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This should keep you going for a bit: 
The Sunday Times - Review
August 10, 2003
Cover story: The Rolling Stones: Their Satanic Majesties: Part one
Drugs, girls, arrests, rows and death: the Rolling Stones, after 40 years and many unofficial histories, are at last revealing their tumultuous story in their own words in a remarkable joint autobiography
MICK: I was always a singer. I was one of those kids who just liked to sing. Some children sing in choirs; others like to show off in front of the mirror. I was in the church choir and I also loved listening to singers on the radio or watching them on TV and in the movies.
I loved all those early rock�n�roll singers. I didn�t care who or what they were � and I didn�t make any value judgments about whether they were tacky or not. Eventually, though, I gravitated towards a number of singers who were really quite good, like Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.
I put together a band with some friends and on Saturday nights I would go out and do gigs, sometimes simply with pick-up bands who were playing in some hall or other, singing Jerry Lee Lewis tunes or country music. I also had a number of friends who had their own record collections, so we used to go round to their houses and listen to them. It was all a bit like trainspotting.
KEITH: I was fortunate that I came from quite a musical family. I thought everybody played the piano or sang because that�s what my family did. My grandfather, Theodore Augustus Dupree, my mother�s father, was a musician.
Gus liked to sing, he played guitar, saxophone, violin and piano, and when he got bored with his seven daughters he�d take the dog for a long walk and go singing on Primrose Hill. He taught me the love of music, the sheer love of it.
Gus had an upright piano, and on top of it there was a Spanish guitar, a very nice one. Whenever I went to visit him, I knew where it was and I just presumed it was part of the furniture. I only found out years and years later, in fact soon after Gus died, that he put it there deliberately.
My family said, �Oh, he only put that up there when he knew you were coming round�, and there had been a period of about five or six years before he had said to me, �Well, now you can reach it, you can take it down�. It�s uncanny, as if he had his eye on me as a guitar player before I knew it. He put it up there like some kind of unreachable icon.
As Richards now puts it, he and Jagger �met on the train at Dartford�, their home town in north Kent, in 1960. Richards was attracted by the rare American blues records under Jagger�s arm.
KEITH: Within a few days of seeing each other, I either went over to Mick�s place or he came over to mine. And almost inexplicably, from that one meeting between Mick and myself, with me wanting to know where he�d got his records from, and then as we listened to them together, we realised that we were really in touch � which we still are now, in this weird, bizarre, night-and-day method of ours.
When it comes to music, if we work on it together, there�s something that just happens. I don�t know how or why: I leave that to the mysteries of alchemy. We started listening to records and playing a bit, and without really saying, �Let�s start a band� or anything, we just began to have fun playing together and figuring out how it was all done.
A visit two years later, in April 1962, to a new club in Ealing, west London, run by the legendary blues guitarist Alexis Korner began the process that rapidly changed their lives. Mick borrowed his father�s car to get there.
MICK: Alexis Korner used to play in this club in Ealing, and I would go there on Saturday nights, for a laugh. It was full of all these trainspotters who needed somewhere to go, just a bunch of anoraks. The audience was mainly guys and the girls were very thin on the ground.
KEITH: Throughout his entire life Alexis had a passion for the blues and his band was like an informal school; the number of musicians that he turned round and encouraged is huge. He would ask anybody who could play, �Do you want to take over for 10 minutes while I have a drink?�, and you�d get up there quivering and ankle deep in sweat.
Ealing was basically full of aficionados. You didn�t go down there to get laid, and if you tried to, it was probably somebody else�s old lady, anyway. It was very much boy�s stuff, almost like a trainspotters� or stamp collectors� club . . . and the way it exploded so quickly was beyond anybody�s expectation. We didn�t really know it was happening, it just did.
At the club they met the guitarist Brian Jones and the drummer Charlie Watts � and an accomplished boogie-woogie pianist called Ian Stewart, who became for many years the invisible sixth Rolling Stone. �Stu� wanted a band to play with, and Keith credits him with creating the Stones. �The rest of us were just try-outs as far as Stu was concerned,� he says. Among the try-outs was the bass guitarist Bill Wyman.
CHARLIE: I�d never met Bill Wyman before; I just remember going to rehearsal for the first time and him being there with this ridiculously big amplifier � which really was the only reason he was in the band, according to Keith. Bill has tiny hands; he was a very un-bass-guitar-like person and his bass guitar was really small, too.
KEITH: We decided to put an ad in Jazz News. Brian was on the phone talking to them: �We�d like to place an ad. We�re available for work, and you can call us at . . .� The voice on the other end obviously said, �What are you called?� Panic. The Best Of Muddy Waters album was lying on the floor, and track one was Rollin� Stone Blues. So the band�s name was picked for us by Muddy Waters.
The crucial springboard to fame was provided by Giorgio Gomelsky, a young music promoter and blues enthusiast.
GIORGIO: One night I was holding forth about the need to inject new energy into the scene when I heard a soft-spoken, lisping but firm voice behind me saying, �Giorgio, you gotta come hear my band. Iths the betht blueth band in the land, weally!� It was Brian Jones.
The promoter invited the Stones to play at his new club, the Crawdaddy, in the Station hotel, Richmond, west London. On the opening night, February 24, 1963, it was snowing.
GIORGIO: By opening time an audience totalling three people had braved the weather. Brian said, �Giowgio, there�th three people in the audience and six of uth on stage. Should we bother to play?� �Brian,� I answered, �how many people you think could fit in here?� �A hundred perhaps?� �Okay,� I said. �Play as if there were 100 here, and they�ll come.�
At the end of the evening I spoke to our three punters and asked them if they had enjoyed it.
