Ask Keith

débuts

2007-01-06T14:55:00.000+01:00

Belle année à tous ceux qui passent ici...

Le gros livre de Bent Rej recèle des photos superbes de nos Stones encore jeunes et frais (années 65 et 66). On trouve aussi à la fin quelques clichés de 1970 où Keith avait chopé cette gueule magique de guitar hero fantasmatique, mais à l'époque, pas encore trop déglinguée... Légende en marche...

Gram Parsons

2006-09-06T00:28:00.000+02:00

Si on parle de famille stonienne élargie, on met Gram Parsons. Ce documentaire, que je viens de visionner, complément idéal aux rééditions Rhino de ses albums solo, est une bien grande chose. Témoignages entrecroisés d'amis, famille et musiciens (dont Keith), c'est passionnant et très touffu, on ne décroche pas une minute pendant deux heures. En sus, larme à l'oeil garantie.

Keith : "Quand il chantait, il faisait pleurer toutes les filles, il réussissait même à émouvoir les vieilles serveuses blondes décolorées".

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000A0GY32?v=glance

no words

2006-08-14T02:22:00.000+02:00

Parce qu'il fallait bien en mettre une ici... cette Gibson Les Paul de 1959, couleur sunburst, a appartenu à Keith et a été mise aux enchères il y a déjà quelques temps.

Rolling Stone : livre d'interviews

2006-08-14T01:40:00.000+02:00

Je n'ai jamais eu le courage de taper sur micro, pour la mettre ici, toute l'interview de Keith à Nellcôte (par Robert Greenfield). Elle fait je ne sais combien de pages. Elle est sans doute la plus mythique. Pour ma part, l'ayant lue tardivement après bien d'autres, je n'avais pas eu le sentiment d'y apprendre tant de choses que cela en la découvrant il y a deux ou trois ans. Il faudrait que je la relise.

Toujours est-il que je découvre seulement maintenant, au hasard d'une recherche, que Rolling Stone a publié en 89 (ou réédité en 89 ?) un bouquin de ses fameuses interviews, qui l'inclut.

Qui sait si l'interview, que je n'avais pas réussi à trouver sur le net, ne s'y trouve pas aujourd'hui d'ailleurs.

Le bouquin quant à lui est dispo sur amazon.com

Les heureux nominés sont :

Donovan 1967 (J Carpenter) Bob Dylan 1967 (Gleason) B.B. King 1968 (Gleason) Eric Clapton 1968 (Wenner) Pete Townshend 1968 (Wenner) Mick Jagger 1968 (J Cott) Jim Morrison 1969 (J Hopkins) Phil Spector 1969 (Wenner) Bob Dylan 1969 (Wenner) Little Richard 1970 (D Dalton) Van Morrison 1970 (H Traum) Grace Slick & Paul Kantner 1970 (B Fong-Torres) Rod Stewart 1970 (J Morthland) John Lennon 1971 (Wenner) Keith Richards 1971 (R Greenfield) Jerry Garcia 1972 (Wenner & C Reich) Paul Simon 1972 (J Landau) Chuck Berry 1972 (P W Salvo) Keith Moon 1972 (J Hopkins) James Taylor & Carly Simon 1973 (S Werbin) Ray Charles 1973 (B Fong-Torres) Johnny Cash 1973 (R Hilburn) Stevie Wonder 1973 (B Fong-Torres) Elton John 1973 (P Gambaccini) Paul McCartney 1974 (P Gambaccini) Jimmy Page & Robert Plant 1975 (C Crowe) Neil Young 1975 (C Crowe) Mick Jagger 1978 (J Cott) Linda Ronstadt 1978 (P Herbst) Bob Dylan 1978 (J Cott) Paul McCartney 1979 (P Gambaccini) Joni Mitchell 1979 (C Crowe) James Taylor 1979 (P Herbst) Pete Townshend 1980 (G Marcus) Billy Joel 1980 (T White).

lézégéries

2006-06-09T14:31:00.000+02:00

Poussière d'anges
Le journaliste Fabrice Gaignault nous donne rendez-vous avec les « égéries des années 60 » et leurs témoins illustres. Souvenirs d'un éblouissement.
Marc Lambron

Plusieurs d'entre elles se croisent autour de 1964 dans l'agence de mannequins de Catherine Harlé. Cascades de cheveux raides, ombre à paupières, jupes Courrèges : ces chimères scrutent leurs reflets dans le miroir brisé de l'après-guerre. Elles se nomment Anita Pallenberg ou Nico, Zouzou ou Dani, Marianne Faithfull ou Tina Aumont. Les nuits de satin blanc, la bohème internationale, l'autodestruction, tel sera le programme de ces flamboyantes pionnières, « égéries des sixties » qui vont narguer les fournaises jusqu'à s'y brûler. Fabrice Gaignault, journaliste à Marie-Claire, leur consacre un livre remarquable.
Au départ, il y a pour lui des reliques, photos, disques, films, et les silhouettes de ces femmes fatales qui s'accrochaient au bras de Brian Jones ou de Bob Dylan. Gaignault connaît les images, mais il veut la vérité. Adepte d'un journalisme campé et visuel, il a mené l'enquête. « Les filles étaient les sixties », écrit-il. Que reste-t-il de ce temps où Godard filmait les Rolling Stones, où « la bataille d'Angleterre se rejouait avec des amplis Marshall et des guitares Telecaster », un temps où une certaine jeunesse paraissait superbement inapte aux amenuisements ? Il en reste des visages et des voix. Gaignault les interroge. Son livre ressemble à un documentaire en trompe-l'oeil, une sorte de « Monsieur Arkadin » au pays des années 60 : le passé reste le sujet, mais le présent fait le voyage. Au générique, il a inscrit une kyrielle de témoins illustres. Bill Wyman et Bernardo Bertolucci, Donovan et Alejandro Jodorowski, François Weyergans et Jean-Marie Périer disent très bien comment un éblouissement peut traverser la pâte du temps. C'était quelque chose, Zouzou la Twisteuse, quand elle déboulait sous une casquette de petit mec dans la cave de Castel...
Le meilleur du livre de Gaignault est là : dans la réfraction du passé sur des visages que le souvenir éclaire. Le cinéaste Paul Morrissey raconte les actrices de la Factory de Warhol. Au fond d'un vieux palais marocain, le décorateur Bill Willis retrace la saga de Talitha Getty, la Nadja pop de Marrakech. Albert Koski, double enfant terrible de Londres et de Paris, alterne tendresse et pertinence (« On ne dira jamais assez l'importance des restaurants italiens dans l'explosion des Swinging Sixties »). Si les photos certifient, la mémoire restitue. Il y a chez tous ces témoins masculins quelque chose d'ébloui, de surexposé. Une supernova féminine a explosé autour de 1965, ils en restent irradiés. Soudain, les filles des sixties sont de nouveau là, vivantes, sous leur profil 2006, éternel retour des Eurydice rock'n'roll. Voici Patti Boyd, ex-épouse de George Harrison et d'Eric Clapton, croisée dans un salon de Londres, toujours belle. Amanda Lear fait des mots (« Je préfère avoir influencé Madonna qu'Annie Cordy »). Anita Pallenberg et Marianne Faithfull paraissent lucides, assumées, détachées. Jane Birkin dit comment le Paris de Gainsbourg lui paraissait « un monde qui relevait de la fiction ». Elles parlent les unes des autres, les bobines tournent, la fresque prend de la profondeur - l'une des corrections de perspective étant ici la réévaluation de Paris, aux côtés de Londres et peut-être avant New York, comme plaque tournante des années 60. Quant au « Mick » qu'elles mentionnent toutes, personne n'ignore plus qu'il s'agit d'un chanteur milliardaire récemment anobli par la reine d'Angleterre...
D'une certaine façon, ces pionnières de la prospérité ne savaient pas comment traiter la pulsion de mort dans une société de paix civile : sexe, drogues et rock, cette génération aura connu délices et champs d'horreur. Le livre de Gaignault est ainsi un acte chamanique où des ombres sortent du feu, un texte orphique qui retourne dans l'enfer du temps pour en ramener des beautés perdues. Au milieu de cette galerie de nymphes, une photo manque et semble justifier toutes les autres. Fabrice Gaignault se souvient d'une mère « belle, blonde, fêtarde, accumulant les nuits blanches avec une merveilleuse opiniâtreté ». Sans doute en est-elle morte trop tôt. L'enfant d'une étoile filante dessine dans le sable le profil de maman. Sur le marbre du mémorial, le vent disperse une poussière d'ange

oh no you're not alone !

2006-05-04T01:37:00.000+02:00

Ceci est : les derniers visiteurs de ce blog. Coucou les derniers visiteurs. Ca devrait m'inciter à le continuer, mais voilà, j'écoute des tas de choses aujourd'hui, pas seulement les Stones...

Juste que j'aimerais bien une mise en forme plus sympa pour ce blog, et que Blogger pour ça, ben c'est pas ça. Je sais pas quoi faire, migrer ailleurs ? Mais aurais-je des Nigérians, des Zostraliens et des gangsters de Chicago ailleurs...

1.
2 mai
06:13
BellSouth Inc., États-Unis
2.
2 mai
09:06
Telstra Internet, Australie
3.
2 mai
09:26
Telstra Internet, Australie
4.
2 mai
09:36
Connect, Australie
5.
2 mai
09:47
Telstra Internet, Australie
6.
2 mai
10:27
Telstra Bigpond, Australie
7.
2 mai
10:27
Prodac Media AG, Köln, Allemagne
8.
2 mai
13:07
IP Exchange GmbH, Allemagne
9.
2 mai
13:59
Comcast Communications, États-Unis
10.
2 mai
15:09
Pennsylvania State University, États-Unis
11.
2 mai
15:32
neuf telecom, France
12.
2 mai
16:02
Skynet Belgacom, Belgique
13.
2 mai
17:43
United Technology Research Center, Hartford, États-Unis
14.
2 mai
18:29
Ottawa, Canada (bellglobal.com)
15.
2 mai
18:35
Qwest Communications Int., États-Unis
16.
2 mai
18:44
Qwest Communications Int., États-Unis
17.
2 mai
18:47
America Online
18.
2 mai
18:49
République Tchèque (msmt.cz)
19.
2 mai
19:10
America Online, États-Unis
20.
2 mai
20:22
États-Unis (enteract.com)
21.
2 mai
20:23
Alliance Capital Management, États-Unis
22.
2 mai
20:40
Southwestern Bell, États-Unis
23.
2 mai
21:20
San Diego State University, San Diego, États-Unis
24.
2 mai
23:09
Middlebury College, Middlebury, États-Unis
25.
2 mai
23:30
MCI, Nouvelle-Zélande
26.
2 mai
23:59
Comcast Communications, États-Unis
27.
3 mai
00:12
Wanadoo France, France
28.
3 mai
00:28
Qwest Communications Int., États-Unis
29.
3 mai
01:32
Reliant Resources, Inc., Houston, États-Unis
30.
3 mai
01:33
Wanadoo France, France
31.
3 mai
02:15
Nouvelle-Zélande (ac.nz)
32.
3 mai
15:18
Renater, France
33.
3 mai
15:32
ProXad, France
34.
3 mai
15:35
Easynet Limited, Royaume-Uni
35.
3 mai
16:00
Level 3 Communications, Chicago, États-Unis
36.
3 mai
16:46
Rogers Communications Inc., Canada
37.
3 mai
16:48
Rogers Communications Inc., Canada
38.
3 mai
16:51
Rogers Communications Inc., Canada
39.
3 mai
18:19
Massachusetts Higher Education Computer Network, États-Unis
40.
3 mai
19:47
Netscape Communications Corp., États-Unis
41.
3 mai
20:58
États-Unis (mo.us)
42.
3 mai
21:09
Allegiance Telecom Inc., États-Unis
43.
3 mai
21:12
Charter Communications, États-Unis
44.
3 mai
21:51
Bluewin AG, Suisse
45.
3 mai
22:12
Allstate Corporation, États-Unis
46.
3 mai
22:52
Norlight Telecommunications, États-Unis
47.
3 mai
23:25
AfriHUB, Nigeria

R&R circus

2006-04-21T05:46:00.000+02:00

(la dernière n'est pas une affiche, mais la jaquette d'un bootleg).

Stick-up (suite) : dans Crossroads

2006-01-15T18:00:00.000+01:00

Belle critique, même s'ils se mélangent quelque peu les pinceaux entre le bassiste et le chanteur (non mais !) dans le Crossroads de ce mois-ci, de l'album de

STICK UP : chemical reaction

Dans le numéro 39 de Crossroads [janvier 2006], Rubrique Hot Stuff, page 44, avec le grand Ray Davies en couv'.

group'ami

2005-11-29T01:29:00.000+01:00

ça t'colle à la peau !...

Sortie de l'album de Stick-Up : "chemical reaction" du groupe de mon ami Jean-Michel Mazella, qui, après m'avoir obtenu un autographe de Bill Wyman, m'a fait le suprême honneur de me dédicacer son disque, et plus encore même (mais je n'en dis pas plus, souhaitant garder ici l'anonymat lol).

Le site de Stick-up :

Stick-Up

Le chanteur a une voix qui ressemble à s'y méprendre à celle de Jagger...

Je ne suis plus trop dans les Stones aujourd'hui, mais c'est vraiment bon, à écouter sans modération...

L'autre groupe de Jean-Mi, pour un clin d'oeil du côté Gramparsonien de la chose :

The Hawkins

je suis le seigneur du château

2005-09-12T21:20:00.000+02:00

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3230,36-688137@51-633431,0.html

Le Monde - Septembre 2005

2005-09-04T18:54:00.000+02:00

Deux pages plein Stones dans le Monde de ce week-end : attention, ça ne sera pas librement accessible en ligne longtemps :

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3246,36-685262@51-627805,0.html

Charlie -R&F sept 2005

2005-09-01T17:35:00.000+02:00

Charlie et la batterie :
"Je joue sur la même batterie depuis 30 ans (…) J’utilise des baguettes standard. Elles n’ont rien d’extraordinaire, on peut les acheter partout. Mais qui veut savoir tout ça ?"

Sur Sweet neo-con : " En fait,c’est un éditorial de Mick sur George Bush. Et la façon dont il a annexé la planète. C’est bien de faire ça, je suis d’accord. " (il n'y a pas si longtemps, Charlie se déplaçait pour assister aux obsèques de Reagan, et il n’est point connu pour ses vues progressistes, faudrait pas oublier non plus).

Sur le monde du spectacle : "A mon sens, c’est toujours pareil, un manager filou et son artiste, tous les deux en train de se faire entuber par quelqu’un".

Sur la longévité des Stones : "Jamais nous ne nous sommes assis à une table pour décider de continuer jusqu’à la mort, il n’y a pas eu de serment, de plan, non (rires)".

Charlie Watts – extraits Rock et Folk de septembre 2005

faux ennemis

2005-08-16T14:53:00.000+02:00

Courrier international - 16 août 2005
MUSIQUE - Deux Beatles pris en flagrant délit de jouer du Rolling Stones
Le quotidien britannique The Independent s'enthousiasme pour "ce qui est considéré comme étant la seule séquence filmée d'une chanson des Rolling Stones jouée par des membres des Beatles" et "qui va être diffusée pour la toute première fois après être restée cachée au fond des tiroirs durant des décennies." Le DVD montrant cette séquence sera en vente au Royaume-Uni le 24 octobre prochain.

La prise, qui date de 1971, montre George Harrison et Ringo Starr faisant un bœuf avec Eric Clapton et Leon Russell sur la chanson "Jumpin'Jack Flash" lors de la préparation d'un concert de solidarité pour le Bangladesh. "Alors que les Rolling Stones ont enregistré des chansons des Beatles, le contraire n'est pas vrai." Non seulement Mick Jagger et Keith Richards ont enregistré "I want to be your man", mais ils "ont aussi prêté leur voix aux chœurs sur ‘All you need is love' en juin 1967".

tiens tiens

2005-07-13T20:50:00.000+02:00

... et si on y refaisait un petit tour sur ce blog ?
Les Stones on en a jamais fini, mais qu'est ce que j'ai pu entendre depuis que je suis partie ! Je suis une autre femme, musicalement parlant !
Bien envie de creuser les Stones toute première période, quand ils étaient les fidèles exécuteurs d'oeuvres autres... C'est le moment, en pleine Bo Diddley mania !
Question interviews, pas de choses à apporter ici, il faudrait reprendre les recherches, mais avec la tournée, il va y avoir du neuf. Pas sûr que ça soit ce qu'on préfère non plus d'eux... On va voir...

Ask me (I got no answers...)

2005-03-17T20:23:00.000+01:00

me joindre ? il y a une boîte sur mes autres blogs (cf rubrique liens en marge).

This is not the end, but…

2005-01-01T02:05:00.000+01:00

Pas sûr que ce blog survive à 2005… Enfin je veux dire continue d’être alimenté aussi régulièrement. Son sujet (les interviews des Stones) était restreint (relativement) et je m’étonne même qu’il m’ait tant tenue. Mais aujourd’hui, plus beaucoup d’interviews à y ajouter (il en reste de mythiques en version papier quand même, et puis 2005, 2006 vont en amener, c’est sûr). Moins envie de le faire aussi.

Un autre blog est né depuis deux mois, que je consacre à la musique en général, et qui m’accompagne dans ces retrouvailles, dont les Stones ont été le catalyseur. C’est une recherche méthodique, chronologique (sans prétendre à l’exhaustivité, sans remonter à la nuit des temps, juste années 70, un peu 60, et on va remonter tout doucement jusqu’à aujourd’hui) avec dans l’idée de réécouter ce que j’avais survolé, et de découvrir en partie de ce que je ne connaissais pas mais surtout d’éviter les sentiers déjà balisés (au secours mon porte monnaie !). Trouver les lignes de partage, les généalogies, parentés et influences diverses, saisir les évolutions, les régressions, les ressucées et les révolutions parfois. C’est passionnant ces choses qui se font écho.
Alors c’est un prolongement, une ouverture, parce que je n’ai décidément pas l’âme casanière, ni sectaire, ni habitudinaire. Probablement grégaire par contre, parce que je ne dois pas être seule dans cette démarche si j’en juge par les encyclopédies vivantes du rock (je prétend pas au titre !) qu’on peut croiser ça et là, sur les forums ou ailleurs.
En tous cas, cette passion retrouvée pour le rock, en 2002, est une des plus belles choses qui me soient arrivées ces dernières années (toujours pas compris comment j’avais pu arrêter si longtemps). Les Stones ont été à l’origine de ça et ce fut une belle aventure que de les redécouvrir, les approfondir, faire sauter quelques préjugés tenaces que je pouvais avoir. Comme avec tous les très grands, il y a plusieurs niveaux de connaissance et je suis heureuse d’avoir dépassé le stade premier. Je me réjouis aussi d’arrêter avant d’en être à celui de fan, qui est un label que je ne tiens pas à avoir (sauf en ce qui concerne Keith, mais même là, c’est sous bénéfice d’inventaire).
C’est Bachelard qui disait que l’objet de la recherche se forme et se définit en cherchant. En cherchant des nuits entières d’insomnies, en 2002/2003, tous ces documents sur les Stones, je ne pensais pas avoir de but précis, si ce n’est nourrir une passion, à ma façon, compulsive et bosseuse jusqu’à l’excès. Je comprends maintenant que j’étais à la recherche de bien autre chose, c’était chercher l’enfance et l’adolescence sous les carapaces de l’âge adulte et retrouver ces sensations perdues ou en voie de l’être, quand c’est toujours la première fois, et que c’est toujours plus fort. Ca a été d’autres choses, d’autres motivations aussi, sur lesquelles je ne m’étendrai pas ici. Ce blog n’a pas été tout seul, il s’est accompagné (et surtout il a été précédé) de sons, d’images, de lectures autres (mais liées), de conversations et de rencontres multiples et riches, de la recréation de tout un univers qui est celui des Stones et de leur fabuleuse contribution et pas seulement à la musique évidemment. Une très belle aventure. Aucun autre art SAUF la littérature n’a été pour moi source d’autant d’apports que la musique, et ce n’est pas faute de m’être intéressée à tout un tas de choses dans les années 90 notamment. Et comme la littérature, on n’en voit jamais la fin, source de frustration et incroyable aiguillon pour piquer la curiosité en même temps.
Alors les Stones, je n’arrête pas, mais je ralentis, je déplace ailleurs. Ca n’empêche qu’ils restent dans ma tête et dans mes tripes à une place où aucun autre groupe ou musicien ne pourra prétendre, c’est plus que sûr ! Certainement que c’est dû aussi à leur longévité, à ce truc trans-générationnel exceptionnel qui en fait de véritables cas d’école. Comme le groupe il n’y a pas si longtemps, je vais à la fin de cette année fêter mes 40 ans. Quand je suis née les Stones avaient trois ans et des poussières, et c’est ma mère qui les écoutait… Je pense souvent à cette phrase de Keith : Pour les gens nés au début des années 60, il y a le soleil, la lune et il y a les Rolling Stones.
C’est beaucoup mieux que la comparaison christique de l’autre - puisqu’il faut toujours « les » opposer et alimenter la guéguerre (suis devenue très œcuménique, perso).
Bowie a dit récemment : aujourd’hui tout le monde aime le rock, impossible pour les parents, les enfants et parfois même les petits-enfants de s’engueuler sur ce sujet.
Moi je me suis quand même beaucoup engueulée avec mes parents qui détestaient le hard rock. Tant mieux, c’est formateur et fondateur.
So long !

4 soirs en 2003

2004-12-30T21:33:00.000+01:00

Quatre soirs avec les Rolling Stones (1)

A Marseille, la forme et le panache

LE MONDE 07.07.03

Marseille, Stade-Vélodrome, samedi 5 juillet, premier des quatre concerts français de la tournée européenne du "Licks World Tour 2002-2003" des Rolling Stones. Le groupe britannique, 41 ans d'âge, a inventé le spectacle dans les grands espaces et reste probablement le seul à en rendre l'idée encore excitante.

Pour la partie stade du tour des léchouilles (licks) - dans certaines villes, dont Paris, les Stones jouent en plus dans des salles de jauge modeste à leur échelle -, le répertoire est constitué des titres de gloire. Satisfaction, Street Fighting Man, Jumpin'Jack Flash, Brown Sugar, It's Only Rock'n'Roll, Start Me Up... peu de tempo lent, du rock électrisant, nourri au blues, évident, poussé par l'envie de remettre l'ouvrage au défi de l'excellence.

A Marseille, les Rolling Stones ont largement tenu cet engagement avec eux-mêmes et leur public. Au rituel de la présentation à mi-parcours, acclamations pour le guitariste Ron Wood, dix degrés au-dessus avec hurlements pour le batteur Charlie Watts et extase pour le guitariste Keith Richards. Ultime coquetterie, le nom de Mick Jagger n'est pas annoncé. Les baudruches géantes et les dragons métalliques des tournées précédentes ont été remisés. Un écran géant en huit parties mobiles et indépendantes, des lumières choisies, un son impeccable concentrent l'attention sur la hargne des quatre musiciens à donner une leçon de jeunesse aux modes.

Dans un concert des Stones, il y a toujours une juste dose de ratage. Ce soir, ce sera, au démarrage, Brown Sugar en roue libre, You Can't Always Get What You Want qui ne prend pas. Sinon, c'est grande forme et panache. Durant Midnight Rambler, tout s'emballe. Cette chanson, les Stones sont allés la chercher dans la mémoire de leurs meilleures interprétations. Ron Wood et Keith Richards, duellistes, taillent dans le vif, sourires carnassiers de conquérants ; Charlie Watts donne des leçons de frappe à Vulcain ; Jagger en appelle, de la voix et de l'harmonica, aux démons du rock. Somptueux. Le 7 juillet, les Stones sont à Paris, à Bercy. Bien préparés.

Sylvain Siclier

Quatre soirs avec les Rolling Stones (2)

Le temps est avec eux

LE MONDE 08.07.03

Mick Jagger et Keith Richards, Dorian Gray et son portrait, côte à côte, sur scène. C'était au milieu du concert que les Rolling Stones ont donné, le 7 juillet au Palais omnisport de Paris-Bercy. Le guitariste a chanté Thru and Thru, une complainte sortie du fin fond de l'album Voodoo Lounge. Sur le grand écran, derrière la scène, le visage ravagé de Keith Richards se détaillait jusqu'à la moindre crevasse, alors que Mick Jagger n'avait cessé de faire étalage de son éternelle jeunesse. On entendait la voix croassante, le jeu de guitare de plus en plus elliptique, et c'était comme regarder un homme sous perfusion, qui ne survit que parce que la musique passe encore goutte à goutte dans ses veines. Ce fut le seul moment de beauté inattendue de la soirée.

Le reste était attendu, et avec quelle impatience. Les Rolling Stones visibles à l'oil nu sans jumelles, en petit comité. Nous étions juste douze mille sans compter les quatre Stones et leurs neuf comparses (un bassiste, quatre cuivres, trois choristes et un clavier) sur une scène dépourvue d'artifices. Il allait de soit, puisque le groupe désertait les stades pour revenir aux palais des sports, que l'on était venu pour un remake des grandes tournées de 1969 ou 1972, qui passèrent par le Madison Square Garden de New York ou le Rainbow de Londres. Et il en a été à peu près ainsi.

Outre un choix de succès enregistrés pour la plupart il y a plus de trente ans, les Rolling Stones jouèrent presque la moitié de l'album Let It Bleed dont une bien belle version de Love In Vain, le blues déchirant que composa Robert Johnson il y trois quarts de siècle. Tout ça pour dire que - pacte avec le diable ou pas - quelque chose dans les gênes du blues et de son bâtard le rock'n'roll fait la nique au temps. Un chromosome à trois accords qui permet à un batteur aux cheveux blancs et à la frappe infaillible, à deux guitaristes souvent approximatifs et à un adolescent de 59 ans de faire croire encore que, pour un pauvre garçon, il n'y a rien d'autre à faire que de jouer dans un groupe de rock'n'roll.

Thomas Sotinel

Quatre soirs avec les Rolling Stones (3)

Des coups de langue au Stade de France

LE MONDE 10.07.03

Les stones, au Stade de France le 9 juillet, ratent leur entrée. Brown Sugar est livré en bouillie, pilonné en quatuor. Mais ils honorent leur sortie avec un énorme Satisfaction et un épais Jumping Jack Flash.

Ils ont des guitares et du style : ces pantalons fins finissant sur des ventres plats comme des carrelets maigres, ces torses nus, ces chemises flottantes au vent, attendant l'intempérie ou le soleil.

Que seraient les Stones sans Mick Jagger, icône pop ? Les intermittents ont lu une déclaration tandis que sur l'autoroute A1, qui mène au Grand Stade, glissaient encore de longues limousines crème, sans doute destinées aux tribunes officielles louées par un fabricant de cosmétiques.

Mick est in, idole indétrônée des fashion victims. En vert, en redingote, en T-shirt, en bleu, en velours, le chanteur coquet porte une part féminine, ultra-minoritaire dans ce Licks World Tour - tous des garçons, hormis une habituée de la maison Stones, la chanteuse Lisa Fisher.

Gracile, Mick Jagger, 59 ans, murmure Angie, se déplace à grandes enjambées, avec une habileté calquée sur ces licks, les coups de langue, dont le mécanisme jouissif est rappelé en dessin animé sur grand écran. Il marche au ras de la foule jusqu'au milieu de pelouse comme d'aucuns sur la mer Morte, il court, véloce et heureux. Avant de se courber en révérence, il chante, sans l'ombre d'une dépression, Little Red Rooster, un pur blues dont les Stones naissants se sont magiquement emparés en 1964 et que son auteur, Willie Dixon, n'aurait jamais imaginé ainsi électrisé au format des stades.

Véronique Mortaigne

Quatre soirs avec les Rolling Stones
4 – Apothéose soul à l'Olympia
LE MONDE 12.07.03 13h47

D'abord , savourer la rareté de l'instant en contemplant leur nom en lettres de néon sur la façade du temple de Bruno Coquatrix. Il est seulement midi, mais il faut déjà venir à l'Olympia se faire sceller au poignet un bracelet jaune, subterfuge contre le marché noir. Les Stones terminent leur semaine parisienne dans cette salle hantée, dira Mick Jagger, par "les fantômes de Jacques Brel, de Charles Trenet et d'Edith Piaf". Celui de Brian Jones aussi, puisque le groupe britannique joua ici en 1965 et en 1966.
Seulement 2 500 places pour l'autoproclamé "plus grand groupe de rock'n'roll au monde". Le beau linge est au balcon et les fans, qui ont fait exploser il y a quelques mois le standard de réservation, s'approchent au plus près de la scène. Leurs majestés sataniques ont, semble-t-il, pleinement renoué avec leur légende puisqu'elles apparaissent avec une bonne heure de retard en dégoupillant un tube, Start Me Up.
En fait, à quelques exceptions près, les "vieilles pierres" ne vont exhumer que des titres obscurs. La roue de leur histoire s'arrête ce soir sur les décennies 1970 et 1980 et sur les albums Black & Blue, Some Girls et Tattoo You – ceux qu'on ne réécoute jamais –, lorsqu'ils s'essayèrent au disco et au funk.
Avec un répertoire de seconde catégorie, les néo-sexagénaires vont donner un concert soufflant. Ils choisissent enfin un parti pris au détriment du patchwork nostalgique. Ces années grises sont égayées par une couleur soul dominante, avec reprises piochées chez Solomon Burke (Everybody Needs Somebody To Love) ou Otis Redding (That's How Strong My Love Is).
Privé de jogging par l'étroitesse de la scène, Mick Jagger en profite pour chanter splendidement (falsetto inclus) et s'adonner à son numéro de nègre blanc. Keith Richards trouve l'accord juste en s'adossant à la section de cuivres emmenée par le fidèle saxophoniste Bobby Keys. Charlie Watts, qui a toujours préféré les musiques noires au rock'n'roll, irradie. Rappel classique avec un Jumping Jack Flash visqueux, vicieux, inoubliable.
Bruno Lesprit

bar au mètre

2004-12-27T01:06:00.000+01:00

Classements en tous genres ces derniers temps. Enfin pu trouver le Rolling Stone, qui vient s'ajouter au spécial Rock & Folk. Au départ dubitative sur le principe de classer des chansons plutôt que des albums, finalement j'aime bien.

Celui de Rock et Folk vaut surtout par les classements thématiques des journalistes. Celui de Rolling Stone, 500 chansons, est plus large et permet une délicieuse plongée dans les abîmes des seventies et parfois des sixties.

Juste pour les premiers :

Rolling Stone :

1 - Like a rolling stone - Dylan (10)

2 - Satisfaction - Stones (2)

3 - Imagine - Lennon (7)

4 - What's going on - Marvin Gaye

5 - Respect - Aretha Franklin

6 - Good vibrations - Beach Boys (4)

7 - Johnny B Goode - Chuck Berry

8 - Hey Jude - Beatles

9 - Smells like teen spirit - Nirvana (1)

10 - What'd I say - Ray Charles

Rock & Folk :

1 - Smells like teen spirit - Nirvana

2 - Satisfaction - Stones

3 - Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin

4 - Good vibrations - Beach Boys

5 - My generation - The Who

6 - Walk on the wild side - Lou Reed

7 - Imagine - Lennon

8 - You really got me - The Kinks

9 - Light my fire - The Doors

10 - Like a rolling stone - Dylan

On pourrait noter les points communs (5 sur 10, je trouve ça assez énorme), mais aussi les divergences, et notamment l'absence de Noir dans les 10 premiers chez nous. Le côté plus roots du classement américain (ils savent mieux d'où vient le rock ? ils nous donneraient des leçons d'histoire ? tiens tiens...), mais aussi plus... américain.

Les seventies sont très présentes ici.

My sweet Lady Jane...

2004-12-23T22:01:00.000+01:00

N'ayez pas peur, allons... C'est juste la voisine, Jeanne B.

Notre Jaggéréotype préféré a eu en effet cet été les honneurs de la presse locale, rien de tel que les vacances pour exhumer ce genre de canard de sous le lit...

studios

2004-12-13T23:05:00.000+01:00

Ca nous mène loin des interviews, mais après tout c'est dans le prolongement... l'interview suit le studio, elle en est souvent le service après vente.

J'ai cette photo du lieu où est né (en partie) Sticky (je pense, j'ai un léger doute sur le fait que c'est bien le studio, mais je crois que oui quand même). Oublié le nom, dans l'Alabama, un truc mythique quelle honte. Si ! Muscle Shoals. La photo doit être d'époque d'ailleurs.

