September 20, 2023 • 63 mins
The Stones return to LA, the rockbiz capital where illusion is an industry and nothing is quite what it seems. Immediately prior to the Stones' gig at the Palladium, an unhinged Satanist appears at the stage door, claiming to be the band's dead guitarist Brian Jones. The unsettling apparition reminds the band of the high cost of their profession, and all that they left behind to make it atop the rock mountain. Later, a long night in a Hollywood Hills haunted house reminds one key member of the STP entourage about his terrifying close call with Charles Manson — who had marked him to die.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome Back to Los Angeles. It's Spring nineteen seventy two.
Tickets for the Rolling Stones Tour of North America are
minutes away from going on sale. If figures from other
cities or any indication competition will be fierce. In Detroit,
there were one hundred and twenty thousand requests for twelve
thousand seats. In Chicago, thirty four thousand tickets sell out
(00:28):
in just five and a half hours. There was a
similar story in San Francisco where people stood outside the
ticket office all day and got nothing but disappointment. All
is to say, most people in line at the Tepanga
Plaza shopping center waiting for the ticketron counter to open
are well aware that he'll probably walk away empty handed,
(00:48):
But Jeffrey from Encino's prepared to get creative. This enterprising
young freak is determined to get satisfaction. He's been camped
out since the night before, along with about two hundred
other kids, bundled in sleeping bags and blankets. But even
these extreme measures might not be enough. You see, the
ticket window can be found within a large department store,
(01:09):
and the employees are given early access. In other words,
they could just rock up and cut the line. To
Jeffrey from Encino, that just doesn't seem fair to everyone
who just used the pavement for a pillow. To fight
this injustice, Jeffrey from Encino's about to go undercover. A
half hour before the ticketron window opens. He changes into
(01:31):
a clean white shirt and tie. I'm carefully smoothing out
the wrinkles. He marches through a door on the side
of the building, mark employees, I'm in personnel. He aily
informs the guard and makes it three steps into the
store before some sour faced lady at the desk kisses
young man, I'm in personnel and I've never seen you before.
(01:51):
The guard puts the collar on Jeffrey from Encino and
shows them the door. The crowd outside, still bleary eyed
in their sleeping bags, cheer them on. I see him
being pushed out the door by a guard. Gotta give
a fellow stones Van credit for triumph pitchin. Someone yells out,
way to go, man yells another. But Jeffrey from Mencino
(02:11):
isn't giving up that easily. Enlisting the help of two
fellow freaks, he sneaks around the far side of the
building to a heavy iron grate. Together they lift it
high enough for Jeffrey from Mencino to wiggle under and
slip down a back stairway. It looks like he's made
it this time, until the stairway brings him out right
by the desk where the same old, sour faced lady
(02:32):
from Personnel is sitting. She sees Jeffrey and yells for
a guard to throw him out. More cheers from the sidewalk. Hey,
it's that dude again, someone in the crowd shouts, far out, brother,
it's nine point thirty, a half hour before the window opens.
It's hot already, and the unsmuged sunshine makes everything look
(02:56):
worn and dead. Jeffrey from Mencino's enraged. He knows that
somebody's in there, already cutting a corner and waiting online
for tickets ahead of him. At this very minute. He's
being ripped off, and he hates it, so he tries
the other side of the building, where he finds another
movable grape. Up it goes and Jeffery from Encino's in
(03:17):
and under and down a back stairway that opens out
into the boys department. He's nervous, no telling what the
sour faced lady will do if she catches him. This time,
desperate to blend in, he makes like a floor walker
and starts straightening out a pile of Levi's. Then he
sees it a plastic name tag, presumably belonging to some
(03:38):
salesman or clerk who left it there at closing time.
Jeffery from Encino takes the name plate and clips it
into his pocket. For the first time all day, he's legal.
With renewed confidence, he takes the escalator down to the
ticket tron booth. There are already eight people on line there,
all suspicions confirmed. Company's got the fix in for its
(04:01):
own employees. All these poor kids who've been outside for
anywhere from ten to sixteen hours are being ripped off. Jeez,
he thinks you have to be a criminal in America
these days just to stay even. Who's that One lady
in front of Jeffrey from Mensino suddenly says to another,
I've never seen him before. These women are clearly not
(04:22):
fans of the Stones and are definitely just getting tickets
for their grand nieces or something. And they're clearly not
fans of his either. And Jeffrey from Mensino can feel
the bust coming. He starts to sweat. Oh, he says,
charming as can be, lying through his teeth. I work
in the boys department. I started last week. Well, the
ladies are hemming and hauling over that one. They're about
(04:45):
to go for a guard, but a long hair in
front of him says, hey, he's okay. I know the
guy he works in shirts. The two ladies relax, the
bust is postponed, and Jeffrey smiles gratefully to the fellow
freak who pulled them out. Ten o'clock. Now the building's
officially open. Buzzers go off and the door is unlocked,
(05:05):
and that's when it happens. Jeffrey from Encino feels it
as much as he hears it, thundering across the building
towards him and the tickeatron counter. It gets louder with
each passing second. Then he sees them, the horde of
freaks who will not be denied, hauling through the furniture department,
pounding past shells of cut glass decanters and wooden salad bulls,
(05:28):
running up the down escalators, tearing away the rope from
in front of the ticketron Pooth and obliterating the line
for the first time all day. Jeffrey from Encino feels fear.
But by the time the thundering stops and the crowd
starts milling around and shouting at the Tikeatron, Lady Jeffrey
(05:49):
from Encino has the situation in hand in his palm.
To be exact, four tickets to the Stones at the
LA Forum there is. That story comes courtesy of Robert Greenfield,
the legendary rock journalist, was the dedicated Stones correspondent for
Rolling Stone Magazine as the twenty something in the early seventies.
(06:13):
He was in LA and witnessed the MAVs scrambled to
obtain tickets to the Exile on Main Street tour in
the spring of seventy two. He was also there in
June when the tour rolled through town. This was a
big one for the band. La was the dark heart
of the music world, where everything was beautiful, but nothing
was quite what it seemed. The crimes of Charles Manson
(06:34):
and a so called family less than three years earlier
it brought that point home. To all appearances, they were
a merry band of musical free spirits, pointing the way
to a more tolerant and free way of life. Yet
they proved capable of unspeakable acts of savagery. It was
all about image in La an image can't be trusted.
(06:57):
Up to this point of the tour, the band did
worry about the Hell's Angels, fearing that the bikers would
launch a retaliatory attack for the disaster at Altamont. But
here the killers could be anyone. Many ghosts would emerge
from the Hollywood Hills during the Stones visit, including the
Specter of Death. In addition to Greenfield and has never
(07:20):
before heard tapes of the Stones in their seventies exile
Eraic Glory will be joined by his friend and fellow
STP tour mate Gary Stromberg, the band's pr soprimo, who's
represented a whole jukebox of the twentieth century's greatest artists.
What's more, he also had a terrifyingly close encounter with
Hollywood's most notorious madman. My name's Jordan Runtag. And this
(07:45):
is the Stones touring party for the Rolling Stones. Being
in la isn't like being the road at all. This
was where Exile on Main Street was completed just a
few months before and where the tour had been meticulously plauded. Hell,
(08:08):
they just left from here less than a week earlier,
probably felt like dejav who. Many of the entourage forgo hotels,
opting to stay in their own houses instead. As far
as Robert Greenfield was concerned, Los Angeles was the stp hometown.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Stones always liked La. They'd lived here before. Remember Mick
had that house up in the hills with the pool
sixty nine. They had lived here in sixty nine, okay,
and so they were comfortable here. They came here early.
The whiskey and the strip, I mean, this was legend
to them. They like going to the Apollo. They understood
the Sun's hit strip. It was iconic.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The Rolling Stones always had an oversized place in their
hearts for Los Angeles. To them, it was the gateway
to a America. This was pop culture ground zero, the
birthplace of movies and media from which they and their
English peers pieced together a fantastical picture of the United States.
Compared to gray, deprived postwar Britain. It seemed like the
(09:16):
promised land, far off, magical place where everything was colorful
and larger than life. Superman, Coca Cola Frank Sinatra, Mickey
Mouse and hot dogs. America produced a ceaseless flood of stars, styles,
and trends, and the US economic boom made even everyday
life seem impossibly glamorous. Big cars with big fins, big
(09:39):
houses with big lawns, and big television sets with the
biggest celebrities. For Brits, America seemed cooler, richer, and a
hell of a lot more fun than anything they had.
This America existed more in the mind than on the map.
They'd figure that out later. Hollywood didn't have the same
(10:01):
sort of luster for local Los Angelos. La made fantasy
food for the world and created stars who were the
physical embodiments of that fantasy. But familiarity breeds contempt, and
those closest to the fantasy making process had few illusions
about it all. They always knew which grade star was
a junkie, a gambling addict, or a philanderer, or whatever
(10:24):
your imagination deems worse Hollywood hype had sold a lot
of things, but more than anything else, it sold the
image of America to the rest of the world. An
image can't be trusted, but still. Guitarist Mick Taylor remembered
his childlike excitement during his first trip to the States.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Most English kids of my age had sort of fantasies
about the where America was, you know, through the movie Is,
through television and classive fact that American music was what
we admired most of all and what we were most
influenced by. So it was like a dream come true
the first time I went there.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Despite its disturbing reputation for violence both international and domestic,
America continued doing trance. The Stones drummer Charlie Watts freely
admitted that the prospect of traveling through the States on
the STP tour scared.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
The hell out of him, But speaking of Robert Greenfield
in nineteen seventy two, he admitted a deep affection for
the place.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Here he is courtesy of our friends at the Northwestern
University Archives.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
I always loved the American I always loved American people.
I am a product of America. I'm as English as
anybody in a funny sense. You know, my life is
not run like an American. My own doesn't look like
an American. It's a typical English owned you know, I
mean with a tea but Georgian silver, all that shit.
I'm not American. I hate those fucking Hollywood owns. I
(11:53):
go to them that the same thing, curiosity showing like
a mansion. I'll go look at all those pools, man,
they really are lovely. If I don't live there, it's
not me. But I am a product of America. I
totally am purely by what I do and what my
interests are. My interests are firstly visual art graphics, which
(12:14):
was when I was younger, you know I'm doing. It
was all American. It was totally American closed. I used
to fucking go crazy about Ivy League.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
I still do.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
I thought all I wear man is a fucking Ivy
League suit. To me, the only music in the world
was black. American still is in a way, funny way,
but I mean it's all based around there. I'm a
total American product.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
They adored America as a whole, but La was a
special kind of thrill. They'd loved it since they first
arrived in the mid sixties. It was here that they
recorded their Immortal Satisfaction in nineteen sixty five. The place
had always been good to them, and the music coming
from here inspired them, especially the country rock sound pioneered
by Keith Richards one time, Nelcott House guest, Graham Party
(13:00):
and the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Here's what the Stones were always aware of. When they
played San Francisco, they knew where they were. When they
played Nashville, they knew where they were. When they played
la they knew they were in the heart of the Beast.
They knew that the business was here, but they also
knew how much music was being made here. This is
Laurel Canyon at its peak. Basically, they're all still up there.
Mama Cass and the Eagles were breaking. Why did they
(13:25):
play the Palladium? Because of the Burritos, because of Graham.
They loved that music La Country.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The golden days of Hollywood were long gone by the
summer of seventy two, with the movies having given way
to pop music and pro sports as America's primary fantasy
ob sessions. As a result, a new kind of star
had come along, the rock star. Since musicians had always
been considered outside the lawlessness became part of the ara.
(13:55):
The Rolling Stones, with a bona fide criminal record, fit
the bill so many the rock star was more potent
than any silver screen idol because they lived everyone's fantasy
life right out in the open where it could be
picked at and discussed. As one Stone's associate once said,
rock stars are groovy because they smoke more cigarettes, take
(14:17):
more dope, drink more whiskey, stay up later, and have
sex more frequently and in odder positions than most people do.
In other words, impost everything bizarro America. They do the
things that everybody wants to do. That's the illusion at least,
and illusion is an LA industry. It's all part of
what we'll call rock biz, a youthful and exuberant subsection
(14:40):
of the music business. The rock biz headquarters is the
Sunset Strip, America's main street of hype and promotion, where
Dick Clark and Phil Specter are across the street Neighbors
and Tower Records, the so called largest record store in
the known world, is the closest thing to a true
community center that LA has a relatively phenomenon. The rock
(15:01):
biz is perfectly LA and totally American. It's transitory, hard, cruel,
and full of paranoia, with such extreme rewards for those
willing to accept its challenge and go out on the
edge to make it. Gary Stromberg explains.
Speaker 6 (15:18):
Careers were made in LA and that was simply put,
unlike anywhere else in media, all of the music business
generated from Los Angeles, New York was distant second when
it came to generating the careers of artists. And you know,
it had this legendary reputation and these guys were very
well aware of it, and I knew how to deal
(15:38):
with it.
Speaker 7 (15:39):
They were very good at dealing with it.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
The other thing that was going on at that point
in time in terms of this business that Gary was
part of creating, was that there had never been a
David Geffen and Elliott Roberts before, who were Joni's manager.
And then we don't have to tell you what David
Geffen was, you know, And so you know, the music business.