�Man, it was great. This is our music.�
I asked them if they knew two people each to bring along next week. If so, they would get in free. So, the following Sunday nine people showed up . . . The nine each brought two friends, so we went to 27, and the week after to over 70.
The place got so popular people had to stand in line from two in the afternoon to get into the place five hours later. It got so crowded that the boys who wanted to bring their girlfriends had to carry them into the room on their shoulders. The breakthrough had happened.
KEITH: The whole attitude in London changed over the winter of 1962-3 and during that following year, although you only became aware of that in retrospect. If you were there and part of it, everything just happened in slow motion. And things were also beginning to change in the rest of the country, although we had no idea about what was going on in Liverpool, for example.
They soon found out. They rapidly became so well known that the Beatles, who were already famous, came to the Crawdaddy.
KEITH: The first time I saw them they were very cool guys in black leather overcoats, which we were very jealous of. I think we and the Beatles were surprised by each other, because we didn�t know they were working away up in Liverpool and they didn�t know what we were doing down in London.
And they were quickly checked out by Andrew Oldham, a shrewd 19-year-old who had worked in PR for the Beatles manager Brian Epstein. Oldham took over the Stones.
KEITH: Andrew pulled together the innate talents within the band. He turned us into a gang, in a way, a sort of conspiracy. And he broadened our horizons. Our biggest aim was to be the best blues band in London. But Andrew said, �What are you talking about? Look, I�ve just come from working with these four berks from Liverpool. You can easily do this.� He had the experience � even though he was just as young as we were � but he was very precocious: a sharp f----- and a right little gangster.
MICK: Everything to do with the Beatles was sort of gold and glittery and Andrew seemed to know what he was doing.
KEITH: Andrew got a deal at Decca records � like lightning. Andrew also realised how you could stir it up and how easily you could manipulate Fleet Street. He would call a few papers and say, �Watch the Stones get thrown out of the Savoy�, and then he�d say to us, �We�ll just go dressed as usual and try and get lunch� � and of course with no ties you�d get chucked out of the Savoy and there�s the press with their story: �The Stones thrown out of the Savoy�. Just silly little things like that.
It was crunch time for their founder-pianist, Ian Stewart. He was not included in the official Stones line-up � but stayed on as their pianist/road manager.
KEITH: I think it was Brian who laid it to Stu, although it�s not really important. In the end it was Stu�s decision to stay with us � he said, �I�m here as long as I can still play piano, and we�ll hang together in the band and I�ll not be in the pictures.� I�d probably have said, �Well, f--- you�, but he said, �Okay, I�ll just drive you around�. That takes a big heart, but Stu had one of the largest hearts around.
I think Stu was bemused by the whole rock�n�roll circus. He enjoyed it without having to be torn apart, sign autographs and go to photo-shoots. He was in every respect the kind of Rolling Stone he wanted to be because he could be totally anonymous, but still be along on all the good shit.
MICK: It was plain that Ian didn�t want to be a pop singer.
Oldham rushed out the group�s first record, Come On, which was an instant hit. To their embarrassment he dressed them in houndstooth check jackets for television.
KEITH: We were hip blues players, and the next minute we�re on Thank Your Lucky Stars or Juke Box Jury � and you�ve done it because you want to get into the studio, you want to make a record no matter what it takes, even to the point of wearing houndstooth suits. I never saw guys lose jackets quicker in my life.
We might have expected to make a small dent in the charts and then maybe slowly work our way in as we learnt the game � and all of a sudden we were in the Top Ten and on Top of the Pops. We all looked at it and went, �It�s all going to be over in two years�, because nobody had ever lasted. The Beatles thought the same.
MICK: Everything happened quickly. But you had to be quick in those days because there was so much going on and you could get lost in the rush. There were so many bands around in those days. nearly all of them terrible and most of them sort of manufactured, and some were just bad and not even manufactured.
KEITH: We kind of got thrown in at the deep end on our first UK tour, with Little Richard, Bo Diddley and the Everly Brothers. We started off just ending the first half, doing two or three numbers, and by the time we got back to London the Everly Brothers couldn�t hold down the top spot, which to me was kind of embarrassing. It happened so swiftly.
And then there were the birds: there�s nothing like 3,000 chicks throwing themselves at you to turn a guy�s head, especially that randy lot I work with . . . We just had our tongues hanging out and would take any old slag down the coal hole for a quick one before we go on. Terrible stuff really, but fun times.
CHARLIE: I remember a turning point when we went to the Royal Albert Hall for a New Musical Express poll winners� concert. We turned up early and saw the Beatles� van. It was covered in lipstick and we all thought, �Blimey, that�s what our van should be like!� We had exactly the same van but no lipstick. But it only took a few months before it happened.
KEITH: One thing I can never thank Andrew Oldham enough for was that he turned Mick and me into songwriters. It would never have occurred to me to try unless he had forced it on us, brutally speaking. The first one we wrote was As Tears Go By. That was the song where Andrew locked us in the kitchen in my flat up on Mapesbury Road in Willesden. He said, �You�ve got to try.� He put a guitar in the kitchen and locked the door and we stayed there all night. Six weeks later it was in the Top Ten, sung by this ex-nun (Marianne Faithfull, Mick�s girlfriend, a former covent schoolgirl) with these enormous gazongas, bless her heart.
MICK: Keith likes to tell the story about the kitchen, God bless him. I think Andrew may have said something along the lines of �I should lock you in a room until you�ve written a song� and in that way mentally he did lock us in a room, but he didn�t literally lock us in.
KEITH: The amazing thing is that although Mick and I thought these songs were really puerile and kindergarten-time, every one that got put out made a decent showing in the charts. That gave us extraordinary confidence to carry on.