Sinon chez nous, y'a le Guillaume Tell :

http://www.guillaumetell.com/

Mais aussi le Davout (j'y tiens à celui-là, si près de chez moi !) :

http://www.davout.com/index.html

Mais ce soir, mieux encore, le scoop, pendant trois semaines, ils auraient pu être encore plus près, carrément sur la rue de Bagnolet, vers Saint Blaise. Source : (indirectement) des types de la Maison de la Radio. Petit monde sans doute. Enfin bref, le Jag et le Keith à la recherche parait t-il d'un studio capable de restituer un son analogique, et apparemment il y en a plus beaucoup, et il y en a un tout près de chez bibi. C'est fou ça.

http://www.halbop.fr/HalBop.php

(ça y est depuis qu'ils ont eu les Stones, ils ont chopé la grosse tête et changé leur site web...)

Keith & Depp - Creem Magazine

2004-12-10T21:47:00.000+01:00

Keith Richards and Johnny Depp hire CREEM hacks to polish first draft of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Treasures Of The Lost Abyss !!!

Musso & Franks Grill on Hollywood Blvd. (or MF as it's better known) is the oldest and swankiest place in Hollywood; vintage high back wood booths and tin ceiling tile make it the ideal kind of location that Keith Richards and Johnny Depp would pick for a story conference.

After publicly griping to anyone who would listen that the leaked first draft "wasn't rock 'n' roll enough," the MFIC and I were put on a retainer as script doctors to punch up key sections of the first draft of Disney's forthcoming major motion picture Pirates Of The Caribbean: Treasures Of The Lost Abyss.

In it, Johnny Depp will be making his first movie sequel by reprising his Oscar-nominated role as Captain Jack Sparrow, while the real-life inspiration for his character, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, will be making his acting debut as Jack's estranged father, the notorious pirate Daddy Jack.

With a tape recorder running to capture every comment, we began showing Depp and Richards the revisions we had made. First up was an action scene on page 124 which featured a large battle between Captain Jack's ship and a rival pirate vessel. We explained that the scene needed an additional incident to show Jack's ability to light a fire under his men and motivate them despite the odds being overwhelmingly against them.

To convey this, we had written a new scene just before the fight begins where Captain Jack swings onto the deck with his sword held high, and rouses the gang's spirits by passionately yelling out: "I'll fight but not surrender cried… the wild Caribbean boy!"

"I like that!" Johnny said enthusiastically upon hearing it. "It might even become a catchphrase or something! You've got to admit it's got a nice rhythm to it…" At this point, he began humming to himself: "I'll fight but not surrender cried…"

"No, no, no…" Keith muttered, looking over. "I hate that line."

"Why?" a perplexed Depp asked. "What’s wrong with it?"

"Deppo, it reminds me of something," Keith drawled. "Something unpleasant that I can’t put my finger on. And I especially don’t like this line on the next page where you have me saying, ‘Friend or foe, stand and deliver! Your money or your life!’ "

We started to speak, but Keith raised a skull-ringed hand to protest.

"I’m serious but not desperate," he slurred. "And I am adamant.

"That’s all right, we suggested; we can come back to it later. Next up was a scene on page 168 when Sparrow's gang of pirates starts fighting amongst themselves over a stash of loot while the ship is in port. We'd added a new scene where Jack and his Dad take a stand on the deck and display their strong authority by confronting the rebellious crew.

Looking at the additional passages marked in the script, Johnny and Keith began reading their new dialogue aloud.

CAPT'N JACK: Hey…hey pirates! Come on now! That means everybody just cool out! Will you cool out everybody?

DADDY JACK: A fight broke out.

CAPT'N JACK: I know. I'm hip. Everybody be cool now. Come on, all right? Uh, pirates, I mean, who's fighting what for? Who's fighting and what for? We don't want to fight, come on!

DADDY JACK: (pointing) Look, that guy there, if he doesn't stop it, man… Listen, either those cats cool it man, or we don't sail!"

"Wait a minute," Johnny said, shaking his head slowly. "I'm afraid those lines don't sound very believable to me. I honestly can't imagine anyone saying something as weak and ineffective as that in a life threatening situation."

"Either those cats cool it or we don't sail?" Keith wheezed. "What kind of lame ultimatum is that? This is supposed to be Pirates Of The Caribbean not Pansies Of The Caribbean."

Suddenly Keith dropped his script and began laughing out loud. "Now this is a new line that I definitely like!"

"What line is that?" Depp asked, looking over.

"Here, on the last page," Keith indicated. "It's the final scene where we've reconciled. You make a sarcastic remark and I turn to you and say: "Comical little geezer, aren't ya? You'll look funny when you're fifty." Once again Keith roared with laughter.

"I don't find that line humorous at all."

"Johnny, Johnny, Johnny," Keith Richards rasped, draping a hand over Depp's shoulder. "You shouldn't take it so hard!"

At this point, with the proceedings declining and the bar tab climbing, we managed to surreptitiously slip out the back door. As we left, the MFIC yelled over his shoulder: "We'll bid you both a fond adieu! On with the show, to hell with you!"

Mick Jagger - Rolling Stone 95

2004-12-05T14:35:00.000+01:00

Longue interview (bilan ? passage des troupes en revue ?) du Jag en 95. Pas toute mise en forme (ça viendra), même pas lue en entier, mais ce que j'en ai parcouru est bon. Avec encore le même doute : il raconte ce dont il se souvient ou ce qu'il a lu sur lui ? Difficile de faire la part, un peu des deux sans doute. Sans avoir la mémoire trop explosée, ni son âge, on peut constater comme les souvenirs sont choses fragiles, ne serait ce qu'à 20 ans de distance...

By Jann Wenner. When did you first realize you were a performer, that what you did onstage was affecting people?

When I was 18 or so. The Rolling Stones were just starting to play some clubs around London, and I realized I was getting a lot of girl action when normally I hadn't gotten much. I was very unsophisticated then.

It was the attention of the girls that made you realize you were doing something onstage that was special?

You realize that these girls are going, either quietly or loudly, sort of crazy. And you're going, "Well, this is good. You know, this is something else." At that age you're just so impressed, especially if you've been rather shy before.

There's two parts of all this, at least. There's this great fascination for music and this love of playing blues -- not only blues, just rock & roll generally. There's this great love of that.

But there's this other thing that's performing, which is something that children have or they haven't got. In the slightly post-Edwardian, pre-television days, everybody had to do a turn at family gatherings. You might recite poetry, and Uncle Whatever would play the piano and sing, and you all had something to do. And I was just one of those kids [who loved it].

I guess you just want some sort of gratification. You have to want some sort of approval. But it's also just the love of actually doing it. Fun.

You were going to the London School of Economics and just getting started playing with the Stones. How did you decide which you were going to do?

Well, I started to do both, really. The Stones thing was weekends, and college was in the week. God, the Rolling Stones had so little work -- it was like one gig a month. So it wasn't really that difficult -- we just couldn't get any work.

How committed to the group were you then?

Well, I wasn't totally committed; it was a good, fun thing to do, but Keith [Richards] and Brian [Jones] didn't have anything else to do, so they wanted to rehearse all the time. I liked to rehearse once a week and do a show Saturday. The show that we did was three or four numbers, so there wasn't a tremendous amount of rehearsal needed.

Were you torn about the decision to drop out of school?

It was very, very difficult because my parents obviously didn't want me to do it. My father was furious with me, absolutely furious. I'm sure he wouldn't have been so mad if I'd have volunteered to join the army. Anything but this. He couldn't believe it. I agree with him: It wasn't a viable career opportunity. It was totally stupid. But I didn't really like being at college. It wasn't like it was Oxford and had been the most wonderful time of my life. It was really a dull, boring course I was stuck on.

Tell me about meeting Keith.

I can't remember when I didn't know him. We lived one street away; his mother knew my mother, and we were at primary school together from [ages] 7 to 11. We used to play together, and we weren't the closest fiends, but we were friends. Keith and I went to different schools when we were 11, but he went to a school which was really near where I used to live. But I always knew where he lived, because my mother would never lose contact with anybody, and she knew where they'd moved. I used to see him coming home from his school which was less than a mile away from where I lived. And then -- this is a true story -- we met at the train station. And I had these rhythm blues records, which were very prized possessions because they weren't available in England then. And he said, "Oh, yeah, these are really interesting." That kind of did it. That's how it started, really. We started to go to each other's house and play these records. And then we started to go to other people's houses to play other records. You know, it's the time in your life when you're almost stamp-collecting this stuff. I can't quite remember how all this worked. Keith always played the guitar, from even when he was 5. And he was keen on country music, cowboys. But obviously at some point, Keith, he had this guitar with this electric-guitar pickup. And he played it for me. So I said, "Well, I sing, you know? And you play the guitar." Very obvious stuff. I used to play Saturday night shows with all these different little groups. If I could get a show, I would do it. I used to do mad things -- you know, I used to go and do these shows and go on my knees and roll on the ground -- when I was 15, 16 years old. And my parents were extremely disapproving of it all. Because it was just not done. This was for very low-class people, remember. Rock & roll singers weren't educated people.

What did you think was going on inside you at 15 years old that you wanted to go out and roll around on a stage?

I didn't have any inhibitions. I saw Elvis and Gene Vincent, and I thought, "Well, I can do this." And I liked doing it. It's a real buzz, even in front of 20 people, to make a complete fool of yourself. But people seemed to like it. And the thing is, if people started throwing tomatoes at me, I wouldn't have gone on with it. But they all liked it, and it always seemed be a success, and people were shocked. I could see it in their faces.

Shocked by you?

Yeah. They could see it was a bit wild for what was going on at the time in these little places in the suburbs. Parents were not always very tolerant, but Keith's mum was very tolerant of him playing. Keith was an only child and she didn't have a lot of other distractions, whereas my parents were like "Get on your homework." It was a real hard time for me. So I used to go and play with Keith, and then we used to go and play with Dick Taylor [who was later in the Pretty Things]. His parents were very tolerant, so we used to go round to his house, where we could play louder.

What was it like to be such a success at such a young age?

It was very exciting. The first time we got our picture in the music paper called the Record Mirror -- to be on the front page of this thing that probably sold about 20,000 copies -- was so exciting, you couldn't believe it. And this glowing review: There we were in this club in Richmond, being written up in these rather nice terms. And then to go from the music-oriented press to national press and national television, and everyone seeing you in the world of two television channels, and then being recognized by everyone from builders and people working in shops and so on. It goes to your head -- very champagne feeling.

You became quite the pop aristocrat in swinging London.

Well, it's quite a while until all that. But the earlier bit was even more exciting. The suits, the ties and getting ready for Thank Your Lucky Stars, the innocence and naivete of it all, and famous photographers wanting to take your picture and being in Vogue. In England they were very ready for another band. It was funny, because the Beatles had only been around a year. Things happened so quickly. Then there were a lot of popular bands, and all these bands were from the North of England. Most people in England don't live in the North, and people are snobby in England, so they wanted a band from the South. We were it.

I recently listened to the very early albums, the first four or five you did, and they're all pretty much the same. You were doing blues and covers, but one song stood out: "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)," your first U.S. hit and your first composition together with Keith. It's the first one that has the seeds of the modern Stones in it.

Keith was playing 12-string and singing harmonies into the same microphone as the 12-string. We recorded it in this tiny studio in the West End of London called Regent Sound, which was a demo studio. I think the whole of that album was recorded in there. But it's very different from doing those R&B covers or Marvin Gaye covers and all that. There's a definite feel about it. It's a very pop song, as opposed to all the blues songs and the Motown covers, which everyone did at the time.

The first full album that really kind of jumps out is "Out of Our Heads." What's on there? [Laughter]

I have no idea. I'm awfully sorry. "Cry to Me," "The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man," "Play With Fire," "I'm All Right," "That's How Strong My Love Is" . . .

Yeah. A lot of covers, still. But it had a unity of sound to it. Most of that was recorded in RCA Studios, in Hollywood, and the people working on it, the engineers, were much better. They knew how to get really good sounds. That really affects your performance, because you can hear the nuances, and that inspires you.

And your singing is different here for the first time. You sound like you're singing more like soul music.

Yeah, well, it is obviously soul influenced, which was the goal at the time. Otis Redding and Solomon Burke. "Play With Fire" sounds amazing -- when I heard it last. I mean, it's a very in-your-face kind of sound and very clearly done. You can hear all the vocal stuff on it. And I'm playing the tambourines, the vocal line. You know, it's very pretty.

Who wrote that?

Keith and me. I mean, it just came out.

A full collaboration?

Yeah. That's the first song you wrote that starts to address the lifestyle you were leading in England and, of course, class consciousness. No one had really done that. The Beatles, to some extent, were doing it, though they weren't really doing it at this period as much as they did later. The Kinks were kind of doing it -- Ray Davies and I were in the same boat. One of the first things that, in that very naive way, you attempted to deal with were the kind of funny, swinging, London-type things that were going on. I didn't even realize I was doing it at the time. But it became an interesting source for material. Songwriting had only dealt in cliches and borrowed stuff, you know, from previous records or ideas. "I want to hold your hand," things like that. But these songs were really more from experience and then embroidered to make them more interesting.

Where does that come from in you? I mean, you're writing about "Your mother, she's an heiress/Owns a block in St. John's Wood," but she's sleeping with the milkman, or something.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it was just kind of rich girls' families -- society as you saw it. It's painted in this naive way in these songs.

But at the time to write about stuff like that must have been somewhat daring.

I don't know if it was daring. It just hadn't been done. Obviously there had been lyric writers that had written stuff much more interesting and sophisticated -- say, Noel Coward, who I didn't really know about. He was someone that your parents knew. The lyricist who was really good at the time was Bob Dylan. Everyone looked up to him as being a kind of guru of lyrics. It's hard to think of the absolute garbage that pop music really was at the time. And even if you lifted your game by a marginal amount, it really was a lot different from most everything else that had gone before in the 10 years previously. A lot of it was perhaps not as good as we thought, but at the time it was fantastic. "Gates of Eden" and all these Mexican-type songs, even the nonsense ones: "Everybody Must Get Stoned" and "Like a Rolling Stone," "Positively 4th Street."

Then you did "December's Children (and Everybody's)." Does that title mean anything particular?

No. It was our manager's [Andrew Loog Oldham] idea of hip, Beat poetry. That record features "Get off My Cloud." That was Keith's melody and my lyrics. This is decidedly not a love song or "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Yeah. It's a stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song. The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early '60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress.

Based on your coming to the States in '64?

'64, '65, yeah. And touring outside of New York. New York was wonderful and so on, and L.A was also kind of interesting. But outside of that we found it the most repressive society, very prejudiced in every way. There was still segregation. And the attitudes were fantastically old-fashioned. Americans shocked me by their behavior and their narrow-mindedness. It's changed fantastically over the last 30 years. But so has everything else [laughs]. Is there anything more to say about "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" than has already been said on the record? Written sitting by a pool in Florida . . . Keith didn't want it to come out as a single. Is there anything special to you about that song, looking back at it after all these years? People get very blase about their big hit. It was the song that really made the Rolling Stones, changed us from just another band into a huge, monster band. You always need one song. We weren't American, and America was a big thing, and we always wanted to make it here. It was very impressive the way that song and the popularity of the band became a worldwide thing. You know, we went to playing Singapore. The Beatles really opened all that up. But to do that you needed the song; otherwise you were just a picture in the newspaper, and you had these little hits. Was "Satisfaction" a great, classic piece of work? Well, it's a signature tune, really, rather than a great, classic painting, 'cause it's only like one thing -- a kind of signature that everyone knows. Why? What are the ingredients? It has a very catchy title. It has a very catchy guitar riff. It has a great guitar sound, which was original at that time. And it captures a spirit of the times; which is very important in those kind of songs. Which was? Which was alienation. Or it's a bit more than that, maybe, but a kind of sexual alienation. Alienation's not quite the right word, but it's one word that would do. Isn't that a stage of youth? Yeah, it's being in your 20s, isn't it? Teenage guys can't often formulate this stuff -- when you're that young. Who wrote "Satisfaction"? Well, Keith wrote the lick. I think he had this lyric, "I can't get no satisfaction," which, actually, is a line in a Chuck Berry song called "30 Days." Which is "I can't get no satisfaction"? "I can't get no satisfaction from the judge." Did you know that when you wrote it? No, I didn't know it, but Keith might have heard it back then, because it's not any way an English person would express it. I'm not saying that he purposely nicked anything, but we played those records a lot. So it just could have stuck in the back of your head. Yeah, that was just one little line. And then I wrote the rest of it. There was no melody, really. When you play it today, how do you feel about it? You've got to play it every night. Well, I try to do it as well as I can, and I do the verse softer, so I give it some sort of dynamic. I try to make it melodic. Maybe we shouldn't really do it every night; I don't know. "As Tears Go By" was your first big, classic ballad. Who wrote that? I wrote the lyrics, and Keith wrote the melody. But in some rock, you know there's no melody until the singer starts to sing it. Sometimes there's a definite melody, but quite often it's your job as the singer to invent the melody. I start with one melody, and I make it another melody, over the same chord sequence. You wrote it when you were 21. What do you think of it now? It's a very melancholy song for a 21-year-old to write: "The evening of the day, watching children play . . . " It's very dumb and naive, but it's got a very sad sort of thing about it, almost like an older person might write. You know, it's like a metaphor for being old: You're watching children playing and realizing you're not a child. It's a relatively mature song considering the rest of the output at the time. And we didn't think of doing it [initially] because the Rolling Stones were a butch blues group. But Marianne Faithfull's version was already a big, proven hit song. Why did you go and rerecord it? Because you had a particular affection for that song? Well, it was already a hit, so, you know [laughs], and Andrew was a very simple, commercial kind of guy. A lot of this stuff is done for commercial reasons. Were you surprised that something of this kind popped out of you at 21? It was one of the first things I ever wrote. I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered and you just must let your imagination run. You can't just experience something and leave it at that. You've got to try and embroider, like, any kind of writing. And that's the fun part of it. You have this one experience looking out of a window, seeing children. Well, you might not have felt anything, but then you just let your mind drift and dream, and you imagine an older person doing that. You put yourself in their point of view, and you start to write other things, and all this is a very subconscious thing. Out of that comes a mature thought, out of a young person. I was reading Pushkin, and his stories are autobiographical. But not totally, because he was never in Siberia -- but his friends were, so he uses it. You use your own experience, and then you spice it up with your friends' observations and your imagination. The next record was "Aftermath," which has "Paint It Black," "Under My Thumb" and "Stupid Girl." Does that stand out in your mind at all? That was a big landmark record for me. It's the first time we wrote the whole record and finally laid to rest the ghost of having to do these very nice and interesting, no doubt, but still cover versions of old R&B songs -- which we didn't really feel we were doing justice, to be perfectly honest, particularly because we didn't have the maturity. Plus, everyone was doing it. [Aftermath] has a very wide spectrum of music styles: "Paint It Black" was this kind of Turkish song; and there were also very bluesy things like "Goin' Home"; and I remember some sort of ballads on there. It had a lot of good songs, it had a lot of different styles, and it was very well recorded. So it was, to my mind, a real marker. Why does "Under My Thumb" work so well? It's got Brian playing these marimbas. That riff played on marimbas really makes it. Plus, the groove it gets in the end of the tune. It speeds up, actually. And it becomes this kind of groove tune at the end. It was never a single, but it was always a very well-known album track. And then it became a thing feminists fastened on. Illegitimately, you think. It's a bit of a jokey number, really. It's not really an anti-feminist song any more than any of the others. It's more caricaturish than it is about real women. Yes, it's a caricature, and it's in reply to a girl who was a very pushy woman. Somebody specific? No, I don't think so. Also, on that same album you've got "Stupid Girl," which is a really nasty song. Yeah, it's much nastier than "Under My Thumb." What was going on in your life when you were writing songs like Stupid Girl"? Obviously, I was having a bit of trouble. I wasn't in a good relationship. Or I was in too many bad relationships. I had so many girlfriends at that point. None of them seemed to care they weren't pleasing me very much. I was obviously in with the wrong group. Your pain worked out well for the rest of us. [Laughs] The pain I had to go through! Then you did "Between the Buttons." What do you think of that album? Frank Zappa used to say he really liked it. It's a good record, but it was unfortunately rather spoiled. We recorded it in London on four-track machines. We bounced it back to do overdubs so many times, we lost the sound of a lot of it. Does that record mean a lot to you? No. What's on it? "Connection." It's nice. "Connection" is really nice. "Yesterday's Papers." Yeah, the first song I ever wrote completely on my own for a Rolling Stones record. "My Obsession," that's a good one. They sounded so great, but then, later on, I was really disappointed with it. Isn't "Ruby Tuesday" on there or something? I don't think the rest of the songs are that brilliant. "Ruby Tuesday" is good. I think that's a wonderful song. Why? It's just a nice melody, really. And a lovely lyric. Neither of which I wrote, but I always enjoy singing it. But I agree with you about the rest of the songs. I don't think they're there. I don't think I thought they were very good at the time, either. You then did "Their Satanic Majesties Request." What was going on here? I probably started to take too many drugs. What do you think about "Satanic Majesties" now? Well, it's not very good. It had interesting things on it, but I don't think any of the songs are very good. It's a bit like Between the Buttons. It's a sound experience, really, rather than a song experience. There's two good songs on it: "She's a Rainbow," which we didn't do on the last tour, although we almost did, and "2000 Light Years From Home," which we did do. The rest of them are nonsense. I listened to it recently, and it sounds like Spinal Tap. Really, I know. Was it just you trying to be the Beatles? I think we were just taking too much acid. We were just getting carried away, just thinking anything you did was fun and everyone should listen to it. The whole thing, we were on acid. We were on acid doing the cover picture. I always remember doing that. It was like being at school, you know, sticking on the bits of colored paper and things. It was really silly. But we enjoyed it. [Laughs] Also, we did it to piss Andrew off, because he was such a pain in the neck. Because he didn't understand it. The more we wanted to unload him, we decided to go on this path to alienate him. Just to force him out? Yeah. Without actually doing it legally, we forced him out. I mean, he wanted out anyway. We were so out of our minds. After it came out and it was kind of a chunk record, how did you consider it? A phase. A passing fancy. You followed up with "Jumpin' Jack Flash." We did that one as a single, out of all the acid of Satanic Majesties. What's that song about? "Born in a crossfire hurricane . . ." It's about having a hard time and getting out. Just a metaphor for getting out of all the acid things. And it did bring you back. You launch this golden era: "Beggars Banquet," "Let It Bleed," "Sticky Fingers," "Exile on Main Street." Let's start with "Beggars Banquet," a record that you could not have predicted from your earlier work. It had extraordinary power and sophistication, with songs like "Street Fighting Man," "Salt of the Earth," "Stray Cat Blues" and "Jig-Saw Puzzle." What was going on in your life at this time? What were you listening to and reading? God, what was I doing? Who was I living with? It was all recorded in London, and I was living in this rented house in Chester Square. I was living with Marianne Faithfull. Was I still? Yeah. And I was just writing a lot, reading a lot. I was educating myself. I was reading a lot of poetry, I was reading a lot of philosophy. I was out and about. I was very social, always hanging out with [art-gallery owner] Robert Fraser's group of people. And I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my creative processes. It was a very good period, 1968 -- there was a good feeling in the air. It was a very creative period for everyone. There was a lot going on in the theater. Marianne was kind of involved with it, so I would go to the theater upstairs, hang out with the young directors of the time and the young filmmakers. Let's start with "Sympathy for the Devil." I think that was taken from an old idea of Baudelaire's, I think, but I could be wrong. Sometimes when I look at my Baudelaire books, I can't see it in there. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it. I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song. And you can see it in this movie Godard shot called Sympathy for the Devil [originally titled One Plus One], which is very fortuitous, because Godard wanted to do a film of us in the studio. I mean, it would never happen now, to get someone as interesting as Godard. And stuffy. We just happened to be recording that song. We could have been recording "My Obsession." But it was "Sympathy for the Devil," and it became the track that we used. You wrote that song. Uh-huh. So that's a wholly Mick Jagger song. Uh-huh. I mean, Keith suggested that we do it in another rhythm, so that's how bands help you. Were you trying to put out a specific philosophical message here? You know, you're singing, "Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints" . . . Yeah, there's all these attractions of opposites and turning things upside down. When you were writing it, did you conceive of it as this grand work? I knew it was something good, 'cause I would just keep banging away at it until the fucking band recorded it. There was resistance to it? No, there wasn't any resistance. It was just that I knew that I wanted to do it and get it down. And I hadn't written a lot of songs on my own, so you have to teach it. When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it. And if they like it, they'll do a much better job than if they're just playing 'cause they feel they're obligated. They get inspired. And then you get inspired, and that's what being in a band's about rather than hiring people. But I knew it was a good song. You just have this feeling. It had its poetic beginning, and then it had historic references and then philosophical jottings and so on. It's all very well to write that in verse, but to make it into a pop song is something different. Especially in England -- you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious. The song has a very strong opening: "Please allow me to introduce myself." And then it's this Everyman figure in history who keeps appearing from the beginning of civilization. Yeah, it's a very long historical figure -- the figures of evil and figures of good -- so it is a tremendously long trail he's made as personified in this piece. What else makes this song so powerful? It has a very hypnotic groove, a samba, which has a tremendous hypnotic power, rather like good dance music. It doesn't speed up or slow down. It keeps this constant groove. Plus, the actual samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it's also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive -- because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it. But forgetting the cultural colors, it is a very good vehicle for producing a powerful piece. It becomes less pretentious because it's a very unpretentious groove. If it had been done as a ballad, it wouldn't have been as good. Obviously, Altamont gave it a whole other resonance. Yeah, Altamont is much later than the song, isn't it? I know what you're saying, but I'm just stuck in my periods, because you were asking me what I was doing and I was in my study in Chester Square. After Altamont, did you shy away from performing that song? Yeah, probably, for a bit. It stigmatized the song in a way? Yeah. Because it became so involved with [Altamont] -- sort of journalistically and so on. There were other things going on with it apart from Altamont. Was it the black magic thing? Yeah. And that's not really what I meant. My whole thing of this song was not black magic and all this silly nonsense -- like Megadeth or whatever else came afterward. It was different than that. We had played around with that imagery before -- which is Satanic Majesties -- but it wasn't really put into words. After the concert itself, when it became apparent that somebody got killed, how did you feel? Well, awful. I mean, just awful. You feel a responsibility. How could it all have been so silly and wrong? But I didn't think of these things that you guys thought of, you in the press: this great loss of innocence, this cathartic end of the era . . . I didn't think of any of that. That particular burden didn't weigh on my mind. It was more how awful it was to have had this experience and how awful it was for someone to get killed and how sad it was for his family and how dreadfully the Hell's Angels behaved. Did it cause you to back off that kind of satanic imagery? The satanic-imagery stuff was very overplayed [by journalists]. We didn't want to really go down that road. And I felt that song was enough. You didn't want to make a career out of it. But bands did that -- Jimmy Page, for instance. Big Aleister Crowley . . . I knew lots of people that were into Aleister Crowley. What I'm saying is, it wasn't what I meant by the song "Sympathy for the Devil." If you read it, it's not about black magic, per se. On that same record you did "Street Fighting Man." Tell me a bit about that. It was a very strange time in France. But not only in France but also in America, because of the Vietnam War and these endless disruptions. Did you write that song? Yeah. I wrote a lot of the melody and all the words, and Keith and I sat around and made this wonderful track, with Dave Mason playing the shehani on it live. The shehani? It's a kind of Indian reed instrument a bit like a primitive clarinet. It comes in at the end of the tune. It has a very wailing, strange sound. It's another of the classic songs. Why does it have such resonance today? I don't know if it does. I don't know whether we should really play it. I was persuaded to put it in this tour because it seemed to fit in, but I'm not sure if it really has any resonance for the present day. I don't really like it that much. I thought it was a very good thing at the time. There was all this violence going on. I mean, they almost toppled the government in France; DeGaulle went into this complete funk, as he had in the past, and he went and sort of locked himself in his house in the country. And so the government was almost inactive. And the French riot police were amazing. Was this written in response to having seen what was going on with the students in Paris, a direct inspiration from seeing it on television? Yeah, it was a direct inspiration, because by contrast, London was very quiet . . . Sleepy London town? Isn't "No Expectations" on that record? It's got that wonderful steel guitar part. That's Brian playing. We were sitting around in a circle on the floor, singing and playing, recording with open mikes. That was the last time I remember Brian really being totally involved in something that was really worth doing. He was there with everyone else. It's funny how you remember -- but that was the last moment I remember him doing that, because he had just lost interest in everything. "Let It Bleed"? Yeah. What's on that? It was all recorded at the same time, these two records. What do you mean? Those two records were recorded back to back? Some of them were recorded on one and spilled over to the next. It's got "Midnight Rambler," "Love in Vain," "You Can't Always Get What You Want." This seems to be one of the bleakest records that you made. The songs are very disturbing, and the scenery is ugly. Why this view of the world? The topics are rape, war, murder, addiction . . . Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense. The thing about Vietnam was that it wasn't like World War II, and it wasn't like Korea, and it wasn't like the Gulf War. It was a real nasty war, and people didn't like it. People objected, and people didn't want to fight it. The people that were there weren't doing well. There were these things used that were always used before, but no one knew about them -- like napalm. Are you saying the Vietnam War had a heavy influence on this record? I think so. Even though I was living in America only part time, I was influenced. All those images were on television. Plus, the spill out onto campuses. Who wrote "Midnight Rambler"? That's a song Keith and I really wrote together. We were on a holiday in Italy. In this very beautiful hill town, Positano, for a few nights. Why we should write such a dark song in this beautiful, sunny place, I really don't know. We wrote everything there -- the tempo changes, everything. And I'm playing the harmonica in these little cafes, and there's Keith with the guitar. "Gimmie Shelter"? That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that. Whose idea was it to do the Robert Johnson song "Love in Vain"? I don't know. We changed the arrangement quite a lot from Robert Johnson's. We put in extra chords that aren't there on the Robert Johnson version. Made it more country. And that's another strange song, because it's very poignant. Robert Johnson was a wonderful lyric writer, and his songs are quite often about love, but they're desolate. "You Can't Always Get What You Want"? It's a good song even if I say so myself. Why is that one so popular? 'Cause it's got a very sing-along chorus. And people can identify with it: No one gets what they always want. It's got a very good melody. It's got very good orchestral touches that Jack Nitzsche helped with. So it's got all the ingredients. Anything else you can think of on "Let It Bleed"? I think it's a good record. I'd put it as one of my favorites. PARTNERS FOR LIFE What about your relationship with Keith? Does it bug you, having Keith as your primary musical partner? Does it bug you having a partner at all? No, I think it's essential. You don't have to have a partner for everything you do. But having partners sometimes helps you and sometimes hinders you. You have good times and bad times with them. It's just the nature of it. People also like partnerships because they can identify with the drama of two people in partnership. They can feed off a partnership, and that keeps people entertained. Besides, if you have a successful partnership, it's self-sustaining. You have maybe the longest-running song-writing-performing partnership in our times. Why do you think you and Keith survived unlike John Lennon and Paul McCartney? That's hard to make even a stab at, because I don't know John and Paul well enough. I know them slightly, same as you, probably, and maybe you knew John better at the end. I can hazard a guess that they were both rather strong personalities, and both felt they were totally independent. They seemed to be very competitive over leadership of the band. The thing in leadership is, you can have times when one person is more at the center than the other, but there can't be too much arguing about it all the time. Because if you're always at loggerheads, you just have to go, "OK, if I can't have a say in this and this, then fuck it. What am I doing here?" So you sort of agree what your roles are. Whereas John and Paul felt they were too strong, and they wanted to be in charge. If there are 10 things, they both wanted to be in charge of nine of them. You're not gonna make a relationship like that work, are you? Why do you and Keith keep the joint-songwriting partnership? We just agreed to do that, and that seemed the easiest way to do it. I think in the end it all balances out. How was it when Keith was taking heroin all the time? How did you handle that? I don't find it easy to talk about other people's drug problems. If he wants to talk about it, fine, he can talk about it all he wants. Elton John talks about his bulimia on television. But I don't want to talk about his bulimia, and I don't want to talk about Keith's drug problems. How did I handle it? Oh, with difficulty. It's never easy. I don't find it easy dealing with people with drug problems. It helps if you're all taking drugs, all the same drugs. But anyone taking heroin is thinking about taking heroin more than they're thinking about anything else. That's the general rule about most drugs. If you're really on some heavily addictive drug, you think about the drug, and everything else is secondary. You try and make everything work, but the drug comes first. How did his drug use affect the band? I think that people taking drugs occasionally are great. I think there's nothing wrong with it. But if you do it the whole time, you don't produce as good things as you could. It sounds like a puritanical statement, but it's based on experience. You can produce many good things, but they take an awfully long time. You obviously developed a certain relationship based on him as a drug addict, part of which was you running the band. So when he cleaned up, how did that affect the band? Drug addicts are basically incompetent to run anything. Yeah, it's all they can do to turn up. And people have different personalities when they're drunk or take heroin, or whatever drugs. When Keith was taking heroin, it was very difficult to work. He still was creative, but it took a long time. And everyone else was taking drugs and drinking a tremendous amount, too. And it affected everyone in certain ways. But I've never really talked to Keith about this stuff. So I have no idea what he feels. You never talked about the drug stuff with him? No. So I'm always second-guessing. I tell you something, I probably read it in Rolling Stone. What's your relationship with him now? We have a very good relationship at the moment. But it's a different relationship to what we had when we were 5 and different to what we had when we were 20 and a different relationship than when we were 30. We see each other every day, talk to each other every day, play every day. But it's not the same as when we were 20 and shared rooms. Can we talk about Brian Jones for a second here? Sure. The thing about Brian is that he was an extremely difficult person. You don't really feel like talking bad about someone that's had such a miserable time. But he did give everyone else an extremely miserable ride. Anyway, there was something very, very disturbed about him. He was very unhappy with life, very frustrated. He was very talented, but he had a very paranoid personality and not at all suited to be in show business [laughs]. Hmm. Show business killed him? Yeah. Well, he killed himself, but he should've been playing trad-jazz weekends and teaching in school; he probably would have been better off. What was Brian's contribution to the band? Well, he had a huge contribution in the early days. He was very obsessed with it, which you always need. Obsessed with the band? Yeah, getting it going and its personality and how it should be. He was obsessed. Too obsessed for me. There's a certain enthusiasm, and after that it becomes obsession. I go back to my thing about collecting: It's nice to collect stamps, but if it becomes obsessive, and you start stealing for your stamps, it becomes too much. He was obsessed about the image of the band, and he was very exclusionary. He saw the Stones as a blues band based on Muddy Waters, Elmore James and that tradition. I don't think he really liked playing Chuck Berry songs. He was very purist. He was real middle class; he came from one of the most middle-class towns in England, Cheltenham, which was one of the most genteel towns in the most genteel area of England. So his whole outlook and upbringing was even worse in the gentility fashion than mine. What started causing tensions in the group among Keith, you and him? [Brian] was a very jealous person and didn't read the right books about leadership [laughs]. And you can't be jealous and be a leader. He was obsessed with the idea of being the leader of the band. You have to realize that everyone in a band is all more or less together, and everyone has their own niche, and some people lead in some ways, and some people lead in others. He never could understand that; he never got it, and he was kind of young. So he alienated people. And as I say, he was very narrow-minded in his view of music, and, really, Keith and I had been very catholic. But did you take away the leadership of the band from him? He had never had the leadership of the band to take away; if you're the singer in the band, you always get more attention than anyone else. Brian got very jealous when I got attention. And then the main jealousy was because Keith and I started writing songs, and he wasn't involved in that. To be honest, Brian had no talent for writing songs. None. I've never known a guy with less talent for songwriting. What did he have talent for? He was a guitar player, and he also diverted his talent on other instruments. His original instrument was the clarinet. So he played harmonica because he was familiar with wind instruments. Did he give the band a sound? Yes. He played the slide guitar at a time when no one really played it. He played in the style of Elmore James, and he had this very lyrical touch. He evolved into more of an experimental musician, but he lost touch with the guitar, and always as a musician you must have one thing you do well. He dabbled too much. Does he deserve the kind of mythological status that he has among hard-core Stones fanatics? Well, he was an integral part of the band, and he -- for whatever it means -- was a big part of it. Can you describe your falling apart? It happened gradually. He went from [being] an obsessive about the band to being rather an outsider. He'd turn up late to recording sessions, and he'd miss the odd gig every now and then. He let his health deteriorate because he drank too much and took drugs when they were new, hung out too much, stayed up too late, partied too much and didn't concentrate on what he was doing. Let his talent slide. Did you fire him, finally? Yeah. How was that? Not pleasant. It's never pleasant, firing people. But it had to be done because we felt we needed someone, and he wasn't there. He wouldn't come to the studio. He wouldn't do anything. We felt we couldn't go on. In fact, we came to a point where we couldn't play live. We couldn't hold our heads up and play because Brian was a total liability. He wasn't playing well, wasn't playing at all, couldn't hold the guitar. It was pathetic. Of course, now I suppose we would have had him admitted to rehab clinics and so on, but those things, unfortunately, in those days were not the path. He tried lots of doctors, but they just gave him more pills. Do you feel guilty somehow about it all? No, I don't really. I do feel that I behaved in a very childish way, but we were very young, and in some ways we picked on him. But, unfortunately, he made himself a target for it; he was very, very jealous, very difficult, very manipulative, and if you do that in this kind of a group of people, you get back as good as you give, to be honest. I wasn't understanding enough about his drug addition. No one seemed to know much about drug addiction. Things like LSD were all new. No one knew the harm. People thought cocaine was good for you. I'm going to quote you something Charlie told me: "Brian Jones had a death wish at a young age. Brian's talent wasn't up to it. He wasn't up to leading a band. He was not a pleasant person to be around. And he was never there to help people to write a song. That's when Mick lost his patience. We carried Brian Jones." That's straight to the point, isn't it? Whether he had a death wish or not, I don't know. He was a very sad, pitiable figure at the end. He was a talented musician, but he let it go and proved to be a rather sad precursor to a lot of other people. Why this should be, I don't know. I find it rather morbid, but it does keep happening, with people like Kurt Cobain. Why? Does this happen in accounting, too? Is this something that happens in every profession -- it's just that we don't read about the accountants? I think the answer is, yes, it does happen in every profession -- it's just played out in public with people like Brian and Kurt Cobain. How do you think Brian died? There's been a lot of speculation. Drowned in a pool. That other stuff is people trying to make money. THE NEXT STONE AGE After Brian died, you recorded what has to be considered another classic Stones album, "Sticky Fingers." Was it strange making an album without Brian? Oh yeah. A whole new world, an era away from Beggars Banquet. We had Mick Taylor in the band, and we had a new record company. We'd been at Decca, and we'd been rather successful, but we didn't get paid very much, and it was like being with strangers. The cover of that album is a pair of jeans with a real zipper. This was Andy Warhol's idea. There's underwear on the back. Is that you? No. It's one of Andy's . . . proteges is the polite word we used to use, I think. All right. That's the news in this interview. Why does "Brown Sugar" work like mad? That's a bit of a mystery, isn't it? I wrote that song in Australia in the middle of a field. They were really odd circumstances. I was doing this movie, Ned Kelly, and my hand had got really damaged in this action sequence. So stupid. I was trying to rehabilitate my hand and had this new kind of electric guitar, and I was playing in the middle of the outback and wrote this tune. But why it works? I mean, it's a good groove and all that. I mean, the groove is slightly similar to Freddy Cannon, this rather obscure '50s rock performer -- "Tallahassee Lassie" or something. Do you remember this? 'She's down in F-L-A." Anyway, the groove of that - boom-boom-boom-boom-boom -- is "going to a go-go" or whatever, but that's the groove. And you wrote it all? Yeah. This is one of your biggest hits, a great classic, radio single, except the subject matter is slavery, interracial sex, eating pussy . . . [Laughs] And drugs. That's a double-entendre, just thrown in. Brown sugar being heroin? Brown sugar being heroin and -- And pussy? That makes it . . . the whole mess thrown in. God knows what I'm on about on that song. It's such a mishmash. All the nasty subjects in one go. Were you surprised that it was such a success with all that stuff in it? I didn't think about it at the time. I never would write that song now. Why? I would probably censor myself. I'd think, "Oh God, I can't. I've got to stop. I can't just write raw like that." "Wild Horses." Is that a Keith song? Yeah, it was his melody. And he wrote the phrase "wild horses," but I wrote the rest of [the lyrics]. It's one of the prettiest. I like the song. It's an example of a pop song. Taking this cliche "wild horses," which is awful, really, but making it work without sounding like a cliche when you're doing it. What about "Moonlight Mile"? That's a song without Keith -- that's you and Mick Taylor. Yeah, we recorded it in my house in the country, Stargroves. And we recorded a lot of stuff [there]: "Bitch," stuff from Exile on Main Street. At the same time? And then just divided the songs between records? Yeah. It's a good house to record in. And that's also where the Who made an album. Led Zeppelin recorded one. But anyway, I remember Mick Taylor playing that song. Real dreamy kind of semi-Middle Eastern piece. Yeah, that's a real pretty song -- and a nice string arrangement. A SUIVRE...

