True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (26 page)

Hours before the show, kids were crowding outside. Stu was on-stage checking the equipment. Bill Graham, the show's promoter, born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin, walked to France to escape the Nazis, came to the United States, became involved with theater in California, now had two rock concert halls, one on each coast, and was at the moment walking around the Oakland Coliseum, killing time. He had wanted to promote the whole Stones tour, and in New York discussing the matter with Schneider had cited a long list of the attractions he had presented, to which Schneider had said, “Yes, Bill, but what did you ever do big?” We visited for a while, then left Graham to go back to the Inn. The setting sun was gold over the distant grey-green hills.

In the motel's restaurant, done in red and black, Naugahyde and flocked velvet, we found David Horowitz with a fat young man who said his name was Jon Jaymes. He was at the Forum last night. I didn't know whom he worked for, but he had a kind of authority. He was sitting at the red linen, speaking into a white telephone, preparing the Oakland airport for the arrival of the Rolling Stones. “I've notified the police,” he said. “People must stay in their seats and let the Stones off”—his voice rising—“or there'll be
chaos
at the
airport
—

“Now what I want to do is notify the plane as soon as it's on the ground to let one of our people on to expedite getting the Stones off with our security people.”

Jaymes' younger partner, Gary Stark (they both spent last night on the living room couches at Oriole, why I don't know), joined us as Jon hung up the phone. “How many kids are there at the airport?” Stark asked, excited.

“Seven hundred kids flew in from Harlem,” Jaymes said, smiling. “Whaddya want from me?”

As we started to leave for the airport, I said to Jaymes, “Wow, you're a
real
con man, that's fantastic.”

“One word like that and I cancel the whole deal,” he said, “cancel all the cars, all the transportation. . . .” He was working for Chrysler, he'd been saying, and as we walked out I told him I'd intended the phrase con man as a compliment. He didn't quite know how to take that, but he was pleased to hear that I wasn't his enemy.

I rode to the airport with Jaymes, who drove insanely as he explained that he was Chairman of the President's Committee for Lowering the Voting Age to Eighteen, before that chairman of two other presidential committees, “a former FBI narcotics agent, and I have an obligation—to a company called Chrysler—to see that this tour is kept clean.” Ah, not more no-dope stupidity, I thought, but Jaymes said, “This means that, through political influence if necessary, if everybody gets busted, I can get everybody off.”

Jaymes said that Chrysler wanted nothing from the Stones in the way of endorsements or promotional photographs, they just wanted the Stones to use Chrysler equipment so that, at the end of the tour, Chrysler could say that they had transported the Stones and tons of equipment around the United States. If all went well and there were no scandals, there'd be a happy tie-in with the youth market. We were careering through red lights, Jaymes blowing the horn, stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time, as he said of Jagger (who'd changed plans abruptly, deciding to take a later flight to Oakland than the one he'd scheduled), “With all due respect, and I think he's due it, I think he has the idea that he's Mick Jagger, Rolling Stone, and he can do anything he wants, and he's surrounded with people who tell him he can when he can't. And someplace on the tour, that's gonna blow up on him.”

We lurched to a stop at the curb and ran through the airport, a cop with us holding his gun under his coat steady in its shoulder holster, to gate number one, where the Stones should have been but were not. Horowitz was at the gate, saying, “There should be press here, where are they?” A birdlike little old lady was looking at him as if he were something strange and wonderful. Gary Stark ran up and said, “Gate three,” holding up four fingers.

From a window I saw the plane landing. Almost at once the Stones were coming toward us, walking down the aisle, not too fast, flutter flutter all around, ^people stopping to watch—the pace picking up till we were past the front lobby and outside, where there were four more cars, rented by Jaymes in the couple of minutes we'd been in the airport. The passenger side door of one car was open, and I slid into the driver's seat. Keith was right behind me, followed by Mick Taylor, Jagger, Wyman, and Watts. Away we zoomed. I had not been expecting the hottest act in show business suddenly to pile in the car with me, so although you
could nearly see the motel from the airport, I went off the wrong way, followed by a couple of cars.