CHARLIE: In those days Mick and Keith would be up late sitting on the bed in Keith�s room playing a guitar and I�d be sitting on the other bed banging a phone book or something. Brian wasn�t a writer, really, so suddenly the band was going off in a direction he couldn�t hold on to. Brian loved being what one would call a �star� . . . One of Brian�s agonies and downfalls was that he wanted to be the leader and unfortunately he wasn�t talented in that way.
continued /
Within two years, the Stones had become a worldwide phenomenon, jetting from gig to gig in the United States in their own plane and topping the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
KEITH: We were on a roller-coaster. I remember after Satisfaction (1965), which was a time of great triumph, a worldwide hit, Mick and I were sitting back in some motel room, in San Diego, if I remember rightly. We gave this big sigh of relief and it was exactly at that moment that there was a knock at the door and the phone started ringing and people wanted the next hit. It was a hard training ground.
As it went on we�d call up John, Paul or George about the single releases. Everybody was talking about the Beatles versus the Stones and all that crap, and yet between us, it would be, �You come out first and we�ll wait two weeks�. We would try never to clash; there was plenty of room for both of us.
There was a time when Paperback Writer came out and one of ours � Paint It Black, or something like that � came out before or after; we had it stitched up with them. There would be surreptitious phone calls. It was, �Okay, ours is ready, yours ain�t� ... �All right, you go first�.
Their huge success brought a problem: Brian did not fit in.
KEITH: Brian was a man of excess. He got into excess really quickly. The fame affected all of us � and it still does, no doubt � but it seemed that there was an extreme personality change which happened really quickly with Brian. It was as if he�d been given this substance, and the more he got of it the more he wanted.
He was always very intense, anyway, about anything that he wanted to do, but there seemed to be something additional within a few months or a year of starting out. This has probably got something to do with the fact that Mick and I were writing the songs. At the beginning he had considered himself the senior member. I think he was a very jealous guy, which affected everything in his life, to the point of self-destruction.
Without knowing it, he deliberately made himself unpleasant to be around. You�re on the road 350 days of the year and suddenly you�ve got this guy who is the one cog in the machine who doesn�t seem to be considering how the machine can help him; he�s no longer a part of it. I have always thought that fame was something to live with and we were famous because this thing we�ve got together works, but I think that for some weird reason Brian saw it as a stepping stone to something else.
If you�ve got to travel with somebody in a car for eight hours, do three gigs in the same night and then move on, you have to be a smooth team and support each other. But Brian either wouldn�t turn up, or if he did he�d just make a lot of very snide remarks, and he also developed some very annoying personal habits like his obsession with his hair.
When you�re alone with the guy so much you start to mimic him. Then Brian would get pissed off that we were taking the piss out of him and the whole thing became compounded.
After Satisfaction Brian�s unhappiness became much more noticeable and then he started being really excessive, first of all with booze and then the drugs, which he knew nothing about. Brian wanted to be different to the rest of us, but he didn�t know who he wanted to be. So he�d be hip-hopping around with anybody who would flatter him, which became intensely irritating to Mick and me.
Eventually your only defence when it became intolerable was to take the piss out of him in front of everybody else. It was really unforgivable, but that was the pressure we were under � and I think we all feel a bit ashamed of it. But Brian was just sitting in the back of the car drooling. And then he started to get sick and we were all trying to ask him, �Hey man, what�s this all about?� Obviously he wasn�t able to articulate it. It was too deep inside him.
The other Stones were themselves close to physical collapse.
KEITH: Suddenly in late 66 we were so exhausted that we couldn�t go on the road. We were wiped. It was a pressure cooker. There was no time off in those days. For three or four years we maybe had 10 days or two weeks off in the whole year.
MICK: Look at the schedule: it goes tour, tour, tour, tour, studio, studio, tour, tour, tour, studio, studio. The work was absolutely non-stop.
Relaxing at Keith�s country home, Redlands in Sussex, they were raided by the police on February 12, 1967. Mick and Keith were charged with drug offences.
KEITH: When we got busted at Redlands it suddenly made us realise this was a whole different ball game and that was when the fun stopped. Up until then it had been as though London existed in a beautiful space where you could do anything you wanted. Then the hammer came down and it was back to reality. We grew up instantly.
There was a realisation that the powers that be actually looked upon us as important enough to make a big statement and to wield the hammer. But they�d also made us more important than we ever bloody well were in the first place.
CHARLIE: There were a lot of drugs being taken at that time, but it was a very fashionable thing to do. It was quite common for musicians to take LSD and then bring a bottle of Jack Daniels on stage.
KEITH: I had started to hang out with Brian again, and I made a very conscious attempt to re-cement my relationship when he wasn�t working and the pressure was off. I used to live across the road. I was enjoying Brian�s company while he was relaxed and we were still playing together in the house. Then, just after we got busted, a trip to Morocco sounded good, but it didn�t work out that way � and things got ugly again. I pulled the old Bentley out and Brian and Anita (Pallenberg, his girlfriend) and myself sat in the back playing sounds. Brian fell ill and we had to put him in a hospital, so it was Anita and me in there. Of course, amazing things can happen in the back of a car � and they did. Brian caught up with us in London and there was a tearful scene. That was the final nail in the coffin with me and Brian. He�d never forgive me for that and I don�t blame him, but, hell, shit happens.
A case could be made that Brian had an acid trip that he never quite came back from � I�m only surmising that � and after that everything was all a bit fragmented within him; the bits just kept moving further and further away from each other.
The furore over the Redlands arrests grew when Mick and Keith were held overnight in prison during their trials before being given a conditional discharge. In the wake of the case, Oldham parted company with the Stones and they self-produced a �psychedelic� album, one of their most infamous.