Initially record business was much like the movie business. The
(16:02):
immigrants of Samuel Goldwin Louis Mayer grew up in the street,
came from nothing and created the movie business. Okay, and
kind of the record companies certainly were in the fifties,
the independent labels. But then around this era in the
late sixties, Laurel Canyon in the early seventies, you have
(16:22):
another thing going on. You have these great artists Jackson
Brown and Joony you know, like asylum records, and the
young people are taking over this business, and the artists
are managed by people their same age as them.
Speaker 8 (16:38):
That's unheard of.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
All the folkies were managed by Manny Greenhill. He was
you know, Joan Diaz and Albert Grossman and Dylan your
manager was fifty five years old and probably fat. Okay,
you know, okay, fine, So now you've got this whole
other sensibility. They were all making it up as they
went along.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Rock Biz lived and breathed the stones. For the second
week of July in nineteen seventy two, they sold out
four shows at three of the biggest and most storied
venues in La County, The Forum, the Long Beach Arena,
and the Hollywood Palladium. As the legendary disc jockey Wolfman
Jackson at the time, if Jesus Christ came to town, he
couldn't sell more tickets. But as far as Keith Richards
(17:23):
was concerned, it was just business as usual.
Speaker 9 (17:26):
I mean, when you get the twig in that that
I always sound sort of flashing, you know that.
Speaker 10 (17:30):
I mean, you really did you get used to it?
Speaker 9 (17:33):
You know what I mean? It still knocks me out
to set out a show in two hours flat. But
I don't feel that it's any particular milestone, you know,
because I've heard that story for the last ten years,
you know what I mean, And you do it. That's
what you like to do, you know, and still happens
to like to do it.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
You know.
Speaker 9 (17:55):
It's not that anybody's starting out to sort of make
milestones right front of this thing.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Seventeen year old Danny Sugarman's got no shirt, no shoes,
no wallet, no keys. The shirt went when he took
it off and stuck it in his back pocket. The shoes, wallet,
and keys disappeared some time later in the crush of
the crowd. But it's all right. In fact, it's a gas.
Danny's just seen the Rolling Stones at the Hollywood Palladium,
and he is knocked out, solid, gone man. He stands,
(18:38):
shoeless and barre chested in the lobby of the Beverly
Hills Hotel just past midnight, hoping to catch a glimpse
of his heroes. They were so good, man, so good,
he gushes to Robert Greenfield, the way they looked like
refugees from a clockwork orange that makeup. Tell me, man,
are they doing a lot of coke does make really
stuff socks down his underwear? Is it true? Man? His
(19:00):
enthusiasm is amusing, considering the Pladium shows generally seen as
pretty mediocre by STP standards. Thankfully, tour manager Peter Rudge's
worst fears go unrealized and the venue was not swarmed
by armed and hairy men on motorcycles. The worst they
had to contend with was a small but vocal group
of reactionaries marching up and down in front of the building,
(19:21):
chanting more Bible less rolling stones. More unnerving was the small,
strange looking man who arrived at the stage door, claiming
to be Brian Jones. The band's founding guitarists had been
dead nearly three years that summer. This strange apparition presented
a card establishing his credentials as a member of the
Church of Satan, a move that hardly endeared him to anybody.
(19:45):
Then he handed over a microphone, claiming that Mick had
asked him to bring it. The package was politely received
and then immediately placed into the nearest bucket of water
as soon as the man was out of sight. Aside
from this, the gig was nothing special. Even promoter Bill Graham,
prone to florid declarations of support for his acts, was
(20:05):
left underwhelmed.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
I was very sad that because it was a non event,
it was the weirdest thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It was a non event.
Speaker 11 (20:14):
It didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I can't figure it out that was supposed to be
the big thing in LA because I don't have the answer.
We all have a habit.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Anybody becomes a theoretician digital answer.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Why didn't come up?
Speaker 5 (20:25):
Nobody rioted, No helicopters came.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Back from the minute I got to it was a
non event.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But Danny Man, he was blown away. This is hardly
surprising considering Danny as a Stone super fan, He's already
worn out five copies of Sticky Fingers. Assuming that records
can be played at an average of a thousand times
before a serious degradation and sound quality begins to occur,
that means Danny has played this Stone's record more than
(20:54):
five thousand times, or ten times a day constantly since
it was released fourteen months earlier. Far out. Like Jeffrey
from Ancino, Danny worked hard for his tickets to see
The Stones, fourteen hours standing in line outside the Century
City shopping plaza yielded nothing, so he turned to scalpers.
But then he hit another snag. After heading to the
(21:16):
bank and withdrawing his life savings, he was devastated to
learn that the tickets were going for seventy five dollars each,
more than ten times their face value. So he resorted
to Plan C, spending an entire day on the phone
getting a hold of every Stones fan he knew, desperate
to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. Finally, after
parting with tickets to Jethro Toall led Zeppelin and The
(21:39):
Grateful Dead plus twelve new albums, I was going to
see the Stones. The acquisition made him quite popular with
his high school classmates. Even his crush from algebra class
was intrigued, the same one to be giving him the
cold shoulder for a year and a half. She sidled
up to him one day in the hallway and let
it slip that she knows he has Stones tickets and
(22:00):
if he wanted to ask her, she wouldn't say no.
Maybe they could get a bite to eat afterwards, and
after that, who knows. This sounds like a fantasy scenario
for Danny, but he turns her down. See he's got
to stay cool in front of her, and this is
just not possible. To a Stone's concert, He's gonna have
to scream and freak out, and she just can't be
(22:20):
a witness to that. Hell, she might even tell the
whole school about how he danced by himself in the aisles.
He didn't need that mark on his reputation, so he
went stagged. As it turns out, Danny will be going
to every one of the Stones concerts in La, the Palladium,
Long Beach, in the Forum, Why to see if they
deliver man, He tells Greenfield. One time he saw the
(22:43):
Dead play for six hours and he was high on
it for weeks. The Stones at their best are an
even greater peak. I've had my friends tell me about
Alice Cooper or the Faces, and I've seen him work,
he tells Greenfield. I've even dropped some Reds to listen
to Grand Funk Railroad and they were still terrible. But
the Stones man, every energy freak in LA is going
(23:03):
to turn out to see him. The Rolling Stones are
a solid decade older than Danny and his friends. This
is no small concern. There were fears in the lead
up to the tour that the band were past it
over the hill, ready to be put out the pasture.
To some, it's considered positively unseemly for men of their
advanced age to rock out on stage of the Forum
(23:24):
or Madison Square Garden. Remember, this was the era of
the ever widening generation gap, the time when kids wore
buttons bearing the slogan don't trust anyone over thirty. Now
the Stones were reaching that all important demarcation, and yet
their drawing power is stronger than it was when they
and their audience were peers. Keith Richards, for one, wasn't
(23:45):
surprised by the rapturous response and the string of sold
out shows.
Speaker 11 (23:51):
But it's always felt, always felt, I mean, all right,
you know the were the Beatles too, I mean always
felt they were at least equal with them drawing power
as you know, as far as audiences with his own,
and better than putting on a good show, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Charlie Watts has his own theory ast to why the
Stones still connect with young fans. Here he is discussing
it with Robert Greenfield back in nineteen seventy two, courtesy
of our friends at the Northwestern University Archives.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Age the age thing is, I mean you're twice as
old as we are, truly too.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
Well, you know, if somebody I mean kids, Yeah, I
don't know anything about the younger generation, but I don't
know what they're doing, you know. I often like what
they like. That's the funny thing about it. And as
I said, I don't know any other way you can
look at it.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Really. Danny's so hip that he even managed to speak
to Mick Jagger once. He stuck backstage at a t
Rex concert hoping to meet Mark Bowen, and there was
Mick leaning against the door jam, waiting for the action
he felt preordained, almost mythical. Danny tentatively approached him, like
(25:01):
a faithful pilgrim meeting his guru, finally able to ask
that one question that would help guide him through life. Hey, Mick,
If he ventures, hey, how do you keep your head together?
Mixed reply was instantaneous. I don't, man, this blows Danny's mind.
Mick is the man, the one above all else, and
(25:24):
he doesn't have it figured out either. It's just too much,
just too goddamn much. And there you have it. A
tossed off re mark, self deprecating, albeit truthful, becomes a
deeply meaningful co on to an la teenager. That's the
magic of Mick. A decade of lopsided social interactions has
made him exceedingly good at giving fans a little moment
(25:47):
to hold on to a treasured souvenir for the rest
of their lives. It's a skill one that the rest
of his bandmates, including Charlie Watts, could never be bothered with.
Cares a lord though.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
What he does, what he does please, and he puts
a lot of time that I couldn't be bothered to
grow into and I had nothing but admiration for that,
because it's not fun yet.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Throughout his career, Mick Jaggers displayed an uncanny knack for
being whatever the moment required, both on stage and off.
His image can change from a swaggering front man to
a sensitive little boy, to a cutthroat businessman, to a
manner born aristocrat to a rebel outlaw, to a father
figure for his tour crew, to a rough and ready
bluesman to a psychedelic London dandy. This chameleonic quality is
(26:41):
crucial to Mixed survival, allowing him to connect with everyone
from taxi drivers to Princess Margaret. He's a great poser
and role player, and he knows it.
Speaker 12 (26:51):
English paper are always brought up to get on with
everyone in every circumstance. I mean that's everyone. I mean
a plus everyone in that particular class group.
Speaker 10 (27:05):
And uh, I've always found it easy to get on
with most people.
Speaker 12 (27:09):
And I mean I've been involved with all that since
I started, you.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Know, ten years ago, more or less.
Speaker 10 (27:15):
I mean that, though I've had my sort of reactions
against it, and I've had my times when I thought
it was nice to dress up, you know, and uh,
it's very flashy clothes and be very fashionable and.
Speaker 7 (27:29):
And do all that in London, which I did for years,
you know, and actual.
Speaker 12 (27:33):
Fact, I mean, but I guess, I forguess because you know,
after coming from really a drab sort of background, you know,
it was kind of chic, you know, and then go
on the road.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Anyway. I was on the road for years. I never
did anything.
Speaker 12 (27:48):
I never spent a lot of time with any one
particular group of people talk I never do.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Some might view this method as inauthentic or even phony,
but it's the only way to hold it together when
you're on top of the mountain, a mountain made up
of money and people's lives, and you have final say
over every one and everything. You have to compartmentalize. By
way of example, consider the early days of July nineteen
sixty nine. On Wednesday, the second, Brian Jones is found
(28:24):
dead in the swimming pool of his country estate in Sussex,
the same home or author eight A. Milne had written
the Winnie the Pooh books. Jones has been a founding
member of the Rolling Stones, then he became a founding
member of the twenty seven Club. Though rumors of foul
play will dog Brian's end until the end of time,
(28:44):
the authorities officially rule it that most British of phrases
death by misadventure. The tragedy comes a month after he's
left the band. The night he dies, the Stones are
rehearsing with guitarist Mick Taylor, poached from John Mayle's bluesbrid
to be his replacement. There's simply no time. The morn
(29:05):
on Saturday, they're due to play their first concert in
two years. Massive free show in London's Hyde Park slated
the draw upwards of a quarter million people. It was
intended to be Mick Taylor's grand unveiling to the band's
fans now it was to be a tribute to Brian.
For Taylor a Stone for less than a month. He
(29:25):
was an inauspicious start to his tenure.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
I think we were already rehearsing and recording when we
heard about Brian's death.
Speaker 8 (29:33):
That's have really been strange.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
It was more strange for everybody else, because after all,
they'd known him for a long time, whereas I'd never
even met the guy before. I think it was a
bit strange for everybody because we'd only had about three
days rehearsal before then, and I was very nervous, as
everybody else was.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Brian died Wednesday night. The Stones learn of his death
on Thursday morning. They take a tea the appearance for
the British music show Top of the Pops that afternoon,
miming their way through their new single honky Tonk Woman,
the last Stone session Brian ever attended. The next day, Friday,
Mick Jagger wakes up with laryngitis. Rest isn't an option.
(30:16):
The next day he has to perform in Hyde Park.
If he doesn't, there'll be two hundred thousand angry youths
uprooting trees and draining the Serpentine. A documentary TV crew
shadows him from the moment he wakes up, following his
every move as a sixth singer prepares to play the
biggest show he's ever done. Kids from all over England
(30:37):
filter into the park until the crowds the size of
a small city. Mick opens the show by reading two
stanzas from Adende's Shelley's meditation on the death of his
friend John Keats. A ceremonial box of butterflies is opened.
Most died in transport, but the survivors flutter to the
sky in Brian's memory. Then the Stones get to work.
(30:59):
This is what they do. Next day, Sunday, Mick boards
a one o'clock plane for Australia, where he's scheduled to
film a starring role in the movie Ned Kelly. After
the grueling hours long flight, he's greeted at the airport
by a protest march. Angry Ausies are offended by the
notion of this convicted English long hair playing their national
(31:20):
folk hero. Two days later, barely a week after the
death of Brian Jones, Mix's girlfriend, the singer and actress
Mary N Faithful, attempts suicide by taking a few dozen
sleeping pills in the hotel room they shared in Sydney,
An unscrupulous journalist sneaks into the intensive care unit of
the hospital and takes her photo. When Jagger returns from
(31:42):
filming on location, he discovers her on the front page
of a newspaper, unconscious and in a coma. Back in England,
they're laying Brian Jones to his final rest, but throughout
the week, Jagger's on set, working, fulfilling his commitments. Hey Mick,
how do you keep your head together? We all want
(32:03):
to know. Brian's death marked the beginning of a horrific
string of casualties that would decimate rock's ranks by nineteen
seventy one. Robert Greenfield remembers that troubling time.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
That summer at nell Cut. Jim Marrison died, and of
course Janice and Jimmy had already died. That's earlier, and
again the level of death in rock and roll. You
know so many people who are at nell Cut not
with us anymore. That summer an incredible summer, but it
was his band. They didn't just lose a band member,
They lost the guy who they came together around, who
(32:41):
was the first star. Brian was the rock idol, and
he fell apart in front of their eyes.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
The group were under no illusions that without Brian Jones
there would have been no Rolling Stones. It was he
who formed the band, naming it after his favorite Muddy
Waters song. It was he who honed the early sound
in the style of the American R and B records.