You do "Dead Flowers" on this record. You put on this kind of loopy, country voice. I love country music, but I find it very hard to take it seriously. I also think a lot of country music is sung with the tongue in cheek, so I do it tongue in cheek. The harmonic thing is very different from the blues. It doesn't bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it's very English, really. Even though it's been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak. Do you have anything to say about "Sister Morphine," which is also on this album? Did Marianne write part of this? She wrote a couple of lines; she always says she wrote everything, though. I can't even tell you which ones. She's always complaining she doesn't get enough money from it. Now she says she should have got it all. What is it about? It's about a man after an accident, really. It's not about being addicted to morphine so much as that. Ry Cooder plays wonderfully on that. It's not what we think it was -- it's not about Marianne Faithfull? No. If you listen to the lyrics -- that's what I remember, anyway. "Here I lie in my hospital bed." Cousin cocaine? Yeah, that's the bit she wrote. Critics say your next album, "Exile on Main Street," is the best Stones album. What do you think? It's a bit overrated, to be honest. Compared to Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet, which I think are more of a piece, I don't see it's as thematic as the other two. I'm not saying it's not good. It doesn't contain as many outstanding songs as the previous two records. I think the playing's quite good. It's got a raw quality, but I don't think all around it's as good. What was the atmosphere recording "Exile"? Well, Exile on Main Street was done in different pieces. There's this part which is recorded at Olympic [Studios], maybe a third. Another part is recorded in my house in the country in England. And half of it's recorded in Keith's basement in the South of France, and it's all mixed in LA. What was the band like at that time? Stoned is the word that might describe it. [Laughs] It's the first album Mick Taylor's on, really. So it's different than previous albums, which had Brian on them -- or Brian not on them, as the case may be. It was a difficult period, because we had all these lawsuits going with [business manager] Allen Klein. We had to leave England because of tax problems. We had no money and went to live in the South of France -- the first album we made where we weren't based in England, thus the title. Was the band at its drug zenith at that time? Yeah. What was the mood? What was the vibe around? Just winging it. Staying up all night. Keith was a full-scale junkie at that point? Totally. And everybody else? Stoned on something; one thing or another. So I don't think it was particularly pleasant. I didn't have a very good time. It was this communal thing where you don't know whether you're recording or living or having dinner; you don't know when you're gonna play, when you're gonna sing -- very difficult. Too many hangers-on. I went with the flow, and the album got made. These things have a certain energy, and there's a certain flow to it, and it got impossible. Everyone was so out of it. And the engineers, the producers -- all the people that were supposed to be organized -- were more disorganized than anybody. So it was a classic of that era, when that was a common approach to things. Absolutely. But the previous ones were easier to make. "Let It Bleed"? We were still like that, but we were grounded because we were still in England and had this way of doing it. We went to the studio and lived in London. Though it was made in a screwy way, it was organized, structured; a studio rather than a home recording. Those home recordings have a good side to them, but they get floaty; you don't really know what you're doing. Who wrote "Tumbling Dice"? [Laughs] Keith and me. I wrote the lyrics. And he did the groove? Yeah. It comes back to that thing where I really don't remember who had the melody or not, but it doesn't really matter. Why does that beat grab you so quick? I don't really know what people like about it. I don't think it's our best stuff. I don't think it has good lyrics. But people seem to really like it, so good for them. Do you cringe when you hear some of the old drug songs? Sometimes. Not only the drugs -- I just cringe, period. Many people would be embarrassed to discuss the drug behavior of their youth, but you have no choice. I was thinking about this the other day, and I don't really think I was suited to heavy drug behavior, to be perfectly honest. But I don't mind talking about it. It's hard to believe that you did so many drugs for so long. That's what I find really hard. And didn't really consider it. You know, it was eating and drinking and taking drugs and having sex. It was just part of life. It wasn't really anything special. It was just a bit of a bore, really. Everyone took drugs the whole time, and you were out of it the whole time. It wasn't a special event. But drugs definitely had a big impact on your band. All these drugs had tremendous influence on behavior. I think half of starting to take drugs in that early period was to kind of plate yourself outside of normal society. Thinking about those days, do you feel this was a good use of time or a waste of time? Good use of time. [Laughs] I'm reticent to go into a sort of dreadful reminiscence of the swinging '60s. What about the contribution of Mick Taylor to the band in these years? I think he had a big contribution. He made it very musical. He was a very fluent, melodic player, which we never had, and we don't have now. Neither Keith nor [Ronnie Wood] plays that kind of style. It was very good for me working with him. Charlie and I were talking about this the other day, because we could sit down -- I could sit down -- with Mick Taylor, and he would play very fluid lines against my vocals. He was exciting, and he was very pretty, and it gave me something to follow, to bang off. Some people think that's the best version of the band that existed. What do you think? They're all interesting periods. They're all different. I obviously can't say if I think Mick Taylor was the best, because it sort of trashes the period the band is in now. Why did Mick Taylor leave? I still don't really know. He never explained? Not really. He wanted to have a solo career. I think he found it difficult to get on with Keith. On musical issues? Everything. I'm guessing. After those four great albums, it seems like a weak period starts. There's "Goats Head Soup" which has "Angie." And "Black and Blue" has got "Memory Motel" and "Fool to Cry." But these records are kind of weak after those big ones. What happened? Did it have to do with Keith's drug use? Yeah, I think so. I find it so hard to remember, though, I don't want to commit myself to saying something. I mean, everyone was using drugs, Keith particularly. So I think it suffered a bit from all that. General malaise. I think we got a bit carried away with our own popularity and so on. It was a bit of a holiday period [laughs]. I mean, we cared, but we didn't care as much as we had. Not really concentrating on the creative process, and we had such money problems. We had been so messed around by Allen Klein and the British Revenue. We were really in a very bad way. So we had to move. And it sort of destabilized us a bit. We flew off all edges. Everybody went in different directions? We had all lived in London before this. So for the first time you guys are not together all the time. Not only couldn't we stay in England, we couldn't go to America because we had immigration problems. So we were limited. It was a very difficult period. You came back, though, with "Some Girls." Did that have to do, perhaps, with being in New York City? Yes, you are absolutely right! Well done! I'd moved to New York at that point. The inspiration for the record was really based in New York and the ways of the town. I think that gave it an extra spur and hardness. And then, of course, there was the punk thing that had started in 1976. Punk and disco were going on at the same time, so it was quite an interesting period. New York and London, too. Paris -- there was punk there. Lots of dance music. Paris and New York had all this Latin dance music, which was really quite wonderful. Much more interesting than the stuff that came afterward. "Miss You" is one of the all-time greatest Rolling Stones grooves. Yeah. I got that together with Billy Preston, actually. You and he came up with that? Yeah, Billy had shown me the four-on-the-floor bass-drum part, and I would just play the guitar. I remember playing that in the El Mocambo club when Keith was on trial in Toronto for whatever he was doing. We were supposed to be there making this live record. That was the first performance of it? Yeah, I was still writing it, actually. We were just in rehearsal. But that's a wholly Mick Jagger song? Yeah. And "Beast of Burden"? That's more like Keith's song. I wrote lyrics. It's got that really nice little lick on that. And "Respectable"? Yeah, this is the kind of edgy punk ethos. Yeah, the groove of it -- and on all of those songs, the whole thing was to play it all fast, fast, fast. I had a lot of problems with Keith about it, but that was the deal at the time. He told me that you kept trying to make a disco album, and he didn't think that was the Stones. Was that the problem? Not at all. I wanted to make more of a rock album. I just had one song that had a dance groove: "Miss You." But I didn't want to make a disco album. I wrote all these songs -- like "Respectable," "Lies," "When the Whip Comes Down." So most of the songs on this album are yours? No, not most. I only mentioned half. I don't know what else is on there. "Shattered." That's one of Keith's and me in combination. "Far Away Eyes"? Combination. I wasn't out to make a disco record, making "Far Away Eyes." But "Miss You" really caught the moment, because that was the deal at the time. And that's what made that record take off. It was a really great record. I seem to like records that have one overriding mood with lots of little offshoots. Even though there's a lot of bases covered, there's lots of straight-ahead rock & roll. It's very brass edged. It's very Rolling Stones, not a lot of frills. BOYS WILL BE GIRLS On the "Some Girls" cover -- and not for the first time -- the members of the band are in drag. This now seems to have become a rock tradition. What are the origins of the androgynous appeal of rock & roll? Elvis. Elvis was very androgynous. People in the older generation were afraid of Elvis because of this. That was one of the things they saw in Elvis. They called it effeminate. And they saw it straightaway. I saw Elvis as a rock singer, and obviously you were attracted to him because he was a good-looking guy. But they saw an effeminate guy. I mean, if you look at the pictures, the eyes are done with makeup, and everything's perfect. I mean, look at Little Richard. He had a very feminine appearance, but you didn't translate that into what Little Richard's sex orientation was. When did you first start to incorporate all that into your own act? Well, we did it straightaway, unconsciously. But when did you get deliberate about it? Oh, about 1960. Very early, before we made records. As far as I was concerned, it was part of the whole thing from the beginning. I couldn't have talked about it like I talk about it now. But it wasn't some new thing. You were copying all your idols. I always thought Buddy Holly was very effeminate. His voice, not necessarily his look. And you just incorporated it all. I just pushed it further because it seemed the natural thing to do. Plus, there was that whole culture of people you met who were gay, in the theater and so on. And everyone in show business talked in a very camp, English way: "All right, duckie," "Come along, dear." So as soon as you were in it professionally, that was the way people carried on, so it became even more camp. The Beatles weren't like this. You were wearing heavy makeup and skirts. I think you just pushed the whole thing because you thought it was sophisticated to be camp and effeminate. It was a thing you showed some of the time and then put aside. It was very English -- guys dressing up in drag is nothing particularly new. But David Bowie told me that you were the master: "He taught all the rest of us." Well, that's very nice. And it obviously worked and offended people, which was always the big thing, something new to offend them with. I think what we did in this era was take all these things that were unspoken in previous incarnations of rock & roll and intellectualize them. But you went further than anybody else and became a symbol of it. When were you first aware that you were this beauty, that you had a power to attract both boys and girls? Oh, from the beginning. The girls, then the boys? Both, always. In a sexual sense? I didn't really think about it. I mean, boys were a very essential part of rock roll. The girls were more onlookers. When I was 15, 16, I used to play this old-fashioned rock & roll -- like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis. And I always felt the boys were more involved than the girls. Boys, as far as England was concerned, were always the hard core. And you just know the guys like it. They want to be you. Some might be attracted to you without knowing it. The girls are more obviously reaching out to you. In those days, guys didn't reach out, put their arms around you and kiss you. Pete Townshend wrote an essay that appeared in "Rolling Stone" about your 40th birthday: "When I am with Jagger, I do love to look at him. He is still very beautiful in my eyes; much has been said of his androgynous attraction, and I suppose my response to his physical presence confirms all that." What's your response? Gosh, it's nice to know, isn't it? Wow, Pete! You don't think of Pete Townshend as someone who would respond to any of that, do you? To be honest, he would be the last person. But I think John responded to it, John Lennon. In what way? He responded to it in a different way. When you get a big response, you push it and so on, until you've really done it. And then you don't do it anymore. And it's great fun, dressing up and being this figure. It's wonderful. What did John Lennon say? He said something in your magazine. It wasn't to do with appearance, more with music. When asked about the Rolling Stones, he said, "I like the butch stuff and I don't like the faggy stuff." But you don't want to be butch the whole time. It would drive you mad, wouldn't it? Rock & roll is a very macho field. Yeah, but the Rolling Stones isn't just a rock band. What does it say to you about rock & roll, in what we've seen in Elton and Boy George? See, it's very confusing. In rock & roll, when I think of both sides of the coin or whatever you want to call it, I don't really think of Elton John. He doesn't spring to my mind, somehow. His appearance is flamboyant, always, but I don't think of him as a feminine stage persona. I'm not saying he was a great butch rocker. But he wasn't that feminine to me. Boy George was a feminine persona in a way -- the moves and so on. He was an overt homosexual. Apart from those two, where are we going with it? I mean, I can't think of hardly any others who are that well known. Are there more who we've forgotten about? Well, David Bowie played with the same images and themes that you have. But as you said, rock & roll mostly is a very butch thing, and it appeals to one hard side of the masculine character. But I don't think the Rolling Stones are only a rock band. They can be other things. They can be very feminine. The Stones? Yeah. Which tends to be overlooked because we don't show it that much because of the nature of the gigs. After "Some Girls" comes "Emotional Rescue." Does it have a lot of resonance? No, it doesn't. You know, Emotional Rescue is a lot of leftovers from Some Girls. Really. And then comes "Tattoo You." Yeah, that's an old record. It's all a lot of old tracks that I dug out. And it was very strange circumstances. [Producer] Chris Kimsey and I went through all the tracks from those two previous records. It wasn't all outtakes; some of it was old songs. And then I went back and found previous ones like "Waiting on a Friend," from Goats Head Soup. They're all from different periods. Then I had to write lyrics and melodies. A lot of them didn't have anything, which is why they weren't used at the time -- because they weren't complete. They were just bits, or they were from early takes. And then I put them all together in an incredibly cheap fashion. I recorded in this place in Paris in the middle of the winter. And then I recorded some of it in a broom cupboard, literally, where we did the vocals. The rest of the band were hardly involved. And then I took it to [producer] Bob Clearmountain, who did this great job of mixing so that it doesn't sound like it's from different periods. I think it's your most underrated record. I think it's excellent. But all the things I usually like, it doesn't have. It doesn't have any unity of purpose or place or time. What do you think? The playing is so precise on it, so sharp. The band sound is very modern. And it's got "Start Me Up" on it. Which is a track that was just forgotten about, a reject. And who wrote "Start Me Up"? It was Keith's great riff, and I wrote the rest. The funny thing was that it turned into this reggae song after two takes. And that take on Tattoo You was the only take that was a complete rock & roll take. And then it went to reggae completely for about 20 takes. And that's why everyone said, "Oh, that's crap. We don't want to use that." And no one went back to Take 2, which was the one we used, the rock track. What about "Undercover," your next album? Not a very special record. And "Dirty Work"? I think that was the last album the Stones made before you and Keith had a falling out. How was that record? Not special. I remember that when you made "Dirty Work," you were about to tour and then changed your mind. Touring Dirty Work would have been a nightmare. It was a terrible period. Everyone was hating each other so much; there were so many disagreements. It was very petty; everyone was so out of their brains, and Charlie was in seriously bad shape. When the idea of touring came up, I said, "I don't think it's gonna work." In retrospect I was a hundred percent right. It would have been the worst Rolling Stones tour. Probably would have been the end of the band. But, finally, it was your decision not to tour. Was Keith upset with that? Oh, yeah. And the next thing you do is a solo album. Yeah. He must have been quite unhappy with that. But when we signed the recording contract with CBS, I had a provision to make a solo record. Keith knew all about it, so it wasn't a bolt from the blue. I don't want to excuse what happened; it was a very bad period. Everyone was getting on very badly. And then it turned into a public battle between you and Keith, with all the sniping in the press. I think that was Keith's way of trying to get back at me; he just liked to mouth off about it. He quite enjoyed it. He became very upset and overreacted when I wanted to do a solo record, which in retrospect seems a natural thing to want to do. But even before that, everyone was bored playing with each other. We'd reached a period when we were tired of it all. Bill [Wyman] was not enthusiastic to start with -- there's a guy that doesn't really want to do much. He's quite happy, whatever he's told to do, but he's not suggesting anything, not helping . . . a bit morose and bored. You've got Charlie overdoing it in all directions. He was getting drugged up and drinking? Yeah. Keith the same. Me the same. Ronnie -- I don't know what Ronnie was doing. We just got fed up with each other. You've got a relationship with musicians that depends on what you produce together. But when you don't produce, you get bad reactions -- bands break up. You get difficult periods, and that was one of them. Do you feel like an underappreciated musician vis-a-vis Keith? I don't think people really know or care that much about what really goes on. I don't think people care about the mechanics of songwriting, particularly. So they think, "Oh, well, Mick must write all the lyrics, and Keith writes all the tunes," which might have been true 30 years ago, but it really isn't true now. But that doesn't worry me very much. Keith might be underappreciated as a lyric writer. I don't think it worries him. I was listening to your last solo record, "Wandering Spirit," on which you play a lot of guitar, and there are songs on there that for all intents and purposes could be Rolling Stones songs. Yeah. You couldn't tell. That's me doing what I do, and you think it's Keith. It's difficult not to do it. I didn't do it on every track. I would come out and go, "I don't want it to sound like that." Then I thought, "Fuck it. If they're good, they're good. It doesn't matter if they're too Stones-y." Charles says, "Mick is better with Keith Richards than he is with any other guitar players. I mean even a technically better guitar player -- he's better with Keith." Do you feel that? Well, yeah, up to a certain point. I do enjoy working with other kinds of guitar players, because Keith is a very definite kind of guitar player. He's obviously very rhythmic and so on, and that works very well with Charlie and myself. Though I do like performing or working with guitar players that also work around lead lines a lot -- like Eric [Clapton] or Mick Taylor or Joe Satriani. Whether it's better or not, it's completely different working with them. We made records with just Mick Taylor, which are very good and everyone loves, where Keith wasn't there for whatever reasons. Which ones? People don't know that Keith wasn't there making it. All the stuff like "Moonlight Mile," "Sway." These tracks are a bit obscure, but they are liked by people that like the Rolling Stones. It's me and [Mick] playing off each other -- another feeling completely, because he's following my vocal lines and then extemporizing on them during the solos. That's something Jeff Beck, to a certain extent, can do: a guitar player that just plays very careful lead lines and listens to what his vocalist is doing. In the mid-'80s, when the Stones were not working together, did you and Keith talk? Hardly at all. A little while ago, Keith described your relationship like this to me: "We can't even get divorced. I wanted to kill him." Did you feel you were trapped in this marriage? No. You're not trapped. We were friends before we were in a band, so it's more complicated, but I don't see it as a marriage. They're quite different, a band and a marriage. How did you patch it up? What actually happened was, we had a meeting to plan the tour, and as far as I was concerned, it was very easy. At the time [1989], everyone was asking [whispers], "Wow, what was it like? What happened? How did it all work?" It was a non-event. What could have been a lot of name-calling, wasn't. I think everyone just decided that we'd done all that. Of course, we had to work out what the modus vivendi was for everybody, because we were planning a very different kind of tour. Everyone had to realize that they were in a new kind of world. We had to invent new rules. It was bigger business, more efficient than previous tours, than the '70s drug tours. We were all gonna be on time at the shows. Everyone realized they had to pull their weight, and everyone had a role to play, and they were all up for doing it. Can you describe the time you spent in Barbados with Keith, deciding if you could put this together? Keith and I and [financial adviser] Rupert [Lowenstein] had a small meeting first and talked about business. We were in a hotel with the sea crashing outside and the sun shining and drinks, talking about all the money we're gonna get and how great it was gonna be, and then we bring everyone else in and talk about it. So that was your reconciliation with Keith? Was there any talk of putting your heads together and airing issues? No, and I'm glad we didn't do that, because it could have gone on for weeks. It was better that we just get on with the job. Of course, we had to revisit things afterward. Charlie said to me, "I don't think you can come between Mick and Keith -- they're family. You can only go so far, and then you hit an invisible wall. They don't want anyone in there." Well, it sounds like one of the wives taking, doesn't it? I remember Bianca [Jagger] saying a very similar thing. But if that's what he thinks, that's what he thinks. It's funny he thinks that. I don't know why he should say that. I think people are afraid to express their opinions half the time. In front of you and Keith? Or just in front of me. They think they're gonna go back to a period where people would jump down their throats for having an opinion. Drug use makes you snappy, and you get very bad-tempered and have terrible hangovers. One more quote. Keith says, "Mick clams up all the time. He keeps a lot inside. It was the way he was brought up. Just being Mick Jagger at 18 or 19, a star, gives him reason to protect what space is left." I think it's very important that you have at least some sort of inner thing you don't talk about. That's why I find it distasteful when all these pop stars talk about their habits. But if that's what they need to do to get rid of them, fine. But I always found it boring. For some people it's real therapy to talk to journalists about their private lives and inner thoughts. But I would rather keep something to myself. It's wearing. You're on all the time. As much as I love talking to you today, I'd rather be having one day where I don't have to think about me. With all this attention, you become a child. It's awful to be at the center of attention. You can't talk about anything apart from your own experience, your own dopey life. I'd rather do something that can get me out of the center of attention. It's very dangerous. But there's no way, really, to avoid that. TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS After "Steel Wheels," you took a couple of years off and came back with "Voodoo Lounge." What were your goals going into the album? Is it a better album than "Steel Wheels"? I don't know if Steel Wheels is better than Voodoo Lounge, actually. I don't think there's a huge difference of quality between the two albums. I wish there was, but I'm afraid, in the end, I don't think there is. On "Voodoo Lounge" it seems like you've got better, more distinctive songs. I don't know. Perhaps if the Voodoo Lounge album had been more successful commercially, I might have agreed with you, because commercial success changes everything. It colors your opinions. If it had sold 5 million albums, I'd be saying to you, "It's definitely better than Steel Wheels." Let's talk about it as two rock critics. That's different. You told me when you started to make the record that you were going to spend a lot of time on this one, making as good a record as you could possibly make, making sure you've got the songs written in advance. You hired a producer, which you hadn't done for a long time. Do you feel that you've met that expectation? Not completely. But maybe we should list the positive things rather than the negative. I think there is a really good feeling of the band on it -- that the band is playing very much as a band, even though it's got one new member [bassist Darryl Jones]. There's a good variety of songs. It's not overelaborate. You get a feeling of really being there, and it's quite intimate in nature. The ballads are rather nice, and then the rock & roll numbers kick quite well and sound enthusiastic like we're into it. I think it's a good frame of reference of what the Rolling Stones were about during that quite limited time in Ireland in that year. It's very much a kind of time -- and place album. In that way I was quite pleased with the results. But there were a lot of things that we wrote for Voodoo Lounge that Don [Was, the record's producer] steered us away from: groove songs, African influences and things like that. And he steered us very clear of all that. And I think it was a mistake. What direction did he take you in? He tried to remake Exile on Main Street or something like that. Plus, the engineer was also trying to do the same thing. Their mind-set about it was just too retro. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it inherently, but they went over the top; they'd gone too far. Maybe that's why I like it so much. Was was tugging you toward doing a classic Stones record. Were you trying to fight that? No, I didn't really fight it in the end. I gave up because there was no point in it. I think both Charlie and I didn't really like it, but we could see that that was the direction you could go, and it might be successful. I don't think it really was that successful, because I don't think there's any point in having these over-retro references. I think it was an opportunity missed to go in another direction, which would have been more unusual, a little more radical, although it's always going to sound like the Rolling Stones. At the beginning of the "Voodoo Lounge" tour, the rap was, these guys are too old. When people say that you're too old to tour, how do you feel? You say, "I don't think so." The band still sounds very good, and it doesn't sound much different from before, and you all liked me before, so you're going to like this, probably. But at the beginning of the tour, you seemed a little nervous and -- Apprehensive. We don't have two weeks to break in out of town. So the first time in a big place like Washington, it's very nerve-racking. But it settled down pretty quickly. After seven performances, it more or less got into a very good groove. It always fascinated me that you are this great, hands-on manager of these massive tours -- really involved in the day-to-day operation. And then you go out and perform, enter stage, the consummate artist and songwriter. That's a very unusual combination of talent. Why? There's really no one as experienced as I am doing it. And though I had huge arguments with [legendary rock promoter] Bill Graham, he had fantastic qualities, especially being an impresario, making a show a real show. I learned a tremendous amount from Bill. He was fantastically difficult on a personal level not only with me but with all the people working with him. He'd just scream and shout at everyone, which would start driving me crazy and everyone else. It makes for a not very good atmosphere. Much too prickly, and that was one of his big problems. I learned a lot from [Graham], and I feel that if I just leave everything to someone else that I get a very one-sided opinion of how things are. And they all have their own agendas. People who are involved in tour directing, they don't understand what it's like to be on the stage. And just on a very simple level like booking the rest of the tour of Europe: How many shows are you going to do in a 10-day period? My agenda is, can the band do this? Is this feasible? That is, making it a tour that the Rolling Stones can actually function, do and have a good time on -- not just a crazy skedaddle around with no time to think and eventually become totally exhausted. How do you reconcile these two sides of yourself, your very artistic half and your very methodical, business half? One is an extension of the other. I don't think of them as very different. It's being creative in another way. I find it very satisfying, the whole thing of designing a stage. One step from that it becomes real practicalities. It starts off as being a great design, but can it be made? And then who's going to pay for it? Well, the Rolling Stones, really. So can you make it for $30 million? And if you can't, you're going to lose. Now that's a kind of money decision, but who else is going to make that decision? This passion for detail -- does it come out of the same impulse as your artistic impulse? It's the same impulse. It obviously divides itself up differently, but I don't separate them completely. I've learned that you have to just delegate. And once it's done, it's done. I'm not going to fret about the details. I used to, but I don't anymore. Don't fret, don't worry about it, and just enjoy yourself. I just leave other people to handle the day-to-day stuff. Could you just describe how you see the show onstage evolve during the set? You open it with this big, grand gesture, an explosion of fire and with a drumbeat going. The first number's really simple as far as the musicians are concerned. Then we have fireworks going, which changes the light on the sides. It's rather eerie and smoky. It's supposed to be a dark beginning, a bit dark and slightly foreboding, not a big, happy, fun beginning. And then we cut to the beginning of the first rock section, which is "Tumbling Dice." Why do you open with "Not Fade Away"? Because we wanted something dark. It could be a bit moody, and then we thought that it would be good to revive this very ancient tune. And it's also rather short, which would be good. And that we could start off with this drumbeat thing we had. So, you've got the rock section starting with "Tumbling Dice," then what happens next? What's the next big mood you're trying to set? There's quite a big move at the end of "Satisfaction" that becomes the high point of that set; then we start to slow it down. It changes mood again going into "Beast of Burden" and whatever ballad we do. When we constructed the set musically, I had in mind that it was in these sections -- like breaking down a screenplay or, very simply, a plot. It starts out with this moody thing, goes into this rock section, breaks down into this power section, then we have what we used to call the grab bag section. Then it goes into Keith's two songs, it goes up at the end of that into this more audience-participation thing -- "Honky Tonk Women." Then it goes into the Voodoo Lounge section, where we change the set. Then it goes into the end, the rock & roll run-out section. How do you prepare for a show? I like to have a peek, see what the audience is doing during the opening act, because it gives you a clue and gives you a good feeling of where you are -- the air can be different in different places. And I like to see the place before, because some of them are very wide, and they're much more difficult to play, because they tend to be baseball places, because they get so wide you have to work a lot more the outlying [laughs] part of it. Because that's where the majority of people are. When you go out to take a peek before-hand, what kind of things are you looking at? Is the front section empty? Because that usually means that they're older and want to just show up at the time we go on. Or are they there only for the opening act or something? And just how do they respond? How loud they are, how enthusiastic they are. Of course, that's the opening act, too. Depends how good they are, whether they can communicate with them, which is not very easy. I'd hate to be a fucking opening act. You get out there, and you feel the temperature of it, really. What's that moment like just before you go onstage? What's your energy like? My energy's usually pretty good. Sometimes I think, "Oh, Jesus, do I really have to go on now?" You have to finally switch into the fact that you're just about to go on, because before it can be unreal. As you walk down to the stadium from the dressing room, you start to buzz a little bit. And you hear the audience, what their response is when the music starts. And then just before we go on, just while the music's really warming up, you get an extra buzz then. When you're onstage -- can you describe that feeling? When you first walk on, it's really -- let me think. I walk out to an empty stage; I'm very confident. This is what I do. I've done it so many times. I'm not at all nervous about going on. It feels very comfortable and like home. But having said that, there's certain feelings that you get, you know: "Jesus, all those people!" There's a few empty seats sometimes, I see, and you say, "Oh, God, how many empty seats?" And funny things that you think of -- just silly things -- and you must not think of those, because as soon as you start thinking, "I hope that the heavy rains that we've had in London don't block the gutters up [laughs] and the roof leaks again." [Laughter] It's just -- anything can come into your mind, but you have to throw it out because you just have to really concentrate on what you're doing. When you're performing, what's that feeling? Can you describe that thrill of performing and dancing around and singing? Is that possible to describe? It's very high adrenalin. If you've ever been in this high-adrenalin situation -- like driving a car very fast or being in a championship basketball team in the finals or whatever it was -- it's really high adrenalin. Our concerts do have a lot in common with sporting events. I mean, they're held in the same places. And they have this kind of feeling. Obviously, what's lacking is the competition aspect, but there is a certain amount of the same feeling -- that you're always present at the event. You know, the event is important. I was at Super Bowl XVII or whatever, and I don't even remember who fucking played, but you were there. You might not remember what songs the Rolling Stones played when you saw them in the Astrodome, but you were there. But it's quite hard to describe just in trying to offer a description. I've sometimes tried to write it down. I have written it down -- what it's like, what you feel like. But there's so much going on, it's hard unless you're really in a stream-of-consciousness thing. Because there are so many references: "Oh, I'm doing this, and I'm doing that," and you're sort of watching yourself doing it. "Oh God, look at that girl; she's rather pretty. Don't concentrate on her!" But it's good to concentrate on her, she's good to contact one-on-one. Sometimes I try to do that. They're actually real people, not just a sea of people. You can see this girl has come, and she's got this dress on and so on, and so you make good contact with one or two people. And then you make contact with the rest of the band. You might give a look-see if everyone's all right. You're always checking everything? The first number, I'm totally checking everything. Now, you said you wrote down this other thing about feeling transported? I don't let myself get transported on the first number, because that is very dangerous. I used to let myself do that, but it's not such a good idea, because there's too much to check. I mean, is everything working? You seem to be split in various parts. There's part of you which is saying to you, "OK, don't forget this, don't forget that." And there's this other part of you, which is just your body doing things that it isn't really commanded to do, which I found is the dangerous part. You can hurt yourself if you don't watch out because you've got so much adrenalin. That's why I rather like doing "Not Fade Away," because I don't do much physically on it. [Laughs] But if you start off with a number like, say, "Start Me Up," which we did on the last tour, your body starts to do all kinds of things on this adrenalin thing. You've got to watch out. You can really hurt yourself -- or just tire yourself out too quickly in the first five minutes, and you're just wiped out. I was standing down at the bottom of the stage in San Antonio, watching you do "Brown Sugar," and there was a look on your face kind of like ecstasy. At some point in the show, you just lose it. You get such interaction with the audience that it feels really good. And it should be pushed. You should let yourself go. I mean, have those moments where, you really are quite out of your brain. But there's always a point where a good performer knows when -- To pull back? Yeah, when they're allowed to happen, if they're going to happen, and when they're not allowed to really happen, if they start to happen. And it's all to do with concentration, really. Is it sustained, or does it come in isolated moments? It comes in isolated moments. It's just a transcendent moment -- I don't know whether you can say it's joyful. Sometimes it can be joyful; sometimes it's just crazy. Charlie said about you, "Mick Jagger is based on James Brown. He's a younger version of James Brown." [Laughs] Well, that's a nice compliment. I mean, of course, I'm not anything like James Brown. I used to aspire to be like James Brown in his moves, and so I copied a lot of James Brown's moves in the early days. I don't do them, really, anymore. But I think what Charlie means is that James Brown is constantly attuned to the groove, to the drums. I'm also very attuned to the drums. It's just natural. Charlie said that he's following you all the time and that the dynamic of his playing is based on a move that you'll make. Well, that's probably the oldest thing in music or performing: the link between drums and dancing -- before there was any other music, really. If you watch any folk music, if you go to Africa or you go to Asia, you can see it in Ireland or England . . . you'll see the connection between the performer who's dancing and the drums. In Balinese dancing or any of these things, they watch -- very closely the dancer. And there may be accents when the dancer moves, and they make rhythmic accentuations on them -- turns and so on. That doesn't strictly go in all rock, because a rock drummer has to keep very basic time. A SUIVRE (fin).