MICK: Their Satanic Majesties Request was a really fun moment, and there were some good songs on it. There�s a lot of rubbish (as well). Just too much time on our hands, too many drugs, no producer to tell us, �Enough already, thank you very much, now can we just get on with this song?� Anyone let loose in the studio will produce stuff like that. It�s like believing everything you do is great and not having any editing � and Andrew had gone by that point.
CHARLIE: Satanic Majesties was a very druggy period � though not for me. I was never into drugs much at that time, only later on.
KEITH: I can remember virtually nothing of those sessions. It�s a total blank . . . We were just loony, and after the Beatles had done Sgt Pepper, it was like, �Let�s get even more ridiculous�.
MICK: The reason Andrew Oldham left was because he thought that we weren�t concentrating and that we were being childish.
Brian was also arrested for possessing drugs and sentenced to prison, but this was rescinded.
MICK: Brian wasn�t turning up to (recording) sessions and he wasn�t very well. In fact we didn�t want him to turn up, I don�t think.
KEITH: Brian�s trouble wasn�t musical. There was something in him that meant that if things were going well he�d make sure it screwed up. I know the feeling: there�s a demon in me, but I only own up to having one of them; Brian probably had 45 more. With Brian it was all self-consuming pride. He would stand on his little hind legs about some piece of bullshit and turn it into a big deal � �You didn�t smile at me today� � and then he started to get so stoned he became something you just sat in the corner. He was a pain in the arse, quite honestly. We didn�t have time to accommodate a passenger. This band can�t carry any dead weight � no band can � and at the same time it was as if Brian was trying to screw the Stones up by not being there. He was so self-important, maybe because he was so short. I mean, why would a guy buy a Humber Super Snipe if he couldn�t see over the steering wheel?
MICK: Keith and I went to tell Brian that he was no longer in the band. I think he wanted it. He wasn�t there in his mind. Nowadays, you could say, �Brian, you have to go to this centre in Arizona for a couple of months to clean up�, but in those days that wasn�t as obvious an option. And naturally he didn�t want to do it himself. He didn�t seem to be very interested in staying in the band. He�d made his contribution to it. People are different. Not everyone wants to be in a rock band for 40 years. You�ve got to want to do it. Some people are not psychologically suited to this way of life, and Brian was one of them. He really wasn�t cut out to do this.
KEITH: We made a band effort. Mick, Charlie and I drove down there together to see him at his house. It was like going to a funeral, really. We were all very quiet. We went through these suburban lanes and then out into the country. We turned up at Brian�s house and said, �Wow, nice joint.� It was AA Milne�s place. I looked around and thought, �I can understand how he could write Winnie the Pooh around here.�
Then we got to talk to Brian. In a way it was weird, because he knew what was coming. We were saying to him, �How do you feel about this? We�re going to go back out on the road and you�re in no condition to join us, man. We�re going on, are you going to come on board again or not?� We offered him the chance to stay, but it was an offer that we knew was going to be refused. He wasn�t going to come back; it was already a foregone conclusion. It was just a matter of how he took it.
It was kind of sad because Brian kept talking about the plans that he�d got: �Yeah, thanks for coming, but I�m playing with so and so, and I�ve got all of these projects and I�m writing this.� He was going on the road with Jimi Hendrix; he had millions of schemes.
That was in early June 1969. On July 3, Brian was found dead in the swimming pool at his house. He was 27.
CHARLIE: I think his not being in the band hurried his death along, but in any case he wasn�t a very strong person � in fact he was very frail . . . Brian didn�t live long enough to do a lot of things he was talking about or thought he could do. Whether he could have done them I don�t know, but he never had the chance. He was incredibly young when he died, when I look back on it. I look at pictures of my wife and myself at Brian�s funeral and I just think, �Bloody hell�. We were so young.
KEITH: God, that guy�s timing was always dodgy. And still the mystery of his death hasn�t really been solved � but that's another story. I don�t know what happened, but there was some nasty business going on. Did he have an asthma attack in the pool, or was he shoved under? It wouldn�t surprise me: Brian could really piss people off. What really killed Brian, though, was not getting the mixture right between the music and the fame.
� Promopub BV, 2003
NEXT WEEK: ROCKING ON
�Keith smiled at the disc jockey, grabbed him by the neck, flashed his bowie knife, put it right to the DJ�s throat and gave him his final warning� � a life of excess, yet they survived as the world�s top band. How?
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The lips had it, and suddenly the Beatles looked square
David Bailey recalls his King�s Road days, when Jagger still had to learn to be a bad boy
It was Jean Shrimpton who introduced me to Mick Jagger, because Jean�s sister Chrissie was going out with Mick, who was still at the London School of Economics. Chrissie told us about Mick and said: �He�s great. He�s going to be bigger than the Beatles.�
One day Mick turned up with Chrissie. He was already striking. I tend to react to people visually, and what struck me were his lips; I used to make Mick extremely angry by joking that his mother used to stick him to store windows while she went shopping.
I immediately liked the Stones when I first heard them, because I had always liked the blues. In contrast, I thought of the Beatles as a boy band, a very manufactured group when they started out. The Beatles haircut was old-fashioned � it only seemed �modern� to people who didn�t realise it had been around for a long time � and I didn�t find lyrics like �I want to hold your hand� that interesting.
Shortly after we met, Mick asked me to take him to a �posh� restaurant. I think he liked my lifestyle, especially all the girls, although I was then much more of a bad boy than he was. In fact, Mick lived with me for a little while when he had nowhere to stay in London; this was the 1960s, of course, and my place was pretty much an open house.
I decided we should go to the Casserole down the King�s Road. I remember Mick paid, which was unusual because back then he never paid for anything. I told him to leave a tip and he said: �Leave a tip? What the f--- for?� I said it was normal practice and suggested he leave a 10-shilling note. Mick put the note on the plate, but as we were putting our coats on, I noticed his hand slip out and put the 10 shillings back in his pocket.