He's so cherished before they found the manager. It was
he who rang up venues looking for gigs and signed
(33:11):
early contracts. He wasn't merely the leader of the band
for the first few years. He was the heart throw,
the spokesman, the guiding spirit, and the creative engine, and,
according to Bill Wyman, the virtuoso, experimenting with sounds from
Morocco and India as well as the American South.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
I think Brian had the bigger ambition to be a
big music a great musician.
Speaker 11 (33:35):
He was great, you know, Brian was great.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I didn't go what anybody says from was a very
good musician.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
You know, and.
Speaker 11 (33:45):
He had a lot of new things that nobody else had.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
He was the first bottomneck guitar player.
Speaker 11 (33:51):
I mean, nobody knew any about.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
The playing with a piece of metal and the guitar.
Speaker 11 (33:55):
You know, it was absurd.
Speaker 7 (33:56):
He was paying his post Italy stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
You know that Saint Tremolos.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Tremlos have been used for and not the way Brian played.
Speaker 10 (34:03):
And Brian played it like Bo Diddley did.
Speaker 11 (34:07):
I know he got it from America, but.
Speaker 10 (34:08):
He was unique in England, you know, And so he
could pick up any instrument and play.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
I can play it.
Speaker 11 (34:14):
I'm not saying that play gray v book.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Be able to use it in a recording off or whatever.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
He could just pick up a half full.
Speaker 7 (34:23):
Sized half and just get something out of a flute or.
Speaker 12 (34:32):
So.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Brian's death may have been shocking, it wasn't exactly a surprise.
The fragile guitarists have been slowly slipping away for two years,
retreating further and further into a cocoon of drugs. Most
of the time, he was too stone to attend sessions.
On the occasions when he did show up, he often
knotted off on the studio floor, driven to distraction by substances.
(34:55):
His bandmates would step in, thus exacerbating Brian's in security
and anxiety, which led him to self medicate with more drugs.
As far as Brian was concerned, everything he loved was
being taken away. He lost girlfriend Anita Pallenberg to Keith Richards,
and he lost the band, the Mick Jagger. As far
as McK and Keith were concerned, Brian just couldn't hack
(35:18):
it anymore.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
The thing about Mick and Keith, as much as I
revere them, they moved on like if you couldn't help
them anymore, you were in the rearview mirror and they
were never coming back to say hello again.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Charlie Watts was unapologetic about their decision the part ways
with Brian.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
I don't think you could function in the situation we
created for him.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
Too much pressure, so much responsibility.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
From the session, which is fundamentally obvious, because you ain't
gonna make a thing, ain't, do you know what I mean?
I think that's what they And they didn't want to
work amost all day?
Speaker 11 (36:00):
Want?
Speaker 8 (36:01):
What did he want? Just to gig occasionally or to
just work when he led a nightlight want?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
The dilemma was hardly unique to the Stones. By the
late sixties, the occupational hazards of rock and roll had
become clear, as drugs and burnout sapped the exuberance and
promise from many of the decades's brightest creative lights. Brian
Wilson had abdicated his role as the Beach Boys sonic architect,
preferring to work on side projects in his home studio
(36:30):
before ultimately retreating to his bedroom. Sid Barrett departed Pink Floyd, entirely,
living at the remainder of his days in the leafy
English suburb of Cambridge. Moby Grape co founder Skipped Spencer's
drug abuse was so bad that he wound up in
a morgue after overdosing, only to scare the mortician to
death by sitting up, removing his toe tag and asking
(36:51):
for a glass of water. Geene and Michael Clark fled
the Birds amidst stress and bad blood, and groundbreaking side
rocker Rocky Erickson the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, was sent to
a psychiatric hospital following an on stage breakdown. In nineteen
sixty eight, a pre famed David Bowie befriend at Vince Taylor,
an early British rock pioneer who had been reduced to
(37:12):
camping outside London subway stations, where he pointed out secret
alien bases on maps and told everyone who would listen
that he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ, sowing the
seeds for Bowie's City Stardust character and an early Fleetwood
Mac struggled to cope with the guitarists with a literal
Messiah complex, Beard and Robes.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
And all Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac. Peter Green was
a great guitarist. Then they moved on Michael Bloomfield and
Butterfield Blues Band. And again, you know what, in order
to be a survivor, you often have to be a
son of a bitch. And Mick and Keith could do
this because their path was clear and the cocaine and
(37:54):
the heroine. What they were doing was making music and
that's all they cared about.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
Somehow. That kept him alive.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
Yeah, also to living hard and Diane Young was a
big part of the the ethic.
Speaker 8 (38:08):
Fast beautiful shadow.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah, it was an ethic that was revered, romantic kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
According to Charlie Watts, Brian just wasn't equipped to handle
the fast living.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Thing that Brian was. He had a total misuse of
his body. Man, he didn't give a shit, you know,
he wasn't like Keith. He was a strong kids. Still
takes care of himself. But Brian had no fucking respect
for his bodily function at all. Unless I feeling ad
about Brian. Everything he did, though, was to he could drink.
(38:40):
Everything he did was to access and drums on excess people.
Speaker 8 (38:43):
But is that where the talent comes from? Too?
Speaker 5 (38:45):
Well, his talent, Brian's talent, he do He forgot.
Speaker 11 (38:48):
About it all.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
So Charlie was sure that firing Brian Jones was the
right decision for the band. As a friend, he remained
haunted by Brian's end and even wondered if they were
in some way responsible for it.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
I think we all destroyed Brian in what way?
Speaker 4 (39:04):
In what way?
Speaker 5 (39:06):
I think he did it, And I think we took
it away because he'd never turn up and it was
his fall, you know, it was his state of mind.
It was what he wanted. It must have been what
he wanted in a very direct way. It was what
he wanted to do was leave, you know. He didn't
want those influences. And I think Mick and Keith were
(39:27):
stronger than he was, and I don't think he could
cope with that. He was always a star, I mean, yeah,
he had tremendous ego. He all, you know, Keith got
a terrific ego. But I meant that I saw him
a few days before I lived up the road for
me at the house he lived in was very close
to mine.
Speaker 12 (39:43):
You know.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
I loved him a lot. I could have killed him,
and at times he was so objectionable. It's a really
he was one of those blokes man that you could
kill and love about love at relationship. I think anyone
involved with Brian it was a total love a relationship,
but my love was was a more and the night.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
The death of Brian Jones could have, and probably should
have been viewed by the Stones as a cautionary tale,
something that very easily could happen to any one of
them if they didn't keep their head and keep their
drug use in check. But no, the discussion of drug
abuse was not especially nuanced in the early seventies. Even
the most basic mental health concepts were largely unknown outside
(40:26):
of professional psychology circles. To the band, it all boiled
down to strength and weakness. Strength was what kept you alive,
not healthy decisions, and weakness killed you. Not addiction but basis.
Bill Wyman recognized the disturbing parallels between Brian Jones and
Keith both in terms of intake and the company they kept.
Speaker 8 (40:50):
I talked to Keith about a lot about the mind
is something he said, you.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Know, you could see if Brian Brian was around himself
that people who look sitting looking at the rug one.
Speaker 8 (40:59):
Said, are going to get and they rolled it up
and sold.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
And Keith saying a hundred sam things surrounded by those
kind of pets.
Speaker 8 (41:06):
And yet I don't know how good.
Speaker 10 (41:08):
Keith has been about you know, about people who are
really is exciting what Keith does.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Jim Morrison died in a bathtub in Paris and Keith
kept shooting heroine. They didn't see it, you know, the
drug keeps you from seeing it.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
The guy at the Palladium stage door claiming to be
Brian Jones was clearly a madman, but to the band
he seemed like a ghost one They desperately tried to
keep it bay. It was a reminder of what it
had cost to get where they were and the consequences
of the path they were on. How do you keep
(41:54):
your head together? Man? You don't. As the Stone's La
(42:15):
Visit continues, the concerts are seeing less is the main
event and more as rude interruptions of a long, continuing
party in the bars and big houses of Hollywood and
Beverly Hills. Party, Party, Party, the world is coming to
an end, and all the matters is where the next
drink is coming from the last of their two shows
at the Forum was livened up with a special guest,
(42:36):
an amazing looking woman. The stp Tax Squad met in
one of the red leather hotel bars Hotelling which one
she insists her name is Joy Bang, and styles herself
in the May West tradition with caked on makeup and
huge false eyelashes. No one's quite sure what to make
of her, but she's got character, so they put her
(42:57):
in a limo and send her out on stage to
present Mick with a bowl of rose pedals for the
Street Fighting Man finale. It probably seemed like a good
idea at the time. The best party of the La
dates took place at the home of Gary Stromberg, the
Stone's recently anointed public relations chief. He'd been absent thus
far on the tour, holding it down in his Sunset
(43:17):
Strip office while his business partner Bob Gibson made the trek.
But road Life didn't agree with Gibson, so he tapped
out and Gary subbed in. Gary's recovering from a case
a hepatitis and was warned by his doctor not to drink,
not to take drugs, and to get plenty of sleep.
Should he fail on any of those first three, he's
to take a vitamin B twelve shot. Gary will get
(43:40):
a lot of B twelve shots over the next few weeks.
He and his condom filled with cocaine fit in immediately.
He heralds his STP arrival with a rager at his
home in the Hollywood Hills, which gets so wild that
he's forced to call in security guards from a nearby
whiskey a go go club. It was a night few
could forget, and fewer still could remember.
Speaker 6 (44:02):
It was up in the Woodrow Wilson area of the
Hollywood Hills. I had this incredibly a miniature castle.
Speaker 7 (44:10):
I was living in. I don't know else to describe it.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
It was handmade by this one guy who died after
years of building this castle.
Speaker 7 (44:18):
It was an incredible place.
Speaker 6 (44:20):
Anyways, we had this party there and there must have
been one hundred people there, and after a while it
just turned into a sing along where everybody was singing.
I had a record player playing and people would sing
along with the lyrics of the various songs we were playing,
and then Bobby Womack and Willie Weeks showed up and
they played, and then we all started singing. I don't
(44:42):
know how I'd all evolved, but it went on to
the very late hours, like four o'clock.
Speaker 7 (44:47):
In the morning.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
I think everybody was singing. And what eventually happened was
it was like the last man standing.
Speaker 7 (44:53):
It was like what's that game you played? Musical chairs.
Speaker 6 (44:56):
I was the last guy who could still remember lyrics
to end.
Speaker 8 (45:00):
We're talking. Mick and Keith were there.
Speaker 7 (45:02):
Mick and Keith, hell you and they're singing along.
Speaker 8 (45:04):
They're singing harmony for you.
Speaker 7 (45:05):
Yes, that's what it ended up.
Speaker 6 (45:07):
And we were doing a lot of doop songs, which
are great for sing lungs. So my memory was that
the last song went on was in the still of
the night, and I knew all the lyrics and they
just sang along behind me. So I ended up with
a cassette because I was of a mind to record
this thing. Fortunately, but I've lost that cassette.
Speaker 8 (45:27):
Gary, can you sing No? No?
Speaker 6 (45:31):
But I'm enthusiastic about my even though I can't know
it's awful.
Speaker 7 (45:36):
Awful.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Gary's home had a notorious reputation even before the stp Rager.
It was steeped in seedy, no worry lore. For most
up and comers in the LA music scene. This was
a major selling point, and Gary was no exception.
Speaker 7 (45:53):
There was a ghost in my house.
Speaker 6 (45:54):
The guy who built the house died in the house,
and I was told when I rented the place that
his ghost was still inhabiting house. And I mean, it
sounds stupid because I don't believe in ghosts, but this.
Speaker 7 (46:06):
Guy was there. There was a dinner party that I
had on another night where there was a noise in
the kitchen.
Speaker 6 (46:12):
The kitchen was down a flight and I walked down
to my kitchen. All the burners on the stove on
four of them. Nobody that was in the house could
have done that had to have been the ghost. There
were noises that were just doors would open and stuff
that just were unexplainable. But it was a friendly ghost,
(46:33):
so that's what I was told. He was a friendly ghost.
He just wanted to make sure that you respected the property.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
I think this is a Robert Stone really great novels.
Nobody knows what comes out from under the decks of
those houses in the Hollywood Hills that night.
Speaker 6 (46:51):
Well, there was a spooky quality to living in Hollywood Hills,
that's for sure.
Speaker 7 (46:54):
My street had no street lights.
Speaker 6 (46:57):
You had to walk down probably seventy five stairs to
get to my place down at steep hillside. You'd hear
noises in the hills. Yeah, I was aware that it
was a kind of a freaky place to live. But
the Hollywood Hills always were the place of the people in.