And then when you leave the stage, when you're done -- how is it? You just let yourself go, just tired, you know. And then you recover pretty quickly. After about 10 or 15 minutes, you feel OK. Do you think you're gonna come back to the States any time soon? I haven't made up my mind. What's at stake for you if you come back to the States so soon? Every time you go out, you're putting yourself on the line. And you can't repeat the same show? That would be a bad mistake. We have to do another show. It's fine being on the road; there's nothing wrong with it, it's lovely. But it is a slightly unreal version of reality -- it can be very addictive, and it can be very tempting to stay on the road, because you're absolved of a lot of responsibilities in your life. I spoke to people in the band, and it sounds like the band wants to go on. I don't think Charlie's wildly enthusiastic, nor am I. Sure, you can keep touring forever if you want, but I don't know whether Keith and Ronnie have thought it through. I don't think they'll turn anything down. They just go, "Yeah, cool." They accept everything. Never question four shows in Edmonton. Never look at it and go, "Do you think there really are four shows in Edmonton?" If that's what they're told to do, they do it. I'm sure Keith would never say no. KEEPING UP WITH THE BEATLES What was the relationship between the Stones and the Beatles? Super, highly competitive -- but friendly. Because when you're very young, it's very hard. Looking back, thinking of all that competition, I hate it. But I suppose it's all right, because I won out. But it wasn't only between us and the Beatles but us and all the other bands. I remember one time playing in Philadelphia, and Herman's Hermits were top of the bill, and we were second, and there was some argument about the dressing rooms. [Peter Noone] was complaining because he was top of the bill and his dressing room wasn't good enough. Anyway, there we were, and he was top of the bill because the Herman's Hermits were huge. And one of the most impossible things was going out to have a hamburger, and some guy would go, "Are you Herman's Hermits?" It would kill you. So you go, "Fuck you. Herman's Hermits is shit." Weren't you particularly compared with the Beatles, though? The Beatles were so big that it's hard for people not alive at the time to realize just how big they were. There isn't a real comparison with anyone now. I suppose Michael Jackson at one point, but it still doesn't seem quite the same. They were so big that to be competitive with them was impossible. I'm talking about in record sales and tours and all this. They were huge. Bigger than Jesus? They were bigger than Jesus! And there came a point where you were Band 2 after that. Yeah, we were Band 2. Like Avis. It's horrible being compared to a car. What kind of a relationship did you develop with John? I liked John very much to start. We all had a good relationship with John. He seemed to be in sympathy with our kind of music, so we used to go out to clubs a lot. We did a lot of hanging out. Did you feel you were developing a special relationship with John? You're the leader of the one group and he's the leader of the other group? There was a professional thing above the friendship. You could talk about problems, bounce things off each other and get a different take on it. Later, when John wasn't in the Beatles any more, he was bouncing more ideas off me than ever before. I'm not saying I was the only person he bounced off of, but he used to bounce a lot off me -- song choices and stuff. He was educated and very smart and cynical and funny and really amusing company. He had a very funny take on the rest of the Beatles. If they boasted too much about how great they were, he had ways to shut them up. He'd say, "Don't worry, he's just getting used to being famous. Shurrup!" [Laughter] As if he'd been famous longer, you know. But I used to get on with Paul as well. Paul is very nice and easy to get on with -- didn't have the acerbic side. You always knew with John, you're gonna be on the end of a lot of sarcastic remarks that you weren't always in the mood for. What do you think was going on with him? What do you think motivated him? Wanted to be the most famous person in the world [laughs]. I think he said as much. Did he really? Along that line. "We want to be more famous than Elvis." Something like that. Yeah. Elvis just did it all wrong, didn't he? Put all these silly ideas into people's heads. And John picked up on it. Do you think that drove him? It seems incredibly crass and superficial, doesn't it? Yeah, but if you feel you have this message for everybody . . . and at the end, he did. Yeah, he did have a big message. I don't think he had a message in the beginning, although he might have thought he was gonna get one. Or you think the message is to be famous, and then I'll think of the message later [laughs]. So now, looking back on his work, what do you think his contribution was? He did wonderful things. John and Paul, I mean, because it's hard to separate this thing, and having been through a partnership, with people always asking you who did what, and, of course, you either exaggerate your own importance or you downplay it, but you never get it right. I think John himself was a very talented guy, very influential and wrote some wonderful songs. And he was very funny. I think he really was larger than life. But the rest of them took it more seriously than John. You got that feeling, and that's why I told you that little story about him shutting them up. He knew it was all bullshit. And he showed he could walk away from it. But don't you evaluate his contribution as greater than, he wrote some good songs? He obviously did more than just that, but he wrote really wonderful songs and performed them wonderfully. The stage performances were not mindboggling, and after nineteen sixty-whatever-it-was, they didn't do any stage performances, so for all intents and purposes, Shea Stadium and the concert on the roof was it. But great songwriting, great personality, and he had all these other sides, which added to it: the writing, the drawing, the little books, the all-embracing, modernistic push, which was refreshing without being pretentious. What was your thinking when you heard he was shot? I was very sad and surprised. And it was all so horribly ironic. He thought he had found a place to be on his own, have this life, and he was quite taken with the idea that he was no longer in the Beatles, that he didn't have to have a lot of protection, bodyguards. He used to tell me how he would go in a cab in New York -- go in a fucking yellow cab. Which, as you know, is probably to be avoided if you've got more than $10. [Laughs] A London cab is one thing, but a New York cab is another. He wanted freedom to walk the block and get in the cab, and he felt in these big cities you can be anonymous. Did it have some deeper personal resonance with you when he died? I just felt very sad for the loss of someone that I loved very much. I didn't write it up as a piece in The Guardian. I think journalists have this temptation to keep marking time lines. [Laughs] There are wall charts for children: dinosaurs end here, wooly mammoths here, and John Lennon dies here. You know? Do you think John deserves this huge reputation he still has? The Beatles being the greatest group? They certainly were not a great live band. Maybe they were in the days of the Cavern, when they were coming up as a club band. I'm sure they were hilariously funny and all that. And they did have this really good onstage persona. But as far as the modern-day world, they were not a great performing band. But do they deserve the fantastic reputation? They were the Beatles. They were this forerunning, breakthrough item, and that's hard to overestimate. What do you think of Tina Turner? I was influenced by her. She's one of the first women performers I worked with who has the same aggressive thing that I've got. A lot of women performers are quite static -- or certainly were in the '60s. They did their best, but they weren't like Tina. She was like a female version of Little Richard and would respond to the audience -- really go out and grab them. Pete Townshend? I always loved Pete. He's very bright, always thinking. He had this insane, rebellious, self-destructive streak. The first time we traveled with him, we were on the same plane going somewhere like Belgium. He got on the plane and got completely drunk in an hour -- drunk and crazy. We just watched. But I love Pete. He was an exciting performer in the heyday of the Who. Hendrix? I loved Jimi Hendrix from the beginning. The moment I saw him, I thought he was fantastic. I was an instant convert. Mr. Jimi Hendrix is the best thing I've ever seen. It was exciting, sexy, interesting. He didn't have a very good voice but made up for it with his guitar. I first saw him at the Revolution Club, in London. I was one of six people in the club, and Jimi was playing. I couldn't believe it. It was insane -- so good and the whole idea of this kind of English band behind him, this bizarre mixture between a blues performer and a rock player with an English touch. Did you have any kind of relationship with him? I was quite friendly with him. He was a really sweet guy. A bit confused. It's the same old story: Jimi Hendrix played all over the place with all these bands. He'd been a background guitar player for donkey years. And suddenly he gets what he wants, then has to play "Purple Haze" every night. He goes. "Uh, I don't want to play 'Purple Haze' every night. I don't want to burn the guitar." And then when everyone went off the deep end, he had to go off the deep end. He became a heroin addict. What's your take on Prince? It's fashionable to knock Prince now because he seems to have gone off on a tangent [laughs]. You mean the way he has no name? That's become a bit of a joke. No, I think Prince is a great artist, very traditional in some ways. Prince has been overlooked. But he's so incredibly in the mold of the James Brown sort of performer. He broke a lot of musical modes and invented a lot of styles and couldn't keep up with himself. Very prolific, which is rare. Mostly people write three songs and repeat themselves. Prince has a lot of talent as a writer, and I've seen great performances by Prince. He's outperformed almost everyone. I'd rate him at the top. I don't think there's a lot of competition from new artists. What about today's music? I'm not in love with things at the moment. I was never crazy about Nirvana -- too angst-ridden for me. I like Pearl Jam. I prefer them to a lot of other bands. There's a lot of angst in a lot of it, which is one of the great things to tap into. But I'm not a fan of moroseness. Some of this music reminds me of the '60s. Do you see that? In that there's four people playing guitars and so on, there's a lot of '60s influence. It may appear that they're playing the same thing or look the same on MTV, or there's certain haircuts you've seen on the Byrds. But the grooves are different. It's all influenced by dance music. In 30 years you don't keep playing the same beat. Which is good. I don't think any of these bands would claim to be daringly different. But it's heartening to return to live music, heartening for people like me in a band. It's a very traditional thing to return to. It re-validates the original form that we fell in love with. Of the new bands: Are any of them going to take on the stadium show? It took us 20 years of doing shows before we actually put on these big stadium concerts. It will be interesting to see if any of these bands today ever do the kind of shows we're doing. I don't think they will, because they don't seem to be that interested in it. You have to be really interested in showbiz to do this; you have to be interested in theater, otherwise there's no point doing it. It's only interesting if you're in control of it. And to be in control of it, you have to initiate it. I wonder if there's anybody that's going to do that. And there has to be somebody central to it like yourself, who's a great impresario as well. Yeah, you can't just be playing guitar in the corner. It's never going to work. That's one of the things that distinguishes you from all the other songwriters, singers and performers: You're a great producer. Well, you have to laugh at that, don't you? Now the whole ethos is to not be that. Which I understand. But it doesn't lead you to anything theatrical. None of these bands in America have that. The Chili Peppers have a sort of sense of the theatrical, but they can't take it anywhere. It's become a bit cliche, just a guitar thing. Everybody wants to be Neil Young, and Pearl Jam is trying to drive ticket prices down. Doing that, they will never get themselves on a stage this big. Can you define rock & roll for me? What is it about? Is it about sex, violence, energy, anger? All those things: energy, anger, angst, enthusiasm, a certain spontaneity. It's very emotional. And it's very traditional. It can't break too many rules. You have certain set rules, certain forms, which are traditionally folk-based, blues-based forms. But they've got to be sung with this youthful energy -- or youthful lethargy, because youth has this languorous, lethargic, rebellious side of it as well. So they can be sung as an alternate mode of thrashing, this slightly feminine languor, the boredom of youth as well as the anger, because youth has those two things. To represent those emotions, this form seems to work very well. Boredom and anger, which are both a form of rebellion. Yeah, a statement of rebellion. Drawing the line where your generation is. So the energy, the sexuality, is from this youthful aspect? Yeah, but the sexuality is very potent and very obvious. There's nothing understated about it. That really comes from black music. The overt sexuality of black music was the precursor of all that. And the violence? Well, violence is mostly in the posing aspect of it. There's some in the lyrics, but it's also the attitude, the bad-attitude thing. I mean, it's very violent. Rock & roll in its very early days came with expressions of violence. There were riots. Not so much Elvis, but Bill Haley, when he was in Blackboard Jungle, do you remember? "Rock Around the Clock" was featured in this movie Blackboard Jungle. And when it was shown, there were riots everywhere. And rock & roll was associated with violence very early on. All these things are about youth: sex, violence, energy, boredom, anger. Has your attitude toward rock & roll changed as you've gotten older? Do you still have the same feeling for it? No. What has changed? Well, it's much older. Rock music was a completely new musical form. It hadn't been around for 10 years when we started doing it. So we were playing with something new. I imagine it's a bit like walking into New Orleans after jazz had only been going eight years. I was there at the beginning. And we were going to change it -- bring this rhythm blues thing into it. And at the beginning you felt like you were one of the chosen few, one of the only ones in the whole world who would get to play with this new toy. We had evangelical fervor. So it was exciting, and no one knew where it was going, if it was going to last. When it first came out, people thought it was a dance craze like the cha-cha-cha or the calypso. Rock history is full of songs about hoping it would never die. It could have easily passed on. So I have a very different attitude now. It's 40 years old. I still love performing it, but it's no longer a new, evangelical form. It's still capable of expression, and it's capable of change and novelty. But it's not as exciting for me. It's not a perfect medium for someone my age, given the rebelliousness of the whole thing, the angst and youth of it. In some ways it's foolish to try and re-create that. Do you ever look back at your career and evaluate what you've done? I'm afraid of doing that. Either you have this satisfied feeling, or you say, "What a bunch of shit. What a waste of time." You can say, "Well, it's something I should have done for a few years and given up, done something else." Does that thought cross your mind? Of course. It would be nice to have another shot. Instead of me being a rock singer, I could have done something else. You hope you've done something right, you've spent an awful long time on it, so you better be bloody right. "Did you waste a lot of time?" Yes, you've wasted a lot of time. "Did you use your intellectual and physical gifts?" Yes and no. Because I don't think rock & roll is as intellectually taxing as other things. It's not particularly challenging. So you get intellectually lazy. I don't think anyone is ever satisfied with what they've done. Are the Stones the greatest rock band in the world? It's just a stupid epithet. It just seems too Barnum and Bailey to me -- like it's some sort of circus act. The first time we heard it said was to introduce us every night. So I used to say, "Will you please not use that as your announcement? It's so embarrassing. And what does that mean? Does it mean the best, the biggest, the most long-lasting?" You know? TAKING IT ALL OFF What does your new record, "Stripped," tell you about the Stones today? To me it was never a kind of life-shattering event, this record. We tried to get a twist on a live record 'cause I didn't want to go back and repeat the previous record. I thought we just had to give something different, We eventually got into it and developed a more intimate record. And we got a few unusual tracks going on, which is always good for a live record -- not original songs but reworked. I think "Like a Rolling Stone" was unusual to do. We've never done a Dylan song before. What appeals to you about that song? Well, melodically I quite like it. It's very well put together; it's got a proper three sections to it, real good choruses and a good middle bit, and great lyrics. It's a really well-constructed pop song, in my opinion. Do you like singing Dylan lines? This is really a good one; it's very much to the point, it doesn't waffle too much. I sang it a lot of times on the European tour -- maybe 50 times. So I really got inside it, and I enjoyed it. I love playing the harmonica on it. What else on this album is unusual? "Shine a Light," which is a song from Exile. We had never done that before, being something that was just hidden. And I was really surprised when we first did it -- that people knew it. The audience starts singing along, and I was like "Uh." Why would you go back and pick out "The Spider and the Fly"? What is it about that song? I wasn't really that mad about it, but when you listen to it on record, it still holds up quite interestingly as a blues song. It's a Jimmy Reed blues with British pop-group words, which is an interesting combination: a song somewhat stuck in a time warp. You said you liked "time-and-place albums," ones that reflect the Stones at a particular period of time. This is the Stones doing their small shows, doing a much more intimate show. What does this say to you about the Stones as a band that other records haven't said? What's new about this? I think it's more relaxed. It's more soft. Most of the album is songs that we were doing on the road that are acoustic songs. It's the Stones as a smaller club band; there's blues and country, and we're showing that side of the Stones rather than the big, huge stadium version. Is there a version to the Stones that you prefer one to the other -- the stadium version vs. this club version? I like the club version of the band. But this is the quieter moments of the club version without the raucous parts of the club version. Why did you reject making this part of the "MTV Unplugged" series? Because everyone has done it, and I didn't want to particularly come to New York and do Unplugged in the middle of the European tour. And I felt that we would take the best element from Unplugged, the intimate thing of it, without actually doing it completely unplugged. Do you think it's a little too retro coming off "Voodoo Lounge"? Any live record would be bound to contain a lot of old material. There's a danger that you would fall into it -- as I've said in this interview quite a few times. I don't think there's any virtue in being completely, only contemporary, but I think you do have to balance the two. The Rolling Stones should do something adventurous for their next album, but I never thought you could, around the time of the tour, do a completely groundbreaking record. It would have been nice, but I don't think that was possible. When you do your own records, you seem a lot more oriented toward dance music and rhythms. My tastes are very much dance music of the 70s, which always enjoys a lot of popularity -- people will always love it because it's got a lot of different time signatures -- but it's not necessarily groundbreaking. On all three solo albums you can hear it. And it's quite obvious that that's what I like to do. And if I do another solo record, I'll probably take that a lot further. Will you do another solo record? I don't know when I'm gonna do it. But I'll probably do one. I look forward to it very much. Tell me why you want to make another solo album. I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I'm tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down. But I'm much less tied down than with the Rolling Stones. I can go in any direction that I want. And if I want to go in a traditional direction and play Irish music, I can. Is it hard coming off tour? No. I've been really busy since I finished the tour. I haven't really had any break, with all this stuff that we're doing -- the record, the CD-ROM and all that. It's the same as being on tour, except that I haven't been doing shows in the evening [laughs]. I'm doing my day job. What are you gonna do next? Take a vacation. Then I'm gonna write some songs, and then I'm gonna work on my movie-development stuff, and then it's Christmas, and then it's the next bit of shows. We're gonna be doing some shows in the Far East and maybe one or two in South America. In a general sense, what is in the future for the Rolling Stones? It's a mystery. I don't know what's gonna happen with the Rolling Stones. I mean, one is always very confident about the future. But what's actually gonna happen is a mystery. Why is it a mystery? 'Cause anything can happen in life and quite frequently does. We don't have set plans. But I dare say the Rolling Stones will do more shows together. But I don't know exactly what framework the next tour in the United States would take, nor do I know what form the next Rolling Stones music will take. But I'm sure there will be Rolling Stones music and there will be Rolling Stones shows. But the Stones do seem a lot more stable than, say, 10 years ago. I think the Rolling Stones have always been mostly stable; they've got a terrific history, a long tradition. It's very steeped in all kind of things. The Rolling Stones are a very admired band, much copied and so on. And very flattering -- it always is. How do you feel about rock's staying power now? I'm kind of surprised by the resurgence of it as a young force. Why would you be surprised? Well, because there seemed to be a period when it was rather flat. It could have become dinosaur music. It's still very similar music to the music in the '60s. It's got its own spin on things, but it's still very traditional. Maybe that's what makes the staying power work, because jazz went up such a difficult-to-understand alley when it went into bop; it lost a lot of mass audience. And rock hasn't really done that. I mean, it's kept its popular base by not only going into intellectual areas where it can't be followed by most people. It stays with the beat. Stays with that same beat, really. Rock has to absorb other rhythmic forms, because the underlying rhythm of music changes with fashion, and people like to move differently now than they moved 30 years ago, and the underlying rhythms have to be the ones that people want to dance to. What about your own staying power? I think it's a question of energy, really. I, personally, have a lot of energy, so I don't see it as an immediate problem. How's your hearing? My hearing's all right. But we worry about it because they play far too loud. Sometimes I use earplugs because it gets too loud on my left ear. Why your left ear? Because Keith's standing on my left. [Laughter.] How would you sum up the last 30 years? Ah. God. You fuck. I'm just not gonna do that one. I'm just totally unable to. I think you just have to end now.

THE END. (RS 723, December 14, 1995) Copyright: Rolling Stone, USA.

une vraie !

2004-11-28T18:11:00.000+01:00

Vraie dédicace, mais vraie flemme aussi à relire le bouquin via l'édition revue et corrigée... Plus tard. Peut-être. Allez on lui doit une fière chandelle à ce bouquin plein de défauts.

CD gratuit mais pas à jeter...

2004-11-28T17:08:00.000+01:00

C'était le CD joint au Uncut de 2002 :

http://pierresetparoles.blogspot.com/2004/10/uncut-2002.html

Pas de dédicace perso du maître (j'aurais bien voulu !),

mais une belle compil de ce qui était présenté comme

quelques uns de ses morceaux préférés.

Anita dit

2004-11-27T13:27:00.000+01:00

"Ce que je pense, en revanche, c'est que je faisais peur aux gens. Peut-être parce que je ne venais pas du même milieu social que bien des musiciens, et ne parlons pas de leurs femmes. La culture, l'éducation, le savoir-vivre sont souvent ressentis comme une agression, voire une perversion par ceux qui en manquent." Anita Pallenberg (2002)

Godard RS 1968

2004-11-22T01:19:00.000+01:00

Encore un autre :

Stones Do Film With Godard

Jagger: "We've always been great admirers of his work"

The Rolling Stones have begun on their first feature film, One By One, with Jean-Luc Godard. It is also a first for the celebrated French director, whose works include Breathless, Masculine-Feminine and La Chinoise -- it will be his first English-language film.
The picture embodies parallel themes of construction and destruction, represented by a London studio where the Stones are involved in a recording session and by a love triangle which ends in suicide, respectively. The Stones' performance provides a "musical embroidery" to the plot.
Godard is employing new experimental camera techniques and lighting effects in his direction. The picture is being produced by Cupid Productions, a new company formed by the Honorable Michael Pearson and actor Iain Quarrier.
Commented Mick Jagger: "We are very excited about this. We have been great admirers of Godard's work for a long time, and have a great respect for him."
(RS 14 - July 20, 1968)

Beggars : la pochette RS 68

2004-11-22T01:08:00.000+01:00

Rolling Stone avait mis ça sur son site l'an dernier, des petits articles d'époque. Je ne parviens pas à retrouver celui, croquignolet, sur la confection du gateau de Let it bleed par je ne sais quel cordon bleu britannique (sic !). Cette pièce fut apparemment son morceau de bravoure.

Graffiti Get Stones in Hot Water

"Beggars Banquet" release delayed due to dispute

The Rolling Stones' bathroom wall-graffiti album cover is still a matter of dispute between the Stones and their record companies, Decca (Great Britain) and London (US). "It looks like Beggars Banquet might be a Christmas release now," Mick has been quoted as saying.
Despite meetings between the record companies and Mick Jagger in London and his representative Allen Klein in New York, the fate of the dingy-golden toned album cover is unsure. The companies are claiming that the scene, which has no swear words or actual obscenities, is "in poor taste."
Klein plans to go to England to settle the matter there. He has said, "The record companies will ultimately have no choice in the matter."
London Records has complained that the cover "will be met with resistance by rack jobbers," the men who stock retail outlets. Mick's suggestion that the album be racked in brown paper bags stamped "UNFIT FOR CHILDREN" was rejected.
In another Stones story, the new single "Street Fighting Man" out of the same Beggars Banquet LP has been banned by many radio stations. Chicago stations have altogether banned it because they feared it could incite violence. "They told me that 'Street Fighting Man' was subversive," said Mick. "'Of course it's subversive,' we said. It's stupid to think you can start a revolution with a record. I wish you could!" "It just goes to show how paranoid they are in Chicago," emphasized Keith.
(RS 17 - October 12, 1968)

Rolling Stone 2004

2004-11-21T19:00:00.000+01:00

The Stones in Exile in 1972

50 moments that changed the history of rock & roll

This is how singer Mick Jagger described his long, hot summer of 1971 at Nellcôte, guitarist Keith Richards' nineteenth-century villa on the French Riviera, as the Rolling Stones made their greatest album, the 1972 double LP Exile on Main Street: "We recorded in Keith's disgusting basement, which looked like a prison. . . . The humidity was incredible. I couldn't stand it. As soon as I opened my mouth to sing, my voice was gone. It was so humid that all the guitars were out of tune by the time we got to the end of each number."
"It was 120 degrees," Richards recalled. "Everyone sat around sweating and playing with their pants off. That's when I got into Jack Daniel's. You're trying to get backup vocals finished . . . and the voice starts to go: 'This'll give you another half hour.' It's those fumes that do it, man."
A triumph of dedicated primitivism and alcoholic, overheated chaos, Exile on Main Street nailed Jagger, Richards, drummer Charlie Watts, bassist Bill Wyman and guitarist Mick Taylor at their absolute peak and captured the atmosphere at Nellc?te with messy faithfulness. Exile wasn't a studio album (although final overdubs and mixing were done at Sunset Sound in Hollywood) -- it was a rock & roll field recording, much like the old Delta-blues sides over which Jagger and Richards had bonded as schoolboys. As the Stones hammered out the outlaw gallop of "Rocks Off" and the epic dirty soul of "Tumbling Dice" in the cryptlike cellar kitchen, mikes and amps were wired up to tape machines in a mobile studio outside. "You were just going into an era where the music industry was full of these pristine sounds -- and we were going the other way," Richards said, cackling with pride thirty years later.
The Stones literally made Exile on the run. In May '71, they moved to France, citing the excessive taxation and police harassment in their native Britain. Many of the Jagger-Richards songs on Exile reflect the exhaustion and madness of the Stones' personal and public lives at the time ("Torn and Frayed," "Soul Survivor"). Jagger's marriage to Nicaraguan model Bianca Perez Morena de Macias on the eve of the Exile sessions irritated Richards, who wanted his singer's full attention during recording; Richards was at the height of his 1970s heroin addiction and spending a lot of time with American country-rock icon Gram Parsons.
Three weeks after Exile's release on May 12th, 1972, the Stones took that accumulated madness with them on a two-month North American tour that opened with a gate-crashers' riot in Vancouver. An equipment truck was bombed before a show in Montreal; there were no arrests. Jagger and Richards, however, were busted in Rhode Island for allegedly assaulting a photographer and briefly jailed. Backstage, the Stones' entourage included high-tone celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Truman Capote, and the band's jet became a movable feast of drugs and mile-high sex. Exile cover photographer Robert Frank filmed the high jinks for a documentary, Cocksucker Blues, but a Christmas-season opening in New York was canceled when Frank and the band fell out over issues of control and editing. Three decades later, Cocksucker Blues remains commercially unavailable.
"There was this one bit that seemed to upset a few people, concerning a nude young lady that we had for lunch one afternoon on the plane," said longtime Stones roadie and pianist Ian Stewart. "To be honest, it was all staged for the cameras. After all, this was the Rolling Stones on tour here, mate. We had to make things at least a little bit naughty."