I loved Andrew Oldham. I wouldn�t have wanted to cross him � he was a worrying little f-----. The meeting between Andrew and the band was very significant. Andrew had a broader range of references, he read more widely and he knew what was going on a little more than the Stones.
On a handful of occasions I went on tour with Mick, when the band were playing college gigs. It was not a lifestyle I would have wanted to embrace. And I was never impressed with their groupies � I had the edge then; photographers were still more desirable than rock�n�roll musicians. But there were riots; lots of overexcited little girls running round with autograph books. I had a new E-type Jag at one point and Mick came along for the ride. He got annoyed because these fans were jumping all over the car writing messages in lipstick on it � �I love you, Mick�.
Once we went out in Jean Shrimpton�s Mini, while Brian (Jones) was in his Humber, the sort of car a vicar would drive. After the gig it was always �Let�s go before Brian comes�. There was a lot of animosity, particularly between Brian and Mick. Brian wanted to keep the Stones more purist � whatever that means � while Mick saw an opportunity to go more commercial. I did actually like Brian, but he was very spoilt, and his accent was posher than the others.
I was also doing some work with the Beatles at the time. The Beatles were great, but they seemed �square� � a good word that has sadly fallen out of use. Jean had bought the Beatles� first release and I thought it was naff; they didn�t really become interesting until the time of Abbey Road.
But there was more to it than the Stones being cooler than the Beatles. They were more charming. Paul was very earnest and protective of his image. I didn�t particularly like John, although he had very definite opinions and knew where he was going � but even he ended up sitting around in his white robes with Yoko, being worthy. And George had his Hari Krishna. The Beatles took themselves so seriously. The Stones could always laugh at themselves.
Quote, unquote
TWO FACES OF FAME
We wanted to move on from being a pop group. We wanted to be more grown up. On the other hand, we wanted to take loads of drugs and have lots of girlfriends � Mick Jagger
I wasn�t interested in being a pop idol sitting there with girls screaming. It�s not the world I come from. It�s not what I wanted to be and I still think it�s silly � Charlie Watts
A ROCK MARRIAGE
Keith and I have a very complicated relationship. I don�t pretend to understand it. I find it quite tricky. He is a very inward person and he was always a very quiet and meditative type of person, so to bring out what he really wants to say is, I think, quite a problem for him sometimes. I�m a very outgoing person and very gregarious. Keith isn�t, really, although he�s learnt to be somewhat more gregarious than he used to be � Mick Jagger
Mick is my wife! But we can�t get divorced ... Keith Richard
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Acid all round, and a surreal police bust
Christopher Gibbs, one of the Stones� inner circle, saw their anarchic lifestyle in close-up
I really got to know Mick when he wanted a house in the country. I am one of those people who reads Country Life every week so I seemed the logical person to help him find somewhere. By chance there was a house near Newbury, appealingly called Stargroves. It was in a wonderful position, with wild country beyond it, but quite easy to get to from London.
Just before the house was bought, Mick, Marianne Faithfull, other friends and I drove down to Stargroves, stopping at various hostelries along the way for a little sharpening up � a joint here, a line there, a drink there, nothing to eat � and arrived at the house to meet the then owner, a buttoned-up chap called Sir Henry Carden, who obviously thought we were ragamuffins, but who was pleased to find someone who wanted to buy this dilapidated Victorian house.
We used to head off in a gaggle on trips around Britain and Ireland, particularly with Mick and Brian; sometimes Keith. Keith was very close to Mick, graceful and rather shy. He always struck me as being extremely intuitive about what was going on in people�s heads, with a tremendously sensitive sympathy that allowed him to pick up on what they might be feeling.
I never regarded Charlie � the most charming and gentlemanly � as a gang person. He was quite self-contained, sophisticated and elegant.
Brian, though, was the epitome of chaos. It was like a great spider�s web all around him, ensnaring anyone who got near. He was incredibly self-obsessed, demanding and impossible, but in those days he just about got away with it by being charming. He charmed people through music; he was not seductive in the same way as Mick.
Mick has a wonderfully searching intellect. He has always been open to what is going on around him, but he is also quick to get to the nub, the juice of the thing � and then he likes a good dollop of what turns him on. He has an extraordinary discipline for someone who, to a large degree, is at the mercy of his senses.
I went to Tangiers with Brian and Anita Pallenberg; we stayed in the Minzah hotel. They had a fight and Brian broke his arm; when he went to hit Anita he struck an iron window frame instead, snapping his arm.
And then there was the bust at Keith�s house. A group of us had stayed there the night before and then had a day out on the beach in the Witterings. We were all full of acid and nonsense.
That night the police came. It was a bust on a big scale. They had usually happened in London flats with a couple of coppers from the Chelsea squad. At Redlands, this horde of rustic West Sussex policemen descended on us. The event was quite surreal, heightened by efforts of various friends of friends of friends to buy off the police and papers. This was never going to work.
The Stones and their activities � like the film Performance, which I was involved in � were a kind of crucible into which energies were poured and enflamed. Some were utterly consumed and some came through.
I come from hard-working, good-citizen stock and although I kicked against that, I had inherited survival genes. So, although I took most of the drugs in the book and stayed up all night, I would go to work at nine in the morning and carry on with my business and my life.
Mick had that discipline in spades, as well as an ability to edit out the unnecessary. Sometimes that required a ruthless element that might mean friends and attachments were expendable. However, everybody needs anchors, and the impression I have is that Mick also needs the framework; he has always been close to his family and his girlfriend or wife of the time, enjoying a real closeness, even if he was going off in three different directions at the same time.
Keith learnt to develop that editing instinct, Charlie didn�t need it, but Brian was incapable of it, which was his downfall.