Speaker 7 (47:14):
Certainly in the music business. So it was a spooky place.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
But having lived in Tapanga for almost a year is
the cost of doing business. You accepted this, and there
were crazy people at the shopping center there. It's never
been any different in these canyon hills.
Speaker 6 (47:31):
Yeah, there's a spooky quality to living in the hills
in the canyons. And a lot of the evil in
Los Angeles has occurred in the and a lot of
the artistry has occurred those places too. Laurel Canyon, there's
a lot of all the artistry that we know of
and love.
Speaker 8 (47:47):
They kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
They're like the dark side, light side, Maniche and the Split.
Speaker 8 (47:53):
They're one and the same. You know, if you look
at it that way.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
They feed off one another, and maybe the art is
a reaction to the darkness, but it's also a way
of expressing it.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
This was an era of paranoia, the anxious inverse of
the optimism at the dawn of the sixties. In those
happy days, anything seemed possible. Now, after the tumult of
the decade, anything seemed possible. Paul McCartney might be dead,
why not. Jimmy, Jim and Janis were not to mention Brian.
(48:28):
The CIA might have killed the president. Why not? The
Pentagon papers proved the State Department was lying to us
about Vietnam. What else are they hiding? Maybe the government
would try and kill us, why not? The National Guard
had just shot four students to death for peacefully protesting
at Kent State University. Reality was just as troubled as
(48:48):
the most way out conspiracy claim. No one was sure
what to believe, not even the Stones. So Keith.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Certain theories that I always found remarkable with a completely
straight face, and I was not about to argue with him.
He explained to me that this was not the original
Tina Turner, that Ike had murdered the original Tina Turner,
and this was well, I mean, Keith Richards is telling
(49:22):
me this, I'm not going to argue with him. That
was one which I found astonishing back then, and then
the last time I interviewed him on the phone. There's
no controlling Keith. Whatever the subject you begin on, you
will not end with. He's just gonna it's all coming
through his mind and out of the blue, all of
(49:44):
a sudden, Keith starts speaking about.
Speaker 8 (49:46):
I feel so bad about Phil Spectr.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Man.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Phil was in jail at that point for murder right,
And I said, do you want to give him a
cake with a file in it?
Speaker 8 (49:57):
He said, no, man a balm okay.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Phil Spector was just one of the most visible Hollywood PARANOIAX.
Los Angeles was full of weirdos of every stripe. Their
presence was unavoidable. They uneasily coexisted with the beautiful people
and the perfectly manicured lawns and freshly polished rolls royces.
The two worlds scraped against one another like a psychic
fault line, and the rumble was palpable throughout LA.
Speaker 6 (50:24):
There was an element of danger. I guess you could
say it was a very volatile city. This was always
a city of people that lived on the fringe, you know,
and this were people the dreamers that came to Alley
was known for it.
Speaker 7 (50:35):
You know, there was at the end of the country.
Speaker 6 (50:38):
This was the last stop, and so there was always
you know, the potential for violence and craziness that existed here.
We had the Hillside Strangler, we had a lot of
darkness previous to the seventy two tour that existed in
Los Angeles. We've always had serial murders that found residents here.
So it had an element of that. But the city,
(50:58):
I mean people, you know, I was born in I
kind of took that for granted. You know, it was
surprising that not all cities had that. You could go
somewhere else with it, but that wasn't you know, in
the background, So that was sure.
Speaker 7 (51:10):
That was the element of that.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
The culture quake finally occurred at one oh five oh
Colo Drive just after midnight on August ninth, nineteen sixty nine,
four twenty somethings, acting on orders from Charles Manson Creepy,
crawled their way into the Benedict Canyon home of actress
Sharon Tate, the wife of Blockbuster director Roman Polanski. Once inside,
(51:37):
they murdered Tate and three of her friends, men's hair
stylist Jay Sebring, Coffee Eirass, Abigail Folger, and boy ccheck Frakowski.
They also killed a teenager named Stephen parent stopped by
to visit the groundskeeper. They found him dead in his
car in the driveway. The butchery followed the next day,
(51:57):
when more Manson followers slaughtered middle class supermarket executive Lino
LaBianca and his wife Rosemary. The victims seemingly had nothing
to do with one another. They traveled in completely different
socioeconomic circles and lived in totally separate parts of the city.
The apparent randomness of the crime, to say nothing of
the brutality, put Los Angeles on high alert.
Speaker 3 (52:21):
So I was living here then I was living into Panga, right,
And the impact of the Manson murders were on the
star community bel Air Bev Hill's Hollywood stars who feared
all of a sudden that they're coming to get us,
right because Sharon Tate, you know, Roman Polanski.
Speaker 7 (52:40):
Was Bring the hairstylist.
Speaker 3 (52:42):
This is the A list film biz celeb right, and
a lot of those people bailed left and came back,
but left you know, got out of town nervous, and
even once the trials were going on, a lot of
Charlie's people were still on the street, and he was
into panga.
Speaker 8 (52:58):
You know.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
A friend of mine would be hitching and Charlie would
pick him up in him.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Charles Manson was something of a familiar face in the
La music scene. He harbored dreams of being a singer
and leached on to anyone who might further his ambition.
For a time, Manson lived with Dennis Wilson, the drummer
for the Beach Boys, who famously recorded one of his songs,
a pairing that perfectly sums up the lightness and darkness
of La in the late sixties. Dennis would take Manson
(53:30):
out clubbing the Whiskey of Go Go, where he no
doubt rubbed shoulders with countless other musical luminaries. Neil Young
would later admit to knowing Manson, as did cass Elliott
of the Mamas and the Papas and sly Stone. Many
others did as well, but they understandably preferred to keep
that association to themselves in the wake of his arrest.
To them, Manson just seemed like another hippie singer songwriter,
(53:54):
but image can't be trusted. Another musical figure of the
era who knew Charles Manson was Gary Stromberg, unbeknownst to
his friend Robert Greenfield.
Speaker 6 (54:06):
Do you know my Manson story? I produced the first
Manson album.
Speaker 8 (54:10):
I Have to Leave What's it called?
Speaker 7 (54:13):
Lie l I E.
Speaker 6 (54:15):
I was at Universal Studios. I had this friend named
Phil Kaufman. He managed Gram Parsons Burn's body of kidnapped
the body out of the cargo. But he was a
very good friend of mine. He got arrested for smuggling
marijuana from Mexico and was thrown into terminal Island here
and he was a cellmate of a guy named Charlie Manson.
(54:37):
And I would go see Phil in prison and write
to him, and he asked if I could get him
some acid. So I would drop acid onto stationary droplets and.
Speaker 7 (54:49):
Write letters to lick it.
Speaker 6 (54:51):
They'd cut it up into segments and they would he
would pass it around and Charlie got his acid for me.
But when Charlie was out, Phil knew he wanted to
get in the music business. And I was the only
one that Phil knew that was connected to the music
because I was under a contract at Universal Studios at
the time as a boy producer, and I had an
office at the Universal and they just started a record company.
(55:14):
So onto the Universal lot one day pulls Charlie up
in his bus with his girls. Oh really, Guard calls
my office and says, there's a guy here that says
he knows you tells me that story. Phil had told
me that Charlie would, you know, appreciate me helping him.
So I set up a meeting. Charlie comes in, brings guitar,
sits on my desk. He's playing music. He's just wild.
(55:37):
He's got these girls dancing around there all high. And
I call this guy, Russ Reagan, who was the head
of UNI Records. They had just started the label. So
there's a guy here that you know I think he
just listened to. He said, sure, bring him up. So
I went up to his office. Charlie Gunn sits on
his desk, starts playing music and Russ is looking at
me like what is this and Jan Russ, just out
(55:59):
of embarrassment, says, I'll give you money to do a demo.
Speaker 7 (56:02):
So he set up a demo.
Speaker 6 (56:03):
Charlie shows up in his bus with the girls and
He had come to my house a few nights to
prepare for this thing. And that's when I was married
to Chelsea Brown, beautiful black girl who at the time
didn't know, but Charlie had this whole idea that Armageddon
was going to be, you know, a race war, Helter skelter. Yeah,
(56:23):
So we did this session. They were all high on acid.
It was just ridiculous and I didn't know what I
was doing. I'm theoretically producing it, but there was an engineer.
It was just turning on and off the stuff. This
stuff was terrible and there was about five songs and
we stopped it and I took it up to Russ.
The next day. We listened to it and Russ said,
just get rid of this. This is terrible, and I did.
(56:44):
And Charlie got really upset with me because I wasn't
able to help him, and he tried to get me,
you know, to try other places, and I said, this
isn't me, that's not what I do, and Charlie we
just split up on bad terms.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
After striking out with Gary Stromberg, Manson attached himself to
music producer Terry Melcher, the son of Hollywood royalty Doris
Day Melcher had made a name for himself working with
The Birds and Paul Revere and the Raiders. He was
a good guy for a wannabe pop star to know,
and Manson pestered him about a recording contract. Like Gary,
(57:21):
Melcher held a demo session just to be polite, and
then gave him the slow fade. He was fairly confident
that Charles Manson didn't have what it took to reach
the top of the hit parade. Some of theorized that
Charlie's murderous turn in the summer of sixty nine had
less to do with half baked theories of a post
apocalyptic race war and more to do with his rage
(57:42):
at the Hollywood establishment for turning their back on him
and his talent. His true motive could never be determined
for certain, but during the time they worked together, Melcher
had lived at one five O Clo Drive, the same
address he told his followers to visit in August nineteen
sixty nine, acting them to kill everyone inside. So we
(58:02):
knew that Melcher had already moved out. His choice of
house likely wasn't a complete coincidence.
Speaker 6 (58:11):
He got with Melcher that all happened after I failed
him and when all of that shit went down with
taits and all, he got arrested. The FBI came to
me to inform me that when they had arrested Charlie,
they had found a list of people that he intended
to murder.
Speaker 7 (58:28):
And then I was on that list, and I tailed
it out of town. I went to Europe and just
hung out for how long a month or two how
long after it, and moved around. I was just afraid.
I kept I got a van and I just drove
all over Europe just fearing for my life.
Speaker 8 (58:44):
So you knew he was dangerous.
Speaker 6 (58:45):
I knew there were other guys that were still on
the street that weren't arrested. They were still part of
the Manson movement. I mean, I knew Charlie over the
course of a few months, so I knew, you know,
a little bit about him, and just him getting arrested
did not remove the threat.
Speaker 7 (59:00):
That I felt.
Speaker 6 (59:01):
So I just kept moving around in Europe for a
while until I felt it was safe.
Speaker 7 (59:05):
To come back.
Speaker 3 (59:13):
I am speechless. I have known dary S Trumper for
fifty years, never heard this. The only thing I can
contribute to this and this is back to you know,
everything that rises must converge. The same is true about
everything that sinks. And at one point Timothy Leary found
himself in solitary at fulsome prison for marijuana bus but
(59:37):
everything aggravated by his behavior in court and being Timothy Leary.
And it was a tapping on the wall and voice said,
I've been waiting a long time for you to get here.
Tim Manson was in the next cell. So it all
kind of I don't know. I mean, what this speaks
to is the outer edge of rock and roll and
the insanity that always lies behind the curtain here. Yeah,
(01:00:01):
you want to talk about the guy from the thirteenth
floor elevators. You want to talk about Sid Barrett, you
want to talk about Peter Green. I could make a list.
Speaker 7 (01:00:08):
You know, Sympathy for the Devil.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Well, thank you for linking it all together, you know.
But Jagger comes to that song from The Master and
the Margarita, a book he read. You know, Jagger is
an artist, a real artist who's able to draw on
other art. But there are other people, as Gary has
just said in this quote unquote business, who are on
(01:00:32):
not just on the edge of madness, who are legit
completely crazy. We're not really off topic, because psychosis and
rock and roll is like an environmental hazard. You know
it's there, it's real.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
The Stones used la as a home base while they
played gigs throughout the Southwest. The usual madness followed in
their wake. What was headline news on the first few
tour stops now seem predictable and even dull. There's street
fighting in San Diego as the kids and cops do
battle in the street. Rocks and molotov cocktails are thrown Yawn.
(01:01:11):
There's tear gas and Tucson, when hundreds of fans act
up after realizing they've been sold phony tickets by particularly
nasty scalpers. A police report is waiting for them in Albuquerque,
informing them that a major riot is feared, so three
separate law enforcement agencies are called in. Ironically, nothing much happens.
(01:01:32):
When the plane leaves after the concert that night, it
turns north for the first time, towards Denver and the
open road. There's six weeks of full throttle trucking ahead,
and there's no way of saying what's out there. California's
been good, but as Jagger says, California doesn't have anything
to do with the rest of America does it. That's
(01:01:52):
as good an assessment as any. It's its own unique place,
reflecting back your deepest fantasies, whatever they may be. But
somehow unknowable, no wonder Mickfield's so at home there for
years has provided the image of America to the rest
of the world. But it's never been the real thing.
(01:02:13):
As Mick says to Robert Greenfield as their plane takes off,
the truth of it is the tour hasn't even really started.
Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Stone's Touring Party has written and hosted by Jordan Runton,
co executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan Runton, Edited
and sound designed by Noel Brown and Michael Alder June.