Altamont RS 1970

2004-11-21T18:35:00.000+01:00

Rock & Roll's Worst Day
The aftermath of Altamont

It was perhaps rock and roll's all-time worst day, December 6th, a day when everything went perfectly wrong. Altamont remains Topic A among the musicians who were there.
After all, it's not every day that a rock and roll band's performance, let alone the Rolling Stones', is accompanied by a knifing, stomping murder within a scream of the stage.
"The violence," Keith Richard told the London Evening Standard, "just in front of the stage was incredible. Looking back I don't think it was a good idea to have Hell's Angels there. But we had them at the suggestion of the Grateful Dead. "The trouble is it's a problem for us either way. If you don't have them to work for you as stewards, they come anyway and cause trouble. "But to be fair, out of the whole 300 Angels working as stewards, the vast majority did what they were supposed to do, which was to regulate the crowds as much as possible without causing any trouble. But there were about ten or twenty who were completely out of their minds -- trying to drive their motorcycles through the middle of the crowds.
"Really, the difference between the open air show we held here in Hyde Park and the one there is amazing. I think it illustrates the difference between the two countries. In Hyde Park everybody had a good time, and there was no trouble. You can put half a million young English people together and they won't start killing each other. That's the difference."
While Richard was satisfying the British press with his incredibly naive view of Western civilization, Meredith Hunter lay dead.
The Maysles Brothers, the film company which had shot the whole Stones' tour, complete with its violent climax at Altamont, had gotten some remarkable footage of Hunter's killing. No less than three cameras had caught the action, and one of them had the entire sequence from the time Hunter was knifed and down, surrounded by Angels. The face of the knifesman was clear, according to Maysles executive producer Porter Bibb.
Which makes it the hottest film property of 1970. Universal Pictures has already weighed in with the highest bid, (reportedly a higher than $1 million guarantee) and will release the movie by early summer.
The principal camera on this sequence was positioned fifteen feet over the stage, on the Grateful Dead's truck, perhaps thirty to thirty-five feet from the spot where Meredith Hunter was fatally stabbed. Amazingly enough, according to Bibb, the whole sequence is perfectly exposed and perfectly in focus. He could not let the press see it, he said, because the killer was too easily identifiable, especially by his Angels' colors on his back. If this information were to get out, Bibb and the Maysles fear they would be killed. They won't tell the cameramen's names for the same reason.
But Bibb was willing to give quite a detailed account of what's on the film, as he sees it. For one thing, the film shows Hunter making at least two charges on the stage during the forty-five minutes before his stabbing. Many others did the same that afternoon.
Then the camera picks up Hunter some eighteen or twenty rows out in the front-stage audience. (According to Rolling Stone's eyewitness account, the incident began at stage left, with an Angel grabbing Hunter's head, then punching him, then chasing him into the crowd, then knifing him in the back, as Hunter ran. It would be at this point that Hunter would appear back in the crowd, about to pull his gun. Which is what happens. Sheriff's detectives investigating the killing believe -- based partly upon photos subpoenaed from Rolling Stone -- that Hunter was at stage left, and was chased back to where the Maysles cameras pick him up.)
A pair of white men, one of them an Angel, run by Hunter, the black man. The Angel apparently brushes his arm. It looks as if Hunter is trying to brush something away where the Angel bumped him. He makes a face at the stage (perhaps a grimace), sticks out his tongue, and, as the lights catch his eyes, they look glazed.
With his right hand he reaches within his lime green suit coat -- the look on his face is extremely agitated -- and pulls a dark object out of his pocket. Simultaneously, he begins lurching forward, but unevenly, so it's difficult to tell what he's doing.
Six or eight Hell's Angels, who are standing at the front of the stage, start toward him, forming what looks like a protective football cup in reverse. A semi-circular cup facing Hunter.
A white girl in a white knit overblouse grabs Hunter's right arm, and appears to be shouting at him. There is a soundtrack, but none of this can be heard, for the Stones are into "Sympathy for the Devil" at high volume. (The girl is evidently Hunter's girl friend, Patty Bredahoff, who affirms that she was wearing a white knit overblouse. She has been instructed to give no interviews by the sheriff's men, and is following orders. Except to tell Rolling Stone that she has no recollection of tugging at Hunter's arm.)
Hunter brushes the girl aside. She grabs his left arm. He keeps on walking, dragging her forward.
The Angels begin to close in on him.
"It seems," says Bibb, "to last a thousand years, but it's maybe only five seconds."
For one fleeting moment, Hunter brings his right arm across the girl's white dress, in the camera's line of sight. There seems clearly to be the outline of a gun, though there's no detail on the object itself.
For that moment, the girl is the center of the action, frantically trying to pull Hunter away.
The crowd steps back.
Behind the semi-circle of Angels, between the stage and their backs, another Angel appears. Another of the cameras catches him reaching down to pick something up. It glints.
This Angel is wearing an orange bandanna around his neck -- probably a handkerchief knotted at his throat-and full Angels' colors. (Meaning that he is a full brother, not a prospective joiner; it was the "prospects," as they are called, who were responsible for a good portion of the earlier violence.)
A few frames later it is clear that he is holding a long silvery knife.
Suddenly he leaps through the air, over the backs of the other Angels, like a halfback slicing through the line.
His arm sweeps up to its highest reach, knife in hand, the knife once again clearly visible.
In one sweeping arc, the Angel grabs Hunter's right hand with his (the Angel's) left, spinning Hunter around so that he is facing away from the Angel, away from the stage--and--down comes the long knife, plunging deep into Hunter's right shoulder blade. The Angel rides Hunter to the ground, knifing him at least once more on the way down, midback. It's a classic street-fighter's move, beautifully executed.
And that is the last we see of Hunter for a long two minutes or so, as the Angels gather, tightly around, keeping everyone else at a distance. Before Hunter disappears, blood stains can be seen widening on his suit.
The coroner says there were five stab wounds. The film accounts for only two, once again suggesting the possibility that Hunter may have been stabbed earlier.
Then Angels and others carry Hunter away.
According to Bibb, the killer splits immediately after the other Angels gather around Hunter and is not seen again in another frame. No telling where he went.
In one frame, just before he is jumped, there is an unmistakable orange flash at the end of the pistol, Bibb adds. It lasts only for this one frame. Bibb is not saying this is a gunshot, and he's not saying it's not. It might be, say, a reflection off someone's watch or glasses. "The Angels say there was a shot fired," says Bibb. "I can't tell you. It's impossible, really, to tell what it is. None of us heard a shot." Bibb was eager to make one point: "This film is not going to exploit the killing. We had decided before Altamont to do a film, before we had seen any film of the killing or any of that. It doesn't hinge on the murder. We don't want to exploit the sensationalism of the thing."
The arrangement with the Stones is that they and the Maysles own the film 50-50 and are coproducing it. The Stones will help with the editing, but the Maysles have creative control over the cutting. This should begin before February.
There will be, in addition to the Altamont scenes, footage from the tour in New York, Boston, Florida, and the recording studio sessions in Muscle Shoals.
David Maysles was quoted in Rolling Stone's first Altamont story as telling one of his camera-men not to shoot one especially grotesque scene, to seek out good vibes instead. It's true, he did say that, according to Maysles executive producer Porter Bibb, but that was before the Maysles had truly grasped that ugliness and violence was the true nature of the day.
"We want to make it clear," Bibb said repeatedly, "that this film is going to be about violence about the relationship between the Stones and their American audience, and about the relationship of both to violence."
It was understood that Allen Klein, the Stones' manager, was going to make some sort of statement concerning Altamont on January 12th. But it never happened, and Klein was said to be en route to England, unavailable for comment, the following day.
Neither did anyone have anything to say about the insurance policy the Stones were said to have taken to pay for any damages during the concert. Plenty of ranchers whose fences were brought down, people whose heads were split, and so on, would like to know about that one.
Though Sam Cutler, who was responsible for paying the Angels $500 worth of beer to police Altamont, claims he's just been taking it easy since Altamont -- "my part in it is finished, it's up to others to take care of the left-over details" -- Sheriff's investigators have spoken with him twice, it is learned.
Detectives Chisholm and Donovan, who are pursuing the murder case for the Alameda County sheriff's department, say it's very nearly together enough to be presented to the District Attorney and the Grand Jury. They have two eye-witnesses, including Patty Bredahoff, Hunter's girlfriend, and are eager to get in touch with the eyewitness quoted in Rolling Stone, since his testimony would make their case that much stronger.
The eyewitness, who preferred to remain anonymous, fearing that the killer and his friends might get him, should be aware that he is one of several who saw it happen, and would not stand alone, and therefore has, the detectives feel, little to fear. To reach them, the phone number is 483-6520.
"It looks good," says Donovan of the information they've got. Asked whether it was an Angel who killed Meredith Hunter, Donovan said that was "reasonable to assume." Porter Bibb, of the Maysles organization, says the killer is quite recognizable in profile, in full face, and in three-quarter view. Donovan agrees (though Rock Scully, one of the Grateful Dead's managers, has seen the same footage repeatedly and claims identification would be very difficult).
One weird Altamont story has to do with a young Berkeley film-maker who claims to have gotten 8 mm footage of the killing. He got home from the affair Saturday and began telling his friends about his amazing film. His house was knocked over the next night, completely rifled. The thief ripped off only his film, nothing else.
Another far-out (and unconfirmed, because the Angels are not talking with the press) report from someone close to the Angels was that they were in possession of Meredith Hunter's pistol, wanted to turn it over to the Sheriff's investigators -- obviously, it would be useful to establish self-defense -- but didn't know how to go about doing it. If true, the Angels evidently solved their own problem. It is learned that investigators have had the gun since shortly after New Year's.
Mrs. Alta Mae Anderson, Meredith Hunter's mother, still had not been contacted by anyone involved with the free concert by January 5th, when she appeared before the Alameda County Planning Commission to request that the Altamont Raceway, where Hunter was killed, be turned into a public park.
"My son's blood is on the land," she said, "and I would like to see the land serve a useful purpose for the youth of Southern Alameda County. I cannot bring my son back, but by your action you may prevent any more wrongful deaths at Altamont."
In the end, the commission voted to allow the speedway to continue holding races, but barred any future rock and roll events, and limited the number of spectators to 3,000.
One sympathetic mother whose own teen-age son was only a few feet from the killing, Mrs. Cayren King, of Oakland, put Mrs. Anderson in touch with Ephraim Margolin, a respected (and tough) San Francisco civil liberties attorney, to represent her interests in the trial that is (reasonably) certain to come.
Meanwhile, many were growing impatient with the length of time it's taken for the District Attorney to move. He hasn't moved yet. Some claim that Alameda County authorities do not want to damage the fragile truce which exists between police and Hell's Angels.
But Rock Scully said it would be a "drag if it has to go through a courtroom scene." He has tried to put Altamont out of his mind, to concentrate on more positive matters. But Scully, the man who worked with Stones road manager Sam Cutler on advance preparations before the Stones' higher managerial echelons arrived in the Bay Area, says everybody he knows "is still upset about the whole thing."
"We were all dupes," he says, rather cryptically. "The thing wasn't ever straight. Everybody got had."
Having met with the Angels a couple of times, Scully says they don't dig having the film shown, because they feel it would be exploitation of the Angels.
(Another source says that the Maysles showed the film to the Angels in San Francisco, privately, and that the Angels' leaders demanded $6000 each for nine different California chapters. A total of $54,000. No confirmation on this from the Maysles. The Angels are said to have demanded the money or else . . .)
In any case, Scully now feels that the whole thing was a disaster, and feels foolish, in a way, about his participation in it.
"The Stones, man," he says, "they wrote the script. They got what they paid for. Let it bleed, man. There's never gonna be another one like it. Anybody should have seen this would have happened -- this whole trip, man -- if somebody tried to buy another Woodstock. We should have seen it, but we couldn't see that."

JOHN BURKS(RS 51 - February 7, 1970)

Exile - Greenfield

2004-11-21T18:29:00.000+01:00

EXILE
The making of EXILE ON MAIN ST.
By Robert Greenfield

In the spring of 1971, the Rolling Stones, the number one outlaw band in the world, were forced for tax reasons to leave England and go into exile in the South of France. Along with his companion, the very glamorous Anita Pallenberg, and their young son Marlon (named after the actor Marlon Brando), Keith Richards set up housekeeping in a sumptuous white mansion overlooking the sparkling blue Mediterranean.
Over the course of the next six months as the Stones recorded their landmark double album Exile On Main St. in the basement of Villa Nellcôte, an international cast of rock musicians, artists, writers, dope dealers and jet set hangers-on came and went, joining a party which never ended in a house which soon became ground zero for the hip universe, circa 1971.
At Villa Nellcôte, at least for a little while, no wish was too extreme. Anything seemed possible and twenty-two for lunch was never out of the question. If no one actually seemed to have a last name or really do very much to earn a living, so be it. This was life on the grand scale, meant to be lived as though some unseen movie camera was perpetually whirring just beyond the frame of a shared reality which never was in doubt.
With the Shirelles playing loudly in the background and all dialogue by Noel Coward and William Burroughs, the mise-en-scène was straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night. Keith and Anita were the Dick and Nicole Diver of rock. They were the real life reincarnation of Gerald and Sara Murphy, the Jazz Age couple upon whom Fitzgerald had based his characters.
Although no one knew it then, Keith and Anita were also the prototype for all the great self-destructive rock couples to follow - Sid and Nancy, Kurt and Courtney, and yes, even Pamela and Tommy Lee. Keith, he played in a rock 'n' roll band and Anita, she was a movie star queen. Both then and now, no more need be said. Even today, the original is still the greatest.
As Gerald Murphy himself once noted, living well may in fact be the best revenge. At Villa Nellcôte, no one ever bothered to get up early. Sleep was for all the little people down the hill. At Villa Nellcôte, careers were made and lives ruined. Marriages fell apart and brand new relationships began. Hand in hand through the villa's marble halls at night, the ghost of Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones, then dead for just two short years, walked with the spirit of Gram Parsons, Keith's brilliant songwriter friend who in a few short years would himself be dead.
Having only just arguably recorded the three best albums in rock back-to-back-to-back (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers), the Rolling Stones went to work in the blazing summer heat of the French Riviera on the double album which has come to be hailed as their great masterpiece.
The acute sense of dislocation which lies at the core of Exile On Main St. accurately reflects a moment in time when even the Rolling Stones were forced to recognize that they were indeed strangers in a very strange land. Working conditions at the villa were primitive and hellish. Night after night, the Stones descended like coal miners in Wales into the basement to record and re-record tracks which Mick and Keith had sometimes only just written. The very next night, they went back down to do it all over again. The fine line between ecstasy and addiction, not to mention also the one separating creativity from madness, was breached so often on a nightly basis at Villa Nellcôte that by the time the sun came up on yet another day, it was no longer possible to tell one from the other.
Soon enough, it became clear to one and all that the high black iron gates of the villa, initially built to keep out the rabble, were now there to keep everyone inside Nellcôte until the album was done. Exile On Main St., which continues to be the defining record of its time, is now joined by Exile, a brilliant collection of remarkable photographs by Dominique Tarlé, who lived for months at the villa yet somehow managed to survive to tell the tale.
In Exile, all the most significant figures from Villa Nellcôte tell for the first time the behind-the-scenes story of a moment in popular culture which will not come again. Never before has the making of a landmark rock album been documented so thoroughly. A signal accomplishment in the history of rock photography, Exile also contains the first full, unexpurgated version of the August, 1971 Rolling Stone interview I conducted with Keith Richards at Villa Nellcôte. Along with a never before published memoir of my time of service at Nellcôte, Exile also features "Goodbye, Great Britain", my account of the Stones' farewell tour of England as well as the report I filed from Los Angeles a year later on the release of the album as the Stones began their historic 1972 tour of America.
A priceless and unique document, Exile vividly portrays a turning point in time when rock was still a lifestyle and a vocation rather than an industry. Those who lived at Villa Nellcôte were not there for the money but for the music. That the music itself was more than enough to sustain them can be seen on every page of Exile. In order to relive that time, simply slip the Stones' double album on the turntable, open the pages of Exile, and remember what it was like to be an exile on main street in a world which will never come again.

Exile (le livre) citations

2004-11-21T18:17:00.000+01:00

Extracts From Exile's Ninety Thousand

It wasn't like we were a young married couple on our honeymoon.

We were two guys working. We certainly weren't a bunch of hippies like everyone says. We didn't have time to be hippies. There was too much to do.
Anita Pallenberg

Suddenly there we all were, living in the South of France. And contrary to what the newspapers thought, which is that we were all joined at the hip and were this big group that lived together, we had never socialised that much. But here, we were suddenly all thrown together in a foreign country, having to see more of each other.
Astrid Lundström (épouse de Bill)

John Lennon came once, but just for one afternoon. As soon as he came, he went off to Keith's bedroom for about three quarters of an hour. Then he came downstairs to say "goodbye", vomited on the carpet and left.
Dominique Tarlé

I noticed one day that the vents in the floors were decorated with swastikas. When I asked Keith about it, he said, "Oh, it was the Gestapo headquarters during the war. But it's all right - we're in here now."
Andy Johns

It was all very primitive, and if we were in the middle of a take at two o'clock in the morning and there was a thunderstorm and lots of lightning, we'd have power failure sometimes. We'd sit around in that dingy basement, talking by candlelight until the power came back again. The whole idea of doing an album like that these days would be laughable.
Mick Taylor

Once we finished a session and then, on the Saturday night, we got a message that some kids had come in and stolen all the guitars and other things. Thirteen or seventeen guitars and a bass. They came and asked, "Where is Keith?" "Oh, he is in the other room, watching telly." So they came in and nicked everything. They were so free and easy there.
Bill Wyman

The cop said, "I have time to spend, here are the five depositions, I'll leave you to read them. Smoke a cigarette or drink a cup of coffee and I'll come back in ten minutes. Tell me what you have to say." One deposition I might argue about, even two or three, but five I couldn't deny. So I went to jail for six months and waited for my trial to come up.
Rene d'Amico

Judges and lawyers came by and remonstrated, "Madame!" But Bianca is like a tiger, she turned on them and said, "C'est mon mari," in other words, "Just try and stop me, my husband's in there!" Everybody backed off.
June Shelley

I went down to Nellcôte with rough mixes of all the material I'd found and remember them listening to them and saying, "God, that's pretty good, what is all this?" One of the tracks that I specifically remember was "Shake Your Hips" which definitely came out of that bunch of tapes. Another one was "Stop Breaking Down", and all the ones with Stu on the piano. There was also a version of the Jimi Hendrix song "Red House".
Trevor Churchill

Mick and I... He found out that I could play a little and he could sing a bit. "I dig to sing," he said, and he also knew Dick Taylor from another school they'd gone to and the thing tied up so we'd try and do something. We'd all go to Dick Taylor's house, in his back room, some other cats would come along and play, and we'd try to play some of this Little Walter and Chuck Berry stuff. No drummer or anything. Just two guitars and a little amplifier. Usual backroom stuff. It fell into place very quickly.
Keith Richards from his 1971 Nellcôte Interview (RS)

La belle-soeur... circa 2000

2004-11-21T18:10:00.000+01:00

Brotherly love

When Marsha Hansen decided to incorporate her music skills and theological education into a ministry, her brother-in-law gave support and advice. Encouragement from a family member may not seem like much ... unless you happen to be related to Keith Richards.
A year after Marsha married Rodney Hansen, an ELCA pastor, her sister-in-law married Richards, the guitarist for the Rolling Stones, suddenly making her related to one of rock 'n' roll's most notorious men.
But Hansen has never seen the side of Richards that the public does. "I met Keith in 1982 when he and Patti were dating," Hansen said. "I couldn't have named one member of the band back then. From the beginning I was so impressed with his character. He's been so consistent as a good family member.
"It's funny to see it from the inside because you couldn't ask for a better person to know or to trust."
Hansen said when she told Richards about her desire for a music ministry, he encouraged her to sing in front of more people and to feel secure about her talent.
Since then Hansen has followed his advice, performing in churches throughout the San Diego area. She also assists her husband when he is a guest pastor (Rodney Hansen is currently between calls).
"I think music is not an adjunct to worship but part of it," Hansen said. "Sharing music that is not only Christian but also represents my cultural heritage helps bring more of my experience of the role Christ [has played] in my life."
Hansen, with a little help from Richards, is working toward her first record deal and is recording her second CD. But Richards has been more than just a musical adviser.
"Marrying into this Norwegian family, I felt like an outsider," Hansen recalled. "Keith ... made me feel comfortable. He would be the one to lean over and whisper, 'It's OK,' and squeeze my hand." Hansen's CD, I Know the Lord's Laid His Hands on Me (Orchard), is available through.

Building a Bridge to Babylon

Marsha Hansen Brings a New Dimension to the Extended Rolling Stones Family

by Jill Underwood

Summer may be officially over but, somewhere in Connecticut, a barbecue is still smoking and music is still blasting. Not that unusual, except that the music is old African-American spirituals and the home belongs to Rolling Stone Keith Richards. Both are music to the ears of Marsha Hansen.’Keith would open all the doors up so everybody could hear the singing and playing,’ says the Chula Vista singer and mother of three. Richards’ listening sessions were what gave Hansen the inspiration to give up teaching and pursue her dream of singing spirituals professionally.The leap of faith came with encouragement from Richards, who also happens to be Hansen’s brother-in-law. ‘I love her dearly. We started singing around the family,’ remembers Richards. ‘That’s where music comes from. It comes from the heart. When she started getting into it I said, ‘Good luck and get going and I’ll keep an eye on you.’’Richards’ reputation isn’t exactly that of a choir boy. But as a child he was a member of a prestigious youth choir in England that performed before Queen Elizabeth II. Hansen herself is a product of the Southern-pewed singing set. When they met almost 20 years ago, the two heard beautiful music. ‘She’s got a great feeling as a sister,’ says Richards. ‘When we get together, we start to hang around the piano and the guitar and pick out and choose songs.’Hansen returns Richards’ respect and affection, whatever his reputation. ‘You get to know a person’s character over the years,’ defends Hansen. ‘If he says something, you can count on it. He has a lot of integrity and he’s very kind. All the children love Uncle Keith.’ Hansen says she has no problem allowing her lambs to lay down with the lion.And why should she? This is a woman with degrees in theology, sociology and human relations. When she met Rod Hansen 20 years ago, she was a Naval officer in Japan. She knew him as a Navy chaplain long before realizing he was also the brother of international supermodel, Patti Hansen. The two married in 1981 on the aircraft carrier Midway. Patti and Keith married in 1983. At the time, his sister’s union gave Rod Hansen little satisfaction.’I represent the establishment,’ says the 48-year-old Hansen. ‘Quite a different world from where Keith lives, and my first thought was, ‘Of all the people in the world you had to fall in love with, Patti, look what you did!’But the two families eventually grew close and learned how to have fun together. Now, with five children between them, the families have flourished. The Hansen’s even have a favorite Rolling Stones song: ‘Brown Sugar,’ admits Marsha. ‘When our daughter was born, I said, ‘Oh look, Keith. She’s ‘Brown Sugar,’ isn’t she? She even had that played when she walked out as the Homecoming Princess last year.’But it’s her own music Marsha concentrates on these days. Her first CD of African-American spirituals, I Know the Lord’s Laid His Hands on Me, was released late last year. ‘These are songs that are from the pre-Civil War [era],’ Hansen explains. ‘They’re sacred folk songs which rose up from enslaved African-Americans with a rural bent. It distinguishes them from Gospel. Gospel grew from an urban experience.’The project came about after Richards gave Hansen a DAT recording machine and introduced her to keyboardist, Rob Whitlock. Together, Hansen and Whitlock co-produced the debut. Its completion left Hansen flying high, but there were still clouds of concern: Would Richards like it? After all, his musical opinion means more to her than almost anyone’s. ‘He’s an encyclopedia in his knowledge of music. I really don’t know anybody who has the music knowledge he does,’ says Hansen.She didn’t have to worry. Hansen’s disc was like a revelation to the rocker. ‘It’s quite pure as compared to a lot of Gospel singers I know,’ says Richards. ‘It kind of intrigues me, too.’But would Richards have told her if he didn’t like it? ‘Now and again I’ll say ‘You’ve got to hit there on another key,’’ Richards admits. ‘But that’s just me being an old record producer.’And Marsha Hansen can take it. Neither sticks nor Stones will break the bones of her sound, which she describes as ‘personal.’ ‘I like the ethnic characteristics in my voice,’ says Hansen. ‘It’s passionate and rich. You can tell you’re listening to an African-American woman sing.’And she’ll be singing a lot more. A second CD is in the works. And she’s leaving space on at least one track for a few guitar licks -- licks that Richards has promised to fill. What’s this? Keith Richards jamming for the robed one?’I love music, no matter what it is,’ says Richards. ‘Music is music to me. It’s not necessarily the message to me. Whether it’s church music or comes from the Honky Tonks, I don’t mind as long as it’s good.’ Richards even made his own record of soul music years ago, Wingless Angels.So how do you repay a Rolling Stone? If you’re Marsha Hansen, with a gift from the heavens. ‘I gave him a hymn book for his house,’ Hansen laughs. ‘He did sing sacred songs as a little boy, but there was never a hymn book around when I was looking for one. So I said, ‘You have to have this now!’’ You can buy Marsha Hansen’s CD, ‘I Know the Lord’s Laid His Hands on Me,’ at Sam Goody stores or at www.MarshaHansen.iuma.com

Gram Parsons

2004-11-21T17:58:00.000+01:00

Un extrait d'un site consacré aux Byrds... (On est en 1968)

In London, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who knew McGuinn and Hillman from earlier tours together, entertained the band. Parsons was quite taken with their hosts, and privately spoke to them about the tour of South Africa scheduled for July. Richards remembers talking to Parsons about apartheid and telling him bluntly, "Well, put it this way: We wouldn't go."

In July, the Byrds returned to England for a charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall, after which they were to leave for South Africa. The night before their departure, Parsons announced he would not be going along because of South Africa's racial policies. In response, McGuinn and Hillman fired him from the band.

None of his friends or associates believed that anti-apartheid sentiment was the real reason Parsons quit, perhaps because of his history of stretching the truth. Hillman, who was furious with Parsons for leaving the band in such a jam, believed that he just wanted to hang out with the Rolling Stones. Byrds roadie Carlos Bernal, who subbed for Parsons on the South African tour, thought that Parsons quit the band because "he couldn't have things just exactly how he wanted them.... He wanted a steel guitar to do a lot of his tunes. He wanted a lot of things the band wasn't prepared to jump into overnight."

The most charitable theory was that this was an early manifestation of his fear of flying, triggered by the thought of the long flight from London to Johannesburg via the Canary Islands. Hillman also thinks this may have been a contributing factor.

In any event, Parsons retreated to Redlands, the country estate of Keith Richards. There the two got to know each other, while Parsons enthused to Richards and Jagger about his favorite country records.

After the Byrds:

Back home, Nancy Ross had recently given birth to a daughter, Polly Parsons. Parsons had planned a large wedding -- a Hank Williams-style media event -- and commissioned a $1,000 wedding dress from Nudie's Rodeo Tailors. Despite, or perhaps because of, the birth of their child, Parsons and Ross had drifted apart. The dress was never used, though it was immortalized years later in the Parsons song "$1,000 Wedding."

In the late summer of '68, Richards and Parsons rejoined Jagger in Los Angeles, where the Rolling Stones were mixing Beggars' Banquet (Abkco, 1968). Jagger had hired a charismatic ex-con named Phil Kaufman to be his "executive nanny." Kaufman, who would become a close friend of Parsons before long, remembers him giving "country music lessons" to the curious Stones during their '68 visit:

"...Gram was teaching the Rolling Stones country music.... Quite often we'd just sit around the house -- Gram, Mick, Keith and I. They had been to Ace Records and bought every country album they could find: George Jones, Merle Haggard, Dave Dudley, Ernest Tubb -- you name it. Gram would say, 'Here is an example of this,' and he'd tell me which record he wanted and I'd play the record. They'd listen to it, tap their toes to it, listen to the chords and then Gram had me play George Jones, etc... That was what Gram was doing. I recorded Gram and Keith singing together, but sadly those tapes are long gone."

Kaufman disputes assertions that Parsons was a "Rolling Stones groupie": "Nothing could be further from the truth. Gram was one of the only guys in the world who hung out with famous people like the Stones and who carried his own weight, i.e., he paid his own way. If anything, Keith was the 'groupie' of Gram.... They wanted to learn country music, and Gram had it."

Before long, Richards and Jagger returned home, and Parsons went back to organizing the long-haired country band he had been planning.

Jean-Pierre Rassam

2004-11-21T17:40:00.000+01:00

Encore des cheminements qu'on aimerait explorer, là c'est ce personnage assez fascinant, Rassam. Un site met en ligne un article d'Antoine de Baeque (Libé). Jean Yanne et Keith ensemble, j'aurais aimé voir ça... :

http://paris70.free.fr/rassam.htm

Il y aurait aussi le "filon" Scorcese, qui a beaucoup fréquenté tout ce monde là dans les années 70 notamment.

Marianne 2004

2004-11-20T16:04:00.000+01:00

Le Monde :
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3246,36-387752,0.html
et :
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3246,36-387753,0.html
Le Figaro :
http://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/20041119.FIG0118.html
Plus ancien, Libé :
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=241450&AG

Connaissance des Arts 2004

2004-11-20T14:50:00.000+01:00

Mick photographié par David Bayley en 1964.

A l'intérieur du magazine, une annonce d'expo à venir, avec ces deux très belles photos (euh... l'amour rend sûrement aveugle, deux ans plus tard, je les trouve parfaitement ridicules ces photos...)

Rock & Folk 94

2004-11-20T14:36:00.000+01:00

Keith Richards 92 R&F (extraits)

2004-11-20T13:58:00.000+01:00

Elle est bien l’interview de Keith par Manœuvre (R&F novembre 92).

Contexte : Il est avec son groupe bis et enregistre depuis mars (Main offender), il n’a pas vu passer l’été. Manœuvre se pointe, avec Gassian, premier d’une série de 35 journalistes pour l’interviewer. On dirait pas parce qu’ils prennent leur temps.
Des extraits de cette itw sont dans le bouquin de Manœuvre, mais c’est mieux en entier et non (ou moins) trafiqué. Ceci dit, ici, je n’en mets que des bribes !

- A l’époque, Bill est sur le départ, c’est pas certain apparemment (me souviens plus de la chronologie) :
Et si Bill Wyman ne veut plus revenir alors ?
Mmmhhh… Bonne question. Ca me trotte dans le ciboulot en permanence (long silence)… Si Bill Wyman ne veut pas revenir, il faudra un autre bassiste ! Les Stones ne vont tout de même pas s’arrêter parce que Bill Wyman ne veut plus jouer avec eux. Tu crois pas ? Ma théorie c’est qu’il va changer d’avis. Mon attitude c’est : quand le temps viendra d’enregistrer avec les Stones, Bill sera là ou il ne sera pas là. Et là, il faut que j’enquête. Tu sais, il nous envoie des messages par presse interposée « Fini terminé pour moi nanana… ! ». Et puis d’un autre côté, tu rencontres certains de ses proches et eux te disent tout autre chose… Moi, je ne l’ai pas vu depuis un an, Bill ! Aucune idée de ses sentiments actuels.

J'en parlais avec des vieux fans français des Stones, et l'un d'eux m'a dit : "Qu'ils mettent Ron Wood à la basse et reprennent Mick Taylor à la guitare"

Ah ah ah ! Tu leur diras de ma part que c'est ce que j'ai entendu de mieux sur le sujet !
Plus loin dans l’interview :
Tiens essaye un peu de nous aligner tous les cinq pour faire une photo des Stones en 92… Non, l’important, c’est qu’on a retrouvé beaucoup de désir et pas mal d’énergie. On sait qu’on a besoin les uns des autres parce qu’on a réalisé à quel point on aimait jouer ensemble. Et même Bill va finir par s’en rendre compte. En tous cas, je l’espère, parce que c’est le dernier truc que je voudrais, perdre Bill.