[Edited by Hannalee] |
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| egon |
bought the paper myself today.
nice read, although it's the same old story.
part 2 next sunday! |
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| Gazza |
whats just briefly mentioned here is that these exclusive extracts come from the long awaited new Rolling Stones AUTOBIOGRAPHY "ACCORDING TO THE ROLLING STONES" which is released TOMORROW (I'm amazed there doesn't seem to have been any advance notice of this!)
The book is priced �30 but you can order copies for �24 plus �1.95 delivery from the Sunday Times bookshop by phone on 0870 1658585.
Note : "The Sunday Times" is not affilated in any way to Ticketmaster.co.uk, so hopefully you wont have to wait eight months on the book arriving before having to return it because they forgot to print the text inside...
I ordered my copy today. 10-14 days delivery time,they said.
[Edited by Gazza] |
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| Hannalee |
I ordered it from Amazon about a month ago, but their estimated delivery date looks very strange. Still, they're usually pretty good, so I shan't panic just yet. Bet it won't go through the letterbox....
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| Jen D |
Amazon UK says the hardback comes out tomorrow (paperback apparently not 'til October next year)
I iddn't even realise it was coming out yet til yesterday, the first I knew it had actually happened was catching a glimpse of one sealed copy in my local WHSmith, not even in a new books or display section of the shop but in with rolling with the stone & beatles anthology etc.
but no other promotion or reviews/previews of it anywhere except this one.
I've seen it up on Amazon before (& saw articles from when the book was announced) - but they've had Nick Mason's AFAIK never finished/published Pink Floyd book available for ages so...
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| Hannalee |
Here's this week's selection:
The Sunday Times - Review
August 17, 2003
The Rolling Stones: Week 2: Dead men playing
While other top groups like the Beatles fell by the wayside decades ago, the Rolling Stones are still rocking after 40 years. Yet there was a long period when drugs and the intense love-hate relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards nearly destroyed them. How did they survive? Here
they tell their story in their own words
CHARLIE WATTS: What you have to remember is that when Keith was in his drug period, the time was his. What that meant was that you could get somewhere at a particular time, but Keith wouldn�t be there; you could make a record but he wouldn�t be in it. At gigs you used to wait for him for two hours to go on. Nowadays, if you�re five minutes late everyone goes mad, but then it was much milder. Everyone would sit from 9 o�clock until 11 or 12 and they would happily wait, but that was what a lot of musicians did then. Keith wasn�t the only one doing it � it�s just a lot of them haven�t survived.
The solution was to install a recording studio at Keith�s Villa Nellcote in the south of France where the group was living in tax exile after more than a decade of world fame.
CHARLIE: By working at Keith�s house, Keith not being there for a recording was a problem we could generally avoid. A lot of the recording was done in the way Keith likes to work, which is playing it 20 times, letting it marinate over another 20 goes, very much like a jazz thing. They call it �working on Keith time�. Keith is like a jazz player in lots of ways. He knows what he likes, but he�s very loose and would never tell you what to do, whereas Mick loves to control it all, which is fine in another way.
MICK JAGGER: I don�t like going into a studio without knowing what�s going on. I�m a singer. It�s all right for bands; they can stand there and jam their butts off, but a lot of it is just a waste of time. It�s very boring.
RONNIE WOOD: There were times when we used to bluff it, get stoned out of our brains and just go for it � �Eyes down and meet you at the end!�
Keith�s drug-taking came to a head in January 1977 when he was found guilty of possessing cocaine after crashing his Bentley on the M1. A few weeks later he hit more trouble in Toronto. It began in a club called El Mocambo.
CHARLIE: The gig at the Mocambo itself doesn�t stand out in my mind, but I do remember having dinner with Mick and Mia Farrow, and Ronnie being with Margaret Trudeau (the prime minister�s wife) and nearly falling down the lift shaft. And I remember Mick running to me saying, �Get out, get out, we�re going to get busted�. I always felt awful because we actually did disappear and leave Keith there. It was terrible really. I have always wondered why did we leave him? It was total paranoia at being roped into a bust that had nothing to do with me.
But the real trouble came when the police raided Keith�s hotel room.
KEITH: I had been at rehearsal, got back to the hotel and passed out. My next memory is being woken up and dragged by these two very big people who were slapping me awake. You can�t be arrested if you�re not awake, so they were splashing water. I woke up thinking, �I�ll wake up in a minute.� I�d rather have had the nightmare. Canada was the crunch. The shit hit the fan big time. I was looking at the possibility of seven years in jail.
At least I faced it. It�s the only thing I�m proud about in all of that period � that I faced up to it and said, �Okay, that�s it, and it�s all over�. I said to myself, �Okay, the experiment will now come to an end. This is a laboratory and we�re closing the laboratory down.� I was f------ my band up, I was f------ my family up, I was f------ myself up � f------ everything up.
I had done it to hide, to hide from fame and being this other person, because all I wanted to do was play music and bring my family up. That was the only way that I could shield myself. With a hit of smack I could walk through anything and not give a damn and not have to feel embarrassed or put upon. It may be a cheap way out of the problem, but it�s still damn expensive.
So I brought it to an end. It�s no big deal: it�s not like having your kneecaps shot � though it�s never easy to clean up. People that don�t know about it write about �the horrors of cold turkey�, but when you�ve done it 10 or 12 times it�s not so horrific.
The court case took nearly two years and resulted in an unusual sentence.
KEITH: There was a blind girl, bless her, from Montreal, my blind angel. I had known this girl for a couple of years. She came to as many gigs as she could; she�d say she was determined to make it to the next show and of course we were worried about her. I�d speak to the truckers and ask them to drop her off at the next show and to make sure she got there safely. And to me, that was it. She came forward and went to the judge�s house, after office hours and at night, knocked on his door and told him this story. Two days later I had the next hearing and it was, �Okay, you�re sentenced to perform a concert for the blind�, which we gladly did.
