True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (51 page)

The lights went up for “Little Queenie,” revealing thousands of lovely berserk kids. During “Satisfaction” somebody in the crowd was waving a crutch overhead. There was that sound again, the high keening wail over all the other sounds, a wild shrieking howl that seemed like the winds of change and joy—but things are seldom what they seem.

Mick, laughing, jumping straight up in the air, pointed to Charlie: “Charlie's good tonight, inne?” As “Honky Tonk Women” began, kids were washing onstage, Mick being attacked by a girl in a lavender crushed velvet dress, smiling as Sam and Tony rescued him. Right in front a tall black girl was looking at him, licking her lips. Behind the amps Leonard Bernstein and his family were listening, his son dancing. Keith, turning up his amps, saw me watching and started hitting his guitar strings harder, as Mick threw the rose-petal basket out into the rising wail.

Then back to the Plaza from the Garden in the limos for the last time. I went out again, to Gore's party. Nicole was waiting there for me. We went to her apartment and slept very little. In the morning I made it back to the Plaza in time to catch a plane to Boston with the Stones and the Maysles brothers.

There were news people with tape recorders and cameras waiting as we walked out of the terminal building at Logan Airport. One man, stepping close to Mick, thrusting out a microphone, asked, “Mick, will this be a
free
concert?”

“Ask the promoter,” Mick said.

At the sidewalk, as we were getting into the limos, a large black woman came up and said, “I want yawlses autographs.” Nobody paid any attention to her; everybody piled into the cars, and just before the doors closed she said, “I never will buy no mo' Rollin' Stones records.”

We were driven to the Madison Hotel, which was attached to the Boston Garden, that night's venue. Up seventeen floors in a funky old elevator, down the badly vacuumed halls, we entered the Rolling Stones' quarters for the evening, three bedrooms and a suite. I lay down on the first bed I came to. The Maysles brothers were in the same room, dumping their equipment on the floor, talking about how much they loved Boston, their home town; they'd come up on Thanksgiving for two hours just to have breakfast here. Mick came in and sprawled across the bed.

“I'm sick,” he said, “I ain't gonna do a whole show, I feel too bad.
I hurt in the head, stomach, crotch, and feet. We used to do twenty minutes, we'd do five songs in a show—take the money and run—we didn't know any better, didn't know at all what we were doing. We'd play like Savannah and there'd be two people diggin' it, so we thought what the fuck.”

Sam came in to tell Mick, who'd asked for soup, that the hotel had no room service. It's grotesque, how you have to live once you've left home, but there it was, no room service. Mick asked Tony to go out to a restaurant for some soup. “Doesn't matter what kind as long as it's warm.”

Tony exited stage right as from stage left, the sitting room door, in came Jon Jaymes, bringing news from the southern front. On the first page of notebook number nine I began writing about the battle of West Palm Beach, where the police had built stockades to contain hundreds of drug arrests. The governor was making arrests personally. Billy Graham had visited, disguised in a fake beard, talking to drug-crazed children in the crowd. The National Guard, on alert, was ready to move in—as were the Stones, ready to move in tomorrow, only now they weren't so sure they were going, if the things Jon had said were true.

“I have a friend there,” I said. “He can tell us what's happening.” I called Charlie Brown in Coconut Grove, left word at the bike shop where he worked, in five minutes the phone rang, Ronnie answered and gave it to me. I told Charlie that I was with the Stones and that we intended to go to the festival.

“Well, you can go down if you want to,” Charlie said, “but I wouldn't advise it. I was down there, and I came back up here. It's all muddy down there and the cops are busting people.”

“But the Stones got to play a gig down there tomorrow,” I said.

“Oh, you have to. How are you going in? Are you going to fly to Miami and drive down?”

“No, we're going to fly into West Palm.”

“He doesn't need to know that,” Sam said, as Ronnie rasped, “He doesn't need to know that.”

“Don't tell him,” snarled Keith, who'd come in at the end of Jaymes'
caveat,
making fun of them both.

“Well, I wouldn't advise you to come in holding.”

“That's not a problem,” I said. “We're taken care of there.”

“What is it?” Ronnie asked.

“He said not to come in holding,” I said.