- Sur Brian : pourquoi est-il si incroyablement salaud quand il en parle, ça heurte des tas de gens.
Il répond encore une fois que Brian s’est désintégré, on pouvait rien pour lui, il se foutait de la gueule de ceux qui voulaient l’aider, il avait fini par choper la grosse tête, à se prendre pour dieu, etc etc. MAIS comme Manœuvre nous décrit aussi la bande son et l'image, on apprend que le K. est « bouleversé » « secoué » et pas du tout glacial/froid/j’en ai rien à foutre de ce mec quand il a fini d’en parler. Ca change tout, et on espère que c’est vrai. Le Sunkist orange ça peut aussi tirer des larmes.

- Une question que je lui ai posée sur son site (no answer !) mais voici la réponse :
L’Angleterre, ça te manque ? Je veux dire, tu es obligé de vivre à New York non ?
Je vais te dire… Je rentre là bas et le grand choc, c’est quand je retrouve les odeurs de l’Angleterre… Snif snif oooooohhhhh… Mais qu’est ce que je peux y faire ? Et puis au fur et à mesure que je me balade dans Londres, de toutes façons je ne reconnais plus rien ! Jésus, c’est ma ville natale et je m’y sens comme le dernier des touristes ! C’est mon destin, ça. Peux pas rentrer chez moi, j’ai plus de maison. L’Angleterre que j’ai connue, elle est où ? Elle a changé, sans moi ! Mais je m’en fous, c’est ok.

- Parlant de ses Winos :
C’est « ma clique » (en français). On va tuer le monde, mon cher ! Où est mon flingue ? On approche la musique comme vous, les Français, vous avez approché la Bastille.
Manœuvre : Ca, au pays, ils vont comprendre !
Keith : C’est le premier truc rock’n roll que vous ayez fait, les mecs !

- In fine :
Et puis, il y a ta biographie qui vient de sortir…
Oh le bouquin de Victor… euh Victor…
Bokris !
Oui tout le monde m’en parle, je n’y ai absolument pas participé ah non ! Donc j’ai jeté un œil là-dedans, j’ai pas pu le croire ! Il a ressorti toutes ces histoires. Le changement de sang ! Je veux dire : encore (crise de rire) ! Il a fait ça dans son coin, tout seul. C’est pas mon livre, c’est son livre. Et la plus grande partie du bouquin, ce sont des archives, de vieilles interviews recollées, si j’ai bien compris, il a interviewé deux ou trois personnes en plus… J’en sais rien ! C’est pas intéressant. Et puis moi, je sais tout sur moi, c’est peut-être pour ça que je trouve le bouquin chiant, hey ?

(L’itw est longue, je vais pas tout résumer).

Rock & Folk 92 & 94

2004-11-18T20:27:00.000+01:00

Déniché chez Gilda 2 ITW : une du K en 92, apparemment fleuve, et une du K et du M, 1994. Pas lues, enfin si juste ça : Mick y aura t-il encore une tournée en 2001 ? NON.

Cocksucker Blues, le film

2004-11-06T14:58:00.000+01:00

Un article de Bruno LESPRIT sur le film.

Les articles restent environ une douzaine de jours accessibles avant de passer en archives payantes...

Par ici sans passer par la caisse pour le moment :

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3246,36-385912,0.html

(pour les abonnés au Monde en ligne, accès via les archives)

Inrocks hors-série sixties

2004-10-30T04:27:00.000+02:00

Ca y est, il est sorti. Comme celui sur les trésors cachés du rock, il est pas épais parce qu'il y a un CD joint.
Pour les Stones, c'est Keith qui est interviewé par Kaganski en 94. Pas encore lu. Dialogue de sourds ?

Mick Jagger Octobre 2004

2004-10-25T15:53:00.000+02:00

Pêchée tout récemment dans le SFJ :

With Jagger's help, 'Alfie' making a comeback

October 17, 2004

BY CINDY PEARLMAN NEW YORK --

How does it feel ? A rock legend asked that question years ago and now Baby Boomers must revisit the inquiry. Specifically, how does it feel when the AARP starts sending that magazine? How does it feel when the gray hairs stage a mutiny and outnumber the darker ones ? And how does it feel when on a Saturday afternoon in SoHo, the guy in the Scholastic bookstore buying educational materials for his grandchildren is none other than Mick Jagger ? The lead singer of the Rolling Stones is 61 years old. When did this happen ? It's not like he's slowing down.

On another day in New York City at the Essex House, that randy rock 'n' roll twinkle remains in Jagger's eyes when he enters a hotel suite. Looking fit in a gray sweatshirt and jeans, he's athletic-looking, thanks to those marathon rock shows and daily swimming sessions. Despite a road map of facial lines, hints of a rebel remain.

"I can't handle the big questions today!" he says, feigning exhaustion. But he's not the least bit tired, just simply amused that his mere presence in a hotel means bodyguards in the hallways, publicists in large groups and second glances from every single woman in the vicinity. But he's not here to talk about being an icon -- more on that later. Jagger just released a critically acclaimed CD featuring the music from the upcoming film"Alfie." He sings several songs and was the soundtrack's producer, along with Dave Stewart. In November, a new double live CD set of Stones songs is due out in stores, plus a new Stones album is in the works. All of the above leave him with little time to be buying little train books for the grandkids, but that's fine with him."The key is to keep going. You never stop," says the man who is living thelyrics: "Start me up and I'll never stop."

Q. You recently wrote the music for the new film "Alfie," about a notoriousplayboy. Is this a topic you know well ? And how is the life of a rock star differentfrom the life of a playboy ?

A. First of all, there aren't any playboys anymore. They don't exist thesedays. It's rather sad, really. Our modern playboys just wrap themselves around treesin badly driven sports cars. I don't know what the difference is between a rock star and a playboy.

Q. So, you are not a playboy ?

A. I've always been a rather career-minded person and any vague resemblance of my life to a playboy's is merely coincidental.

Q. How did you link up with Dave Stewart to write the "Alfie" songs ?

A. One of the first things we ever did was a song for this movie "RuthlessPeople," which starred Bette Midler. We got paid lots of money, which we then spent on worthless consumer items. [Laughs] So it was easy to say yes again.

Q. What are the challenges ?

A. Doing a soundtrack, you don't have this complete freedom to write. You have to write a specific song around a specific character and enhance a specific scene. So it's very disciplined in that way. In a way it's kind of interesting because it'sanother form of writing. You have to get it right for the scene, which is ratherinteresting. And on top of that, there's a lot of craft that goes on. You have to look at other scenes and make these songs work in other scenes. For example, one of the lead songs on "Alfie" is "Old Habits Die Hard," which is a rather happy-go-lucky tune when you first hear it. But when you put it in another scene and slow it down and take out some instrumentation, it becomes a much more romantic or sadder tune than it initially appears. You need to fit the movie's mood.

Q. Was it different writing songs with Dave vs. Keith Richards ?

A. I write songs a lot with different people. I write a lot of stuff with Dave, I write a lot of stuff with Keith, and I write a lot of stuff on my own. There's hundreds of different ways of writing songs within that formula. I just spent two weekswriting songs with Keith and some are songs where I'm just there on my own and Keith walks in and plays the bass on what I've written. And some days it's the reverse, I go in and play the piano on something he's written. Dave and I are very concentrated and we're quite detailed. We force one another to finish everything. We like to do our work and get it done.

Q. The original movie "Alfie" with Michael Caine was such a hit in the1960s. Were you familiar with his world ?

A. To be honest, I saw the original movie "Alfie" at the time and I don't remember an awful lot about it, except that the character made Michael Caine a bigger star than he already was. But I know of the theme. The Alfie character is a guy that doesn't want to commit to a relationship. I think that's a character throughout the last 300-400 years in literary history that comes off again and again. He's a young guy who has lots of girlfriends before he realizes he has to settle down somehow with one of them.

Q. You've acted in and produced movies. What's the attraction ?

A. It's very exciting to get a good part. But it doesn't happen very often in my case.Some actors don't ever get good parts, so it's very competitive. There aremany good people out there who can sing, dance and act. There shouldn't be a greatdivision between these things. Some people get really annoyed if they specialize in one field and someone else moves into it. But I don't care. A lot of people in music can do all things to varying degrees of success. I don't see why not. I admire people who can do more than one thing.

Q. Will the Stones tour again ?

A. I don't know who's going be ready first -- [the new] Wembley Stadium or the Rolling Stones. Charlie's [Watts] a lot better. He's had all his treatments andhe's been pronounced sort of free and clear of everything, so we're very pleasedabout that. And Keith and I have been writing new material for the Stones' new albums. I don't know when the Stones will actually tour, but I suspect we'll do the album and then we'll do a tour.

Q. So how does it feel to get up onstage these days ? Is it the same thrill as when you were younger, hearing the roar of the crowd ?

A. It's still a wow. Of course, it's the same thrill. It's exactly the same thing. You get in front of an audience. It's a similar feeling to when I first started. when I get up now. You know, in a lot of ways, it's exactly the same. I don't think that the thrill or the excitement that drew you to it in the beginning is the same.But it's still a thrill.

Q. Can you define that thrill ?

A. It's about never really knowing what's going to happen. You never never know what the audience is going to be like. You never know how they're going to behave. You expect them to do certain things, but they don't always do that. You don't always do the same things that you've done the night before. I think that's what brings you into live playing and what makes live playing so interesting as opposed to being in the studio.

Gassian, suite

2004-10-25T15:28:00.000+02:00

Bon, donc ce qui précède est un merveilleux bouquin à 38,11 euros "Photographies 1970-2001" où beaucoup de ceux qui portent ou portèrent guitare ou micros - mais pas que - dans le laps de temps en question figurent.

Sir Claude Gassian

2004-10-24T20:00:00.001+02:00

Bouquin paru chez la Martinière, où le photographe égrène ses clichés rock qui n'en sont pas. Du grand grand art, cette faculté de capter l'artiste et ses fêlures, dans des moments particuliers, loin des regards parfois. Mick qui repasse, Keith dans quelque mauvais snack qu'on imagine dans le middle west profond, le regard vague et triste, ou complètement allumé dans cette photo qu'il repiquera sur son 45 t Run Rodolph run... Imaginez un mec comme Doisneau photographiant des rock stars, on en est pas loin, même regard, même humanité.

Inrocks hors-série

2004-10-24T19:29:00.000+02:00

Ca, c'est un peu de teasing, deux numéros spéciaux
des Inrocks sur les 50 ans du rock.
Le premier, Trésors cachés du rock est pas top.
Mais le 2ème, spécial 70ies, merveille ô merveille !
Y'en a eu un sur les 80/90 (que je n'ai pas),
et on attend donc celui sur les SIXTIES,
où seront les Stones.
A suivre...

Mojo 2004

2004-10-24T19:25:00.000+02:00

NME Originals

2004-10-24T19:13:00.000+02:00

La machine à fantasmes est en couverture,

mais dedans Keith est interviewé lui aussi :

ça date de 74, c'est à Cheyne Walk

(pas encore vendue pour payer les frais d'

avocats), et il parle à Nick Kent.

Pas encore lue.

Numéro toujours en vente à ce jour.

Signaler leur très beau hors-série spécial

Stones années 60 avec plein de coupures

de presse de l'époque. Hélàs je l'ai filé à

quelqu'un et n'ai pu le retrouver ensuite en

vente...

petite bête qui monte

2004-10-24T19:06:00.000+02:00

Oooooopppssss.... les ayatollahs vont mugir (et alors ?!)
Dommage que Mojo ne fasse pas des éditions françaises
pour les numéros stoniens également.
Le marché du scarabée serait il plus porteur ?

Mojo 2003

2004-10-24T19:03:00.000+02:00

Ah celui-là, pour tout l'or du monde...

Uncut 60 ans de Keith

2004-10-24T18:58:00.000+02:00

Ils en parlent tous, ils prennent des pincettes,
mais ils disent quand même quelques vérités,
à l'anglaise, entre les lignes...

Uncut 2002

2004-10-24T18:55:00.000+02:00

Contient une belle et très longue interview du K
à la veille de la tournée US,
l'occasion de vérifier une nouvelle fois que la presse
musicale anglaise, c'est quelque chose !!!

Mojo à 4 couv' (2002)

2004-10-24T18:50:00.000+02:00

Special Keith edition, c'était la seule qui restait !!

Stones News

2004-10-24T18:45:00.000+02:00

Très beau numéro du fan club français des Stones,
tout entier consacré à Exile à l'occasion de la sortie
du bouquin de Tarlé.

Inrocks 2002

2004-10-24T17:39:00.000+02:00

R&F 99

2004-10-24T17:23:00.000+02:00

se définissant comme le magazine des Stones (mais Monsieur Manoeuvre vous z'avez encore du boulot avant de savoir l'interviewer comme vos confrères anglo-saxons !)

Peellaert & Cohn

2004-10-24T16:17:00.000+02:00

Encore des images pieuses...

Tarlé...

2004-10-18T23:18:00.000+02:00

... la seule qu'on s'autorisera à mettre ici...

Des amygdales en or...

2004-10-18T23:12:00.000+02:00

Lucie de la Falaise & Marlon

2004-10-18T23:07:00.000+02:00

Elle (1994)

Quand Bill m'écrit...

2004-10-18T22:51:00.000+02:00

Merci à Jean Mi pour cet autographe, merci aussi de lui avoir raconté l'anecdote du Little Red Rooster, et de m'avoir dit que ça l'avait fait rire...

Anita - Marie Claire (1ère page only)

2004-10-18T22:46:00.000+02:00

Best cover (1974)

2004-10-17T18:25:00.000+02:00

En attendant de me décider à le mettre ici, au moins la couverture.

A venir aussi : Rolling Stone 71 & Guitar Player 76 (2 itw du K.).

Vu sur le site journaux collection, les vieux Rock'n Folk y sont (pas tous !) à des prix prohibitifs (45 euros ceux de 1970!!!).

On va regretter longtemps encore d'avoir jeté tout ça...

STP cover (new US edition)

2004-10-17T17:29:00.000+02:00

Bouquin disponible sur Amazon, sans, hélas, les photos centrales de l'édition française (objet rare et précieux !) :

Liens divers

2004-10-17T16:40:00.000+02:00

(en relation avec la musique :
presse, photos, …)

http://imageshack.us/index2.php
http://www.creemmagazine.com/
http://www.guitariste.com/forums/
http://www.guitarplayer.com/
http://www.guitarworld.com/
http://www.journaux-collection.com/
http://www.lesinrocks.com/
http://www.lostsongs-and-otherblues.com/
http://www.mojo4music.com/
http://www.nme.co.uk/
http://www.nmeoriginals.com/
http://www.novaplanet.com/
http://www.picsearch.com/
http://www.q4music.com/
http://www.rexfeatures.com/
http://www.rockcritics.com/index.html
http://www.rockhall.com/home/
http://www.rocknfolk.com/
http://www.rocksbackpages.com/index.html
http://www.sefronia.com
http://www.technikart.com/
http://www.uncut.net/
http://www.villagevoice.com/

Another blog

2004-10-17T15:38:00.000+02:00

http://belzebuth.blogspot.com/

Paris & MJ - 2004 (4)

2004-10-17T02:53:00.000+02:00

Et sinon... plus au sud... pour l'hiver...
www.mustique-island.com
chercher Stargroves

Paris & MJ - 2004 (3)

2004-10-17T02:50:00.000+02:00

La rue ? L'étage ?
Ah non !

Paris & MJ - 2004 (2)

2004-10-17T02:38:00.001+02:00

On approche, vers chez l'Idole, c'est sur la droite

Paris & MJ - 2004

2004-10-17T02:38:00.000+02:00

L'église qu'on voit là, et ses cloches bruyantes qu'on n'entend pas ici, sont causes de probables réveils matinaux de l'Idole...

Ora et labora, même chez les Stones.

Nellcôte 2003 (10)

2004-10-17T01:55:00.000+02:00

Vue depuis Nellcôte sur Villefranche :
& pour prolonger sur Nellcôte :
http://perso.club-internet.fr/iduneau/papawas2.html
http://www.darse.org/patrimoine/vill_055.html

Nellcôte 2003 (9)

2004-10-17T01:52:00.000+02:00

Nellcôte 2003 (8)

2004-10-17T01:49:00.000+02:00

Nellcôte 2003 (7)

2004-10-17T01:46:00.000+02:00

Un bout de l'arbre monstrueux qui cache la maison...

Nellcôte 2003 (6)

2004-10-17T01:42:00.000+02:00

Le portail, mal cadré (plein de bagnoles qui gênaient). Un type de l'EDF venait de sortir du domaine, espérons pour lui que le compteur était à la cave...

Nellcôte 2003 (5)

2004-10-17T01:38:00.000+02:00

Domaine de Nellcôte, ça c'est juste la maison du gardien !

Nellcote 2003 (4)

2004-10-17T01:34:00.000+02:00

Nellcote 2003 (3)

2004-10-17T01:32:00.000+02:00

Nellcote 2003 (2)

2004-10-17T01:30:00.000+02:00

Nellcote 2003

2004-10-17T01:19:00.000+02:00

Archéo (James Phelge)

2004-10-10T17:44:00.000+02:00

No Stone Unturned

Author James Phelge provides a first-handlook at the early days of the Rolling Stones
by Chris Parcellin

Have you ever wondered what Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were like before the models, private jets and drug busts? Well, get ready, because your questions are about to be answered...in graphic detail. Just released in the United States Nankering with the Stones (originally titled Phelge's Stones ) chronicles the early, poverty-stricken days of Rolling Stones Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones---living in a small flat in London's Edith Grove section. The man who provides us with this window into the making of the legendary rock group is James Phelge. Phelge was a roommate and friend to the Stones in the early-'60s, and had a front row seat as they evolved from an unknown local band into international superstars. And Phelge proves to be more than up to the task of capturing the real people behind the public facade. His biting humor and incisive commentary show the Stones as three-dimensional human beings, as no other biography has. And his genuine fondest and respect for the band shows through at all times. D-FILED had the privilege of speaking to Phelge recently, and he did not disappoint.

How long did it take you to write Nankering with the Stones?

James Phelge: I suppose the real answer is thirty-five years, although physically, it was only three. There were lots of little myths and facts about the Stones that were getting out of perspective, or just being told totally wrong. I decided to write the book just to correct some things and also tell what actually happened. It became an evening job after I returned home from running my business. I did have 'off' periods though, where I did nothing for two or three months.

Was it something that you'd planned to do for a long time?

JP: I had thought about it occasionally over the years but it was really a part of my life that was extinct. I'm not a great believer in going back. You usually get disappointed
When you first heard the Stones---what did you think?

JP: I thought they were great. Maybe it was just that they were playing a different kind of music compared to the pop pap being put out at the time. And playing it good. Maybe it was because they were my age and part of my local scene. Whatever it was, they had an air of rebellion about them. Maybe we all did back then, and it was a mutual recognition among those visited the clubs on Stones nights. On the other hand maybe it was just the fact that it was cheap to get in.:-))

It seems like Bill Wyman didn't like you very much. What was his problem?

JP: Wyman is aware that they never wanted him the band from the start. One of the Stones office staff told me after Bill left the band that Wyman had himself said that it had stayed like that for thirty years. Although he was in the band, I still don't think he ever grasped or understood what the Stones were about. Maybe it was because he was boring......yawn.
It sounds like--from reading your book---that even in the early days, Keith was someone who'd never backdown from a fight. Did you see him get into many scraps?

JP: Not really. It is just that he would stand up for himself. He was never afraid to be outspoken. I could not imagine him giving way to someone if he thought he was right or had just been insulted. Sometimes people would find with Keith they'd bit off more than they could chew and backdown. Talk is cheap as they say...unless you're Marlon Brando, then it's about ten dollars a word. In Stanley Booth's book The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones he gives a brief overview (mostly from Keith's perspective) of the same era your book covers.

Did he have his facts straight?

JP: Dunno. I never read it. Nothing against his book but I have never read any Stones book. Never felt the need. Most of the people who write about them don't or won't ever really know them. Anyone from the outside is going to already be tarnished by the hype around band. They will never get to grips with the normality of the guys as ordinary people. They never knew them then of course.
Is the stuff about Jagger wandering around Edith Grove in a housecoat true? Do you think his sexuality was questionable---or was he just goofy?

JP: He had a womans nylon dressing gown he wore occasionally. I think he nicked it from one of the girls downstairs. His sexuality is not worth arguing over. Mick's been in the papers for 30 years with a different chick each week and the same before he was famous.

Where does this gay bit come in...? Do you think Brian Jones has gotten a bad rap over the years?

JP: There is no doubt that his memory has been maligned over the years. It's sad to still see that no one ever quotes anything nice about him. I don't mean just in terms of his music ability which would have grown over the years and moved with the progressive music, he was that capable. People always quote his drugs problem and the various kids etc. He could be difficult to deal with, sure, but so are many people. I can think of one or two others who have had a drug problem not to mention illegitimate kids. Should be easy to pick two names to go in that last sentence. Maybe the fact that Brian's memory won't die bugs some people.

Did success change those guys a lot?

JP: I can still see the original guys and their attitudes come through on occasion. They were bound to have changed in someways - maybe a few airs and graces with Jagger. As I said earlier, most people never knew them so would not know what to look for. They are expected to be entertainers now and that is what they do. They still have their original attitudes, if you know where to look. I sometimes see the fleeting looks that cross their faces when they're pissed off, although the mask only drops for second.

Has the book been a big success for you?

JP: Not as much as I would have liked. Distribution was the problem. Big book stores won't buy books anyway, they want them on consignment. Like, I wanna sponsor Barnes and Noble? Things have improved for me. The US rights have been sold to a Chicago publisher and the new American Edition came out April 1, 2000. It is now called Nankering with the Rolling Stones. Not my choice of title, but I guess it's better than Eating Shit with Keith, Maybe not tho'...
Where can fans order it?

JP: It is now available from any US bookstore, as well as Amazon.com. It is also now part of official Stones merchandising and will be available from their website soon. More details are on my website.

Any plans for a follow-up book?

JP: I'm working on a second, but nothing to add to that at the moment.

Have you heard any reaction to Nankering with the Stones from Keith or the other Stones?

JP: Not at all, apart from the fact Jane Rose rang after a year saying 'If I give Mick my house he won't sue.' Just kidding. She rang about it becoming official merchandise, so I guess it's okay. Wyman actually bought a copy while I was in America. I gave another copy to Keith personally, but he was on his way to gig. Knowing him, he probably lost it.

Long View Farm 1981

2004-10-10T17:28:00.000+02:00

Jane Rose
"People think I get my way a lot more than I do," Keith continued." You don't know what it's like dealing with the people I have to deal with. If it wasn't for the music, I wouldn't be doing it.""Oh, Keith! Keith!" Jane Rose tends to shriek a bit when she talks. Her job is to take care of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and she's very protective of them. "Oh, I knew I'd find you in here, in this ice-cold control room, talking to Greg and listening to records." Keith hit the "mute" button on the console, lowering the volume level in the room. "Gil's his name," he said. "Gil, then. Listen, Keith-eee, we simply must begin to think about getting on our way. Greg, here — Gil, I mean — has those two pilots waiting inside that gorgeous airplane, and we simply can't keep them waiting, can we? You know what you have to do for tomorrow. There's the dentist again, and there's the Consulate, and there's Renaldo, in Rome, and we're way up here in goodness-knows-where. And I know Patti must get back to the city, too, mustn't you, dear, and I know ..." "We're not going anywhere," Keith said, returning the level of the studio monitors to full, undistorted blast. "We're not going anywhere," he said again, I think, judging from the way his lips moved. I smiled, having only moments ago taken Keith behind the moose head in the library with our two full glasses of Stolni' and orange juice. "You don't have to go anywhere tonight, Keith," I had said. "It just starts to get fun here after supper. You can hang out, listen to some records, fool around, anything you want. The place is yours." "Yeah," he muttered through a smile. "I don't have to go anywhere, do I?" "No, Keith," I said, "you don't." And he didn't go anywhere. Jane brought the word back outside to Alan, who was tired and just as happy to stay, and the pilots were released from any duty within Gil's gorgeous airplane. Keith stayed, and stayed largely inside the control room, playing and listening to music, for the better part of three days.
"Get Jane up," he said at one point. It's always dark in the control room, particularly when the black velvet curtains are pulled, and so it's difficult to tell what time it is, or whether it's night or day. I think it was about 5 AM. We had just gone through a half a dozen versions of Merle Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home," Keith singing and accompanying himself on the piano. "Tell her to get Woody on the phone, and Bobby Keys, too." "Keith," I asked, "do you know what time it is? I don't." "Doesn't matter. I never get a chance to do this. You don't understand. I suppose you think it's all fun being me. Listen, I never get a chance to sing by myself like this — play the piano — without some bastard weirding out and asking me why I wasn't playing the guitar, and looking mean. People have their ideas about me. I bet you didn't think I could play the piano, did you? Or sing classics from the thirties. Well, I can, and I want to talk to Woody. He'll love it here. Where's Jane?" "Upstairs, Keith, in the Crow." "I'll go, Keith," volunteered Patti Hansen, and she slithered out the door and up the staircase to the bedroom we call the Crow. Muffled female voices indicated that Jane had not been sleeping all that soundly, if at all, and that she had some reservations about calling Woody and Bobby Keys. "I know what you mean, Keith," I continued down below. "It's not all that great when you get what you want. Me, I've got a lot of things happening, but also a lot of screwed up relationships, like with my girlfriend, who's the mother of my kids."
"Me, too," Keith said, slapping his vest pocket and looking about for something he had obviously misplaced. "I did the same thing. Her name's Anita. Kid's Marlon." "Here's what you're looking for," I said. "Use the razor in the editing block." "People think I get my way a lot more than I do," Keith continued. "You don't know what it's like dealing with the people I have to deal with. If it wasn't for the music, I wouldn't be doing it." Sniff! "Let's do 'Dream' next, what d'ya think?" "Let's do it, Keith. Gimme a minute, though. I want to put some two-inch tape on the big machine for this one. Something I want to check on the machine first, too." "No hurry, man. No... hurry." Keith stretched out the "no's" until they wouldn't stretch any more, and addressed the mirror once again. Sniff! Patti Hansen leaned her full weight on the heavy studio door, opening it a crack and looking in on Keith and me. "Look at the two of you. I mean, I can't leave the room for a minute. I need to talk to you, Gil. Come here, will you?" "What's up, Patti?" I asked, a bit blinded once outside the door by the early morning light. "What's up?" "You've got to invent some excuse, Jane says. He may never leave here if you don't. You don't know Keith. He likes it here, too much maybe. But he's got to be in Rome before next Monday to get his visa fixed. Jane's worried. Can't you say something about the plane, or something? Really, Gil, he may not ever leave here, at all." Patti Hansen is a very beautiful woman, and it was clear that she was asking me to take action, too. Not just Jane. "Something about the plane?" I asked. "Like there's bad weather coming in, and we'd better make a move soon." "That would be great," Patti said, eyes flashing. "Not before the Everly Brothers' tune," I said, somewhat automatically. "He wants to do the Everly Brothers' tune, and he really should. That's next. Don't worry, Patti," I said. "He's really doing fine in there." "O.K., Gil, that's all great. But what do you think, I mean, what should I tell Jane?" "Tell her after the Everly Brothers' tune," I laughed. "O.K., Gil," Patti said, smiling. "You know, you're not bad for forty-one. That's how old you are, right?" "You read the article in the magazine in the plane?" "You put it there for us to read." "Yeah, I guess I did. Listen, don't worry about Keith. I'll get him out of here somehow. Just so long as it's not before we do the Everly Brothers' tune, O.K.?" "O.K.," Patti said.

Keith Richards
Keith looked up at the chimney, then back at me. I saw a gleam in his eye. We had this one.Keith ambled out of the airplane, legs stiff from the 45 minute trip from Teterboro. He smiled. Keith looked like warm, friendly leather. Soft eyes. "I'm Gil Markle, Keith. Welcome here." "Hey, yeah. Nice, man. Nice trip." "And I'm Alan Dunn, Gil. Sorry for the delay, but here we are." I was then introduced to Jane Rose, who was talking to Keith and looking at him while shaking my hand, to Alan's comely wife Maureen, and to a smiling Patti Hansen, who looked me right in the eyes. "Let's go," I said. "Black car, over there. " "We all going in one car?" Keith asked. "Yes," I said. "We'll all fit." I made a mental note to investigate the purchase of a second black Cadillac. (Except they didn't build big ones anymore.) We squeezed into the car. Keith, Patti, and Jane Rose in the back seat; Alan Dunn and his wife up front; me driving. "Car got a radio?" Keith shouted up. I flipped to WAAF, The Police; then to WBCN, an old J. Geils cut; then to some Hartford station, Jerry Lee Lewis. "Yeah," Keith erupted. "Yeah." I turned up the volume, and by the end of the tune, which was "Personality," we were gliding up Stoddard Road, past the Long View pond and rowboat, and up the long gravel drive. The Farmhouse glistened white, and the enormous barn glowed cherry red under a dark but very starry summer's night sky. There was a new moon. It was silent, except for the crickets. "Welcome to Long View, Keith," I said. "Yeah," Keith replied. "Nice place." We were scarcely inside the house, drinks ordered up but not yet in hand, when Alan Dunn motioned to me and took me aside, behind the fireplace. "Look," he said, "this has got to be quick tonight. I've got to be back in the city for a day's work tomorrow. So does Jane Rose. Keith's got to be in Rome before the weekend, and he's nowhere near ready to go. Just got evicted from his apartment, and there're a lot of loose ends to tie up. So give him a quick tour, and let's take a look at your plans for the loft. Don't get your hopes up. There's just not time for us to do much tonight." "Here's your wine, Alan," I said. "And here's a screwdriver for Keith. Where'd he go?" "Into the control room, I think. With Patti. Let's meet up in the loft in ten minutes, and you better call your pilots and tell them to be ready to depart Worcester for Teterboro at eleven, at the latest. Sorry it's got to be so rushed, but this was your idea, not mine." "Ten minutes, Alan, in the loft." It took us twenty minutes to get up there, not ten. Keith was in no hurry, and neither was I, if you want to know the truth. We hung out in the control room for a while, and I explained to him how we have tie lines between the two studios, and how we sometimes record over across the way, in the barn, but mix here in Control Room A. We then took a look at the bedrooms upstairs, the balcony overlooking our antique Steinway, and our collection of records. "You keep all your fifties in one place, too," he remarked with apparent relief. "Easier that way, isn't it? That cassette deck work?" "Sure does, Keith. What you got there?" "Bunch of stuff all mixed up. Starts with some Buddy Holly, I think." Keith slammed the cassette into the cassette deck, which hangs at eye level just as you enter the kitchen, and hit the "go" button. "Select tape two on the pre-amp," I shouted over to him, which he did. On came Buddy Holly, as expected. Keith turned it up, loud, very loud, until it began to distort the JBLs hanging overhead, then down just a notch. Maximum undistorted volume, that's called. He extended his glass to me, which now had only a bit of yellow left in it, way down at the bottom of the glass. He needed a refill. "Good idea," I said. "Then let's go across the way and I'll show you what we have in mind for the stage." "Yeah," Keith said. "Let's go over to the barn. Got to find Patti, though. Hold on a minute." Patti materialized, and we headed out, through the library, under the moosehead, past the fish tank, and out onto the driveway. "Look down there, Keith," I said. "Those lights down there are Stanley's, and he's our nearest neighbor. Farmer." "Hope he likes rock 'n' roll," Keith laughed. "He better by now," I said. "He's been hearing it from us for almost eight years now. Up these stairs here, and straight ahead." Alan Dunn and Jane Rose were waiting for us in the loft, and had already been briefed by Geoff Myers, who was talking in an animated fashion, and moving his arms in wide arcs. He was explaining how deep the stage was going to be, and how strong. Keith listened for a moment, then walked over to one of the massive support beams, and kicked it. He looked up, whistled softly through his teeth, and spun around slowly, on his heel. "Yeah," he said. "What's down there?" "Come on, I'll show you," and I scrambled down the rickety ladder into what we now call the Keith Richards bedroom suite. Keith followed, with Jane Rose telling him to be careful. "We don't really know how strong that thing is, now, do we? Gil, are you sure you need Keith down there? Why don't you just leave Keith up here and you can talk to us from down there. Keith, are you all right? Keith!" "Figured we'd do a bedroom and living area down here," I said. "Right beside the chimney here. A place for people to hang out during the rehearsals, but still be out of the way. Look up there. The stage will be on the level of those transverse beams. You'll be able to see the whole thing from down here. We'll build staircases, fix it up nice. Cassette deck will be over there; speakers hanging so, on either side of the chimney. Should sound good down here." Keith looked up at the chimney, then back at me. I saw a gleam in his eye. We had this one. Keith and I made our way back up the ladder, Keith first, much to Jane Rose's pleasure and relief. Geoff Myers was jumping up and down on the plank floor, trying to make it move. "See? And this is just one layer of two-inch pine on top of two-by-eights. Nothing compared to the strength of the stage, which will have three layers: beams of hemlock, pine sub-flooring, and oak finish. You could drive a truck up there and the floor wouldn't give a bit." And that's all Keith needed to hear. He walked up to Geoff, and gave him a friendly slap on the lapel with the back of his hand. "It won't bounce, right?" "No bounce, Keith." "We're coming, then. What a place I found!" "We're what?" Alan interrupted. "We're coming to this man's barn. Where's Mick now?" "India, Keith." "Let's go ring him. What a place I found!" "How's your screwdriver, Keith?" I asked. It was plainly down to its ice cubes, and needed refreshing. He looked at me, and at my screwdriver, which was still quite yellow, and full of Stolni'. I poured my glass into his; he laughed, and we walked back across the driveway to the Farmhouse. Keith and I were getting on just fine.

