True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (59 page)

“I've just been talkin' to those guys, those kids who're goin' into the army at Fort Bliss—strange name for an army camp—they don't want to do anything but go to Juárez and score some marijuana.”

“Don't they care about girls anymore?” the man said.

“Yeah, they all want to go to Juárez and screw some broads and smoke some dope. They signed up for four years so they won't have to go to Nam and fight in a war they don't believe in, for this idea of America as the policeman of the world.”

“It's not a matter of being a policeman, it's a matter of protecting your interests,” the man said.

“What interests, you got half a million soldiers in Vietnam which is certainly not yours. The North Vietnamese are right and they're gonna win.”

“You know that?”

“Yeah, because I've seen films and read about it and talked to people who've been there.”

“Yeah, but you don't know, you might have to fight yourself someday,” the man said darkly.

“I do, all the time,” Keith said, and then he seemed to despair of being able to get his point of view across to the man. “You don't know what it's like.”

“What what's like?”

“Being a Rolling Stone, the attacks people have put on us, the violence—”

“You mean people try to beat you up?”

“They try to kill me, man, that's what I mean by violence, cops have pulled guns on me and offered to shoot me with them.”

“Where?”

“Backstage in dressing rooms, for nothing, for the slightest pretext. The five members of this band have had to go through so much bullshit—”

The seat belt light went on and I went back to my seat, passing Mick and Charlie. “But in a love affair,” Mick was saying, very earnest. I knew which five members Keith had meant. The Stones were so funky that one of them was a dead man.

When we got off the plane our peaceful interlude was over. The people who had been comic voices on the phone were all around us. Ronnie grabbed Mick, sideburning him along. “Don't worry about a thing, everything's being taken care of, we have a site, we can go out there tonight if you want to, Chip's out there, and Sam—”

As we walked out to the limousines a small boy asked me, “Are you a Beatle?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What's your name?”

“Philo Vance.”

“They'll believe anything,” Keith said. “Philo Vance, the well-known Beatle.”

Keith and I got into a limousine and Jon Jaymes followed us, talking about the free concert. “I'm insuring the whole thing,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Keith asked.

“That means if there are ten murders,
I
go to jail.”

His heart was achin', head was thumpin'
Little Jesse went to hell bouncin' and jumpin'
Folks, don't be standin' around little Jesse cryin'
He wants everybody to do the Charleston whilst he's dyin'
One foot up, a toenail draggin'
Throw my buddy Jesse in the hoodoo wagon
Come here, mama, with that can of booze
It's the dying crapshooter's—leavin' this world—
With the dying crapshooter's—goin' down slow—
With the dying crapshooter's blues.

W
ILLIE
M
C
T
ELL:
“The Dying Crapshooter's Blues”

W
HEN, IN
1968 , I went to England for the first time to meet the Stones, wearing a trenchcoat in unconscious self-parody, I didn't know what I was getting into. Four weeks later when I returned to America to write what I could about the Stones, I knew that something was going on with them under the surface, and that I hadn't been able to get to the bottom of it.

In the summer “Jumpin' Jack Flash” had carried them back to the top of the pop charts. Their new album,
Beggar's Banquet,
was released in November after a long dispute over the Stones' proposed cover photograph of the graffiti on a toilet wall in a Mexican auto-mobile body shop in Los Angeles. Decca refused to release the album with that cover. “The record company is not there to tell us what we
can make,” Mick had said. “If that's the way they feel about it, then they should make the records and we'll distribute them.” At last the record was released with a white cover designed as an invitation. “We copped out,” Keith said, “but we did it for money, so it was all right.”

Also released in November was
One
+
One,
a film by Jean-Luc Godard that was in part about the recording of “Sympathy for the Devil.” Filming had been completed for a movie called
Performance,
starring Mick and Anita. In December the Stones produced a filmed entertainment called “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.” It presented circus acts—tigers, acrobats, clowns, a fire eater—and rock and roll from the Stones, Taj Mahal, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull, the Who. The Stones intended selling it to BBC-TV, but it was never finished.