“We don't care about that,” Sam and Ronnie said in unison. I was about to suggest they try for harmony.

“We're just worried about the kids,” I told Charlie.

“Yeah,” Keith said, taking long strides across the room, “if they're
putting kids in a stockade, the kids are going to go wild, and the cops'll go wild, and then we can't help but go wild—”

“So what's happening to the kids down there?” I asked Charlie, as Keith went on: “The kids'll look to us for support, and if you can't give 'em that, what can you give them?”

“Look,” Charlie said. “Call the sheriff's department of West Palm Beach County person-to-person, ask him what's going on, he's the local jurisdiction. Also you could call Governor Claude Kirk in Tallahassee, except he's in West Palm Beach at the moment, I don't know where he's staying. Call the
Miami Herald
city desk, maybe they could tell you that.”

“How are you?” I asked.

“Fine. I've written a poem about Kerouac I'd like you to hear when we get the chance.”

“Great. See you later.”

I hung up. “We'll call down there,” Keith said, “and if they're doing all that shit we'll tell them we're not coming. We don't want to start any trouble—but if that kind of thing is happening, we can't help but go berserk and start yelling things—”

“I'll call them,” Ronnie said, going into the sitting room.

Mick was still lying on the bed, bottom lip stuck out, staring at the ceiling. “I'm not gonna change,” he said. “I'm goin' on dressed like this—” He was wearing green slacks and a red wool sweater.

Sam, standing at the foot of the bed, leaning to one side, grey-faced, a constant three-day stubble like little insects over his jaws, mustache drooping, eyes worried and motherly, said gently, “Yes, you are, man.”

“No I'm not,” Mick said.

Sam took a drag of his cigaret and, hands on hips, peered at Mick through the smoke. “Now I know, man,” he said softly, “that about five minutes before you go on you'll think, Right, better change—”

“No I won't,” Mick said.

“Yes you will, man,” Sam said, going out.

And in a few minutes Mick went into the bathroom and coming out asked Sam, who'd returned, “Where's the makeup?”

“Come in this bedroom,” Sam said, leading him away.

Mick came back in uniform, and soon we went down on the antique elevator—its cables slipped, we fell several feet, the white-haired elevator operator looked up at the ceiling with a sad and droopy eye—and went into the Garden, to a small dressing room where the only refreshments were a few Cokes. While the guitars were being tuned, I checked out the arena, saw too many cops, didn't like the feel, and went back upstairs to take a nap. Just as I was going to sleep, Jo called, wanting to talk to Mick. Before I fell asleep again the doors burst open and in came the Rolling Stones and company, back from the
wars. Ronnie was the first in and I told him about Jo's call as he passed, the steely glint of his sharkskin knifing the gloom. Mick hurled himself face-down onto the bed beside me.

“Was it a drag?” I asked with complete absence of tact.

“I couldn't care less,” Mick mouthed into the pillow.

“Did you see that Re-elect Wyman to Congress sign?” David Maysles asked.

“What about that guy with no legs,” Ronnie said. “He came onstage, Sam started to throw him back, lifted him up and from the waist down he wasn't there. He wanted Sam to set him up on the amplifiers.”

Taking several sheets of accounting paper from his briefcase, Ronnie sat down on the bed between Mick and me. “This is for the first half of the tour,” Ronnie said, pointing to a figure. $516,736.63. “That's just through Chicago. I figure you'll each take home a hundred Gs.” He really said “Gs.”

“More like ninety,” Mick said.

“What were those reporters at the airport asking you?” David Maysles asked. “If this was going to be a free concert?”

“I wanted to do the whole tour free,” Mick said, “till I talked to my bank manager. They tell you you're doing great, you've got all this money, until you want to buy something, some chairs or something, and then you discover you don't—you only give me your funny pay-pah.” He sang the last line.

“We could take home what we're grossing if we'd had time to book it ourselves,” Ronnie said. “We could have got eighty-twenty instead of sixty-forty.”

“The accountant's dream,” Mick said, waving his fist in a jerkoff gesture. He stretched back on the bed. “We could have done a lot of things, but we only had a week. If I hadn't gone to Australia we'd never have made it, the Bureau of Immigration took so long to approve us.”

