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| VoodooChileInWOnderl |
The town that Mick rocked
Chris Jagger, brother of Mick, visits Nashville to watch the Rolling Stones and then checks out the town's vibrant music scene
I arrive in Nashville with a hangover, courtesy of the 100 Club, one of the most venerable music venues in London. Everyone who's anyone has played there, from Glenn Miller to the Sex Pistols; it's a piece of our history, yet it's clinging on to its lease.
Highly strung: Nashville has one of the most
vibrant music scenes in the world
Things would be different if it were in Nashville. Here it would be a shrine. This is "Music City USA", where every second cab driver, washer-up or plumber is a muso. And tonight many of them are turning out to see the Rolling Stones.
Coming straight from the airport to the Gaylord Entertainment Centre, home to the Predators ice hockey team, I find the band running through their teatime sound check, a laid-back version of It's only rock'n'roll. Dials are being finely tuned, cables taped down, guitars polished.
Backstage I run into D J Fontana, Elvis's former drummer, a good old boy from Tennessee's other music town, Memphis. D J is hanging out in the pool room with Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, who, seeing me coming, croaks: "What the f*** are you doing here?" There's an orderly queue outside Mick's dressing room - "to see the doctor," as ADC Miranda Guinness puts it.
Out in the auditorium all our yesterdays are playing, and they make interesting listening given the context: Wang Dang Doodle by Howlin' Wolf, High and Lonesome by Jimmy Reed, Let it Rock by Chuck Berry. There are tracks, too, from Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Elmore James; all the seminal influences are dancing round the brightly lit hall.
I pick up a set list and have the band sign it for me. "What d'you want that for?" asks Charlie Watts. So I've got a note, in case I get carried away later, that the show kicked off with Street Fighting Man and ended with Jumping Jack Flash.
It's a show that cranks up nicely from a simple beginning. Just the music - no smoke, no lasers or fancy set. This arena seats 15,000-plus, quite big enough, so it's welcome when the band come down the catwalk to the middle of the floor, out to the "B" stage to get in among the people.
"They say this is the home of country music," says Mick, by way of introduction to Bitch. "Well, I say tonight it's the home of rock 'n' roll."
But there are country numbers too, more of them than usual, and they go down well. The Stones were always rather cod country, with songs such as Dead Flowers and Memory Motel; even Honky Tonk Women started life as a country number. Here they include two from Exile on Main Street: Sweet Virginia and Loving Cup. Both date from the time when Gram Parsons, that fine exponent of "cosmic country", was hanging out with them in the South of France, togged out by Nudie the Rodeo Tailor in a white suit embroidered with marijuana leaves, pills and naked women. Gram would sit and play for many hours with Keith and he showed me too how to lay back and relax into the song.
Mick and I chat after the show about Nashville and its music. "We played here some years back, but since then it has grown from a small and rather insular place into a modern city," he says. "Dylan recorded here in the 1970s [Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding], but there are people who consider Nashville ruined country music, with records that all sound like they were made in the same studio on the same day.
"Some considered it wrong that a music that had so much humanity should be processed like that. It's not French pop music - this is music of the people, of the soil, personal communication - but it was becoming more mass-market than anything; hurried, not thought about. That was the criticism made by Gram Parsons and more recently by Dwight Yoakam, so they wouldn't come down here to record."
For me the country influence on British music goes right back to the beginnings of skiffle and Lonnie Donegan copying the early hill-billy acts.
"We always played some skiffle," says Mick, "and I would listen to the country songs in the store, but I didn't like them enough to buy. Jim Reeves was hugely popular, number one for six weeks with He'll Have To Go. So were Jerry Lee Lewis and Hank Williams. I've just sung a duet with Jerry Lee; a song I wrote called Evening Gown, a straight country tune.
"The Everly Brothers were seen as pop artists in England but they are country artists in the USA. Ricky Nelson, Eddie Cochran, too, is pretty country, and so were Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.
"And I loved Johnny Cash; he was one of my formative influences. The first record I bought of his was I Walk The Line. How country is that?"
Keith Richards, too, is a great country fan. Earlier this year he appeared on stage in Nashville in a tribute to Willie Nelson. The two outlaws, performing Dead Flowers, were beamed to millions watching on television. Keith has also recorded with George Jones (and more recently he bought the movie rights to the definitive Gram Parsons biography, Hickory Wind).
But the influences don't flow only in one direction. Like all American towns, Nashville has a smattering of limeys, and among them is an old friend of mine, Paul Kennerly, who once recorded an album of made-up Civil War songs and sold it to the Yanks. Since then he's penned hits with the Judds. I stay a night in his house in a suburb of Nashville where the old money lives discreetly in mansions surrounded by well-kept lawns. Al Gore is up the road.