Original music composed and performed by Michael Alder June and
Noel Brown, with additional instruments performed by Chris Suarez, Nick
John's Cooper, and Josh Than. Vintage Rolling Stones audio the
(01:02:56):
courtesy of the Robert Greenfield Archive at the Charles Deering
mcam Library and special Collections in Northwestern University Libraries.
Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows,
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome Back to Los Angeles. It's Spring nineteen seventy two.
Tickets for the Rolling Stones Tour of North America are
minutes away from going on sale. If figures from other
cities or any indication competition will be fierce. In Detroit,
there were one hundred and twenty thousand requests for twelve
thousand seats. In Chicago, thirty four thousand tickets sell out
(00:28):
in just five and a half hours. There was a
similar story in San Francisco where people stood outside the
ticket office all day and got nothing but disappointment. All
is to say, most people in line at the Tepanga
Plaza shopping center waiting for the ticketron counter to open
are well aware that he'll probably walk away empty handed,
(00:48):
But Jeffrey from Encino's prepared to get creative. This enterprising
young freak is determined to get satisfaction. He's been camped
out since the night before, along with about two hundred
other kids, bundled in sleeping bags and blankets. But even
these extreme measures might not be enough. You see, the
ticket window can be found within a large department store,
(01:09):
and the employees are given early access. In other words,
they could just rock up and cut the line. To
Jeffrey from Encino, that just doesn't seem fair to everyone
who just used the pavement for a pillow. To fight
this injustice, Jeffrey from Encino's about to go undercover. A
half hour before the ticketron window opens. He changes into
(01:31):
a clean white shirt and tie. I'm carefully smoothing out
the wrinkles. He marches through a door on the side
of the building, mark employees, I'm in personnel. He aily
informs the guard and makes it three steps into the
store before some sour faced lady at the desk kisses
young man, I'm in personnel and I've never seen you before.
(01:51):
The guard puts the collar on Jeffrey from Encino and
shows them the door. The crowd outside, still bleary eyed
in their sleeping bags, cheer them on. I see him
being pushed out the door by a guard. Gotta give
a fellow stones Van credit for triumph pitchin. Someone yells out,
way to go, man yells another. But Jeffrey from Mencino
(02:11):
isn't giving up that easily. Enlisting the help of two
fellow freaks, he sneaks around the far side of the
building to a heavy iron grate. Together they lift it
high enough for Jeffrey from Mencino to wiggle under and
slip down a back stairway. It looks like he's made
it this time, until the stairway brings him out right
by the desk where the same old, sour faced lady
(02:32):
from Personnel is sitting. She sees Jeffrey and yells for
a guard to throw him out. More cheers from the sidewalk. Hey,
it's that dude again, someone in the crowd shouts, far out, brother,
it's nine point thirty, a half hour before the window opens.
It's hot already, and the unsmuged sunshine makes everything look
(02:56):
worn and dead. Jeffrey from Mencino's enraged. He knows that
somebody's in there, already cutting a corner and waiting online
for tickets ahead of him. At this very minute. He's
being ripped off, and he hates it, so he tries
the other side of the building, where he finds another
movable grape. Up it goes and Jeffery from Encino's in
(03:17):
and under and down a back stairway that opens out
into the boys department. He's nervous, no telling what the
sour faced lady will do if she catches him. This time,
desperate to blend in, he makes like a floor walker
and starts straightening out a pile of Levi's. Then he
sees it a plastic name tag, presumably belonging to some
(03:38):
salesman or clerk who left it there at closing time.
Jeffery from Encino takes the name plate and clips it
into his pocket. For the first time all day, he's legal.
With renewed confidence, he takes the escalator down to the
ticket tron booth. There are already eight people on line there,
all suspicions confirmed. Company's got the fix in for its
(04:01):
own employees. All these poor kids who've been outside for
anywhere from ten to sixteen hours are being ripped off. Jeez,
he thinks you have to be a criminal in America
these days just to stay even. Who's that One lady
in front of Jeffrey from Mensino suddenly says to another,
I've never seen him before. These women are clearly not
(04:22):
fans of the Stones and are definitely just getting tickets
for their grand nieces or something. And they're clearly not
fans of his either. And Jeffrey from Mensino can feel
the bust coming. He starts to sweat. Oh, he says,
charming as can be, lying through his teeth. I work
in the boys department. I started last week. Well, the
ladies are hemming and hauling over that one. They're about
(04:45):
to go for a guard, but a long hair in
front of him says, hey, he's okay. I know the
guy he works in shirts. The two ladies relax, the
bust is postponed, and Jeffrey smiles gratefully to the fellow
freak who pulled them out. Ten o'clock. Now the building's
officially open. Buzzers go off and the door is unlocked,
(05:05):
and that's when it happens. Jeffrey from Encino feels it
as much as he hears it, thundering across the building
towards him and the tickeatron counter. It gets louder with
each passing second. Then he sees them, the horde of
freaks who will not be denied, hauling through the furniture department,
pounding past shells of cut glass decanters and wooden salad bulls,
(05:28):
running up the down escalators, tearing away the rope from
in front of the ticketron Pooth and obliterating the line
for the first time all day. Jeffrey from Encino feels fear.
But by the time the thundering stops and the crowd
starts milling around and shouting at the Tikeatron, Lady Jeffrey
(05:49):
from Encino has the situation in hand in his palm.
To be exact, four tickets to the Stones at the
LA Forum there is. That story comes courtesy of Robert Greenfield,
the legendary rock journalist, was the dedicated Stones correspondent for
Rolling Stone Magazine as the twenty something in the early seventies.
(06:13):
He was in LA and witnessed the MAVs scrambled to
obtain tickets to the Exile on Main Street tour in
the spring of seventy two. He was also there in
June when the tour rolled through town. This was a
big one for the band. La was the dark heart
of the music world, where everything was beautiful, but nothing
was quite what it seemed. The crimes of Charles Manson
(06:34):
and a so called family less than three years earlier
it brought that point home. To all appearances, they were
a merry band of musical free spirits, pointing the way
to a more tolerant and free way of life. Yet
they proved capable of unspeakable acts of savagery. It was
all about image in La an image can't be trusted.
(06:57):
Up to this point of the tour, the band did
worry about the Hell's Angels, fearing that the bikers would
launch a retaliatory attack for the disaster at Altamont. But
here the killers could be anyone. Many ghosts would emerge
from the Hollywood Hills during the Stones visit, including the
Specter of Death. In addition to Greenfield and has never
(07:20):
before heard tapes of the Stones in their seventies exile
Eraic Glory will be joined by his friend and fellow
STP tour mate Gary Stromberg, the band's pr soprimo, who's
represented a whole jukebox of the twentieth century's greatest artists.
What's more, he also had a terrifyingly close encounter with
Hollywood's most notorious madman. My name's Jordan Runtag. And this
(07:45):
is the Stones touring party for the Rolling Stones. Being
in la isn't like being the road at all. This
was where Exile on Main Street was completed just a
few months before and where the tour had been meticulously plauded. Hell,
(08:08):
they just left from here less than a week earlier,
probably felt like dejav who. Many of the entourage forgo hotels,
opting to stay in their own houses instead. As far
as Robert Greenfield was concerned, Los Angeles was the stp hometown.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Stones always liked La. They'd lived here before. Remember Mick
had that house up in the hills with the pool
sixty nine. They had lived here in sixty nine, okay,
and so they were comfortable here. They came here early.
The whiskey and the strip, I mean, this was legend
to them. They like going to the Apollo. They understood
the Sun's hit strip. It was iconic.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The Rolling Stones always had an oversized place in their
hearts for Los Angeles. To them, it was the gateway
to a America. This was pop culture ground zero, the
birthplace of movies and media from which they and their
English peers pieced together a fantastical picture of the United States.
Compared to gray, deprived postwar Britain. It seemed like the
(09:16):
promised land, far off, magical place where everything was colorful
and larger than life. Superman, Coca Cola Frank Sinatra, Mickey
Mouse and hot dogs. America produced a ceaseless flood of stars, styles,
and trends, and the US economic boom made even everyday
life seem impossibly glamorous. Big cars with big fins, big
(09:39):
houses with big lawns, and big television sets with the
biggest celebrities. For Brits, America seemed cooler, richer, and a
hell of a lot more fun than anything they had.
This America existed more in the mind than on the map.
They'd figure that out later. Hollywood didn't have the same
(10:01):
sort of luster for local Los Angelos. La made fantasy
food for the world and created stars who were the
physical embodiments of that fantasy. But familiarity breeds contempt, and
those closest to the fantasy making process had few illusions
about it all. They always knew which grade star was
a junkie, a gambling addict, or a philanderer, or whatever
(10:24):
your imagination deems worse Hollywood hype had sold a lot
of things, but more than anything else, it sold the
image of America to the rest of the world. An
image can't be trusted, but still. Guitarist Mick Taylor remembered
his childlike excitement during his first trip to the States.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Most English kids of my age had sort of fantasies
about the where America was, you know, through the movie Is,
through television and classive fact that American music was what
we admired most of all and what we were most
influenced by. So it was like a dream come true
the first time I went there.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Despite its disturbing reputation for violence both international and domestic,
America continued doing trance. The Stones drummer Charlie Watts freely
admitted that the prospect of traveling through the States on
the STP tour scared.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
The hell out of him, But speaking of Robert Greenfield
in nineteen seventy two, he admitted a deep affection for
the place.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Here he is courtesy of our friends at the Northwestern
University Archives.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
I always loved the American I always loved American people.
I am a product of America. I'm as English as
anybody in a funny sense. You know, my life is
not run like an American. My own doesn't look like
an American. It's a typical English owned you know, I
mean with a tea but Georgian silver, all that shit.
I'm not American. I hate those fucking Hollywood owns. I
(11:53):
go to them that the same thing, curiosity showing like
a mansion. I'll go look at all those pools, man,
they really are lovely. If I don't live there, it's
not me. But I am a product of America. I
totally am purely by what I do and what my
interests are. My interests are firstly visual art graphics, which
(12:14):
was when I was younger, you know I'm doing. It
was all American. It was totally American closed. I used
to fucking go crazy about Ivy League.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
I still do.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
I thought all I wear man is a fucking Ivy
League suit. To me, the only music in the world
was black. American still is in a way, funny way,
but I mean it's all based around there. I'm a
total American product.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
They adored America as a whole, but La was a
special kind of thrill. They'd loved it since they first
arrived in the mid sixties. It was here that they
recorded their Immortal Satisfaction in nineteen sixty five. The place
had always been good to them, and the music coming
from here inspired them, especially the country rock sound pioneered
by Keith Richards one time, Nelcott House guest, Graham Party
(13:00):
and the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Here's what the Stones were always aware of. When they
played San Francisco, they knew where they were. When they
played Nashville, they knew where they were. When they played
la they knew they were in the heart of the Beast.
They knew that the business was here, but they also
knew how much music was being made here. This is
Laurel Canyon at its peak. Basically, they're all still up there.
Mama Cass and the Eagles were breaking. Why did they
(13:25):
play the Palladium? Because of the Burritos, because of Graham.
They loved that music La Country.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The golden days of Hollywood were long gone by the
summer of seventy two, with the movies having given way
to pop music and pro sports as America's primary fantasy
ob sessions. As a result, a new kind of star
had come along, the rock star. Since musicians had always
been considered outside the lawlessness became part of the ara.
(13:55):
The Rolling Stones, with a bona fide criminal record, fit
the bill so many the rock star was more potent
than any silver screen idol because they lived everyone's fantasy
life right out in the open where it could be
picked at and discussed. As one Stone's associate once said,
rock stars are groovy because they smoke more cigarettes, take
(14:17):
more dope, drink more whiskey, stay up later, and have
sex more frequently and in odder positions than most people do.
In other words, impost everything bizarro America. They do the
things that everybody wants to do. That's the illusion at least,
and illusion is an LA industry. It's all part of
what we'll call rock biz, a youthful and exuberant subsection
(14:40):
of the music business. The rock biz headquarters is the
Sunset Strip, America's main street of hype and promotion, where
Dick Clark and Phil Specter are across the street Neighbors
and Tower Records, the so called largest record store in
the known world, is the closest thing to a true
community center that LA has a relatively phenomenon. The rock
(15:01):
biz is perfectly LA and totally American. It's transitory, hard, cruel,
and full of paranoia, with such extreme rewards for those
willing to accept its challenge and go out on the
edge to make it. Gary Stromberg explains.
Speaker 6 (15:18):
Careers were made in LA and that was simply put,
unlike anywhere else in media, all of the music business
generated from Los Angeles, New York was distant second when
it came to generating the careers of artists. And you know,
it had this legendary reputation and these guys were very
well aware of it, and I knew how to deal
(15:38):
with it.
Speaker 7 (15:39):
They were very good at dealing with it.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
The other thing that was going on at that point
in time in terms of this business that Gary was
part of creating, was that there had never been a
David Geffen and Elliott Roberts before, who were Joni's manager.
And then we don't have to tell you what David
Geffen was, you know, And so you know, the music business.
Initially record business was much like the movie business. The
(16:02):
immigrants of Samuel Goldwin Louis Mayer grew up in the street,
came from nothing and created the movie business. Okay, and
kind of the record companies certainly were in the fifties,
the independent labels. But then around this era in the
late sixties, Laurel Canyon in the early seventies, you have
(16:22):
another thing going on. You have these great artists Jackson
Brown and Joony you know, like asylum records, and the
young people are taking over this business, and the artists
are managed by people their same age as them.
