Old Gods Almost Dead (53 page)

Old friends also noticed the Stones were a cranky lot. “The money's got them in trouble,” Stu told press rep Lisa Robinson. “They can't even live in their own country. They have to go from one hotel to another.” Mick complained bitterly that the tax laws had forced a whole creative community into exile and had killed British music.

May 1975. The Stones gathered in New Orleans for the final rehearsals. Their new press agent, Paul Wasserman, an older, bearded guy from L.A., introduced himself to Keith and said he'd be handling the press. Keith hugged him, whispered, “Better you than me,” and walked away. The band sounded good. Ron Wood trembled in fear, but his blazing slide guitar gave the Stones a new screeching jolt. Playing with a younger black drummer woke up laconic, thirty-four-year-old Charlie Watts, empowered him to play with a funky kick in his drums. It was like the whole band had gotten its blood changed, and they came out swinging. The '75 shows were the longest of the Stones' career, as if they thought they had to compete with the three-hour marathons of the other big English bands like Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull.

The shows began, tongue of Kali firmly in cheek, with the recorded trumpets of Aaron Copland's
Fanfare for the Common Man.
The Stones emerged onstage to cherry bomb wargasms as the roadies set off explosions and Keith fired off the chords to “Honky Tonk Women.” “If You Can't Rock Me” segued through Ollie Brown's congas into a jokey, disco-tinged “Get Off My Cloud,” now a stage-business duet with Billy Preston. The show progressed through a sequence of hits and high spirits: “Happy” got a scorching slide guitar lift-off from Ronnie while Keith shouted his slurred, smacked-out lyrics, his voice now lost to tobacco abuse but still full of gruff character. Ron Wood's choppy chord solos replaced Mick Taylor's fluid groove on “Tumbling Dice.” “Starfucker” had a thrilling vamp section at the end while Mick rode the white penis that blew up into an arena-size erection. The live performances of “Fingerprint File” had an extra-cool guitar lick over dub-style fills and an interlude for some paranoid stage business: “Who dat man in de corner? Not
dat
corner, de one over there!”

“You Gotta Move” was transformed into a vocal quartet, as Mick, Keith, Wood, and Preston gathered around the mike and sang soul-style harmonies over Charlie's Salvation Army drumbeat. This often got a gospel-style reprise from Billy Preston. With no horns, Billy played the intro to “You Can't Always Get What You Want” on the synthesizer instead. Ron Wood played Brian Jones's slide guitar licks expertly on “Little Red Rooster.” They ignored “Satisfaction” entirely.

Billy Preston's set usually ended with Mick coming out in his Giorgio di Sant'Angelo striped crepe “clown suit,” tied at the waist and fashionably cross-gartered, and dancing the bump and suggestive homoerotic grinds with Preston, who performed in stacked heels and a massive Afro wig. The finale was a burning “It's Only Rock 'n' Roll,” “Brown Sugar,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Jumpin' Jack Flash” (with Mick flying around the halls at the end of a trapeze rope), and the winding guitars and samba drums of “Sympathy for the Devil.”

TOTA had no single opening act. Instead, various bands—the Meters, Little Feat, the Eagles, the Outlaws—opened in different parts of the country.

For the TOTA shows, limos were out. The band was driven in low-profile station wagons and vans. Peter Rudge had hired a new, heavyweight layer of security. Despite the anti-FBI jibes in “Fingerprint File,” moonlighting FBI officers and Secret Service agents protected the Stones from local police departments. Spanish Tony claimed that Keith told him he was supplied unusually pure heroin by these operatives. Fred Sessler was also along with his licensed Peruvian marching powder. Carefully delineated lines of cocaine and heroin on the amplifiers were available during the shows, and any roadie who put his flashlight on them was fired. The heroin lines were for Keith and Woody exclusively, while the coke was for the rest of the band. Keith and Woody also smoked “dirty fags”—heroin-laced cigarettes—during the shows.

                

The Stones opened
far out of town on June 1, 1975, at Louisiana State University. The Meters, Creole-funk heroes from New Orleans's 13th Ward, opened with their strutting “second-line” syncopations and the mellow harmonies of the Neville Brothers. Then to the airport and the waiting Starship, a customized Boeing 720 jetliner with a bar, an organ, sofas, maroon shag carpeting, a fireplace, various lounges, and a bedroom in the back. The Starship was the ultimate new amenity in the booming world of seventies rock, affordable only by the Stones, Led Zepp, and Elton John. Peter Rudge and security chief Bill Carter, a lawyer and former Secret Service agent, ran such a tight ship that Bianca Jagger referred to the atmosphere around that tour as “a fascist state.” But tough measures were often required. At the second stop, San Antonio, the local vice squad threatened the band with arrest if they deployed their flying penis. Cops flooded backstage during the show, ready to pounce, but were faced down by Bill Carter, who knew how to talk to local police chiefs.

