True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (49 page)

After the appeals and a hot, crowded press conference at Granada Television in Golden Square, Mick was flown by helicopter to a country house in Essex. Waiting in the garden for a televised interview with Mick were William Rees-Mogg, the editor of
The Times;
Father Corbishley, the Jesuit; Lord Stow Hill; and John Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich. Their general desire was for Mick to admit that his case proved the healthy state of English justice, and the heavily tranquilized Mick, mush-mouthed, would not agree, but he was unable to mention anything specific to which he could object except persecution of homosexuals and capital punishment, both of which had already been legally brought to his position. The meeting's only conclusive note was Mick's: “I am very happy today.”

Whatever the legal significance of the case, it came down in many people's minds to a battle between opposing ways of life. On August 14 the
Daily Mail
reported that Mick and Marianne had been publicly snubbed twice in three days, at a party at Kilkenny Castle and by taxi drivers at Heathrow Airport, who refused to carry them. “My kids have to ride in this cab,” one driver said. The Stones were snubbed also by the BBC, which refused to show on one of its music programs a film the Stones had made to introduce their new single, “We Love You.” Conceived by Mick in his cell, the record began with the actual sound of a prison guard's footsteps and the slamming of a cell door. It was going to prove not very commercial in England, but in the United States it would go to number one faster than any of the Stones' previous records. The film parodied the trial of Oscar Wilde, with Mick as Wilde, wearing a green carnation; Keith as the Judge with a wig made of pound notes; and Wilde's lover “Bosie” played by Marianne Faithfull in a miniwig.

One or two of the Beatles appeared as background singers on “We Love You.” Keith and Mick had sung backing vocals and Brian had played tenor saxophone on the Beatles' recent single, “All You Need Is Love.” Back in April, while the Stones were floundering in a sea of heartbreaking and lawbreaking (even Bill Wyman had been in the
news; Diane, his wife, had left him in February, telling the press, “I'm not prepared to share him with thousands of strange women”), the Beatles released a lavish album,
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,
on the cover of which they appeared, dressed as Sgt. P.'s L.H.C.B. in colorful satin uniforms, among a crowd that included Mae West, Karl Marx, Sonny Liston, William Burroughs, and a doll wearing a pullover knitted to read “WMPS Good Guys Welcome the Rolling Stones,” around a grave that represented and, as it turned out, did signify the death of the Beatles. “The era of playing on each other's records” may have been, as Mick would say, a joke, but at the time the Beatles might have been, as John Lennon had recently said, more popular than Jesus. Lennon's statements resulted in much outrage, an extreme example of which was the burning of Beatles records sponsored by radio station WAYX in Waycross, Georgia, where Gram and I used to live. In a public apology, Lennon said he meant that the Beatles were “having more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus.” They were certainly an enormous influence; everywhere you began to see boys with long hair, flashing the V-sign for some undefined victory that would come someplace besides Vietnam.

The biggest and richest and best educated generation in history knew no better than previous and later tiny, deprived generations what life was about. Prudent people cultivated their gardens. Early in September, Charlie and Shirley Watts moved from the Old Brewery House at Southover into Peckham's, a thirteenth-century farmhouse at Halland, eight miles from Lewes, where Mick and Keith had been tried. A forty-acre farm went with the house, but Charlie said he intended to lease all the land except the garden to a farmer.

On September 14, four of the Stones left Heathrow for America—Brian and Suki being photographed by English
paparazzi
—to work on the $25,000 cover (a 3-D photograph with images that moved) for their new album,
Satanic Majesties.
On their arrival the Stones were delayed while immigration officers questioned Keith for more than half an hour before allowing him “deferred entry.” When Mick and Marianne arrived from Paris on a later flight, Mick was also questioned and his luggage thoroughly searched.

After a seven-minute interview with the Stones the next morning, the director of immigrations said that they were being allowed to stay pending the arrival of court records. As Mick left, one of the immigration officers asked for an autograph for his daughter. The Stones stayed at the Warwick Hotel, where a war correspondent named Martin Gorshen, back from his third trip to Vietnam, where U.S. forces had increased in five years from five thousand to five hundred thousand, saw them and wrote a newspaper piece to complain: “We've got kids dying out there without a sound and we've got punks here who dress up like girls and make millions of dollars doing it.”