Speaker 8 (16:38):
That's unheard of.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
All the folkies were managed by Manny Greenhill. He was
you know, Joan Diaz and Albert Grossman and Dylan your
manager was fifty five years old and probably fat. Okay,
you know, okay, fine, So now you've got this whole
other sensibility. They were all making it up as they
went along.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Rock Biz lived and breathed the stones. For the second
week of July in nineteen seventy two, they sold out
four shows at three of the biggest and most storied
venues in La County, The Forum, the Long Beach Arena,
and the Hollywood Palladium. As the legendary disc jockey Wolfman
Jackson at the time, if Jesus Christ came to town, he
couldn't sell more tickets. But as far as Keith Richards
(17:23):
was concerned, it was just business as usual.
Speaker 9 (17:26):
I mean, when you get the twig in that that
I always sound sort of flashing, you know that.
Speaker 10 (17:30):
I mean, you really did you get used to it?
Speaker 9 (17:33):
You know what I mean? It still knocks me out
to set out a show in two hours flat. But
I don't feel that it's any particular milestone, you know,
because I've heard that story for the last ten years,
you know what I mean, And you do it. That's
what you like to do, you know, and still happens
to like to do it.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
You know.
Speaker 9 (17:55):
It's not that anybody's starting out to sort of make
milestones right front of this thing.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Seventeen year old Danny Sugarman's got no shirt, no shoes,
no wallet, no keys. The shirt went when he took
it off and stuck it in his back pocket. The shoes, wallet,
and keys disappeared some time later in the crush of
the crowd. But it's all right. In fact, it's a gas.
Danny's just seen the Rolling Stones at the Hollywood Palladium,
and he is knocked out, solid, gone man. He stands,
(18:38):
shoeless and barre chested in the lobby of the Beverly
Hills Hotel just past midnight, hoping to catch a glimpse
of his heroes. They were so good, man, so good,
he gushes to Robert Greenfield, the way they looked like
refugees from a clockwork orange that makeup. Tell me, man,
are they doing a lot of coke does make really
stuff socks down his underwear? Is it true? Man? His
(19:00):
enthusiasm is amusing, considering the Pladium shows generally seen as
pretty mediocre by STP standards. Thankfully, tour manager Peter Rudge's
worst fears go unrealized and the venue was not swarmed
by armed and hairy men on motorcycles. The worst they
had to contend with was a small but vocal group
of reactionaries marching up and down in front of the building,
(19:21):
chanting more Bible less rolling stones. More unnerving was the small,
strange looking man who arrived at the stage door, claiming
to be Brian Jones. The band's founding guitarists had been
dead nearly three years that summer. This strange apparition presented
a card establishing his credentials as a member of the
Church of Satan, a move that hardly endeared him to anybody.
(19:45):
Then he handed over a microphone, claiming that Mick had
asked him to bring it. The package was politely received
and then immediately placed into the nearest bucket of water
as soon as the man was out of sight. Aside
from this, the gig was nothing special. Even promoter Bill Graham,
prone to florid declarations of support for his acts, was
(20:05):
left underwhelmed.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
I was very sad that because it was a non event,
it was the weirdest thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It was a non event.
Speaker 11 (20:14):
It didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I can't figure it out that was supposed to be
the big thing in LA because I don't have the answer.
We all have a habit.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Anybody becomes a theoretician digital answer.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Why didn't come up?
Speaker 5 (20:25):
Nobody rioted, No helicopters came.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Back from the minute I got to it was a
non event.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But Danny Man, he was blown away. This is hardly
surprising considering Danny as a Stone super fan, He's already
worn out five copies of Sticky Fingers. Assuming that records
can be played at an average of a thousand times
before a serious degradation and sound quality begins to occur,
that means Danny has played this Stone's record more than
(20:54):
five thousand times, or ten times a day constantly since
it was released fourteen months earlier. Far out. Like Jeffrey
from Ancino, Danny worked hard for his tickets to see
The Stones, fourteen hours standing in line outside the Century
City shopping plaza yielded nothing, so he turned to scalpers.
But then he hit another snag. After heading to the
(21:16):
bank and withdrawing his life savings, he was devastated to
learn that the tickets were going for seventy five dollars each,
more than ten times their face value. So he resorted
to Plan C, spending an entire day on the phone
getting a hold of every Stones fan he knew, desperate
to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. Finally, after
parting with tickets to Jethro Toall led Zeppelin and The
(21:39):
Grateful Dead plus twelve new albums, I was going to
see the Stones. The acquisition made him quite popular with
his high school classmates. Even his crush from algebra class
was intrigued, the same one to be giving him the
cold shoulder for a year and a half. She sidled
up to him one day in the hallway and let
it slip that she knows he has Stones tickets and
(22:00):
if he wanted to ask her, she wouldn't say no.
Maybe they could get a bite to eat afterwards, and
after that, who knows. This sounds like a fantasy scenario
for Danny, but he turns her down. See he's got
to stay cool in front of her, and this is
just not possible. To a Stone's concert, He's gonna have
to scream and freak out, and she just can't be
(22:20):
a witness to that. Hell, she might even tell the
whole school about how he danced by himself in the aisles.
He didn't need that mark on his reputation, so he
went stagged. As it turns out, Danny will be going
to every one of the Stones concerts in La, the Palladium,
Long Beach, in the Forum, Why to see if they
deliver man, He tells Greenfield. One time he saw the
(22:43):
Dead play for six hours and he was high on
it for weeks. The Stones at their best are an
even greater peak. I've had my friends tell me about
Alice Cooper or the Faces, and I've seen him work,
he tells Greenfield. I've even dropped some Reds to listen
to Grand Funk Railroad and they were still terrible. But
the Stones man, every energy freak in LA is going
(23:03):
to turn out to see him. The Rolling Stones are
a solid decade older than Danny and his friends. This
is no small concern. There were fears in the lead
up to the tour that the band were past it
over the hill, ready to be put out the pasture.
To some, it's considered positively unseemly for men of their
advanced age to rock out on stage of the Forum
(23:24):
or Madison Square Garden. Remember, this was the era of
the ever widening generation gap, the time when kids wore
buttons bearing the slogan don't trust anyone over thirty. Now
the Stones were reaching that all important demarcation, and yet
their drawing power is stronger than it was when they
and their audience were peers. Keith Richards, for one, wasn't
(23:45):
surprised by the rapturous response and the string of sold
out shows.
Speaker 11 (23:51):
But it's always felt, always felt, I mean, all right,
you know the were the Beatles too, I mean always
felt they were at least equal with them drawing power
as you know, as far as audiences with his own,
and better than putting on a good show, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Charlie Watts has his own theory ast to why the
Stones still connect with young fans. Here he is discussing
it with Robert Greenfield back in nineteen seventy two, courtesy
of our friends at the Northwestern University Archives.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Age the age thing is, I mean you're twice as
old as we are, truly too.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
Well, you know, if somebody I mean kids, Yeah, I
don't know anything about the younger generation, but I don't
know what they're doing, you know. I often like what
they like. That's the funny thing about it. And as
I said, I don't know any other way you can
look at it.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Really. Danny's so hip that he even managed to speak
to Mick Jagger once. He stuck backstage at a t
Rex concert hoping to meet Mark Bowen, and there was
Mick leaning against the door jam, waiting for the action
he felt preordained, almost mythical. Danny tentatively approached him, like
(25:01):
a faithful pilgrim meeting his guru, finally able to ask
that one question that would help guide him through life. Hey, Mick,
If he ventures, hey, how do you keep your head together?
Mixed reply was instantaneous. I don't, man, this blows Danny's mind.
Mick is the man, the one above all else, and
(25:24):
he doesn't have it figured out either. It's just too much,
just too goddamn much. And there you have it. A
tossed off re mark, self deprecating, albeit truthful, becomes a
deeply meaningful co on to an la teenager. That's the
magic of Mick. A decade of lopsided social interactions has
made him exceedingly good at giving fans a little moment
(25:47):
to hold on to a treasured souvenir for the rest
of their lives. It's a skill one that the rest
of his bandmates, including Charlie Watts, could never be bothered with.
Cares a lord though.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
What he does, what he does please, and he puts
a lot of time that I couldn't be bothered to
grow into and I had nothing but admiration for that,
because it's not fun yet.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Throughout his career, Mick Jaggers displayed an uncanny knack for
being whatever the moment required, both on stage and off.
His image can change from a swaggering front man to
a sensitive little boy, to a cutthroat businessman, to a
manner born aristocrat to a rebel outlaw, to a father
figure for his tour crew, to a rough and ready
bluesman to a psychedelic London dandy. This chameleonic quality is
(26:41):
crucial to Mixed survival, allowing him to connect with everyone
from taxi drivers to Princess Margaret. He's a great poser
and role player, and he knows it.
Speaker 12 (26:51):
English paper are always brought up to get on with
everyone in every circumstance. I mean that's everyone. I mean
a plus everyone in that particular class group.
Speaker 10 (27:05):
And uh, I've always found it easy to get on
with most people.
Speaker 12 (27:09):
And I mean I've been involved with all that since
I started, you.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Know, ten years ago, more or less.
Speaker 10 (27:15):
I mean that, though I've had my sort of reactions
against it, and I've had my times when I thought
it was nice to dress up, you know, and uh,
it's very flashy clothes and be very fashionable and.
Speaker 7 (27:29):
And do all that in London, which I did for years,
you know, and actual.
Speaker 12 (27:33):
Fact, I mean, but I guess, I forguess because you know,
after coming from really a drab sort of background, you know,
it was kind of chic, you know, and then go
on the road.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Anyway. I was on the road for years. I never
did anything.
Speaker 12 (27:48):
I never spent a lot of time with any one
particular group of people talk I never do.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Some might view this method as inauthentic or even phony,
but it's the only way to hold it together when
you're on top of the mountain, a mountain made up
of money and people's lives, and you have final say
over every one and everything. You have to compartmentalize. By
way of example, consider the early days of July nineteen
sixty nine. On Wednesday, the second, Brian Jones is found
(28:24):
dead in the swimming pool of his country estate in Sussex,
the same home or author eight A. Milne had written
the Winnie the Pooh books. Jones has been a founding
member of the Rolling Stones, then he became a founding
member of the twenty seven Club. Though rumors of foul
play will dog Brian's end until the end of time,
(28:44):
the authorities officially rule it that most British of phrases
death by misadventure. The tragedy comes a month after he's
left the band. The night he dies, the Stones are
rehearsing with guitarist Mick Taylor, poached from John Mayle's bluesbrid
to be his replacement. There's simply no time. The morn
(29:05):
on Saturday, they're due to play their first concert in
two years. Massive free show in London's Hyde Park slated
the draw upwards of a quarter million people. It was
intended to be Mick Taylor's grand unveiling to the band's
fans now it was to be a tribute to Brian.
For Taylor a Stone for less than a month. He
(29:25):
was an inauspicious start to his tenure.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
I think we were already rehearsing and recording when we
heard about Brian's death.
Speaker 8 (29:33):
That's have really been strange.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
It was more strange for everybody else, because after all,
they'd known him for a long time, whereas I'd never
even met the guy before. I think it was a
bit strange for everybody because we'd only had about three
days rehearsal before then, and I was very nervous, as
everybody else was.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Brian died Wednesday night. The Stones learn of his death
on Thursday morning. They take a tea the appearance for
the British music show Top of the Pops that afternoon,
miming their way through their new single honky Tonk Woman,
the last Stone session Brian ever attended. The next day, Friday,
Mick Jagger wakes up with laryngitis. Rest isn't an option.
(30:16):
The next day he has to perform in Hyde Park.
If he doesn't, there'll be two hundred thousand angry youths
uprooting trees and draining the Serpentine. A documentary TV crew
shadows him from the moment he wakes up, following his
every move as a sixth singer prepares to play the
biggest show he's ever done. Kids from all over England
(30:37):
filter into the park until the crowds the size of
a small city. Mick opens the show by reading two
stanzas from Adende's Shelley's meditation on the death of his
friend John Keats. A ceremonial box of butterflies is opened.
Most died in transport, but the survivors flutter to the
sky in Brian's memory. Then the Stones get to work.
(30:59):
This is what they do. Next day, Sunday, Mick boards
a one o'clock plane for Australia, where he's scheduled to
film a starring role in the movie Ned Kelly. After
the grueling hours long flight, he's greeted at the airport
by a protest march. Angry Ausies are offended by the
notion of this convicted English long hair playing their national
(31:20):
folk hero. Two days later, barely a week after the
death of Brian Jones, Mix's girlfriend, the singer and actress
Mary N Faithful, attempts suicide by taking a few dozen
sleeping pills in the hotel room they shared in Sydney,
An unscrupulous journalist sneaks into the intensive care unit of
the hospital and takes her photo. When Jagger returns from
(31:42):
filming on location, he discovers her on the front page
of a newspaper, unconscious and in a coma. Back in England,
they're laying Brian Jones to his final rest, but throughout
the week, Jagger's on set, working, fulfilling his commitments. Hey Mick,
how do you keep your head together? We all want
(32:03):
to know. Brian's death marked the beginning of a horrific
string of casualties that would decimate rock's ranks by nineteen
seventy one. Robert Greenfield remembers that troubling time.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
That summer at nell Cut. Jim Marrison died, and of
course Janice and Jimmy had already died. That's earlier, and
again the level of death in rock and roll. You
know so many people who are at nell Cut not
with us anymore. That summer an incredible summer, but it
was his band. They didn't just lose a band member,
They lost the guy who they came together around, who
(32:41):
was the first star. Brian was the rock idol, and
he fell apart in front of their eyes.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
The group were under no illusions that without Brian Jones
there would have been no Rolling Stones. It was he
who formed the band, naming it after his favorite Muddy
Waters song. It was he who honed the early sound
in the style of the American R and B records.