Ron Wood put his mark on the tour early, made himself indispensable, worked hard to fit in, got people drinks. Manic laughter in the tuning room before the show did wonders for the Stones. He was everyone's little bro. Keith: “Good to be with in a tune-up room and inspiring to all in attendance, Ronnie is. He gives everyone courage for the show.” Wood was the first antic stage presence Mick had to deal with since 1967, with his flash guitar posturing and his attempts to bait the stone-faced Wyman, who barely moved or smiled during the shows. Mick bounced off Woody during the shows, jumped on him, kicked him, mugged in his face, did physical shtick, licked his cheeks onstage.

Kansas City, June 5, with the Eagles opening. The Stones played outdoors for the first time under a white stage tent for eighty thousand kids, a sea of waving arms, topless girls hoisted onto brawny shoulders, and a constant, chanting roar. Backstage the musicians and crew wore T-shirts that asked “Who the fuck is Mick Jagger?” Keith, who'd been awake for a week, jamming through the night and listening to reggae with Ronnie, debuted a pair of skintight white leather pants in which he would live for the rest of the tour.

Municipal Stadium, Cleveland, 83,000 customers on June 13. Next day, before the Buffalo show, the crew took a boat ride under Niagara Falls. “Don't show this to Jagger,” Rudge said as they beheld the mammoth cascade. “He'll want it onstage.”

In Toronto, word got backstage that a young girl, blind since birth, was following the tour, hitching from show to show. Keith started noticing her up front every night, squeezed in the crunch of fans, and became concerned for her. He arranged for the roadies to look after her, let her ride in the trucks, see that she got in all right every night. It was a simple gesture, a karmic gift that would pay off down the road.

Six shows at Madison Square Garden in New York at the end of June, with the blossoming lotus stage deployed for the first time. A round of parties and jams with Eric Clapton at Jimi Hendrix's old studio. Bob Dylan backstage one night, with Carlos Santana onstage with the Stones on the last night of the week. At this show, the Stones were joined by a hundred steel drummers, masters of pan music recruited from Brooklyn's West Indian community to add a Carnival vibe to the New York finale. When Keith crashed into “Happy,” the Garden brimmed with communal joy as the fans sang along with the bombed-out guitarist. After this show, the Stones threw a big party for the Steel Band Association drummers and their girlfriends in Brooklyn, with reggae songs turned up to full watts all night. The next day's papers reported that the six shows had grossed over a million dollars.

                

Fred Sessler
drove the Stones crazy by disappearing for a few days. A New York record executive, Stu Werbin, got some cocaine for Ronnie and was invited to have a snort with the band. He observed that Mick was playing games with Bianca, pretending not to notice that she wanted a toot. This went on for a while until Keith, in spiteful defiance of Mick, served Bianca several crystalline lines. Sessler reappeared before the Stones left town, his supplies replenished. Money never changed hands with him because he never sold drugs and wasn't a dealer. His only compensation was hanging with the Stones and being seen with them.

After a few days off, the Stones plunged right back in with a Washington, D.C., show on July 1. To Mick's annoyance, Bianca was photographed in the embrace of President Ford's son Jack while visiting the White House with Andy Warhol. She was spotted dancing with Disco Jack at decadent Studio 54 in New York a few days later, which got Mick
really
steamed.

Memphis a few days later. The Starship arrived late at night without Mick, who was driving. They were greeted on the runway by eighty-three-year-old Beale Street blues legend Furry Lewis, who sat on a couple of cases of whiskey, singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Enchanted, Keith sat down on the tarmac to listen awhile. Later that afternoon, at the Stones' July 4 show at Memorial Stadium, they refused to play until Furry Lewis did a couple of songs for 51,000 half-nekked kids who'd already been waiting five hours in the hot summer sun. Furry told them a joke about eating pussy, got a big roaring laugh, and played the crowd “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