The Stones had made millions—their Decca records had earned around a hundred million dollars—but they were having trouble getting at the money. While in New York they met with Allen Klein, who had taken the $1.4 million advance from Decca and deposited it not into the Stones' business account, Nanker Phelge Music Ltd. in London, but the U.S.-based N.P.M. Inc., Klein's own creation. It would take the Stones years to learn that Klein had spent all the money on General Motors stock, which produced little of the ready vital to being nigger rich. Their contract with Klein, he would point out when the time came, obliged him only to pay them the advance within twenty years.

Money was a big problem, but the Stones had bigger ones. Their major effort of the last two years had been, apart from staying out of prison, trying to learn to make Rolling Stones records without Brian. For most of the
Satanic
sessions Brian had been absent, spending a lot of time in Spain with Suki. Brian's trial took place on October 30 at Inner London Sessions. He was charged with possession of cannabis, methedrine, and cocaine, smoking and allowing his flat to be used for smoking cannabis. He pleaded guilty to possessing and smoking cannabis, otherwise not guilty.

The prosecutor, Robin Simpson, said that on May 10, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the police searched Brian's flat. Asked if he had any drugs, Brian had said, “I suffer from asthma, the only drugs I have are for that.” Eleven objects were found in different places, in different rooms, to contain or to bear traces of drugs: two canisters, two wallets, two pipes, two cigaret ends, a box of cigaret papers, a jar, a chair caster used as an ashtray. The total number of grains of cannabis found was thirty-five and a quarter, enough to make from seven to ten cigarets. The police had shown Brian a tin containing some of the material now in evidence and a phial that appeared to have traces of cocaine. “Yes, it is hash,” Brian had said. “We do smoke. But not cocaine, man. That's not my scene.”

The defending attorney, James Comyn, Q.C., said that Brian had suffered a breakdown and had been under strict medical care. He had been very ill but had at last responded to treatment. Comyn said that Brian was a highly intelligent (IQ 133) and versatile musician and composer, with tremendous writing talent. The defense called Dr. Leonard Henry, a psychiatrist from Northolt, Middlesex, who said that Brian had been agitated, depressed, incoherent, and had to be treated with tranquilizers and antidepressants. He was very sick and got worse. He didn't respond to treatment and was recommended for treatment in Roehampton Priory in July. Brian was now less depressed and less anxious, but the doctor said, “If he is put in prison, it would be disastrous to his health. He would have a complete mental collapse, a breakdown, and he couldn't stand the stigma. He might injure himself.”

Another psychiatrist, Anthony Flood, of Harley Street, testified that Brian was “deeply distressed, anxious, and a potential suicide.”

Then Brian took the stand. He was wearing a navy suit with flared jacket and bell-bottom trousers, a polka dot cravat, and shoes with Cuban heels. Judge Reginald Ethelbert Seaton said that he'd been told Brian intended cutting out drugs completely. “That is precisely my intention,” Brian said. He told the judge that drugs had brought him only trouble and disrupted his career: “I hope that will be an example to others.”

“I am very moved by what I have heard,” the judge said, “but under the circumstances nothing less than a prison sentence would be correct. I sentence you to nine months imprisonment for being the occupier of premises, allowing them to be used for the smoking of drugs, and three months for being in possession of cannabis resin, the sentences to run concurrently.”

The judge also ordered Brian to pay £250 costs and refused to grant him bail pending an appeal. Brian was led away to jail as teen-aged girls, some of whom were Brian's friends and loved him, left the courtroom in tears. The next day, Brian's appeal was set for December 12, and he was released on bail.

The other Stones were digging their trenches. Mick bought a country estate near Newbury, Berkshire, called Stargroves, with a twelve-bedroom mansion that had no running water. Keith had built a nine-foot wooden fence, like a fort in a Western movie, around Redlands, and further fortified the place with two guard dogs, a Labrador named Bernard and a Great Dane named Winston.