He's so cherished before they found the manager. It was
he who rang up venues looking for gigs and signed
(33:11):
early contracts. He wasn't merely the leader of the band
for the first few years. He was the heart throw,
the spokesman, the guiding spirit, and the creative engine, and,
according to Bill Wyman, the virtuoso, experimenting with sounds from
Morocco and India as well as the American South.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
I think Brian had the bigger ambition to be a
big music a great musician.
Speaker 11 (33:35):
He was great, you know, Brian was great.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I didn't go what anybody says from was a very
good musician.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
You know, and.
Speaker 11 (33:45):
He had a lot of new things that nobody else had.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
He was the first bottomneck guitar player.
Speaker 11 (33:51):
I mean, nobody knew any about.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
The playing with a piece of metal and the guitar.
Speaker 11 (33:55):
You know, it was absurd.
Speaker 7 (33:56):
He was paying his post Italy stuff.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
You know that Saint Tremolos.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Tremlos have been used for and not the way Brian played.
Speaker 10 (34:03):
And Brian played it like Bo Diddley did.
Speaker 11 (34:07):
I know he got it from America, but.
Speaker 10 (34:08):
He was unique in England, you know, And so he
could pick up any instrument and play.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
I can play it.
Speaker 11 (34:14):
I'm not saying that play gray v book.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Be able to use it in a recording off or whatever.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
He could just pick up a half full.
Speaker 7 (34:23):
Sized half and just get something out of a flute or.
Speaker 12 (34:32):
So.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Brian's death may have been shocking, it wasn't exactly a surprise.
The fragile guitarists have been slowly slipping away for two years,
retreating further and further into a cocoon of drugs. Most
of the time, he was too stone to attend sessions.
On the occasions when he did show up, he often
knotted off on the studio floor, driven to distraction by substances.
(34:55):
His bandmates would step in, thus exacerbating Brian's in security
and anxiety, which led him to self medicate with more drugs.
As far as Brian was concerned, everything he loved was
being taken away. He lost girlfriend Anita Pallenberg to Keith Richards,
and he lost the band, the Mick Jagger. As far
as McK and Keith were concerned, Brian just couldn't hack
(35:18):
it anymore.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
The thing about Mick and Keith, as much as I
revere them, they moved on like if you couldn't help
them anymore, you were in the rearview mirror and they
were never coming back to say hello again.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Charlie Watts was unapologetic about their decision the part ways
with Brian.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
I don't think you could function in the situation we
created for him.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
Too much pressure, so much responsibility.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
From the session, which is fundamentally obvious, because you ain't
gonna make a thing, ain't, do you know what I mean?
I think that's what they And they didn't want to
work amost all day?
Speaker 11 (36:00):
Want?
Speaker 8 (36:01):
What did he want? Just to gig occasionally or to
just work when he led a nightlight want?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
The dilemma was hardly unique to the Stones. By the
late sixties, the occupational hazards of rock and roll had
become clear, as drugs and burnout sapped the exuberance and
promise from many of the decades's brightest creative lights. Brian
Wilson had abdicated his role as the Beach Boys sonic architect,
preferring to work on side projects in his home studio
(36:30):
before ultimately retreating to his bedroom. Sid Barrett departed Pink Floyd, entirely,
living at the remainder of his days in the leafy
English suburb of Cambridge. Moby Grape co founder Skipped Spencer's
drug abuse was so bad that he wound up in
a morgue after overdosing, only to scare the mortician to
death by sitting up, removing his toe tag and asking
(36:51):
for a glass of water. Geene and Michael Clark fled
the Birds amidst stress and bad blood, and groundbreaking side
rocker Rocky Erickson the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, was sent to
a psychiatric hospital following an on stage breakdown. In nineteen
sixty eight, a pre famed David Bowie befriend at Vince Taylor,
an early British rock pioneer who had been reduced to
(37:12):
camping outside London subway stations, where he pointed out secret
alien bases on maps and told everyone who would listen
that he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ, sowing the
seeds for Bowie's City Stardust character and an early Fleetwood
Mac struggled to cope with the guitarists with a literal
Messiah complex, Beard and Robes.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
And all Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac. Peter Green was
a great guitarist. Then they moved on Michael Bloomfield and
Butterfield Blues Band. And again, you know what, in order
to be a survivor, you often have to be a
son of a bitch. And Mick and Keith could do
this because their path was clear and the cocaine and
(37:54):
the heroine. What they were doing was making music and
that's all they cared about.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
Somehow. That kept him alive.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
Yeah, also to living hard and Diane Young was a
big part of the the ethic.
Speaker 8 (38:08):
Fast beautiful shadow.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah, it was an ethic that was revered, romantic kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
According to Charlie Watts, Brian just wasn't equipped to handle
the fast living.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Thing that Brian was. He had a total misuse of
his body. Man, he didn't give a shit, you know,
he wasn't like Keith. He was a strong kids. Still
takes care of himself. But Brian had no fucking respect
for his bodily function at all. Unless I feeling ad
about Brian. Everything he did, though, was to he could drink.
(38:40):
Everything he did was to access and drums on excess people.
Speaker 8 (38:43):
But is that where the talent comes from? Too?
Speaker 5 (38:45):
Well, his talent, Brian's talent, he do He forgot.
Speaker 11 (38:48):
About it all.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
So Charlie was sure that firing Brian Jones was the
right decision for the band. As a friend, he remained
haunted by Brian's end and even wondered if they were
in some way responsible for it.
Speaker 5 (39:01):
I think we all destroyed Brian in what way?
Speaker 4 (39:04):
In what way?
Speaker 5 (39:06):
I think he did it, And I think we took
it away because he'd never turn up and it was
his fall, you know, it was his state of mind.
It was what he wanted. It must have been what
he wanted in a very direct way. It was what
he wanted to do was leave, you know. He didn't
want those influences. And I think Mick and Keith were
(39:27):
stronger than he was, and I don't think he could
cope with that. He was always a star, I mean, yeah,
he had tremendous ego. He all, you know, Keith got
a terrific ego. But I meant that I saw him
a few days before I lived up the road for
me at the house he lived in was very close
to mine.
Speaker 12 (39:43):
You know.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
I loved him a lot. I could have killed him,
and at times he was so objectionable. It's a really
he was one of those blokes man that you could
kill and love about love at relationship. I think anyone
involved with Brian it was a total love a relationship,
but my love was was a more and the night.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
The death of Brian Jones could have, and probably should
have been viewed by the Stones as a cautionary tale,
something that very easily could happen to any one of
them if they didn't keep their head and keep their
drug use in check. But no, the discussion of drug
abuse was not especially nuanced in the early seventies. Even
the most basic mental health concepts were largely unknown outside
(40:26):
of professional psychology circles. To the band, it all boiled
down to strength and weakness. Strength was what kept you alive,
not healthy decisions, and weakness killed you. Not addiction but basis.
Bill Wyman recognized the disturbing parallels between Brian Jones and
Keith both in terms of intake and the company they kept.
Speaker 8 (40:50):
I talked to Keith about a lot about the mind
is something he said, you.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Know, you could see if Brian Brian was around himself
that people who look sitting looking at the rug one.
Speaker 8 (40:59):
Said, are going to get and they rolled it up
and sold.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
And Keith saying a hundred sam things surrounded by those
kind of pets.
Speaker 8 (41:06):
And yet I don't know how good.
Speaker 10 (41:08):
Keith has been about you know, about people who are
really is exciting what Keith does.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Jim Morrison died in a bathtub in Paris and Keith
kept shooting heroine. They didn't see it, you know, the
drug keeps you from seeing it.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
The guy at the Palladium stage door claiming to be
Brian Jones was clearly a madman, but to the band
he seemed like a ghost one They desperately tried to
keep it bay. It was a reminder of what it
had cost to get where they were and the consequences
of the path they were on. How do you keep
(41:54):
your head together? Man? You don't. As the Stone's La
(42:15):
Visit continues, the concerts are seeing less is the main
event and more as rude interruptions of a long, continuing
party in the bars and big houses of Hollywood and
Beverly Hills. Party, Party, Party, the world is coming to
an end, and all the matters is where the next
drink is coming from the last of their two shows
at the Forum was livened up with a special guest,
(42:36):
an amazing looking woman. The stp Tax Squad met in
one of the red leather hotel bars Hotelling which one
she insists her name is Joy Bang, and styles herself
in the May West tradition with caked on makeup and
huge false eyelashes. No one's quite sure what to make
of her, but she's got character, so they put her
(42:57):
in a limo and send her out on stage to
present Mick with a bowl of rose pedals for the
Street Fighting Man finale. It probably seemed like a good
idea at the time. The best party of the La
dates took place at the home of Gary Stromberg, the
Stone's recently anointed public relations chief. He'd been absent thus
far on the tour, holding it down in his Sunset
(43:17):
Strip office while his business partner Bob Gibson made the trek.
But road Life didn't agree with Gibson, so he tapped
out and Gary subbed in. Gary's recovering from a case
a hepatitis and was warned by his doctor not to drink,
not to take drugs, and to get plenty of sleep.
Should he fail on any of those first three, he's
to take a vitamin B twelve shot. Gary will get
(43:40):
a lot of B twelve shots over the next few weeks.
He and his condom filled with cocaine fit in immediately.
He heralds his STP arrival with a rager at his
home in the Hollywood Hills, which gets so wild that
he's forced to call in security guards from a nearby
whiskey a go go club. It was a night few
could forget, and fewer still could remember.
Speaker 6 (44:02):
It was up in the Woodrow Wilson area of the
Hollywood Hills. I had this incredibly a miniature castle.
Speaker 7 (44:10):
I was living in. I don't know else to describe it.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
It was handmade by this one guy who died after
years of building this castle.
Speaker 7 (44:18):
It was an incredible place.
Speaker 6 (44:20):
Anyways, we had this party there and there must have
been one hundred people there, and after a while it
just turned into a sing along where everybody was singing.
I had a record player playing and people would sing
along with the lyrics of the various songs we were playing,
and then Bobby Womack and Willie Weeks showed up and
they played, and then we all started singing. I don't
(44:42):
know how I'd all evolved, but it went on to
the very late hours, like four o'clock.
Speaker 7 (44:47):
In the morning.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
I think everybody was singing. And what eventually happened was
it was like the last man standing.
Speaker 7 (44:53):
It was like what's that game you played? Musical chairs.
Speaker 6 (44:56):
I was the last guy who could still remember lyrics
to end.
Speaker 8 (45:00):
We're talking. Mick and Keith were there.
Speaker 7 (45:02):
Mick and Keith, hell you and they're singing along.
Speaker 8 (45:04):
They're singing harmony for you.
Speaker 7 (45:05):
Yes, that's what it ended up.
Speaker 6 (45:07):
And we were doing a lot of doop songs, which
are great for sing lungs. So my memory was that
the last song went on was in the still of
the night, and I knew all the lyrics and they
just sang along behind me. So I ended up with
a cassette because I was of a mind to record
this thing. Fortunately, but I've lost that cassette.
Speaker 8 (45:27):
Gary, can you sing No? No?
Speaker 6 (45:31):
But I'm enthusiastic about my even though I can't know
it's awful.
Speaker 7 (45:36):
Awful.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Gary's home had a notorious reputation even before the stp Rager.
It was steeped in seedy, no worry lore. For most
up and comers in the LA music scene. This was
a major selling point, and Gary was no exception.
Speaker 7 (45:53):
There was a ghost in my house.
Speaker 6 (45:54):
The guy who built the house died in the house,
and I was told when I rented the place that
his ghost was still inhabiting house. And I mean, it
sounds stupid because I don't believe in ghosts, but this.
Speaker 7 (46:06):
Guy was there. There was a dinner party that I
had on another night where there was a noise in
the kitchen.
Speaker 6 (46:12):
The kitchen was down a flight and I walked down
to my kitchen. All the burners on the stove on
four of them. Nobody that was in the house could
have done that had to have been the ghost. There
were noises that were just doors would open and stuff
that just were unexplainable. But it was a friendly ghost,
(46:33):
so that's what I was told. He was a friendly ghost.
He just wanted to make sure that you respected the property.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
I think this is a Robert Stone really great novels.
Nobody knows what comes out from under the decks of
those houses in the Hollywood Hills that night.
Speaker 6 (46:51):
Well, there was a spooky quality to living in Hollywood Hills,
that's for sure.
Speaker 7 (46:54):
My street had no street lights.
Speaker 6 (46:57):
You had to walk down probably seventy five stairs to
get to my place down at steep hillside. You'd hear
noises in the hills. Yeah, I was aware that it
was a kind of a freaky place to live. But
the Hollywood Hills always were the place of the people in.
Speaker 7 (47:14):
Certainly in the music business. So it was a spooky place.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
But having lived in Tapanga for almost a year is
the cost of doing business. You accepted this, and there
were crazy people at the shopping center there. It's never
been any different in these canyon hills.