Charlie Watts
Charlie Watts turned, looked me straight in the eye, and lifted his glass of Tequila. "Think if I ever grew up I'd get out of rock 'n' roll, too," he said."Charlie Watts," I said. "What are you doing up this early in the morning?" It was 7 AM, and I was getting no sleep at all in the water bed in the Flat. I had been dreaming my nightmare, which had been recurrent for me now ever since the Rolling Stones arrived. Was always the same. Nancy, my sweetheart, making love to some other guy, yet smiling at me with her tender, enigmatic Mona Lisa smile — checks becoming ever more flushed — until I would end the dream and wake up terrified in the heaving, sloshing water bed, aware once again that it was the Rolling Stones playing upstairs on our new and gleaming sound stage, and that I had gotten my wish. I mean, that the Rolling Stones had come to Long View Farm. Charlie Watts was alone in the kitchen in the Farmhouse, looking out over the valley toward the east, and toward a sky which was now gray, streaked with orange, just a few moments after sunrise. "How'd the practice go last night, Charlie?" "Gil," he said, "let me look at you." Charlie was swaying slowly back and forth, seated on the wooden bench overlooking the front porch and the deep valley below. There were patches of mist in the low spots in the valley. "Let me look at you," Charlie continued. "I want you to tell me this one thing, Gil." "What, Charlie?" "What . . . and I want you to tell me the truth . . . what are you going to do, Gil, when . . . when . . . " "When what , Charlie?" "When you grow up, Gil. What are you going to do when you grow up?" Charlie said each word by itself. Distinctly, and without any consideration of count, or cadence. "Jesus, Charlie," I said. "I'm already forty-one." "Know that. Know that, Gil. Know that very well. But the question still remains, what, Gil, are you going to do, when you grow up ?" "Think about getting out of rock 'n' roll, for a start. I can now." I was amazed that I had said that. "Ha, ha! Watts spoke. Ha, ha. That's already a beginning my good man. A beginning for us to con-tem-plate, the two of us. Out of rock 'n' roll. Which way, Gil? Which way is out of rock 'n' roll? That way? Down past the riding ring? Ha! You really forty-one?" "I don't know, Charlie. Sometimes I lose track. That's what it says in the papers — in the articles. I guess that's how old I am." "Treated you easy so far, rock 'n' roll did. Unless you have an aging portrait upstairs in the attic. Ha! Knew someone like you once. Looked great, he did. Didn't show it all as much as me. And I've been showing it a bit. But was that bastard ever miserable! You miserable, Gil?" "Charlie," I said, "what kind of a thing is that to ask?"
"Aw, fuck," Charlie said. "Wasn't asking. Trying to say something. Trying to say something to you, Gil, who's just forty-one. Played drums all night, trying to say something in the morning. In Massachusetts. I don't know why they make such a fuss over us. Never did understand it. Still don't." "You're the Rolling Stones, Charlie. That's why." Charlie Watts turned, looked me straight in the eye, and lifted his glass of Tequila. "Think if I ever grew up I'd get out of rock 'n' roll, too," he said. He then rose unsteadily to his feet, acquired some stumbling momentum in the direction of the fireplace, the staircase, and his bedroom two flights above us, just across the hall from Mick's room. "G'night, Charlie," I shouted after him. "Nite, Gil," he said softly. "Nite, Gil."

Mick and Freedom
Mick's eyebrows arched. He's still holding his empty plate in one hand. I could see that this was going to have to be quick. Just time enough for the abridged version of my prepared speech.It was time for the Rolling Stones to leave Long View Farm. Their first really big show — the first of two back-to-back performances, and in front of 80,000 persons, was scheduled for Friday, in Philadelphia. So they would leave Long View on Thursday. It was now Monday, or Tuesday if I'm wrong. Dr. Rose, who's Jane Rose's father, and a semi-retired physician, had stopped by with his wife and had given vitamin B-12 shots to all the members of the band. That's a no-nonsense measure designed to eliminate the possibility of any sore throats, fevers, or other infectious diseases. It's almost impossible to get sick once you've had a shot of vitamin B-12. Billy Maykel, the local Svengali and chiropractor, had stopped by and had cracked all available backs. Mick requested the treatment, but once Billy was on the premises, his popularity spread like wildfire. Keith, once "cracked" and relieved of a bothersome shoulder pain, instructed Woody to "get cracked, too." Bill and Astrid came next. Patti Hansen officiated at the assembly-line back-crackings, which occurred downstairs in the barn, just outside the sauna. She "got cracked" herself, and immediately joined the ranks of the proselytizers and converted. The Rolling Stones thought Dr. Billy Maykel was a genius, and he's still prescribing adjustments and diet changes for them by mail. I "got cracked," too, over in the Flat, and was briefed by Maykel on the state of the spines of the members of the band. " Mick's the worst," Dr. Billy said, gravely. "Don't see how he can carry on, in the state he's in. Internal organs? I don't want to talk about it. He's better now, though. Three consecutive sets of adjustments I've put him through, and he's obviously improved. Now, Gil, breathe out. That's it. All the way out." "CRACK!" "Hmmm. Not doing too well yourself, if you want to know." "How so, Billy?" "Liver, Gil. I've been telling you this now for years. Liver." "Whaddaya mean, 'liver'?" I asked Dr. Billy Maykel. "You know, Gil. Without my telling you. You're also not doing the pressurepoint exercises either, like you've been told. There, get up. That should loosen you up for a while. Your fourth lumbar was way out. Not as far as Mick's though. His was practically out of joint. Keith, he had another problem altogether..." "Please, Billy, don't tell me things like that. They're all better now, though, you say?" "No problem. They'll perform in Philly, if that's what you're asking." That was good for me to hear. Didn't want it said that we'd sent the Rolling Stones out into the world in anything less than fighting shape. I thanked Billy, and made my way across the driveway to the Farmhouse, feeling particularly light on my feet. The cracking had been a good one. It was now suppertime, or just a bit later than that. Cracking of the back loosens up the mind, that's why I'm a fan of chiropractics. I was thinking particulary well, all of a sudden. Hallucinating for a start; then tying the rush down to earth, in the form of a determination — of an intention. Always works, that. If you start with an hallucination, and then focus, you're home-free-all. The thing will then happen. Some shrinks will charge you $250 per hour, and still not tell you that. Tonight, I intended to say goodbye to Mick Jagger. Mick and I had been circling around one another for almost two months now — keeping our distances, playing our roles, each very well. We had only good things to say about each other, but had never done so directly, to the other, one-on-one. That would have been superfluous, and possibly dangerous to boot. Mick Jagger wasn't a person for me; and I wasn't a person for Mick Jagger. We were instead two intelligent men caught up in rock 'n' roll, with clearly defined objectives. Mick figured temporarily on the horizon of my objectives; I figured temporarily on his. And that was fine with the two of us. All this aside, I still wanted to say goodbye to the man, and had been rehearsing my goodbye speech for at least a month now — tinkering with it, scrutinizing it for any remaining traces of ego, bombast, and bravado, and waiting for my moment. It was now very shortly to arrive. People were just getting up from the table, after an evening meal which must have been fish, since there was a profusion of empty wine bottles in evidence. White wines, from Bordeaux. I know. I selected most of the titles. A fire — large for the month of September — was raging in the fireplace. Keith would occasionally throw on a log. So would Woody, and Charlie Watts. One of them, at least, had done so. I rounded the corner by the fireplace, toward the table, just as Mick was rounding the fireplace, empty plate in hand, heading toward the dishwasher. It's a sign that guests are fully at home at Long View, and aware of what has to be done to keep the place running, when they take their empty plates back to the dishwasher. Mick was doing just that, which impressed me. Now was the time. He knew this, too, and we stopped, facing each other some six feet in front of the blazing fire. "So," I said, jauntily, "looks like you're on your way. Seems like you just got here." "Right, Gil," Mick said. "Very pleasant stay, I'd like you to know. Very pleasant." "Something I wanted you to know, Mick, on your way out. Something I've been meaning to say to you, for some time." Mick's eyebrows arched. He's still holding his empty plate in one hand. I could see that this was going to have to be quick. Just time enough for the abridged version of my prepared speech. "Thought you'd like to know that you've made me a free man. "People often say the opposite to you — I know that. Complain that the Rolling Stones captured them, dragged them along, imprisoned them in a series of events they couldn't control — burned them out. I've heard it all." Mick was now listening intently. "But you did the opposite for me, I want you to know. Finally, after years, I don't have to worry any longer about bringing a bigger and better band to Long View Farm. That cross is off my shoulders, once and for all. And that's a very liberating feeling, and I wanted you to take the credit for it. There's one man, at least, whom you've made free." "Very nice, Gil," Mick said. "A very nice thing to say." I believe Mick would have said more, had he known that this little ceremony was going to occur. We smiled at each other, we shook hands, and he continued on his way to the dishwasher. He was thinking about what I had just said as he slid his plate onto the counter. I could tell.

Woody
"Lemme tell you something. I've been in the band for years now. I never ate with them all before. All at one table, I mean. I never saw 'em all together over a bottle of wine before I came here."
Ron Wood, who's sometimes called "Ronnie," and at other times "Woody," is by far the friendliest member of the Rolling Stones. He will always say hello to you, for example — even go out of his way to do so. And he will address you using your first name, and in a manner which is always upbeat, happy, confident, and selfless. Selfless. Yes, that's exactly the word I wanted to use. Woody — who's a most talented guy — doesn't make you wrestle with this fact day in and day out. He seems interested in you, instead. He hangs out with fellow guitarist Keith Richards almost all the time. Keith beats on Woody, which is funny most of the time, and a concern to Woody's friends for the remainder of it. The door to the Game Room was closed, and I figured no one was in it, since it was 11:30 in the morning, so I burst through as though I owned the place, figuring I'd check things out a bit, and see if the Advent TV was working. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. "Woody," I said. "Fancy meeting you here!" Woody was prowling around the pool table, taking an occasional shot. He'd not yet been to bed, as I could tell from the prowl, which was a touch unsteady. He relaxed his aim on the ball, which was teetering on the edge of falling into a pocket, straightened up, and smiled broadly. "Hi, Gil!" he said. Woody was genuinely happy to see me. "Howya doing?" he asked me. "O.K., Woody, I guess. You'd know the answer to that question better than me. I'm just hoping things are going well for you guys, and that we're doing a good job for you... " "You mean, you don't know already?" "Well, Ronnie, I've been staying out of sight, mainly — not jumping into the middle of things, you know?" "Gil. The band loves it here. Loves it here. Honored to be here, Gil. First time I heard talk like that from any of 'em."
"Lemme tell you something. I've been in the band for years now. I never ate with them all before. All at one table, I mean. I never saw 'em all together over a bottle of wine before I came here. Here, take this." Ron Wood passed me a large and healthy-looking cigarette. I can only assume it contained English tobacco and black hash. Then he grabbed a cube of blue chalk off the shelf, applied it to the business end of his cue stick, and continued his playful taking-of-shots at whichever ball seemed closest to him on the pool table. "Never happened under one roof before," Ronnie continued. "No problem if more than one roof is involved. Bill and Astrid, they'll disappear almost right away. Mick'll be up in his penthouse with his friends, and his telephone. Charlie not far away probably. Keith and me'll be messin' up in some dungeon downstairs letting out our energy. People in different places, usually. But under one roof? Never saw it before." BLAM! The door to the Game Room flew open, propelled by Keith Richards's right boot. It slammed against the wooden wall, and bounced back again, catching Keith on the elbow, and partially spilling the orange juice and vodka Keith was carrying in that hand. "Ronnie, that was yours. Always carry yours in my right hand." Keith gave the half-filled drink to Ronnie, slapping him on the back as he did, and causing him to spill even more of the screwdriver onto the cement floor. He spied me on the other side of the large TV couch — an infrequent visitor here in the Game Room. "Hey, Gil, whaddaya doin' here in the crypt?" "Just checking out that everything's working, Keith," I said lamely. Keith swings a leg up and over the couch. It lands right in the middle of the cushion. Keith steps up onto that leg. He's now standing in the middle of the couch on one foot, Advent video projector immediately to his right — three circles of blue, red, and green, shining cone-like through the air, and illuminating Keith Richards in three basic colors. Keith lands on the floor beside me, cat-like, and now on two feet. "Haven't seen you to talk to since the time before, when Patti and me were here." "I know. I've been concentrating on the gig. There's not been much time. I want to talk to you about that tape of yours, however. I haven't found time yet to do the edits. So how are we doing, Keith? I mean, the Farm and everything." "Yeah," Keith said. "Everything's fine, man. Just don't schedule any more 'a those meetings down here, or Ron and me'll revolt." Ronnie looked up, smiling over his cuestick.
"Meetings? You gotta be joking, Keith," I said. "You must be joking." "Wasn't much of a joke in here yesterday. A dozen of Mick's clothes designer friends in here watching videos on that damned wide-screen TV of yours. Who brought 'em down here anyway?" "I did. Keith," I confessed. "Yeah," Keith acknowledged. "Good thing you like rock 'n' roll, or Ronnie and me'd gang up on you." Ronnie had just got off a shot from the far end of the pool table which had miraculously put three balls into three different leather pockets. He smiled up at us once again. "Don't listen to him, Gil," he said.

A Typical Rehearsal
"Always a bit rough around the edges. You expect them to be." The band forges on, and starts "Hang Fire" all over again from the top.""Oh, they're playin' tonight, Gil. No doubt about it. Didn't last night, even though everybody was here and ready. Think it was Keith who just couldn't get it together. The night before it was because Mick didn't get back from New York. So that was two nights people were basically just lying around. They'll play tonight for sure." It's Jesse Henderson speaking, Long View Chief Engineer, standing up against the Dempster Dumpster in the shed, nursing a beer. He caught my attention as I walked past. It was now after supper for the "regular schedule" eaters and their guests, of whom there were many tonight. A Saturday night in mid-September. Kurt Loder from Rolling Stone magazine had arrived, hoping to get some material for his cover article on Keith Richards. Nancy Griffin, who wrote the copy for the eventual spread in Life magazine, was also there, demure, out of the way, and taking notes. Abe Brenner and Mark had just arrived. These were friends of Keith's, as best we could tell. It was rumored that Abe Brenner —who looks old enough to be Keith's father — had once gone to jail for Keith in some drug-related police action. We didn't ask too many questions about Abe Brenner and Mark, who didn't seem to sleep much — either of them — and who always seemed to arrive just minutes before the best parties began. They had somewhat sallow complexions and traveled via a different chartered airplane each time. "Yeah," Jesse repeated. "Gotta play tonight. Piano's tuned. Rhodes, too." "Space heater for Bill Wyman?" "That's up there, right beside his stool. He should have no bitches. Works great." "And overall, the place looks O.K. up there?" "Except for the butts on the floor. They won't listen to me, Gary and Chuch. They put 'em out on the floor on purpose. Their way of getting even, I suppose. Everyone else beats on them, they beat on the studio. Weird, but I can understand it." Gary and Chuch were roadies, and this was not the first time that they had worked for the Rolling Stones. They were in charge of all the gear — like the amps, and guitars, and the dozen or so packing cases full of assorted paraphernalia. They also functioned somewhat as court jesters whenever they were in presence of the band. They would do errands, roll joints, and — most important — absorb punishment otherwise meant for the band members themselves. Gary and Chuch would lose things that were somehow fated to be lost; it's either Gary or Chuch who would get his front tooth chipped on the corner of the pool table in the Game Room, not Keith Richards. A door swinging open unexpectedly would catch one of them square in the forehead, not Mick Jagger. Hangovers the morning after? Not the band members, as best we could tell. Gary and Chuch would suffer instead. They provided Karmic insulation, you would say, in addition to the usual services provided by professional road men. They rendered themselves up for poundings and punishment in service of the myth, and that's what they were really paid to do, if you ask me. And they put butts out on the inflammable wooden floor of Studio C — at one point almost prompting an ultimatum from me which would have been served up to Mick himself. Fortunately, this never had to occur. "Thought I'd hang out up there a bit tonight, Jesse," I said. "See how things are going." "Might as well, man. They won't kick you out. That's for sure." "I've been trying to set an example, Jesse. They don't need us up there, even though they say we're welcome. We're welcome, but we're not either, if you know what I mean." Jesse knew what I meant. He'd seen Long View staffers hustled quietly away by Jim Callahan or Bob Bender upon the raising of an eyebrow from Mick Jagger, and hadn't seen me up there very much at all. Oh, I'd take a tour through, once a night, but these were official visits only, not listening visits. As owner, I'd appear sometimes during the first few hours of the rehearsal, pass a remark or two in the company of lovely Patti Hansen, take an approving puff of the everpresent "joint a l'anglaise", dim the house lights a touch in evidence of Owner's Concern for Creative Environments, and then get the hell out of there. In a straight line, no detours, no dallying about, no mesmerization even .nh contemplated, much less acted out. I had to be the one to lead the charge in this whole area of professional self-image. We were doing this as paid "pros," and that left no room for any personal displays — affected or genuine. They didn't come here to see us, or hear our theories about their music, their personal lives, or whatever. Nor did they coome here to be friends with us. So enter, bow, depart; and don't get your feelings hurt if you fail to establish eye contact with all five members of the band. It was a bit earlier than usual that night, when they started playing. Patti Hansen had appeared in the kitchen about 10 PM, willow-thin and a touch wan, wearing only a robe. "Keith's up," she said to John Farrell. "Wants his breakfast." "Usual?" "Usual," Patti said, and John disappeared into the pantry for some raw hamburger and for the potatoes to make the home fries, and for the bottle of H. P. sauce. Patti would bus the completed "breakfast" over on a tray. She didn't mind; it gave her something to do "in the morning."
An hour later, Keith was up on the stage — wire-haired, crazed looking, and full of Long View protein. He stands still as Gary slings one of a dozen or so guitars around his shoulders, which are bare, and rippling with muscle tone. The guitar settles down and hangs low — as low as Keith can reach with his long arms. Keith slices across the metal strings with a guitar pick, and a massive, barn-rattling "SPRONG" issues forth from the Cerwin-Vega monitors. "SPRONG . . ." Keith goes again. That "SPRONG" was in the key of "A", I thought, which made sense, since "Hang Fire" was the first tune on the top of tonight's "list." Mick's list, I mean. He kept it over on the packing case behind the piano, and he referred to it constantly during the night. Mick was very organized, and was writing things down all the time. It's unusual to see people "write things down" in rock 'n' roll. Practically unheard of. We "feel" in rock 'n' roll, and don't need to think. Keith's ready, and the band lurches into "Hang Fire" — little Jade's favorite tune off the new album. The barn sounds great. Loud. Wooden. Almost cathedrallike. There's natural "slap" on the snare drum — echo from the far wall — and it sounds just like the "slap" engineers labor to synthesize in the studio, using delay lines. About a third of a second. House lights are off; only spots illuminate the stage. Red night lights — the sort that glow in the cockpits of bombers and supersonic jets — shine warmly over each of the Rolling Stones packing cases beneath the stage. Some of these cases are open with their drawers slid out —others half open, guitar cords snarled inside — others closed, but with a visitor sitting on top, fidgeting, looking about, and trying to stay out of the way. You'd find your reporters on top of these cases — those few who, after cooling their heels for as long as a week in Sturbridge, were finally allowed in.
Back to "Hang Fire." The harmony "doo-doops" sound terrible; and everyone in the band knows it. They stop playing, and Mick, Ronnie, and Keith try to figure out who's going to sing what. It's easier in the studio, where you can overdub voices, taking them one at a time if you want. Live, it's much more difficult. The three of them reach a consensus. Now they sound better, but not really great. "Always a bit rough around the edges — the Rolling Stones," to repeat what Keith Richards said later that night to Kurt Loder — the writer from New York City. "Always a bit rough around the edges. You expect them to be." The band forges on, and starts "Hang Fire" all over again from the top. "Here, Gil. Do you want some of this?" It's Patti Hansen who has materialized at my side, out of the shadows and the thunder, and she's extending a large cigarette to me which is quite lit, and giving off lots of smoke. She's holding her breath, about to exhale. "Don't mind if I do, Patti," I said, taking the joint from her. I see Gary the roadie only a few feet away, dusting specks of tobacco off the top of the packing case. He winks at me, and gives me the "thumbs up" signal. He had created this cigarette only moments ago, and he was proud of it. We'd get to smoke it for a minute or two — to "warm it up," as it were. Then, upon a signal from the stage, Gary would snatch it away, run with it up the stairs, and feed it to Keith, on whose lower lip the thing would dangle, through several re-lightings, until it was all gone except for the cardboard mouthpiece. This cigarette was not ours forever. So I took another toke. "You ready to give all this up for the movies, Patti?" I asked. Patti was going to be in a movie soon, and there was some question as to how much time she could be on the road, with the band. "I don't think about it," Patti said. "It is great, though. I know what you mean. I've never seen them play this way before. Never. They actually seem to be enjoying it." "Here," I said. "Do some more of this." Suddenly, Jane Rose appears out of the darkness with a screech. "Hi, every-body. Well, don't the two of you look comfortable there. I was wondering where you ran off to, Patti. Here, Gil. Come here, please. I want you to meet someone." I get to my feet, and am given to meet Lisa Robinson — noted rock 'n' roll gossip columnist. I say hi to Lisa, and we chat for a second as best we can with "Hang Fire" playing live, just twenty feet in front of us. Behind her, moving quietly along the wall, are two Japanese photographers. A satellite tracking lens has been adapted to fit a standard Nikon, and brought all the way from Tokyo by these gentlemen. It's set up behind us, shooting over our heads toward stage center. A third, small Japanese gentleman is fussing with it, tinkering, and staring into the viewfinder. Pictures of Mick Jagger for an All Nippon Rock Extra. Printed on glossy paper and sold in millions of copies in Japan. Kurt Loder from Rolling Stone magazine is down by the fireplace, banging loudly in time to the music on our antique oak table. Nancy Griffin from Life is sitting on a packing case, legs crossed at the ankles, wondering how to package what she's seeing for Middle America. A new gaggle of visitors appears in the doorway of Studio B. They nod respectfully toward the stage, and disseminate themselves in ones and twos along the walls — timid, silent, and awed by the dimensions of the room, the loudness of the sound and the spectacle before their eyes — the Rolling Stones, live.
Suddenly the lights come on, the music stops abruptly, and at least two dozen reporters, photographers, fashion designers, free-lance writers and other assorted Stones watchers freeze in their tracks — checking nervously over their shoulders in the direction of the stage. As well they should. Mick is not pleased; that much is clear. His eyes run over the faces in attendance — the writers, the reporters, the gentlemen from Japan — and his scowl deepens. He puts down his wireless microphone, and walks in careful measured steps down the beamed staircase, around the oversized packing case at the foot of the stairs, through the door to Studio B, and out into the night. It's break time.

Say it all together (RS - 1997)

2004-10-10T15:55:00.000+02:00

Ah les interviews de Rolling Stone ! On se croirait presque revenu aux temps où la barrière infranchissable avec eux n'existait pas. Enfin, Jagger est sur ses gardes, faut pas pousser.

Du Ron, du Charlie, du Jag, et du Keith, séparément mais tous.

___________

Notes from the Babylon Bar

On the road with the Rolling Stones

Backstage, on the second night of the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon tour, most of the world that will cosset and comfort them over the next year is up and running -- a world that is serviced by at least six chefs, including a dedicated dessert chef, and that allows two full-time tour employees to have their job listed in the tour program as Backstage Ambience. In the area known as Bar Babylon, I float on the edge of a conversation with some non-performing Rolling Stones insiders. The hot topics of conversation: the best face creams, the rise of Krispy Kreme donuts. Over on the other side of the room, Keith Richards greets the visiting blues wives (Muddy Waters', Willie Dixon's). Keith's father, Bert, wanders by, smoking a pipe, talking about the twenty lengths he swims each day. Ronnie Wood has some glitter on his face, which he excuses as (a) "posh cocaine" and (b) a side product of all the women he has to greet. "Where's wardrobe?" he asks. "And why am I asking now? We've already done one show...."

Keith Richards is scooping ice into a glass with his right hand when we are introduced. My first moment with him. Warm pirate grin; ice-cold handshake.
These shows start with a bendy, overexcited, unanchored "Satisfaction." Each Rolling Stone easily slips back into role. On Mick Jagger's face, there's the determination and the scowling effort and, when it's going well, that swagger.
He shimmies and contorts himself in a flurry of hyperactivity, always as though he is trying to prove something. Charlie Watts has that slightly bemused, patient look, his head turned slightly to one side, half-smiling: It's silly, really, isn't it? Ron Wood assumes his customary jack-the-lad demeanor. Whenever a camera for the overhead screen comes close, he displays his casual repertoire of daftness: the stuck-out tongue, the stupid face. As for Keith Richards . . . anyone who is cynical about the Rolling Stones' motives in touring the world once more -- as plenty, quite reasonably, are -- would struggle to explain Richards' exploding grin, at once childlike and old-man wise, stuffed with delight and reverie.
This is the Bridges to Babylon tour. Except . . . well, I'll let Mick Jagger explain it. "We haven't got a fucking bridge yet," he pouts. It won't arrive until ten days into the tour. "I ordered it," he laughs. He says it's like decorating your flat: Everything's supposed to be ready for a party on Friday, but when Friday comes, there are no curtains.
"And," he repeats, "there's no fucking bridge."

What's the worst part of getting old?
Ronnie Wood: When your ankles start to change color [lifts up an ankle and shows off discolored blotches]. It's not serious. It's probably just broken veins. I still feel like I'm twenty-three. My kids are, like, "You're so old." That's the hardest thing about old, when the kids kind of rub it in.
Mick Jagger: I suppose you do think about the time that's allotted to you more than when you were younger. The mortality thing obviously has a stronger pull for you. It's an imminent truth; it's not necessarily a bad thing. You realize -- much earlier than my age now -- that you won't be able to play for England's football team, just to take a really crass example. So you can't have that life again. Unless you believe in reincarnation or whatever. Reincarnation? That's a whole other question. I find people who talk about that sort of thing in interviews idiotic. And I don't want to go down with them.
Charlie Watts: It's only if my wife mentions growing old, because I think it affects women a lot more than men, this stuff. It'd be nice to be rich and grow old -- I'd hate to be shuffling 'round Brixton Market in a pair of slippers. Then again, I'll probably be shuffling 'round the garden.
Keith Richards: I haven't found it yet. I still zoom around and do what I do. I'd hate to have to go 'round thinking about [derisively] health and shit like that. It's never occurred to me. This is what I am, this is what I've got, and I do what I do. It's such a sturdy frame, this; I even abused it to see how far it could go, but that was a long time ago. Hey, I've got the measure of this thing. [Lights a cigarette] There's only one really fatal disease, I've concluded. It's called hypochondria. And it is deadly.

Some Myths Addressed, Some Propagated #1
The Rolling Stones history has been repeated and regurgitated and mulched over and over. I read all the books: the smart ones, the sturdy ones, the dumb ones. It is, I decide, only the occasional pithy detail that demands revisiting.
Me: You are, I believe, one of the few rock stars who actually has pushed a TV out a window.
Keith Richards: Yeah. In the old days, motel TVs were bolted to the floor, so that was the challenge. Room service had pissed us off by refusing to serve us.
Me: They weren't just late?
Richards: No. We didn't do it for little things. That was 1969, and as I say, it was a very strange year.
Me: How far down did it fall?
Richards: About it stories.
Me: Was it exciting?
Richards: Well, by then it had become a project. You do things like that on the road when you've been up four or five days.
Me: Do you still skip nights?
Richards: I'll do two days sometimes.
Me: On this tour already?
Richards: Yeah. A couple of times.
Me: But no three-dayers?
Richards: Not unless I have to. Nine was as far as I could go. And loads of four and fives, especially with Ronnie in the '70s. But after three days, another thing clicks in. It's a fascinating world. I was so interested in what I was doing, whether it was music, songs, tapes, listening, talking, that sleep seemed superfluous.
Me: Presumably you can't do the long multiples without the right drugs.
Richards: [Nods] Oh, no, the chemistry comes into play here. Incredibly important, of course. It was a laboratory. As far as I was concerned, the whole thing was a scientific expedition.

Brief scenes from an interview with Mick Jagger
There are two chairs and a sofa. Mick Jagger takes the sofa. I take a chair. That leaves one chair spare. I move to put my tape recorder on it. "I was going to put my feet up on it," says Mick Jagger. "But it's all right. We can do both." He looks around. It is the middle of the afternoon. "So have we got any drinks? Water, or martinis, or whatever we're drinking?" We are, as I am sure he is aware, drinking Evian. He squints toward the window. "Bit bright, isn't it?" he says.
It's difficult interviewing Mick Jagger. He is not a man who enjoys being pinned down. "Why should you be?" he reasons. "One's pinned down enough in life. You're so pinned down...." There is a way he talks that seems to be a perpetual smirk, as though he wants you to know that the very act of sitting here, answering your questions, is an absurd indulgence. Of the tour he says, "It is a great thrill It's my vocation. It's what I do. If I can do it well, I enjoy it. And if I can't do it well, I'll make sure I do it better." When he says things like this, he seems so careful in what he says that he sounds insincere. In the end, I will wonder whether the strangest thing about Mick Jagger might be that beneath this veneer of insincerity, what he is actually hiding is sincerity itself.
The pre-tour Jagger media frisson has been provoked by Paul McCartney. McCartney says, in his new as-told-to memoir, that he turned Mick Jagger onto drugs. Jagger shakes his head, amused. He has a theory. "It's all to do with John Lennon being a saint and being the edgy one. Paul definitely had his edgy moments.... People now think he's this old wanker, that he never did anything and John did everything." He certainly seems paranoid.
"That's what I think, anyway. And he wants to say stuff that indicates that he was on the edge of things."
Do you mind being brought into it?
"I don't mind at all. Whatever he wants to say. Even though it isn't true. You know -- what does it matter? It's a lot of mythology, isn't it?" Jagger says that he first smoked outside England. "What does it matter? It's a load of old trollop, all of this stuff. How would he even know, unless I said, `Wow! I've never tried it before!' or `I'm so grateful!'? And how would he ever remember?"
Mick Jagger was once, in the early '80s, contracted to write a book. The story went around that when he tried, he simply couldn't remember. In fact, a version of the book was written by a ghostwriter whom Jagger employed. It's locked away in some vault. "It was just boring, trying to remember everything," he says. "It wasn't I couldn't remember everything, it was just . . . 'Euchhhh.'"

Some Myths Addressed, Some Propagated 2
Me: Did you read Marianne Faithfull's book?
Jagger: I couldn't read the whole thing. You only read what's serialized.
Me: Do you mind that she said Keith was a better lover than you?
Jagger: She had to say something. Something to sell it.
Me: So she didn't mean it?
Jagger: I've no idea if she means it. She said to my mother the other week that I was wonderful in bed and embarrassed my whole family.
Me: What on earth was the social situation that allowed this conversation?
Jagger: Do you really want to know? It was a cricket match at Paul Getty's house, in the tea interval. She said it to my mother and my father.
Me: But how does that just come up in conversation?
Jagger: Yes, exactly. She just came out with it, after a few Pimms or something.
I raise the subject with Keith Richards.
Richards: [Grins] She should know.
Me: Did it have the ring of truth?
Richards: Well, I wouldn't know. I've never made love to him.
What do your children nag you about?
Mick Jagger: [Gently indignant] They don't nag me! They're not allowed. [Puts on a daft Germanic voice] You vill not nag me!
Ronnie Wood: There are a few things. 'Oh, are you still in bed, Dad?' And then they jump on you. The worst thing is when they don't jump on you.
Keith Richards: That they don't see me enough. Which is true. But it's the nature of my job. They'll nag me, 'Ok you haven't sent me a fax,' because that's the way we communicate. Drawings, mostly, and little letters. I might be, `Guess who I'm with?' and draw a nose, and they'll know it's Ronnie.
Charlie Watts: My daughter? Playing jazz, I suppose. The same goes for my wife. I think the secret of a successful marriage is separate bathrooms.