Andrew Oldham was fast fading from the Stones picture, and the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, had recently died. Mick and Paul McCartney began to talk about the possibility of the two groups' purchasing a recording studio and forming a joint production company to be called Mother Earth. Neither group was happy with its record company. After the effort of making what sounded like a difficult album and creating the elaborate cover art, the Stones were infuriated by a delay in the release of
Satanic Majesties
because Decca, so they said, were out of cardboard. The album finally reached the shops at about the time of Brian's appeal.

Brian appeared before a panel of four judges. Dr. Leonard Neustatter, a court-appointed psychiatrist who had interviewed Brian four times, said that he was intelligent but “emotionally unstable, with neurotic tendencies.” In a report prepared for the appeals court, Dr. Neustatter wrote, “He vacillates between a passive, dependent child with a confused image of an adult on the one hand, and an idol of pop culture on the other.”

Dr. Leonard Henry, again testifying for Brian, said that, faced with an intolerable situation, Brian “might well make an attempt on his life.”

In the light of these opinions and the fact that Brian had never before been convicted of anything worse than peeing in a garage—though he had been guilty of worse things many times—the court substituted a £1000 fine and three years probation for Brian's prison term, telling him: “The court has shown a degree of mercy, but you cannot go and boast, saying you've been let off. If you commit another offence of any sort—you will be brought back and punished afresh. And you know what sort of sentence you will get.”

Two days later, Brian was taken to St. George's Hospital in London after being found unconscious on the floor of a flat in Chelsea, rented in the name of his chauffeur, John Coray. Doctors in the hospital's emergency department wanted Brian to stay, but he left after an hour, saying he was only exhausted and wanted to go home.

Mick and Marianne were in Brazil for the holidays, staying at a remote beach where the people thought that Marianne was the Virgin Mary, the unshaven Mick was Joseph, and Nicholas, Marianne's two-year-old son, was the baby Jesus. Keith and Anita were in Italy, Bill and Astrid were in Sweden. Charlie was at home with Shirley, who was going to have a baby.

As the new year began, Jo Bergman, who had come to work for the Stones in September, made an analysis of their situation:

1. Rolling Stones personal working accounts overdrawn

2. Rolling Stones #3 account overdrawn

3. Telexes sent to Klein by us and Lawrence Myers

4. Promise of £2000 to be sent Thursday

5. Need £7000 to clear most pressing debts

6. Money needed for studio & offices

7. Summary

(a) due to lack of funds in personal accounts, some bills paid out of Rolling Stones account #3

(b) no funds for running of office

(c) Rolling Stones accountant Mr. Trowbridge has been forced to find an alternative

The Stones started rehearsing in February and by mid-March were recording songs for a new album. Brian, who felt he could no longer play with the Stones, was participating very little. In March he was in the office and left a note for Jo, whom he feared, thinking that she was Jagger's enforcer.

Dear Jo,

I need the following dates for to do my recording thing in Morocco: 22nd→25th or 26th March. This is the only time I can get it done, and I honestly believe
I can get something really worthwhile from this venture for us. If this means I have to miss a session or two, I can dub my scenes on after, while vocals are being done or whatever. Incidentally the Morocco thing is only part of my venture. I am confident I can come up with something really groovy. I will talk to you later about financing the thing, if that be possible. I don't need that much. Hope it happens! Love Brian

Talk to you later—

Before Brian could get out of London, he was again in the news:
STONES GIRL NAKED IN DRUG DRAMA,
the
News of the World
headline said. Linda Keith, a disc jockey's daughter who had once been Keith's girlfriend and was now, at least part of the time, Brian's, called her doctor, told him where she was and that she was going to overdose on drugs. The doctor called the police, who knocked down the door of the Chesham Place flat, rented to Brian's chauffeur, where Brian stayed in London. Linda was inside, right in style, naked and unconscious. After she had been taken to the hospital, Brian arrived at the flat. “I had been at an all-night recording session,” he told reporters, “and when I came back just after twelve I found the police at the flat. I was absolutely shattered when the landlord of the flat asked the police to have me removed. He said, ‘It's because you are trespassing. We don't want your kind in this place.' I explained to him that I rented the flat for my chauffeur and only lived here when I was in town. But he wouldn't listen to me. I have paid six months rent in advance, but it didn't make any difference to him. I can't understand it.”