At the end of the year, Keith, Mick, Anita, and Marianne went to Peru and Brazil. Seeing the black cowboys on the
pampas
inspired Keith to write a Jimmie Rodgers type of song called “Honky Tonk Women.” Brian, who had moved into Cotchford Farm in November, spent the holidays with Suki in Ceylon. John Lewis, a young English friend of Brian's, would tell me sometime later that while in Ceylon Brian consulted an astrologer—supposedly, at one time, Hitler's astrologer—who told Brian to be careful swimming in the coming year, not to go into the water without friends.

On January 13, Brian was back in London to appear before a court that denied his appeal to set aside his guilty verdict. That left him with two drug convictions on his record, two strikes against him. At the end of January Mick and Keith came back to England and started months of work on the tracks for
Let It Bleed.
In March the Stones were asked to play at the Memphis Blues Festival and considered doing it with Eric Clapton because of the problems they would have getting Brian into the country.

Brian had used his upset over his impending trial as an excuse for missing sessions and had even avoided England, telling the London newspapers from Morocco, “I have the feeling my presence is not required.” With his trial over and months of dental work finished (“What a waste,” Jo said), Brian—though he had completed his Moroccan album, having spent £23,000 of his own money—was still not able to do his part, whatever that was now, with the Stones. “After the trial was over and Brian didn't get it together,” Jo said, “the handwriting was on the wall.” Early in April, Jo wrote a letter to Mick. “What's happening with the group?” she asked, and offered “a short report on what's really happening:”

A few first thoughts—the office is completely loyal—also relatively free of intrigue and politics. No one is ambitious or on ego trips. It's a nice place to work.
Lately there hasn't been enough to keep minds together, and that leads us to the basic crunch: it's your office.

1. What's happening to the group? Is there any real interest in doing public appearances? Or do you want to just record and make movies?

2. Aside from the Rolling Stones, any other projects? Record company?

The Klein problem is more than a drag. We're puppets. How can you work, or the office, if we have to spend so much time pleading for bread or whatever. It's never going to be efficient till that is straightened out.

1. Klein—some way of finance—agony over money & contracts

2. Mick's personal plans

3. Records—you should just worry about the product.

4. Rolling Stones

5. Record company or studio

6. If the load is too heavy, fuck it. You really only should do what makes you happy. If you knew there wouldn't be any hangups.

On February 3, Allen Klein announced that he had taken over the Beatles' management. The Stones, feeling neglected and resentful, kept working on
Let It Bleed,
using the sixty voices (double-tracked) of the London Bach Choir on “You Can't Always Get What You Want” and a young mandolin player named Ry Cooder on Robert Johnson's “Love in Vain,” finding ways to add the exotic textures and accents Brian had once provided. Brian would still come to some recording sessions. At one he asked Mick, “What can I play?”

“I don't know,” Mick said, “What
can
you play?”

The hand Brian had broken on Anita's head had not healed properly, and Brian had trouble playing guitar. He tried playing harmonica, but finally Mick told him, “You can't play anymore, why don't you go home?”

Mick and Keith were looking for someone to replace Brian. In May they invited Mick Taylor to some sessions. On May 25 they over-dubbed saxophonist Bobby Keys on the rock and roll version of “Honky Tonk Women.” Sometime in the next week, Mick had a talk with Mick Taylor.

At this time Mick was learning dialogue for his appearance with Marianne in a film about the bandit
Ned Kelly,
scheduled to start pro­
duction in Australia early in July. The day the newspapers carried the story announcing the film, Mick and Marianne were arrested for possessing illegal drugs in the house Mick had bought the year before at 48 Cheyne Walk.