PRINCE RUPERT LOEWENSTEIN, the Stones� business manager: Keith was obliged to perform a benefit concert in aid of the Canadian Institute for the Blind.
Keith now became a workaholic in the recording studio.
RONNIE WOODS: Keith was very adamant about working above and beyond the call of duty. At about 4 o�clock in the morning, just when everybody was getting really tired, after we�d really done well and cut a couple of basic tracks, Keith would say, �Right, now we�re going to do this�, and we�d all go �Ahhh . . .�
Keith�s catchphrase of the time was, �Nobody sleeps while I�m awake�. There was one night when I�d actually managed to get out of the studio and climb into bed thinking, �Oh my God, I�m so tired�. It didn�t last. Keith climbed over the fence outside, jumped into my garden, broke into the house. In my sleep I could hear the door bursting open, boom, boom, crash, bang, and in they came, right up to my bedroom � �Nobody sleeps while I�m awake� � and I was dragged back into the studio.
But Keith found that all was not well in his relationship with Mick.
KEITH: When I returned to the fold after �closing down the laboratory�, I came back into the studio with Mick, around the time of Emotional Rescue (1980 album), to say, �Thanks, man, for shouldering the burden� � that�s why I wrote The Beast Of Burden for him, I realise in retrospect � and the weird thing was that he didn�t want to share the burden any more. Mick had grown used to running the show � and I slowly became aware that he resented any interference.
RONNIE: During this period there would be just the one token Keith song on every album. I think it was just something that Mick and Keith had going. It was something unwritten that was going on between the two of them, which I don�t really understand. It is hard to nail what lay beneath it. Mick was not a very good drinker and drugger, and when he decided to quit or cut down his intake, generally change his personality and try and be a more responsible person, Keith didn�t really like the change in him. Between the two things, the overuse and the cleaning up, there was some residual resentment, for some reason.
There was terrible tension around and I had to assume my diplomatic role a lot. Keith had a bee in his bonnet about anything Mick did � he�d say: �Aah, it�s crap�. Then Mick would come in to me, asking, �What�s wrong with Keith? What have I done?�, followed by Keith, who would be saying, �What are you talking to him for?� and I�d find myself in trouble with Keith. I suppose if Charlie had pitched in as well we�d have had some almighty group argument and exploded into oblivion.
In the early 1980s, Charlie began a drugs binge.
CHARLIE: During this period I was personally in a hell of a mess and as a result I wasn�t really aware of the problems at the time between Mick and Keith and the danger these posed to the band�s existence. I was in pretty bad shape, taking drugs and drinking a lot. I don�t know what made me do it that late in life � well, to Keith, it wasn�t late enough! � although in retrospect I think I must have been going through some kind of midlife crisis.
I had never done any serious drugs when I was younger, but at this point in my life I went, �Sod it, I�ll do it now� � and I was totally reckless. This phase lasted for a couple of years, but it took a long time for me, and my family, to get over it.
KEITH: Charlie is very strong physically, and you don�t want to be on the end of a drummer�s right hand. He put Mick across the table in Amsterdam once during that period. Mick and I had been out for a drink and I�d lent Mick my wedding jacket. Mick got pissed and when Mick gets pissed he gets sloppy. We went back to the hotel and Mick wanted to talk to Charlie: he said something on the phone like, �Where�s my drummer?�
CHARLIE: He annoyed me, so I went storming upstairs and told him not to say things like that.
KEITH: There�s a knock at the door and there�s Charlie Watts, dressed in a Savile Row suit, tie, hair done, shaved, cologne. He walks across to Mick, grabs him and says, �Never call me your drummer again� � bang. On this table is a great silver platter of smoked salmon. Mick was on his back on the silver platter, which started to shoot down the table towards the open window. I�m sitting there. I�m watching Mick and I�m going to let him go, but then I thought, �That�s my f------ wedding jacket�, so I grabbed him!
CHARLIE: The bottom line is, don�t annoy me. It�s not something I�m proud of doing and if I hadn�t been drinking I�d never have done it.
Charlie�s wife Shirley fought hard against his drink and drug use.
RONNIE: Charlie was going through a terrible time with Shirley. They were having lots of heavy arguments and so Charlie was often late, or Shirley would come into the studio and forcibly drag him out.
And things were little better between Mick and Keith.
KEITH: I call this period world war III � it was a hiatus in the story of the Rolling Stones. I had got extremely pissed with Mick for taking his solo record deal with Columbia Records and stitching it onto a Stones deal without telling anybody, which at the time I thought was really slimy. I said, �That is not on�, and that is when I pulled out. �Excuse me, old chap. That doesn�t go down this gullet like that. Go ahead and make your solo album. You ain�t going to get one out of me.� It then got carried on in the press: �He said this, and he said that.� I love Mick dearly. He�s my mate and I�ll protect him to the end. But sometimes you think, �Where�s the comeback? Where�s the reciprocation?� Maybe I f----- it in those 10 years when I was on the dope and there is no reciprocation.