It was like being gypsies. I remembered the gypsy boy buried by the roadside on the way down to Wyman's house from London. He had been hanged for a crime the gypsies say he did not commit, and each year on the date of the hanging, the morning finds fresh flowers on the grave, the grave now more than two hundred years old, but the gypsies' memory is older than night. We were like gypsy boys, I thought, in spite of the false con and the real con it was exhilarating to be with the Stones, millions of dollars worth of talent and notoriety, wheeling through the darkness, looking for the
REGNAD REGNAD
motel. I turned down a dark side road, pulled right, hit the brakes, and threw the front end left, placing us directly athwart the highway. Cars were coming from both directions. Jagger was groaning, “What you up to?” But we made it, turned around, went back to the main road, and in a minute we were at the motel.

Sam Cutler came out to greet us. “Raise the portcullis, let the knights enter the castle.”

We went in, some of us had drinks, and then in the Stones' suite there was a press conference: more long-haired kids with cameras and tape recorders. One asked, “Why haven't the Stones made any statements concerning the U.S. youth movements, marches, and pitched battles with the police?”

“We take it for granted that people know that we're with you,” Keith said.

“We admire your involvement,” Jagger said, “but we're primarily, um, musicians, and last night for instance the crowd needed to rel—weren't ready to
relax.
They wanted to be cool and intelligent, and it took them a long time to get to the frame of mind where it's just fun. We just want them to get up and dance.”

The press, sitting on the floor, looked as if they'd never be able to get up and dance. Someone asked if the Stones had any trouble getting into the United States, and Jagger said, “No, because none of us has any convictions.” The conference ended with, once again, little said.

As we left for the Coliseum I asked Horowitz if he was getting any good publicity. “Both the wires covered the Forum show,” he said. Then he got himself under control and said, “Of course, with the Stones, you don't have to create news.”

We drove to the Coliseum and in the back entrance. Inside the Stones' dressing room, above the table covered with cheeses, meats, beers, wines, champagne, was a large poster of Bill Graham smiling broadly, holding his middle finger aloft to the camera. The Stones came in and deployed themselves around the room, looking at the food as if it were a display of artificial flowers.

Ike Turner stuck his black, greasy head in the door, and Jagger said, “How are ya?”

“I'm lookin' good, workin' hard, starvin' to death,” Ike said, and closed the door.

The Oakland Coliseum was smaller than the Forum, with amber roof lights. Ike and Tina had already played, and the crowd was stomping for the Stones. Sam on the microphone was saying, “We're sorry we're late, there were no cars to meet us at the airport, we'll be here in two minutes literally.”

I wandered the aisles looking at the kids, hairy and wild but at the same time healthy and fresh, smelling of aromatic herbs and incense, stomping in time-honored fashion, like on Saturday afternoon when the projector would break before the cavalry could arrive. Then—it had been no more than five minutes—the cavalry arrived, to whistles and yells of pleasure, just like Saturday afternoon.

Keith hit the opening chords of “Jumpin' Jack Flash,” Mick Taylor chiming in, Charlie bashing, Wyman's small, light bass (a Fender Mustang) creating a mountainous sound with great reverberating overtones. How he did it was a mystery. That Wyman was a Rolling Stone was a mystery, but there he was, a little old man, and just listen. He never danced, never even moved. “Once in a while I sweat a little bit under me arms,” he said. Jagger sashayed around the stage, waving hello with his thin, elegant arms. Another factor was present tonight, and I walked to the back of the stage to see it: a giant closed-circuit television screen above the stage, a big black and white Jagger above the real one.

The joint was jumping, but in the middle of the second song, Keith's amplifiers died, and the band ground to a halt. “It seems electricity has failed us,” Jagger said, “so we're gonna do some acoustic numbers.” Keith was trying to coax an amplifier to work, Stu was dragging two stools onstage. Mick sat down, Keith picked up his National, and they did “Prodigal Son.”

Po' boy took his father's bread,

started down the road

Took all he had and

started down the road

Goin' where God only knows

When the acoustic songs ended, the stools were removed. The equipment men had been working on the amplifiers, but they weren't finished.