On June 8, with “Honky Tonk Women” ready for release, Keith, Mick, and Charlie went to Cotchford Farm to talk to Brian. Years later Charlie would say, “It was the worst thing so far that I've ever had to do.” But he also said that when they told Brian what they wanted to do, he seemed relieved. “It was as if a whole weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and he said, ‘Yeah, I want to leave.' ”

Brian announced to the press that he had left the Stones. He called his father to say that it was only temporary, they wanted to play America, he would tour Europe with them next year.

In London's Hyde Park, starting in September 1968, a man named Peter Jenner, from the pop production firm Blackhill Enterprises, had been giving free concerts like the ones he had seen in California. “Honky Tonk Women” was scheduled for release on July 4, and the Stones planned a free concert in Hyde Park for July 5. Another letter from Jo Bergman:

Dear People,

Here is a rough guide-plan for this week's events:

TUES. 1st July

1 o'clock. Granada Theatre, Wandsworth Road The evening is theoretically free, unless anyone feels able to do interviews for FM stations in America at that time—i.e. 5-6 o'clock. I will ask you about this later.

WED. 2nd July

12-2 o'clock. Music Scene introductions. These will be at the TRL Studio, 44/46 Whitfield Street W.1., and will be very quick. It is very important however that everyone make it by 12 o'clock because they must be finished in the studio by 2 o'clock.

7 o'clock. Olympic-recording.

THURS. 3rd July

1.30/2 o'clock. Photo session with an American photographer to do pictures for posters in America and photograph for the September album cover. This should take, at most, two
hours, probably less. Rest of the afternoon could be rehearsals.

8-9.30 Top of the Pops taping at Studio G. Lime Grove.

FRI. 4th July.

Rehearsals all day I presume. (Mick only—meeting with Jane Nicholson and
Rolling Stone
staff. Meeting with Jo to be arranged before rehearsals)

SAT. 5th July.

The Battle of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

3.45 Albert Hall Car Park

After Altamont, when I was living in London, I talked many times with Shirley Arnold, who was still running the fan club. She was one of the most decent people I had ever met, English in the best sense of the word. A few years later, when the Stones were living abroad and she never saw them anymore, she stopped working for them. She would spend a few years working for Rod Stewart and then one day she would call Jo Bergman in California, where Jo was working for Warner Bros. Records, and say, “I've left the business.” It was to her credit that she had never been in the business.

“Brian was in a terrible state for ages after Anita,” Shirley said one day in her gentle but frank blue-eyed manner, “but then Brian was always in a terrible state, wasn't he? He was always losin' out, every way. He so wanted to be—not that they're not normal, but he so wanted to have a normal happy life, every way, wiwout any hangups. But it never worked out. And he would never reach out for what he wanted. He was so easily led. I went round very early one morning in late ‘sixty-seven. He rang up, he'd had a bad night. Maybe he'd taken lots of things and hadn't slept for days. He said, Tm starvin'. Get ten pounds from the accountant, get lots of food and bring it round. I'm starvin. He wanted a big ham on the bone and that costs about five. So I get round to the flat, which was in Courtfield Road, and there was Brian and two other girls, couple of other fellows, all hangers-on who weren't really interested in Brian. The food arrived and everyone sort of dived in. There were eggs and bacon, and he'd asked for instant mashed potatoes. He said, ‘How do I cook sausages?' I said, ‘Would you like me to cook it for you, Brian?' He said, ‘Oh, yes, please.' I was cookin' his breakfast—and I was engaged then, I was engaged to be married—and he was sayin', ‘You're so normal, you're gettin' it all together.' It was so easy, I mean anyone can cook a breakfast, and Brian was sayin', ‘You're so clever,' and I could imagine Brian tryin' to cook eggs and bacon. I'll never forget, we had these big sausages,
and I put the fork in them—lots of people do, you know, put the fork in a sausage to stop it from explodin'—and he was sayin', ‘Aw, I never knew that.' He said, ‘I'm really gonna get it together with a nice chick, it's great to see you workin' in the kitchen.'