RONNIE: It got near, so near, to falling apart. And that�s when I had to do my stuff to keep Mick and Keith talking. Mick called me up and he said, �Woody, Keith just doesn�t want to talk to me; he hates me.� I said, �I�ve just got off the phone with Keith. He doesn�t hate you, there�s just been a misunderstanding.� Mick went, �Oh yeah, Woody�, so I said, �You stay where you are for 15 minutes and I guarantee I�ll have Keith ring you�. So I rang Keith and told him, �Mick has got this stupid idea that you hate him� to which he said, �Well, so what?� and I went, �Yeah, okay, talk to him�. Keith was saying, �Oh, come on, it�s only what the papers are doing, they�re magnifying this and putting it all out of proportion�. I said, �Well, ring him up and tell him�, so Keith said, �All right, where�s his number?� I told him, �Make sure you ring him right now�, and he said, �Okay, I will�, and he did. Mick rang me back and said, �It worked, Woody� � and I thought, �Da-dah, I�ve done my good deed for the decade�. It was a good feeling because I knew that underneath anything else that might have happened they had that old love � and that old love/hate � for each other from back in the sandpit.
CHARLIE: The funny thing about Mick is that he is very easy, and within that very complex. He longs to have big status records, number ones, and when he gets them he�s the first to put them down and deride them. Or if we�re doing a video, it�s never right, he can never just leave it alone, he has to go in and spend another �4,000.
KEITH: When we brought it back together, we knew we were going to be a little rusty. You can�t just shove something back together after five years and expect it to fit perfectly, but luckily it was, as it always has been, intriguing enough and promising enough for us to say, �Yeah, we want to keep on doing this, and I don�t mind the money and the birds, because there�s that side to rock�n�roll as well!�
MICK: Given the state of the band at the time, it was probably very good that we hadn�t done any touring for a while. We wouldn�t have been able to do anything: we were struggling internally and externally. But then we came up with a big tour in 1989, which turned out to be very successful and great fun to design and put a team together for.
CHARLIE: Mick and Keith are like brothers, always arguing but also always getting on. It�s a lovely conflict, a loving conflict.
PRINCE RUPERT: Luckily, individuals differ one from the other and the different characters and make-up of each person in the band produce tensions which later can resolve into harmony: I have often thought my own role in the organisation has been a combination of bank manager, psychiatrist and nanny.
MICK: Keith can be really authoritative and helpful, and have lots of ideas, and sometimes he can be completely narrow-minded and bigoted. But I know him well enough that I know he�s not going to be like that all the time. People are very complex and they don�t play the same roles the whole time. So I might be quite flaky one week and somebody else will have to take over a job. Those roles shift a lot.
KEITH: Mick�s and my friendship exists on the basis of a certain amount of space. I have a feeling that I�m not supposed to have any friend except him. He doesn�t have many close male friends apart from me, and he keeps me at a distance. There is something of a siege mentality, so that whenever anyone comes up to Mick, he�s thinking, �What do they want out of me?� But the only way to find whether a guy�s worth anything is to take a risk. Sometimes friends let you down, sometimes they don�t. But you take the chance, otherwise you get nothing at all. Mick is very difficult to reach. Mick will be walking down the plane looking straight ahead and you�ll say, �Hey Mick remember me?� � but that�s Mick, and you accept it.
CHARLIE: What�s really surprising is that we have stayed together, with all the egos and the lack of it and whatever it is that makes people what they are. And the fact that people still like you is staggering.
KEITH: The fact is that I am 60 years old and 20-year-old chicks are still throwing panties at me! It�s ludicrous, really. What do I tell the old lady about these? �I need them to decorate my room, they�re very nice.�
According to the Rolling Stones, the Autobiography by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood, is published by Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated at �30. To order your copy at �24 + �1.95 p&p call The Sunday Times Books Direct on 0870 165 8585 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksdirect
The Rolling Stones: The two faces of Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger is probably one of the most famous people in the world. He is also incredibly sane and well-adjusted to dealing with celebrity. He gets out and experiences life � not just exclusive, hip clubs. I�m talking about shopping malls and cineplexes.
In order to move about like that, he has learnt to contain and conceal his huge, charismatic persona. So when Mick the shopper arrives at the studio it takes a little while for him to turn into Mick Jagger, the character.
After a couple of takes he�ll take his white shirt off, strip down to his tanktop: his whole musculature changes and his lips get bigger: suddenly he looks 40 years younger.
It is so intense that I feel like I�m gawping at him the way a tourist would and I get so embarrassed that I can�t even look. He�ll record four or five passes where he is so deeply inside the character we have a wealth of material to choose from � Don Was, record producer
For some reason the DJ kept playing a lot of bad disco tracks. People kept coming up to him requesting some rock and R&B, which he would do for only several songs before going back to disco.
I was at a table with Keith and I could tell he was really starting to get pissed off. Finally Keith took his drink, walked slowly up to the DJ booth, smiled at the disc jockey, grabbed him by the neck, flashed his bowie knife, put it right to the DJ�s throat and gave him his final warning. Needless to say, nobody heard any disco for the rest of the night � Peter Wolf, singer, touring with the Stones in 1982, who saw Keith in action at a party
I miss Bill as a sparring partner because he was always on stage looking at girls� tits, always on the look out for gazongas. He'd say, "Hey, Woody, see that huge pair?" � Ronnie Wood on Bill Wyman
I�ve seen murders. I�ve seen dogs come on stage trying to savage people. I've turned round and found a pool of blood where the piano player should be! I've been struck by sharpened pennies. But you can't really do anything about that. It's just a part of the gig � Keith Richards
The Rolling Stones: That backstage buzz
Sheryl Crow, a one-time Stones backing singer witnessed the backstage extravagance of their tours:
Expense is not spared to provide comfort and inspiration for the band.
I love the memory of first entering the inner sanctums of Ronnie and Keith, with the snooker table, red wine, Muddy Waters blasting on the stereo, and random vintage guitars for getting inspired.
I felt as though I was being let into the backroom of a juke joint and that it was invitation only.
A step across the hall would lead one into Mick�s world, a more gentle atmosphere of tea and wardrobe and piano for warming up.
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| egon |
very nice! |
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| Monkey Woman |
Very interesting! I ordered my copy of the book right away. |
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