“When we all get ready,” Jagger said. Then Keith hit the first chord for “Carol,” and the amplifiers blew again. In anger and frustration, Keith broke his guitar, a Les Paul Custom. The band kept
playing, Keith picked up another guitar, the music staggered on. “Sorry about the amp problems,” Jagger said. “You'll just have to hear it in your heads.” At the end of Chuck Berry's “Little Queenie,” with the house lights up, the Stones started “Satisfaction.” The kids rushed forward, carrying the guards with them, surrounding the cameramen in front of the stage. Bill Graham, onstage, rushed forward to protect the cameras as the cameramen climbed onstage, handing their cameras out of a sea of rocking flesh. Sam Cutler, watching Graham, thought he was too rough with the kids, tried to stop him, and Graham tried to throw Sam offstage. The Stones made it through “Honky Tonk Women” and “Street Fighting Man” and beat it to the dressing room, Keith kicking the table as he came in. “That
cunt
,” he said.

In the press room next door, Jon Jaymes was on the phone trying to line up some airplanes so we could get back to Los Angeles, because we were going to be very late if the Stones did a second show at all, which was doubtful. I was drinking bourbon and offered Jaymes a drink. In the middle of a speech about how Graham's cameras cost $2500 apiece and he had every right to protect them, he stopped to say, “Never get me drunk.” Just a jolly fat man. The Stones would, as it turned out, do another show, but it would take a while.

In the early days the Stones could and did handle a riot every night, night after night, kept on going, taking no dope of any kind. “You couldn't,” Keith said. “You couldn't keep going if you did, not even booze, no pills, nothing.” But in 1969 things had changed. It would be impossible to endure a world that makes you work and suffer, impossible to endure history, if it weren't for the fleeting moments of ecstasy. As you get older, it's harder to cook up the energy, even if your life is composed of distant beaches, soft female skin, plane rides, cold concrete arenas, cops, fatigue, cocaine, heroin, morphine, marijuana, busted amplifiers, riots. You have to get it from somewhere, which is why Jagger said, “All right, San Francisco, get up and shake your asses.”

But now Jagger was sitting glum, the famous lips pouting, on the floor in the dressing room. I went out to the bathroom, where I encountered Bill Belmont's family, wife, cousins, because Belmont is from San Francisco and his family come to see him light a show when he's in town, I suppose, but why the bathroom?

When I came back to the Stones' dressing room, Jagger was gone. Bill, Charlie, and Keith were talking with Rock Scully. Scully was, I'd heard, a sort of manager for the Grateful Dead, the San Francisco band who had hung out with Ken Kesey at the Acid Tests and who had rushed their equipment to the Stones to replace the blown Ampegs.

Scully was wearing Levi's and a plaid cowboy shirt, and with his beard and his bright eyes, he appeared a pleasant open-faced charming
western guy. He was talking about the proper way to give a free concert, how it might be done, with whose help. The Dead had done this sort of thing many times, and Scully might actually have known how to give a free concert in, say, Golden Gate Park. The Be-In, a mass gathering, had taken place in the park with no unpleasantness. The Hell's Angels, who had attended the Be-In, had acted as security at some Grateful Dead concerts, and it was natural (not to say organic) to have the Angels help you do your thing, or so it seemed to Rock Scully. He was saying, sitting on a couch in that oblong room where our destinies were being formed, though we were too tired to give much of a shit, “The Angels are really some righteous dudes. They carry themselves with honor and dignity.” He was so wide-eyed and open about it, it seemed really convincing. Nobody was even particularly paying attention, but I noticed the way he used the words
honor
and
dignity,
these high-flown words here but
you
know what I mean.

Uppermost in people's minds in the dressing room was Bill Graham and what an ass he was. Keith was furious, and when Keith was furious, everybody else had better be at least indignant. Scully was running Graham down for being a capitalist pig, and Keith was saying that Ralph Gleason was obviously “Graham's bootlicker. Why don't he go on writin' about Art Blakey and Monk and people like that, he's just an opportunist who's climbed on the rock bandwagon.” The poster of Graham above the banquet table was spattered with thrown cheese dip.