The Stones blasted off at nine, Mick in a lavender silk cape, Keith in a Bob Marley T-shirt, tearing off the chunky chords to “Honky Tonk Women” as the whole stadium began to quake. Police in riot gear threatened to arrest the Stones if they performed “Starfucker” and exposed their big balloon dick in Memorial Stadium. Bill Carter took the police chief aside and advised: “If you bust the Stones tonight, these kids will burn down this stadium and your city along with it. Plus, this band will litigate you forever. These ain't some broke hippies, Chief. I guarantee you,
they will sue
!” The Stones played “Starfucker” that night like it had a nitrous oxide hookup, and the flying phallus wasn't exposed in big outdoor shows anyway. After the show, in honor of American Independence Day, Mick had Jimi Hendrix's bitterly sardonic “Star-Spangled Banner” played over the P.A. Afro-headed Ollie Brown earnestly read a selection of revolutionary texts (Lenin, Che, Thomas Jefferson) chosen by Mick, ending with Chairman Mao's rhetorical query “Is one revolution enough?” Thousands of Stones fans remained in the stadium to listen to Jagger's Godard-like guerrilla theater piece.

The next morning, Keith and Woody left Memphis by limo, along with Fred Sessler and their big English security man, Jim Callaghan, to drive through the South to the next gig at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. They stopped for some pork barbecue in tiny Fordyce, Arkansas, where the car and the two exotic musicians attracted not a little attention. Keith was wheeling the limo out of town when he swerved across the road while trying to tune in KFFA in Helena. A cop pulled them over and busted Keith for carrying a ratchet knife. They went back to Fordyce, where the cops pried open the trunk and arrested Sessler for cocaine possession. As a crowd of longhairs gathered around the courthouse, some calls were made, and Arkansas native Bill Carter soon arrived. Keith's bail, set at $162, was paid and he was released. Sessler, described in subsequent press reports as a hitchhiker, paid $5,000. A chartered plane hastily ferried the miscreants off to Dallas.

Most Glamorous Gladiators

That summer
of 1975, the Stones stayed on the road in America, playing some nights much better than others, standing on their laurels, a strategy that almost begged for contempt. Their presentation was criticized as “a generally unrevealing set of reinterpretations of their old songs.” Critic James Miller, covering the tour for
Newsweek,
wrote that “the Stones became the Seventies' most glamorous gladiators, but the shows grew slick and the music slack. Here was rock royalty gone cynical . . . fabulously moneyed superstars with enough nasty habits and jet-set sidekicks to keep the gossip juicy.”

When TOTA reached Los Angeles, the Stones were joined by their wives at the Beverly Wilshire. Anita, recently deported from Jamaica after her drug conviction, was absent, so Keith stayed at a canyon hideaway owned by Fred Sessler. Movie stars—Raquel Welch, Liza Minnelli, Bianca's rumored boyfriend Ryan O'Neal—clamored for tickets and backstage passes. Bianca commandeered the best seats for her friends. “You should write something bitchy about her,” Mick told Lisa Robinson. “She's very rude to people.” Ron Wood and Bill Wyman skipped Ahmet Ertegun's party for the Stones at Diana Ross's house and went to see Bob Marley and the Wailers play at the Roxy nightclub instead.

In San Francisco, the Stones were in the middle of the second of two desultory concerts when Mick's assistant, Alan Dunn, passed him a note onstage that read, “She's on the plane.” Bianca had left the tour and gone home, to Mick's relief. Later that night, he and Keith went to see reggae stars Toots and the Maytals. Stray cats were soon observed padding out of Mick's hotel room in the morning. The daily tour memo warned “Loose lips cost wives.” Fred Sessler flew in Uschi Obermeier to elevate Keith's flagging spirits.

Elton John called Mick at his hotel and asked if he could sit in with the Stones in Denver that night. Though Mick had agreed to let him join for only one number, Elton refused to leave, stayed for six songs, fucked up the arrangements, and annoyed everyone.

In Chicago, Mick and Billy's disco grind got a little Out There, with Mick stripping and Billy miming fellatio, drawing accusations of poor taste in the papers. Keith crashed in Chicago after a five-day binge. He woke up to find a “Dear Keith” letter from Uschi, who had fled. Keith crumbled for the rest of the tour despite Ron Wood's strenuous efforts to keep him going. “You want a psychiatrist,” Keith mused, “go see Ronnie. He's a one-man suicide line. I could make a fortune selling tickets. Suicide court! They'd come out laughing their heads off, with a new vision of life.”