Afriend of Paul's, Laurie, gives me a lift into town next morning and clues me up on the scene. She kindly takes me to an outdoor clothing store where I buy a few items, including dungarees, that I find hard to track down in England. In the store, where you could kit yourself out for battle, a TV informs me that "60 per cent of Americans support a war in the Gulf", as if it's just a vote for a Pop Idol.
Laurie tells me what I've been missing while I was picking away in Paul's front room. "There was a great show at 3rd and Lindsley," she says gleefully. "The Players, as they call themselves, were hot, all top session musicians, and the place was packed. Brent Mason, the guitar god around town, announced, 'There's a young guy in the audience is gonna get up here,' and Vince Gill went on stage and sang. Wow! Everyone's road band were in there."
Down on Broadway the music starts around lunchtime, and with the doors ajar you can stroll into any of the honky-tonks on the strip, look around and buy a beer for $6 (�3.80); there's no entry fee.
The musicians are good, if a little predictable, and they will play your request or something by that artist if you shout it out. Everyone is real friendly - particularly if you drop a couple of bucks in the tips jar. No point being a shrinking violet here. Essex man would go over big after a few bevvies, provided he knew a thing or two about Waylon, Willie and George Jones.
Tootsies is the most famous bar, festooned with pictures like a shrine at Lourdes. The band are shoehorned on to a tiny stage, the drummer sitting in the window like a hooker in Amsterdam. Patsy Cline used to slip in the back door for a drink here between sets at the Grand Ole Opry.
The Opry was the traditional home of country, the place from which live broadcasts went out in the days when radio was king. There's now a new Grand Ole Opry, 15 miles outside town, part of a theme park including a colossal hotel and shopping complex. It encloses a "Mississippi Delta" a good few acres under, plus massive ballrooms and miles of corridors. But the original building remains in town, renamed the Ryman Auditorium.
Built as a place of worship, the auditorium boasts fine wooden pews and a large wide sweep giving good views of the stage. Every aspiring country singer played here in these intimate surroundings and it's worth a visit even in the daytime to wander around and have your picture taken.
I do just that, posing with the guitar on a roped-off portion of stage as roadies prepare for a concert later that night. I even break into a little of Back in the Saddle Again a la Gene Autry, and get a few claps from the circle upstairs. Country music fans are real friendly folk.
Two doors up from Tootsies, at Legends, I listen to a relaxed band with a guitar player who could jam with Herbie Hancock, but instead he's stuck with three-chord tunes so he makes the most of them. A couple, perhaps in their seventies, dressed in western gear, come in to the bar and soon they are waltzing around the small hardwood floor, showing how it should be done.
At Cafe 123 I catch a great bluegrass/roots trio called Bonepony. The fiddle player tells the audience: "When I got to Nashville they wanted me to cut my hair and wear a cowboy hat, but I said, 'Shit no, sir!' "
Nashville's Hall of Fame is also worth a visit. It's dedicated to musicians who too often were ripped off by agents and managers and drank themselves to an early grave but nonetheless live on in records and their old instruments displayed behind glass cases.
But that's not the kind of sight you'll find on the Jugg Sisters' "Nash Trash" tour. They're keener to show you the Davidson County Jail, where inmates allegedly have included Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Hank Williams Jr.
"You from England, right?" Sherri Lynn, one half of the Sisters, asks me. "We've been on that Ruby Wax show!"
Yeah, Ruby: how English can you get?
The Juggs, all leopard-print blouses, press-on nails and big hair, drive around town on a funky pink bus. I stow on board even though they're halfway round and almost become part of the double act that takes the rise out of "Music City USA".
"It's hot in here," announces Sheri Lynn, moving to the window. "I'm sweating like a whore in church!"
As we pull out of the parking lot, she pretends to spot the country star Tim McGraw, and waves at a bemused passer-by with a "Hi, Tim, how ya doin'?", her wild wig hanging from the window to the amusement of the party of Greeks in the bus.
Celebrity stalking is on the menu for these gals. Anything goes, apart from Elvis jokes. At the mention of the King's name they stand to attention and say a prayer. They're as hospitable as everyone else in Nashville. They even drop me off downtown in their ancient Merc after parking the bus at the Farmer's Market.
While I'm wandering around I find myself talking to Jesse Bellamy, son of one of the Brothers of Let Your Love Flow fame. Which is what I like most about Nashville - the connections you can make with people. As John Sebastian sang, "there's thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville/And they can pick more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee ant-hill."
Chris Jagger travelled to New York with United Vacations (0870 606 22 22, www.unitedvacations.co.uk; flights from Heathrow three times daily from �267 return including taxes) and on to Nashville with Continental Airlines (www.continental.com; up to five times daily from New York to Nashville from �430). Accommodation was arranged through Tennessee Tourism (01462 440784). For further information visit the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau website at www.nashvillecvb.com.