Speaker 6 (47:31):
Yeah, there's a spooky quality to living in the hills
in the canyons. And a lot of the evil in
Los Angeles has occurred in the and a lot of
the artistry has occurred those places too. Laurel Canyon, there's
a lot of all the artistry that we know of
and love.
Speaker 8 (47:47):
They kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
They're like the dark side, light side, Maniche and the Split.
Speaker 8 (47:53):
They're one and the same. You know, if you look
at it that way.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
They feed off one another, and maybe the art is
a reaction to the darkness, but it's also a way
of expressing it.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
This was an era of paranoia, the anxious inverse of
the optimism at the dawn of the sixties. In those
happy days, anything seemed possible. Now, after the tumult of
the decade, anything seemed possible. Paul McCartney might be dead,
why not. Jimmy, Jim and Janis were not to mention Brian.
(48:28):
The CIA might have killed the president. Why not? The
Pentagon papers proved the State Department was lying to us
about Vietnam. What else are they hiding? Maybe the government
would try and kill us, why not? The National Guard
had just shot four students to death for peacefully protesting
at Kent State University. Reality was just as troubled as
(48:48):
the most way out conspiracy claim. No one was sure
what to believe, not even the Stones. So Keith.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
Certain theories that I always found remarkable with a completely
straight face, and I was not about to argue with him.
He explained to me that this was not the original
Tina Turner, that Ike had murdered the original Tina Turner,
and this was well, I mean, Keith Richards is telling
(49:22):
me this, I'm not going to argue with him. That
was one which I found astonishing back then, and then
the last time I interviewed him on the phone. There's
no controlling Keith. Whatever the subject you begin on, you
will not end with. He's just gonna it's all coming
through his mind and out of the blue, all of
(49:44):
a sudden, Keith starts speaking about.
Speaker 8 (49:46):
I feel so bad about Phil Spectr.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Man.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Phil was in jail at that point for murder right,
And I said, do you want to give him a
cake with a file in it?
Speaker 8 (49:57):
He said, no, man a balm okay.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Phil Spector was just one of the most visible Hollywood PARANOIAX.
Los Angeles was full of weirdos of every stripe. Their
presence was unavoidable. They uneasily coexisted with the beautiful people
and the perfectly manicured lawns and freshly polished rolls royces.
The two worlds scraped against one another like a psychic
fault line, and the rumble was palpable throughout LA.
Speaker 6 (50:24):
There was an element of danger. I guess you could
say it was a very volatile city. This was always
a city of people that lived on the fringe, you know,
and this were people the dreamers that came to Alley
was known for it.
Speaker 7 (50:35):
You know, there was at the end of the country.
Speaker 6 (50:38):
This was the last stop, and so there was always
you know, the potential for violence and craziness that existed here.
We had the Hillside Strangler, we had a lot of
darkness previous to the seventy two tour that existed in
Los Angeles. We've always had serial murders that found residents here.
So it had an element of that. But the city,
(50:58):
I mean people, you know, I was born in I
kind of took that for granted. You know, it was
surprising that not all cities had that. You could go
somewhere else with it, but that wasn't you know, in
the background, So that was sure.
Speaker 7 (51:10):
That was the element of that.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
The culture quake finally occurred at one oh five oh
Colo Drive just after midnight on August ninth, nineteen sixty nine,
four twenty somethings, acting on orders from Charles Manson Creepy,
crawled their way into the Benedict Canyon home of actress
Sharon Tate, the wife of Blockbuster director Roman Polanski. Once inside,
(51:37):
they murdered Tate and three of her friends, men's hair
stylist Jay Sebring, Coffee Eirass, Abigail Folger, and boy ccheck Frakowski.
They also killed a teenager named Stephen parent stopped by
to visit the groundskeeper. They found him dead in his
car in the driveway. The butchery followed the next day,
(51:57):
when more Manson followers slaughtered middle class supermarket executive Lino
LaBianca and his wife Rosemary. The victims seemingly had nothing
to do with one another. They traveled in completely different
socioeconomic circles and lived in totally separate parts of the city.
The apparent randomness of the crime, to say nothing of
the brutality, put Los Angeles on high alert.
Speaker 3 (52:21):
So I was living here then I was living into Panga, right,
And the impact of the Manson murders were on the
star community bel Air Bev Hill's Hollywood stars who feared
all of a sudden that they're coming to get us,
right because Sharon Tate, you know, Roman Polanski.
Speaker 7 (52:40):
Was Bring the hairstylist.
Speaker 3 (52:42):
This is the A list film biz celeb right, and
a lot of those people bailed left and came back,
but left you know, got out of town nervous, and
even once the trials were going on, a lot of
Charlie's people were still on the street, and he was
into panga.
Speaker 8 (52:58):
You know.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
A friend of mine would be hitching and Charlie would
pick him up in him.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Charles Manson was something of a familiar face in the
La music scene. He harbored dreams of being a singer
and leached on to anyone who might further his ambition.
For a time, Manson lived with Dennis Wilson, the drummer
for the Beach Boys, who famously recorded one of his songs,
a pairing that perfectly sums up the lightness and darkness
of La in the late sixties. Dennis would take Manson
(53:30):
out clubbing the Whiskey of Go Go, where he no
doubt rubbed shoulders with countless other musical luminaries. Neil Young
would later admit to knowing Manson, as did cass Elliott
of the Mamas and the Papas and sly Stone. Many
others did as well, but they understandably preferred to keep
that association to themselves in the wake of his arrest.
To them, Manson just seemed like another hippie singer songwriter,
(53:54):
but image can't be trusted. Another musical figure of the
era who knew Charles Manson was Gary Stromberg, unbeknownst to
his friend Robert Greenfield.
Speaker 6 (54:06):
Do you know my Manson story? I produced the first
Manson album.
Speaker 8 (54:10):
I Have to Leave What's it called?
Speaker 7 (54:13):
Lie l I E.
Speaker 6 (54:15):
I was at Universal Studios. I had this friend named
Phil Kaufman. He managed Gram Parsons Burn's body of kidnapped
the body out of the cargo. But he was a
very good friend of mine. He got arrested for smuggling
marijuana from Mexico and was thrown into terminal Island here
and he was a cellmate of a guy named Charlie Manson.
(54:37):
And I would go see Phil in prison and write
to him, and he asked if I could get him
some acid. So I would drop acid onto stationary droplets and.
Speaker 7 (54:49):
Write letters to lick it.
Speaker 6 (54:51):
They'd cut it up into segments and they would he
would pass it around and Charlie got his acid for me.
But when Charlie was out, Phil knew he wanted to
get in the music business. And I was the only
one that Phil knew that was connected to the music
because I was under a contract at Universal Studios at
the time as a boy producer, and I had an
office at the Universal and they just started a record company.
(55:14):
So onto the Universal lot one day pulls Charlie up
in his bus with his girls. Oh really, Guard calls
my office and says, there's a guy here that says
he knows you tells me that story. Phil had told
me that Charlie would, you know, appreciate me helping him.
So I set up a meeting. Charlie comes in, brings guitar,
sits on my desk. He's playing music. He's just wild.
(55:37):
He's got these girls dancing around there all high. And
I call this guy, Russ Reagan, who was the head
of UNI Records. They had just started the label. So
there's a guy here that you know I think he
just listened to. He said, sure, bring him up. So
I went up to his office. Charlie Gunn sits on
his desk, starts playing music and Russ is looking at
me like what is this and Jan Russ, just out
(55:59):
of embarrassment, says, I'll give you money to do a demo.
Speaker 7 (56:02):
So he set up a demo.
Speaker 6 (56:03):
Charlie shows up in his bus with the girls and
He had come to my house a few nights to
prepare for this thing. And that's when I was married
to Chelsea Brown, beautiful black girl who at the time
didn't know, but Charlie had this whole idea that Armageddon
was going to be, you know, a race war, Helter skelter. Yeah,
(56:23):
So we did this session. They were all high on acid.
It was just ridiculous and I didn't know what I
was doing. I'm theoretically producing it, but there was an engineer.
It was just turning on and off the stuff. This
stuff was terrible and there was about five songs and
we stopped it and I took it up to Russ.
The next day. We listened to it and Russ said,
just get rid of this. This is terrible, and I did.
(56:44):
And Charlie got really upset with me because I wasn't
able to help him, and he tried to get me,
you know, to try other places, and I said, this
isn't me, that's not what I do, and Charlie we
just split up on bad terms.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
After striking out with Gary Stromberg, Manson attached himself to
music producer Terry Melcher, the son of Hollywood royalty Doris
Day Melcher had made a name for himself working with
The Birds and Paul Revere and the Raiders. He was
a good guy for a wannabe pop star to know,
and Manson pestered him about a recording contract. Like Gary,
(57:21):
Melcher held a demo session just to be polite, and
then gave him the slow fade. He was fairly confident
that Charles Manson didn't have what it took to reach
the top of the hit parade. Some of theorized that
Charlie's murderous turn in the summer of sixty nine had
less to do with half baked theories of a post
apocalyptic race war and more to do with his rage
(57:42):
at the Hollywood establishment for turning their back on him
and his talent. His true motive could never be determined
for certain, but during the time they worked together, Melcher
had lived at one five O Clo Drive, the same
address he told his followers to visit in August nineteen
sixty nine, acting them to kill everyone inside. So we
(58:02):
knew that Melcher had already moved out. His choice of
house likely wasn't a complete coincidence.
Speaker 6 (58:11):
He got with Melcher that all happened after I failed
him and when all of that shit went down with
taits and all, he got arrested. The FBI came to
me to inform me that when they had arrested Charlie,
they had found a list of people that he intended
to murder.
Speaker 7 (58:28):
And then I was on that list, and I tailed
it out of town. I went to Europe and just
hung out for how long a month or two how
long after it, and moved around. I was just afraid.
I kept I got a van and I just drove
all over Europe just fearing for my life.
Speaker 8 (58:44):
So you knew he was dangerous.
Speaker 6 (58:45):
I knew there were other guys that were still on
the street that weren't arrested. They were still part of
the Manson movement. I mean, I knew Charlie over the
course of a few months, so I knew, you know,
a little bit about him, and just him getting arrested
did not remove the threat.
Speaker 7 (59:00):
That I felt.
Speaker 6 (59:01):
So I just kept moving around in Europe for a
while until I felt it was safe.
Speaker 7 (59:05):
To come back.
Speaker 3 (59:13):
I am speechless. I have known dary S Trumper for
fifty years, never heard this. The only thing I can
contribute to this and this is back to you know,
everything that rises must converge. The same is true about
everything that sinks. And at one point Timothy Leary found
himself in solitary at fulsome prison for marijuana bus but
(59:37):
everything aggravated by his behavior in court and being Timothy Leary.
And it was a tapping on the wall and voice said,
I've been waiting a long time for you to get here.
Tim Manson was in the next cell. So it all
kind of I don't know. I mean, what this speaks
to is the outer edge of rock and roll and
the insanity that always lies behind the curtain here. Yeah,
(01:00:01):
you want to talk about the guy from the thirteenth
floor elevators. You want to talk about Sid Barrett, you
want to talk about Peter Green. I could make a list.
Speaker 7 (01:00:08):
You know, Sympathy for the Devil.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Well, thank you for linking it all together, you know.
But Jagger comes to that song from The Master and
the Margarita, a book he read. You know, Jagger is
an artist, a real artist who's able to draw on
other art. But there are other people, as Gary has
just said in this quote unquote business, who are on
(01:00:32):
not just on the edge of madness, who are legit
completely crazy. We're not really off topic, because psychosis and
rock and roll is like an environmental hazard. You know
it's there, it's real.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
The Stones used la as a home base while they
played gigs throughout the Southwest. The usual madness followed in
their wake. What was headline news on the first few
tour stops now seem predictable and even dull. There's street
fighting in San Diego as the kids and cops do
battle in the street. Rocks and molotov cocktails are thrown Yawn.
(01:01:11):
There's tear gas and Tucson, when hundreds of fans act
up after realizing they've been sold phony tickets by particularly
nasty scalpers. A police report is waiting for them in Albuquerque,
informing them that a major riot is feared, so three
separate law enforcement agencies are called in. Ironically, nothing much happens.
(01:01:32):
When the plane leaves after the concert that night, it
turns north for the first time, towards Denver and the
open road. There's six weeks of full throttle trucking ahead,
and there's no way of saying what's out there. California's
been good, but as Jagger says, California doesn't have anything
to do with the rest of America does it. That's
(01:01:52):
as good an assessment as any. It's its own unique place,
reflecting back your deepest fantasies, whatever they may be. But
somehow unknowable, no wonder Mickfield's so at home there for
years has provided the image of America to the rest
of the world. But it's never been the real thing.
(01:02:13):
As Mick says to Robert Greenfield as their plane takes off,
the truth of it is the tour hasn't even really started.
Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Stone's Touring Party has written and hosted by Jordan Runton,
co executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan Runton, Edited
and sound designed by Noel Brown and Michael Alder June.
Original music composed and performed by Michael Alder June and
Noel Brown, with additional instruments performed by Chris Suarez, Nick
John's Cooper, and Josh Than. Vintage Rolling Stones audio the
(01:02:56):
courtesy of the Robert Greenfield Archive at the Charles Deering
mcam Library and special Collections in Northwestern University Libraries.
Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
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