Canada on behalf of Bill Graham.' Michael said that Steve O'Rourke, the Pink Floyd manager, had suggested he call me. ‘I've got a bid which I'd like to make to you.'

‘Well, of course, you can do that,' I replied, ‘but I have to tell you that we are on the verge of settling this with Bill Graham, so I am afraid you might find it won't work out because the sums we are being offered as advances really are significant.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Michael Cohl, ‘and I also know that he is prepared to pay you many millions of dollars. I am prepared to pay you twice as much.'

‘Well, in that case . . . we should certainly meet and talk about it.'

I contacted Mick and Keith as quickly as I could and told them that Michael Cohl was willing to pay a huge amount more. Naturally, they agreed we should consider his offer.

The discussions took place on Montserrat during a break in the recording, a series of meetings with the Stones and the lawyers, and separately with Bill Graham and Michael Cohl. At the end of the sessions I said to the band, ‘I think you will agree that Michael comes out best.'

Mick, however, was concerned, as he always is, regardless of the monetary offer, with the scenery and production values. The principal negative in Michael's proposal was that he did not have the experience on the touring management side that Bill Graham had, since he had primarily been promoting concerts in his native Canada. Bill Graham, on the other hand, had within his team a number of people who were very strong on the staging side, in particular an Englishman, Mick Brigden, who understood décor and was able to translate and realise Mick Jagger's sometimes very complicated scenery ideas in a way with which Mick and Keith were perfectly happy.

In the event we decided that to offset this weakness in Michael Cohl's proposal we would bring in as specialists Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein, an ‘odd couple' whose looks (Burnstein with the grey locks and beard of a hippie rabbi, Mensch's pate completely shaven) belied their abilities, not least that of being able to convince Mick that the show and the staging felt suitably contemporary, a form of reassurance he required.

We made our decision to go with Michael Cohl and informed the various parties. Bill Graham was furious. He found out which flight Mick was taking to New York, booked on the same plane and collared Mick. ‘You're insane,' he shouted. ‘Michael Cohl doesn't know how to produce. I've got Mick Brigden who's done all the last tours. The team all know you. What have you got against me?' Mick said, ‘It's very simple, Bill: not enough money.'

Bill Graham later wrote, somewhat pungently, that ‘losing the Stones was like watching my favourite lover become a whore'. He never even had the chance to pitch for any of the subsequent Stones tours: one October night in 1991 he died in a helicopter crash in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Michael Cohl worked with us on all the subsequent tours through the 1990s and into the 2000s. As I got to know him better I found that he was very bright, had great charm and was both unassuming and capable. Under his guidance the tour became the most financially successful rock tour up to that point: there was huge pressure on him and his team to deliver, since his advance had acquired the rights to handle not only the concerts, but also all the sponsorship, merchandising, radio, television and film exploitation.

The
Steel Wheels
tour – renamed
Urban Jungle
for the European leg – was on a suitably grand scale. The show was spectacular, the set like a huge power station on an odd distant planet: some kind of antediluvian Mars, I imagined.

The band were still able to deliver powerful performances. I noted in the tour journal I kept, ‘At times their music is by and large so cacophonous, the crowd's enjoyment of it (when so many cannot hear or see the spectacle) still baffles me. Mass emotions both escape and frighten me.'

After one concert in the States, an American journalist delivered a review that, to me, was pretentious drivel. ‘You might have thought,' I wrote, ‘that he was thinking about Bartók, instead of what this is: rhythmic music with lyrics describing trite emotions.
But
it appeals to the millions. Why? Of course this show is stunning visually and has coherence from the point of view of that and the music. Also Mick has star quality as a performer that transcends the banality of the medium. But Bartók (or Bizet for that matter) it ain't!'