Report filed: 14/12/2002
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| Pants Make the Man |
Man...Chris Jagger knows more about country music than I'll ever know. Cool... |
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| parmeda |
You don't hear much about Chris all that often, but when you do...it's always pleasantly surprising. |
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| Pants Make the Man |
I hope he does more updates. Is he, like, a writer or something? That report was thorough.
sidenote: they love the Stones in Nashville. When they want to rock the jukebox, the Stones top the list. |
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| Maxlugar |
Chris Jagger is a demi-God. |
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| luridchief |
Saw Chris Jagger doing "Stand Up For the Foot" on Conan O'Brien a few years back and he ROCKED! It was great stuff . . . ! |
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| gypsy |
I can't stand the Chris Jagger that hosts that "Change of Heart" show. I liked the other host better. |
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| monkeyman |
SOME PICTURE OF CHRIS JAGGER????
ANYBODY SEEN TO CHRIS????
LUCAS FROM ARGENTINA.
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| luridchief |
Here you go:
http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c102123/stones/chrisj2.htm |
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| luridchief |
Even more:
http://www.uibk.ac.at/~stones/stones/chrisj.htm
I have ATCHA on CD (US release is titled "Rock the Zydecko") and a lot of it is great stuff--Mick even joins him for a tune!
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| Tom |
That's a great link luridchief!
Here's some Chris albums with him on the cover
Some more
See great shots @ this link http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Loft/6098/pictj.html |
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| Tom |
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| sirmoonie |
Man, that was a good read. I had no idea Mick had a brother. I have no idea whether any of the Stones have siblings.
Man, talk about sibling rivalry. Some of my brothers are much more successful than I will ever be, but Mick and Chris is ridiculous.
Hey bro, uh...got laid off at the asbestos factory again....can you buy me a house in Mustique to get me through the lean times. Thanks. Love ya, bro. I like that new song too. I could have written that if Mom had encouraged me like she did with you all the time.... |
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| Nasty Habits |
quote:
Maxlugar wrote:
Chris Jagger is a demi-God.
Is this true? If that is true, all of Jesus's brothers are demi-gods as well.
I don't think that's true.
You are on very shaky ground, theologically speaking.
You can say that Chris Jagger is related to God.
I will accept your statement then.
Nasty!
Wine and bourbon hurt the fingers that type!
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| Maxlugar |
Chris Jagger is pulling all the strings behind the scenes.
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| moy |
here's another
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
sirmoonie wrote:
Man, that was a good read. I had no idea Mick had a brother. I have no idea whether any of the Stones have siblings.
Yeah, didn't you see the Charlie Rose interview with Mick? Charlie asked, metaphorically, if Mick and Keith were 'brothers'. "No, Keith's an only child," said Mick quickly, continuing the thought by saying Keith tends to "adopt" brothers, like Mick and Woody, and get along with them like brothers do. "I HAVE a little brother, so I have no need to seek out another one." (These aren't direct quotes, but very close.)This was all apropos of Keith's shitfit over Mick's knighthood, which Mick explained thusly: 1) How else is Keith gonna get publicity at this point? and 2) Mick has one and Keith doesn't, so he's jealous. VERY brotherly thinking, actually.
Keith, as stated, is an only child. Woody has an older brother named Art Wood who also played music (first in the Artwoods, then in the Birds), before Woody actually - there's a reverse whammy on the brotherly competition thing. Brian had a sister, and I'm not sure about Charlie or lil' Mick. |
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| sasca |
Brian actually had 2 sisters. One died as a baby. Brian reportedly thought she had been given away and feared the same would happen to him. |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
Perhaps we should start a petition to investigate the death of Miss Baby Jones. It sounds very suspicious to me.
I wonder where Frank Thorogood was on that day? |
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| Keefness |
Only thing is...The Stones didn't do 'Bitch' that night & Legends doesn't have a wood floor, it's linolium. And the beers down on Broadway cost about half of what he said.
[Edited by Keefness] |
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| sasca |
Guess what I'm thinking. |
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| Monkey Woman |
And Bill was the first of six kids! I bet he didn't have any illusions either about brotherhood by the time he joined the Stones 
Apart from Brian's sister, his parents also had another child first, who died in infancy. It was suggested later that the shock and chagrin brought by this loss somehow poisoned the relationship between the next boy (Brian) and his parents. Sad but not exceptional in such a case. |
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| Monkey Woman |
Sorry, Sasca, didn't see your post re Brian's siblings. Case of great minds thinking alike |
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| Pants Make the Man |
quote:
sasca wrote:
Brian actually had 2 sisters. One died as a baby. Brian reportedly thought she had been given away and feared the same would happen to him.
That sounds like a Grimms Fairy Tale. |
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| Keefness |
Tap tap tap..is this thing on..? |
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| sasca |
quote:
Monkey Woman wrote:
Sorry, Sasca, didn't see your post re Brian's siblings. Case of great minds thinking alike
 |
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