Tony came in with Chinese food, little paper cartons of bamboo shoots, peapods, beef, rice, but no plastic forks or spoons or chopsticks; instead, popsicle sticks, very tricky to eat with.

Mick was sitting up in bed, shoes off, socks in different shades of blue, trying to spoon up wonton soup with popsicle sticks.

“Why don't your socks match,” Ronnie asked.

“It's lucky they're the same color,” Mick said.

David Maysles, standing at the foot of the bed trying to eat Chinese chicken, began to swoon.

“ 'Scuse my feet, man,” Mick told him.

“Funky,” David said. He moved away, blinking, threw me a glance (how pungent) and I started to laugh. At that moment Sam came in, stopped arms akimbo by the bed, took a deep breath and said, “Cor, your feet don't arf smell.”

“I've been jumpin' about onstage for an hour and an arf, that's why,” Mick growled.

“Well, man,” Sam said in a conciliatory tone, “I'll tell you what you should do.”

“I can't do anything,” Mick said.

“Yes you can. At some time during the next two hours, right, wash your feet. Just give 'em a wash, right, it'll freshen you up. Always freshens you up to give your feet a wash.”

Mick drew his feet up under him in defense and began talking to me about the future, where to live, what to do. “I made a ridiculous amount of money last year,” he said. “I got paid for two films in the same fortnight. I don't know where to live. England is so small-town. They put me in jail in England. I've been arrested three times. They'll send me away eventually. And they tax you blind. I think I'd like to live in France and travel, live in different places different times. The south of France or Italy. That's the advantage of living in Europe, you don't have to live in one country. I never know what to put down on my passport for race—I always want to put English Gentleman. But I've got to find a place to live, got to think about the future, because obviously I can't do
this
forever.” He rolled his eyes. “I mean, we're so
old
—we've been going on for eight years and we can't go on for another eight. I mean, if you can you will do, but I just can't, I mean we're so old—Bill's
thirty-three.”

“In eight years,” I said, “he'll be—”

“Y'see wot oi mean?”

Time waits for no one, but we didn't know that then. Eight years sounded like a lifetime.

“Mick,” Ronnie called from the front room, “Jo wants to talk to you.” Mick limped away, and Michael Lydon and two young Boston girls came in. Sam let them in and right away took one of the girls back out. The other girl sat on the bed beside me. Michael introduced himself and the people in the room and began asking the girl, whose name was Georgy, about her neighborhood, whether she liked school, and so on. “I'm not a groupie,” she said. “If you write about me, say I'm not a groupie.” Meanwhile, Sam had told her friend, “You can meet the Stones, but you have to ball me first.” They were in another bedroom, Sam was taking off his trousers, the girl was down to her bra and panties, and the door flew open. “All right, the jig's up, it's the cops,” a voice yelled. It was Ronnie and Keith and Mick and little Mick.

“Aw, come on,” Sam said.

“I didn't do anything,” the bewildered girl said. “We didn't do anything.”

“You ought to be ashamed, Sam,” the boys told him.

Soon we went downstairs. It was late, I was tired, it was Saturday
night in America, and I was over a day behind in my notes. While the Stones did their show, I did some catching up. I didn't expect the apocalypse to come in Boston.

After the show we went back upstairs, for no good reason, and when we came out the kids were waiting like in 1964, girls swarming over the cars, pressing against the windows. We drove slowly through them, stopping at times, then, as the crowd cleared, picking up steam. At the airport we parked among small dark planes and hiked across the asphalt to a twenty-seater. Once we boarded someone discovered that Tony had been left at the hotel, so a car was sent back for him. On the airplane were two plain groupies who had been in the dressing room by courtesy of Jon Jaymes. One of them, nineteen, from New Jersey, told me that she had been following the Stones on their American tours since she was thirteen, never before having gotten near them. At last Tony arrived and the doors were shut. I had a window seat behind the right wing, and I noticed something pouring out of the engine, some of it splattering on the ground and the rest spilling down inside where the spark plugs were igniting snorts of greasy blue smoke that burst into yellow shrieks of flame dancing over the wing in the chill New England night.