Scenes From an interview with Charlie Watts
I am invited to Watts' hotel room, which is meticulously tidy. He reluctantly turns down his jazz, in deference to my tape recorder, but doesn't seem pleased with the compromise. His wife has just flown off to a horse show in Germany; he seems a little melancholy, but he oozes gentle dignity. When I ask a question that seems foolish, he furrows his brow, like a kind uncle trying to be patient with the wayward next generation, and simply says "Good Lord . . . " before gamely attempting a reply. "Mick's good at interviews, you know, and you get only so much, and he doesn't want you to have any more," he says. "Whereas I'll prattle on forever. But it's not of much importance . . . ."
He has mixed feelings about being on tour. "It's still a huge pressure," he says. "All I really like to do is play the drums with this band. The rest of it I find very difficult to take. The world of this is a load of crap. You get all these bloody people, so incredibly sycophantic. Us sitting here doing this is a bit. . " He looks along the sofa at me with friendly distaste. "Well," he says, definitely. "It is."
So we talk about the twenty-nine dogs Watts lives with on his stud farm in the English countryside. The numbers are growing because his wife is on a mission to save ex-racing greyhounds. "I used to have a pig, actually," he says. "Billy Pig." Billy Pig lived in the house until he got too big. Watts tells me of his sports memorabilia; of his earlier cowboy obsession; of the 1937 Lagonda Rapide that sits in the garage because he has never learned to drive; of his vintage guns. He is a collector and, one might deduce, a compulsive.
One of the most fascinating things about Charlie Watts is how, after sitting out some of the most extreme drug abuse of the late 20th century, he quietly and privately became a heroin addict himself for a period in the mid-'8os. I don't exactly bring it up, but he misunderstands a question I ask about Mick and Keith's fractured relationship during that decade. He nods. "I was very fucked up," he says. "I was warring with myself at that time."
We talk about the band. "I'm closer to Mick than I've ever been," he says. "I think Jerry's done that. The children and that. He's grown up a lot."
Would you accuse Keith of having grown up?
"No. He's a bohemian. They don't work by the book. He'll either miss very badly, whatever it is, or he's 100 percent and two weeks ahead of you. I've seen Keith fall asleep at business meetings about millions of dollars for him -- because of heroin, just nod out, and then wake up and answer a question."
And Ronnie?
"I don't really know him as well like that. He's a very likable person. He's not grown-up. He doesn't need to be. He's not at all sensible, Ronnie. It's not his role. He's a maniac."
For decades, Charlie Watts has followed an on-tour ritual. In each hotel room in which he stays, he sketches the bed. (Sometimes other things, too: a lamp, hotel signs, his meals.) It began when he was bored, which was often, and now he has to do it. He can't leave a room without doing it. "It's a panic," he says. "I always try to do it when I get there." It's a diary, of sorts. "All the rooms look the same, really," he says.

Some Myths Addressed, Some Propagated # 3
Me: Did you really use to own a Hovercraft?
Keith Richards: Yes. But it was the size of this table. I bought it for my son to play with. It went 'round the lawn for about two weeks. We hovered in there for a while. Interesting sensation. And then it went in the moat. It never came out the same.
(Perhaps that is the perfect metaphor for true, untrammeled, insulated '70s rock stardom in all its pointlessness and gloriousness. The Hovercraft went in the moat, and it never came out the same. But what the hell. It was your Hovercraft. And your moat.)
What Mick and Keith Did On Their Holidays
Keith Richards is discussing his lead singer's acting career. "As far as I'm concerned, I like to keep Mick busy doing rock & roll to stop him doing those things," he says. "Mick, to me, is a purely physical and audio person. I don't really think acting is his forte and metier. But at the same time, if you've got to do it, have another bash, boy."
You sound like someone who's seen "Freejack."
"No," he says. "Just the ads."
Nonetheless, Jagger has a new film awaiting release. Richards says he had no idea it even existed. The film, Bent, is about gay prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp. Jagger appears for the first twenty or so minutes as a faded drag queen, both in and out of drag, and he is quite splendid in it.
"Did you like Bent," Jagger asks me carefully, "or did you get bored?"
I reassure him. He says that he was a little wary about slipping into another frock. He's since been offered another drag part: "A gay man that's mad about Latins. I haven't read it yet."
Why do people come to you for that?
"I don't know. Because it's a laugh and they know that I'll . . . do things."
You have a great expression in Bent, as though you have done every last debauched thing but you simply don't care. I was vaguely wondering where you got that look from.
He smirks. "It's acting, darling."
Keith Richards has another new album, Wingless Angels, which he co-produced, played on and shepherded into existence. He has been hanging around and playing with a group of Rastafarians in Jamaica for twenty-five years. This music -- mostly drum rhythms and voices performing slow, soaring versions of traditional songs -- isn't, he says, just nice; it is "good for you. These people understand the necessity for trance in one's life. The beat they play is designed to be just slightly under heart-rate."
This is one of the mistakes people make with Keith Richards: They see him punching out the chords to a rough rock song, and they imagine that's where the whole of his heart is. But, more and more, Keith Richards' strength is his sentimentality. The closing two songs on Bridges to Babylon "Thief in the Night" and "How Can I Stop" -- are, even with Richards' strange voice curled around them, two of the most affecting. "See, chicks see the other side of me, which guys don't," he says. "I have a good empathy with women. I mean, nobody has ever divorced me." Quite who that is directed at, I think we should leave to the parties concerned.
When did you last cry?
Charlie Watts: When I last left home, because I hate leaving home. And I was a bit sad today because our remaining cat died. Jezebel. A bit sad, really. Well, not a bit sad. Very sad.
Mick Jagger: This morning, when my toast was burned. When I read your Madonna interview. She shouldn't have let you in the flat, I reckon.
Keith Richards: I cry quite often. I look at a picture of my grandfather sometimes, listening to music that he loved. And I cry for dead Jackie, my dead Rastaman who is on that record we just brought out.
Ronniee Wood: Watching Princess Di's funeral. All those poor people. So sad. It silenced everything, didn't it? Two days before, I was on the plane with Dodi. My wife used to go out with him. He proposed to her and everything. In fact, she dumped Dodi for me. I think that was a good move on her part.
A Conversation About David Duchovny and Premature Ejaculation
Me: Did you read what David Duchovny said about you recently?
Mick Jagger: David Duchovny?
Me: Do you know who he is?
Mick Jagger: I do indeed. X-Files. Actor. What did he say?
Me: He was talking about how much he liked you when he was young, and he said you "offered the promise of premature ejaculation."
Mick Jagger: [Slightly amused] What does that mean?
Me: I thought you could help me here.
Mick Jagger: The promise? In a sort of gay-sex way, I suppose. I assume. What else could you assume? [Pause] I met him.
Me: And he didn't mention this?
Mick Jagger: [Shakes his head] He didn't talk about premature ejaculation. It was more of a business meeting. About an action thriller called, at the moment, "All the King's Horses."
Me: And not a word about premature ejaculation?
Mick Jagger: No, nothing [laughts] . . . There were other people there.
Me: Do you think it's a compliment?
Mick Jagger: Yeah. Anything that lures you with a promise of something like that has got to be a compliment.
Me: Yes, but premature ejaculation can be a bad thing . . . Mick Jagger: No, I assume it was when he was younger . . . [Stops short, reconsidering] Well, maybe it isn't such a good thing. If I go to the second meeting, we'll bring it up.

Scenes From An Interview With Ronnie Wood
Ronnie Strides In, Bearing Cans
A Guinness for him, a Guinness for me. We are in Philadelphia, two weeks into the tour. I accept enthusiastically, and from then on, whenever I am in the same room as Ronnie, he will get me a Guinness. Perhaps this is a common form of Ron Wood bonding. Later he will recite the last fax he got from Bob Dylan: "Hey, Woody. How are you doing? I'm sending you this from East Asia. You can't get good Guinness down here. Send a truck. Love, Bob." Bob Dylan visited him in Ireland last July. They recorded lots of Dylan's songs and a couple for Wood's next solo album, After School, which he plans to release first as an instrumental because "that way people can't criticize my voice."
Wood is another on-tour sketcher: "I do views from hotel windows when I'm not allowed to go out walking," he says. "There's a lot of old, fat people outside that make it hard for you, and they've usually got guitars in their hands."
Until fairly recently, Wood sometimes had to support himself by selling his portraits. He was made a full member of the band only in this decade.
"I didn't mind doing, like, a seventeen-year apprenticeship," he says with a broad, but somewhat wistful, smile.
Of course you bloody did.
"No. I mean, I wasn't treated like a skivvy," he says. "I was always respected. But it's a hard nut to crack, the Stones' financial side. Everything comes to he who waits." He has other reasons not to be bitter: "Luckily, the big money only came when I got cut in."
A final, odd detail. Ron Wood does not know the lyrics of many of the Rolling Stones' most famous songs: "Brown Sugar" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash," for instance.
"I like to keep them preserved as I've always heard them," he says. Recently he's been sneaking a glance at the teleprompter, particularly during rehearsals, if he's got his glasses on. It's a fresh new world of discovery. "I was reading 'Bitch,' " he says, "and I was cracking up at some of the words."

Scenes From An Interview With Keith Richards Since Our First Chilled Handshake
Keith Richards has been involved in a pop tiff. In an interview for Entertainment Weekly, he was asked about the death of Princess Diana and shared a few thoughts about her funeral singer, Elton John. John's main talent, he said, is writing "songs for dead blondes."
"He's so pathetic, poor thing," Elton John retorted. "It's like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young."
The second part of the accusation is strange -- if a Rolling Stone is guilty of trying to look young, it's not Keith Richards -- but it's the phrase "monkey with arthritis" that caught the public imagination.
Richards ushers me into his Philadelphia hotel room and fixes himself another vodka and cranberry. The room is as you would imagine seeing Keith Richards' Room in a rather heavy-handed biopic. Incense is burning. Scarves are draped over the lamps. There is a photo of '60s soul singer Garnet Mimms across the room, a small framed photograph of Richards' grandfather Gus on the desk. We sit at a table littered with books: The Rastafarian, Erotica Universalis, Antonio Vivaldi. Some Portuguese guitar music booms from a hefty music system.
Richards talks in a deceptively lazy drawl, and -- just as he brazenly ignores the shifting dictates of fashion and still wears thin, colorful, silken shirts open halfway down his chest -- somewhere in his life he found the manner of speech that suited him and stuck with it. Women are "chicks" (except when they are wives, in which case they become "the old lady"); sentences frequently have a ". . . man" appended to their end; and anyone -- including me can be referred to as "baby" if it will help the sentence to roll right.
Keith Richards' room always has a name, and on this tour it is known as the Baboon Cage. The simian reference is a coincidence. "The baboon cage was my room way before Elton got into this thing," Richards says before I can ask. The Elton John feud is not for discussion. "You can forget about that," he pre-empts, "except I'll say this: I guess the truth hurt."
What do you mean?
In his eyes I see the beginning of a glare. "I don't have to explain any more. If you don't get it . . ." He shrugs. "The only reason Elton spoke out like that is in response to something that I said, and I guess the truth must have hurt. I was talking about a funeral, and the rest of it doesn't bother me. It's all on him. He's got to live with it, not me."
I begin another question, but I am clearly pushing my luck. "That's it," says Richards firmly. The glare deepens, and I understand why people used to be scared of Keith Richards. "That's that subject gone."
Almost. He will later note that he is enjoying singing "All About You" onstage -- "There's some lines in there I'm really relishing right now: `Hanging around with dogs like you'; it's nice to sing lines like, 'You're the first to get laid but always the last to get paid'" -- and that on the night the news broke, he dedicated the song to Elton John. And there is one further, small irony worth observing. Elton John triggered these events by singing for royalty in Westminster Abbey. But it is Keith Richards who, more than forty years ago, sang Handel's Messiah for the Queen of England in the very same building, as part of one of the country's finest school choirs. "Some of my most prestigious gigs," he smiles, "were when I was still at school" Those experiences taught him an early lesson about stardom's ugly side. "The real thing I learned was that when your voice breaks -- shrrrmmttt! -- you're out of here. Then you go back to the real world, where you haven't done chemistry for a year because you were let off for the choir."
I think you caught up on chemistry. "Maybe," he grins. "It took me a while. I have a very good laboratory."
There are others who knock him. In the world of David Letterman, Richards has replaced Bob Dole as the totem of everything impossibly aged. "I can only put it down to jealousy," Richards says. "They can't understand why I can do what I do 'at my age.' What is it with these guys? Because they can't do it? Just because chicks throw their panties at me and I'm fifty-four? So? So I'm sorry, you little boys who can't get that action. Well, stuff you . . .,p> What would you say if you met him?
"If I walked into his studio, I'd say, 'As usual, it's too cold.' It's terrible to play in. It gives a horrible ambience to the whole show. Just because he doesn't want to sweat, you know. Well, I like to sweat, and I sweat every night."
Last night in Charlotte, N.C., he tells me with great excitement, his fingers remembered a little flourish in "Jumpin' Jack Flash" that he swears he hasn't played since he made the record. "Just a curly little lick," he says. "The songs keep on teaching you."
The drinks and questions roll on. I ask him about his dreams, and he says: "The only recurring dreams I can remember are all on cold turkey, and it was always that the dope was hidden behind the wallpaper. And in the morning, you'd wake up and see fingernail marks where you'd actually tried to do something about it."
I ask him what Mick Jagger would never do, and Richards says: "You know, there's nothing I can think of. He'd say he'd never take drugs again. I mean, it depends who he's talking to."
I ask him which cliches about himself have become most tiresome. "Sometimes," he says, "you feel a certain pressure of being wished to death. That kind of can get to you. It just stinks a bit. Shit, they've been wishing me dead since the early '70s, man."
The Baboon Cage is open most nights for anyone on the tour who wishes to hang out. There is a small Baboon Cage suggestion box to which visitors are invited to contribute anonymously. It gets opened once a week. "I've had a few 'Fuck off, you cunt's,'" Richards laughs, "but you expect them. Last week there was 'The wicked get wickeder' and 'You should get some sleep tonight.'"
As a rule, Richards does not get some sleep on any night. He normally crashes out at about 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. in the morning, and he talks about having breakfast or going to the shops as activities you stay up to do. His is a body with its own rules. "The permanent night shift," as he calls it. The night energizes him, he says, but there's nothing like drawing back the curtains and seeing 10-in-the-morning, happy-new-day sunshine to make him feel tired and drive him into bed. He'll generally rise around 3 p.m. in the afternoon and start to get going around 5 p.m.
In this and many other ways, convention is something that Keith Richards has been careful not to respect. But he does not wander aimlessly -- he has thought these things out. "Why do you think there's this three square meals a day?" he asks. "This is about factories. You eat, you go to work, you get a break for lunch; when you're finished you get your dinner. But people should never eat like that. They should have little bits every two hours." And, consequently, that is what Keith Richards does.
Two days later, one of the Rolling Stones gets ill, and they have to cancel an MTV concert. It is Mick Jagger.
That night, backstage in Philadelphia, I am invited into the tuning room. Wood gets me a Guinness. "This is the sanctuary," Richards explains. "This is the string section's room." For a couple of hours before the show, the two guitarists gravitate between here, where they noodle about together on guitars, and the bar, where they play each other at snooker.
Wood stands up. "I've got a bee up my nose," he complains. "It could be anything up to the size of a large bat," mutters Richards. "The sun's not down," he adds quietly.
Wood nods. "Can't wake up till the sun goes down."
Richards breaks into a spirited boogie; Ronnie sits back down and joins in. Richards breaks off and holds up his guitar. "Some guitars are too good for the stage. This is a '54." He points to Ronnie's. "That's a '47." It's a nice flourish, within all the ritual excess of such tours: these guitars traveling from city to city, tuning room to tuning room, never to be seen in public, forever a private pleasure.
An emissary tells Richards and Wood that they will be required in ten minutes for the meet 'n' greet with people of local importance -- in particular the representatives of their sponsor, Sprint.
"Meet 'n' greet," grumbles Richards. "That shit. Sprint in and out. Can we do it by phone?" He plays on. "We had enormous gunfights about which song to play," he says. "Everything was cool. Once the smoke cleared."
Mick Jagger joins us. This is a different Jagger from the one I met in a hotel room or the one I see onstage. Those have a certain swagger and a king-of-the-castle-and-I-don't-care insouciance about them. But this man looks like the other Jagger you see in those early-'60s clips -- already cocky, no doubt, but also delicate, slightly effete and curiously deferential, his arms always likely to fold over in front of his body when they have nothing else to do.
Wood has something to ask Jagger. Tonight is Blues Traveler's final night opening for the band, and maybe this can be the night when John Popper satisfies a small dream. "The bloke from Blues Traveler," Wood says, "offered his services as an extra harp player...." "Fuck off," says Jagger. "I thought you'd say that," says Richards. "The dueling harps -- I don't see it."
"He's a pretty good harp player though," Jagger reflects. "Too good. He plays an awful lot of notes."
Which Book Have You Read Twice?
Ronnie Wood: Silence of the Lambs. I like evil books.
Mick Jagger: Travels With My Aunt, by Graham Greene, comes to mind instantly. I've read quite a lot of Graham Greene twice. He's a very good prose stylist.
Charlie Watts: I've just been through all the Wodehouse books: Jeeves and Wooster. I think he's very funny.
Keith Richards: Loads of them. I never catch it all the first time. There's an excellent book I've quite often read called Hashish, by a couple of French guys. Very interesting. It's an education in chemistry and folklore. I've done the Bible and the Koran a few times. Sometimes just for the prose, sometimes for information. The Kamasutra I've been through a few times, come to think of it. [Laughs] I've done the chandelier, and the revolving table with the melon. I've done it all, mate.
A History of Intraband Fisticuffs in the Rolling Stones
Sometimes they have come to blows. Keith Richards enjoys telling of the Amsterdam Watts vs. Jagger affair in the '80s, when a drunk Jagger phoned up Watts' room at 5 a.m. in the morning and referred to him as "my drummer." Legend has it that Watts got dressed in his best clothes, went to find Jagger and nearly punched him out a window.
"It never actually happened like that," says Jagger. "He pushed me, but I don't think he actually punched me. There's quite a lot of difference, in my book."
Watts acknowledges the incident -- "I was drunk. I was really pissed off" -- but looks mortified at its mention. "It's not something I'm proud of," he says.
Then there was the great Richards vs. Wood set-to sometime around the end of the '70s or the beginning of the '80s. "There was too much stuff going on in his room," Richards recalls. "He had some dodgy people in there."
"He came at me with a broken bottle," remembers Ronnie. "He was going for the face. So I said, 'Keith, I may be stupid, but I'm not a cunt.'" Ronnie fought back: "He'd have gone out the window if someone didn't catch him."
Do you think he would have used the bottle?
Ronnie nods. "Yeah."
And, as it happens, there has been a third, more recent, altercation. Holed up in Toronto before the tour started, the band had decided, unusually, to rehearse on a Saturday. Ronnie had pointed out that he would want to stop to see the boxing: Oscar De La Hoya vs. Hector Camacho. He had a bet on it. "Everyone watched it as well," says Ronnie, "but I got the blame for dragging everyone away from the rehearsal. But, unknown to me, Keith was pacing during the whole fight, waiting for everyone."
After the fight, Ronnie went upstairs to the rehearsal room. "I was totally surprised. I walked back in and . . . hrrggghhhhh-eurgghhhhhhh!" explains Wood. Richards leapt on Wood, his hands around Wood's throat. "Everyone was in shock," says Wood. "But it's something I have to be aware of with Keith, you know. I could say, `OK, I can't live with this shit,' but he's my mate. He's my pal."
Were the others there?
"Yeah," he says. "Just. . . shocked." Keith doesn't look too happy when I bring this up. As it turns out, there is another side to this story. "I had to go to a funeral the next day, and I made a mistake," he says quietly. "I was pissed off at being there, and I was left alone. When Ronnie came back . . . I'd asked him to stay with me, because I should have been with my old lady, whose sister had died, and I felt very bad about that. The next day I had to fly to New York and carry a coffin, so I wasn't really compos mentis. But in a band, anyone got a problem, it's best to flash it out straightaway . . . "

Some Myths Addressed, Some Propagated #5
Me: Have you ever performed with anything stuffed down your trousers?
Jagger: Oh, no. Do people actually do that?
"How you doing, Philly?" Richards beams. "Smells the same."
Often, watching the Rolling Stones in Chicago, I found myself forcing my enthusiasm: Too much of the show was theoretically exciting, but I simply didn't feel it. Two weeks later, in Philadelphia, it's a quantum leap. They play better songs ("Gimme Shelter," for instance, but none of their recent songs with "rock" in the title). The dumb pom cartoons that illustrated "Bitch" and "Miss You" are gone. And they have a bridge, which rises out of the center of the stage and -- extending as it arcs above the audience -- curves all the way, unsupported, to a small stage in the arena floor, which itself rises to greet it. It's hokey and dumb -- it's just a bridge -- but it's worth a little gasp.
The music is rougher and less clipped. Tonight, it is as though Mick Jagger is less concerned with showing off his impressive physicality; it's as though . . . well, it's as though he has joined the band. And it is as if they are all trying less and succeeding more. Afterward, Jagger will complain that his throat is bad and things will start being canceled, so possibly some of this is caused by illness and necessity. Nevertheless, I would like to suggest that when the Rolling Stones feel they have something to prove, they're not bad, but it is when they feel they have nothing to prove that they're at their finest.
The Hair Of Keith Richards: A Short Cosmetic Note
Keith Richards' hair is now, Suddenly, authentically gray-white. He can explain. "The last tour, I was talked into 'keeping it constant,' so they kept putting this crap in," he says. "I got sick of that stuff. This is the way it's going to stay. I just couldn't be bothered to fake it."
That individual 17-length, 12-direction, pointy, icicle-and-feather style is sculpted by Richards himself. He says that he last allowed a professional hairdresser to cut his locks when he was fourteen. After that, he realized that he could handle it himself and keep the haircut money for cigarettes. "Nobody's ever touched it since," he says. "I mean, a few chicks have had a snip here and there when I'm asleep. The Samson bit. Those damned Delilahs! Otherwise, no. I never say I'm going to cut my hair. I just walk into the bathroom and there's a pair of scissors and I say, 'That bit's got to go.'" He doesn't look in the mirror. His hair, like its owner below, does what it will. And why would he want somebody else's idea on top of his head?
One other thing that steels his hair-autonomy resolve: "I don't like people around me with sharp objects. That's my job . . ."
It was at this stage of our meeting that Keith Richards produced a sheathed bayonet from the chair next to him and placed it on the table between us. Its blade was about five or six inches long. When quizzed, he replied that it travels with him. "For the unexpected," he said. "One has to be prepared." That devil smile. "You want another beer?"

CHRIS HEATH (RS 775 - December 11, 1997)

Interview Stanley Booth

2004-10-10T15:32:00.000+02:00

The True Adventures of Stanley Booth
Steven Ward

Stanley Booth is one hell of a writer. The evidence is clear once you pick up his book on the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones. Many writers and Stones fans feel like Booth's tale is not only the definitive book on the Stones, but one of the definitive rock books ever published.
Why? Like I said before, Booth is one of hell of a writer. Also, because a younger Booth actually was there. He went to parties, sat in on press interviews, ate dinner with, did drugs and drank with, and toured with the band during one of their most creative periods -- after Brian Jones died but before Exile on Main Street took shape. Booth was at Altamont during the filming of Gimme Shelter and the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter. He also witnessed the awe-inspiring, passionate performance the Stones gave after Hunter passed away -- maybe the only way the band could deal with the evil and destruction that was growing out of the community that was the free concert's audience that day in 1969.
But Booth is much more than a guy who followed the Stones around in the late '60s. He's an intellectual Southerner that learned to read before he was three and wrote his first novel at nine. A voracious reader who is as comfortable with Twain and Faulkner as he is with Eastern philosophy scribes, Booth is a man consumed -- passionate about good writing, and not just music writing. Like the Waycross, Georgia native said in the interview below, he does not have much use for people who write "about" music. He writes stories about people. His history of the musicians who represent the South, Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South is about to be re-released in October by Da Capo Press. Run out and buy it. Booth is currently working on a biography about his buddy and fellow Waycross native, Gram Parsons.
Below are some of Booth's thoughts on rock journalism, The Rolling Stones, the best books and authors on the planet and the answer to a question many people like to pose to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards today: "Can you ever be too old to rock and roll?"

Steven: The first thing that pops into my mind is, do you still keep in touch with any of the Stones and what do you think of the last few albums and tours?

Stanley: Yes, I still keep in touch with the Stones, though we do go for long periods without communicating. This happens when friends grow older and have kids and grandkids. The Stones still do more or less what they used to, but history has changed the context in which it happens. The Stones' actions will probably never again carry the weight they bore in 1969. I don't enjoy the big stadium shows, and I find the precision of the later tours off-putting. Keith, Charlie, Ronnie, Bobby Keys, are still great. But I prefer the earlier Stones records, up through Tattoo You, I guess. On that album Sonny Rollins plays more and better than any Rolling Stone ever played on anything.
Steven: I know you grew up in Georgia. Give me some bio info connected to that experience. How old are you, where exactly did you grow up, etc.?

Stanley: I lived in Georgia from 1942 till the end of the fifties, seventeen years. I was born in Waycross, near the Okefinokee Swamp, a heavily Protestant area with many blacks and many white racists. In fact practically all the whites were racist to some extent. Racism was in the air one breathed. Physically it was a great world for a boy -- pine trees, alligators, horses. I lived for a time in a turpentine camp in the pine woods near Waycross and even when I didn't live there, stayed there a lot with my grandparents. I thought it was Heaven until one of the black woods hands tried to stab my grandfather. I was five years old then and it opened my eyes to the fact that the world wasn't perfect.
Steven: When did you discover you had a love of music and writing?

Stanley: I learned to read at a very early age, before I was three. I always loved books and wrote in them before I could read them.
Steven: Do you remember the age you were when you decided to become a writer and the books and authors that might have been behind that decision?

Stanley: I wrote a novel when I was nine. I loved Perry Mason (whom I knew not from TV but from a book of my Aunt Blanche's called The Case of the Negligent Nymph) and wrote a novel, or what I thought was a novel, in a blue composition book. When I was fifteen I made a conscious, serious decision to try to become a writer. I thought I might fail but at least I could die trying. That's what I'm still doing.
Steven: First you decided you were going to write a book about the Stones.

Stanley: Well, not exactly. Many things happened before I decided I was going to try to write a book about the Rolling Stones, among them the death of Brian Jones, which made the story infinitely more interesting.
Steven: By the time you were finished, you really not only captured the Stones between hard covers, you captured a chunk of your own autobiography as well. Was that done on purpose when you set out to write the book?

Stanley: I did have the intention of writing about myself and others in the book, such as Gram Parsons, in the same spirit as its ostensible subject, the Stones. I wanted to write a book that readers could walk around in and know what it was like to be in London in 1968 or America in 1969. I felt that I had to treat celebrities and non-celebrities alike or I'd be writing publicity.
Steven: Many music writers (including heavyweights like Peter Guralnick) and non-music writers (Like middleweight Robert Stone) call your Stones book one of the best, if not the best, rock book ever written. How do you react to that kind of praise?

Stanley: If Guralnick's a heavyweight, I'd say Robert Stone is an Immortal. Stone's ten times the writer Guralnick is. I appreciate praise from any source but never do anything to seek it out. Basically I write for myself. I mean if it pleases me it should be good enough for anybody. I'm hard to please.
Steven: Do you think your personal story, which is woven into the book, helped set it apart from the hundreds of other books about The Stones?

Stanley: What sets The True Adventures apart is that I can write and I know what I'm writing about from first-hand experience.
Steven: It seems to me that a Southern boy from Georgia was the perfect person to tell the real story of the Stones since the South was the real inspiration for everything the Stones aspired to musically. Do you agree with that.

Stanley: I was the best person to write the book partly because I was Southern, but there were many other reasons.
Steven: Did you feel like you and the Stones had some sort of bond or did you feel like an outsider looking in?

Stanley: A writer is always an outsider even in his own family. But sure, the Stones and I had bonds. For one thing, I knew such people as B.B. King and could introduce the Stones to him. They had a use for me.
Steven: The book takes place around the time of Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones. What the heck took so long. The book did not come out until 1984 -- almost 15 years later.

Stanley: In order to write the book, I had to become a different person from the foolish young man who went on the road with the Stones. That took a while.
Steven: The original title of the book was Dance with the Devil.

Stanley: The original title of the book was The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. Somebody at Random House dreamed up that other title and believe me, I hated it. About five years later the actor Kirk Douglas published a novel at Random and the title was, you guessed it, Dance with the Devil. Somebody there loves that title and intends to keep calling books that until one's a hit.
Steven: Was the new title for the reprint your idea and what do you think of it?

Stanley: When the book came out in England, spring '85, the publisher, hating Dance with the Devil as much as I did, gave it my title. The book did very well in England, better than here, so when Random House's paperback imprint, Vintage, published the book, they reverted to my original title and it's been called that ever since.
Steven: Your other music book, Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South is about to be re-released in October by Da Capo Press. How did that happen and are you excited about it?

Stanley: I'm not sure how it happened. Da Capo got in touch with my agency and arranged the republication. They have a distinguished list and I'm delighted to be on it.
Steven: I understand you are currently working on a biography of Gram Parsons. Did you read Hickory Wind by Ben Fong Torres and are you approaching Gram's life story from a different perspective?

Stanley: Ben F-T's a newspaperman from San Francisco who thinks there are a lot of things around Waycross called "Swamps" instead of one big one of 680 square miles. Yeah, my perspective will be different, I expect.
Steven: You were never a rock critic were you? You were more of a rock feature writer, right? What publications have you written for throughout the years?

Stanley: I've written hardly any criticism. I don't understand people who listen to records and write about them. I write stories about people. I've worked for most of the thieves in the periodical business: Esquire, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Granta, the Saturday Evening Post, Musician, Guitar World, Request, StereoType, Mojo, Smart, Grammy magazine, the Atlanta Weekly, Creative Loafing, I can't remember them all.
Steven: Who are your favorite rock critics and writers, and do you still read rock journalism?

Stanley: Greil sends me his books to proofread, or used to. I don't read any others. I reviewed Guralnick's Godawful Elvis II for Playboy. If I want to read somebody writing well about music, I'll read Otis Ferguson, Henry Miller (Colossus of Maroussi) or Jack Kerouac (On the Road). Or a great book by a great musician, Art Pepper's Straight Life.
Steven: Many in the biz say rock journalism is dead. That's because writers like Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer (for the most part) are gone and most newspapers and magazines have a rock critic which has killed off much of the experimental writing that was happening in the '70s. Do you agree with that?

Stanley: I think rock is dead, and thank God. Rock journalism was never anything worth paying attention to.
Steven: Who were your favorite authors as a reader and some of your favorite books?

Stanley: Were? Nay, sir, I know not "were." My heroes ARE Homer, the poets and prophets who wrote the Bible, Lady Murasaki, Basho, Issa, Shiki, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, the authors of All Men Are Brothers and The Dream of the Red Chamber, the authors of the sutras, the author of the Gilgamesh epic, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Saint Thomas More, the Cavalier poets, the Romantic poets, Cervantes, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Edgar Poe, Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, Robert Louis Stevenson, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Flaubert, Maupassant, Yeats, Mark Twain(!), Joel Chandler Harris, Jane Austen, E.M. Forster, Denton Welch, Hemingway, Faulkner (Bill and John), Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Isak Dinesen, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford, P.G. Wodehouse, Vladimir Nabokov, Berry Morgan, Cormac McCarthy's first five novels, Mary Hood, Kandia Crazy Horse, Tim Gautreaux. And many others.
Steven: Are there any new bands or music that you listen to now that are giving you the same kind of thrill the Stones did back in the 60s?

Stanley: I love the North Mississippi All-Stars. I love Bobby Rush, Marvin Sease, and Lynn White. I love Ellis Marsalis, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Calvin Newborn, Harold Mabern, George Coleman, Col. Bruce Hampton, Unknown Hinson, Toni Price, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Billy Joe Shaver, Bill Parker, Ben Robinson. Music itself is not today what it appeared briefly to be in the sixties.
Steven: Do you think the Stones are too old to rock and should gracefully walk away from the stage and recording studio?

Stanley: Anyone who saw Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters -- or Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Fred McDowell -- knows that when you get too old to rock, you're ready for the grave.
Steven: My last question. Was Charlie Watts as cool, jazzy and dapper back in the old days as he appears today?

Stanley: Charlie has grown cooler and more dapper with each passing decade.