The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. Stanley Booth

Mick made a little speech, the questions trailed off, and Mick said, ‘Thank you very much, people,’ sounding like the late Merriman Smith ending a presidential press conference.

      The Stones left the room. There at the end Mick had said: ‘We aren’t doing this tour for money but because we wanted to play in America and have a lot of fun. We’re really not into that sort of economic scene. I mean, either you’re gonna sing and all that crap or you’re gonna be a fucking economist. We’re sorry people can’t afford to come. We don’t know that this tour is more expensive. You’ll have to tell us.’ It seemed, since the Stones had always avoided having other people tell them what to do, a serious step.

      Steckler, Sandison, Jo, and I met the Stones in Bill Wyman’s suite, where the serious question in the sitting room was whether the Stones would release a single record from their new album before the tour started. Steckler suggested they release the album’s country version of ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ their latest single, thus becoming the first musical group to release the same song twice in a row.

      Jagger suggested releasing the title track, ‘Let It Bleed,’ as a single ‘if anybody would play it on the radio.’

      ‘Not with those lyrics,’ Jo said.

      ‘Well, they’re not just dirty, I mean they’re double entendre,’ Mick said.

      ‘“If you want someone to cream on, you can cream on me,” is pretty single entendre,’ Jo said.

      ‘We also have to decide which press you’ll talk to,’ Steckler said, and named several periodicals that had requested interviews.

      ‘Saturday Review, what’s that like?’ Mick asked.

      ‘Dullest magazine in America,’ I said. ‘Duller than the Saturday Evening Post. Duller than Grit.’

      ‘That’s all right, then.’

      The meeting was short; nothing was settled, except to try living for a few more days. No blueprint, no master plan.

      After lunch of ham sandwiches and beer back at the Oriole house, Steckler, Sandison, and I visited the Laurel Canyon place. A pudgy young man named Bill Belmont, part of Chip Monck’s stage production crew, came along in the limousine with us and pointed out the sights like a tour guide who dreams of being a press agent: ‘That cabin there, that’s Frank Zappa’s house, used to belong to Tom Mix. This house we’re going to, where the Stones are, used to be Carmen Miranda’s house and Wally Cox’s house and then it belonged to Peter Tork of the Monkees and now it belongs to Steve Stills. David Crosby lived there for a while. I can tell you everything. You see that story in Rolling Stone about the Doors? I did that. I told the guy the whole article. He just wrote down what I said.’

      At a dirt road on the valley side of Laurel Canyon there was a gate, but it was open and we drove up, the dark green valley walls around us. The house was stone, with a swimming pool and big paved drive where two limousines and two rented sedans were parked. From the far end of the house across the pool came muffled sounds of electric guitars and a harmonica.

      A lemon tree was growing by the drive, and the clowns I was with amused themselves by tearing off and throwing lemons. I threw one or two myself, just to be sociable, but I come from a place where the people are proud but poor, and I can’t really enjoy throwing food unless I’m trying to hit someone with it.

      After a while we went into the house, a wood-leather-and-stone robber’s roost with stone floors, a big stone fireplace, no softening touches. The kitchen had a refrigerator big as one in a commissary at a turpentine camp, but it was stocked with beer instead of pigfeet and Big Oranges. We drank Heinekens and waited for the rehearsal to end. Belmont, Steckler, and Sandison were lounging in chairs around the living room. I didn’t know why any of them was here. I had come to speak to Keith and Mick about the letter I needed to get a publisher, to go on living, to write a book. I lay down on a leather couch, gazed out the window, and saw, coming down the valley-side, a small brown fawn.

      Soon the music at the back of the house stopped and the Stones came out. I followed Keith into the kitchen. He opened a 35-millimeter film can and with a tiny spoon lifted out a mound of white crystals, and didn’t see me until he had the spoon halfway home. His hand stopped, I said, ‘Caught you,’ and he shrugged, raised the spoon and sniffed. Then I said, ‘Um, Keith, what about the, ah, book?’

      ‘I’ll talk to Mick about it.’

      Time passed, nothing happened. In the living room the people were still slouching about. Keith stood with one hand loose on forward-slung hips, the other shoving a beer into his mouth, looking like a baby with its bottle. I found Mick sitting at a piano just outside the door of the rehearsal room. ‘What about the book?’ I asked.

      ‘I’ve got to talk to Keith about it.’

      Then I went back to Keith and said, ‘Have you talked to Mick yet? We got to go.’

      ‘Hey,’ Keith said to Mick, who happened to be walking past, ‘what about this book?’

      ‘What about it?’

      They strolled into the kitchen as daylight faded. Finally we really were leaving, and I said to Keith, ‘So?’

      ‘You write the letter,’ he said, ‘and we’ll sign it.’

      So far so good, I thought, back at the Oriole house eating bouillabaisse. I had never eaten bouillabaisse before, and though I enjoyed it, I was still wondering what to do next. Write the letter and they’ll sign it. Then what? Will they leave me alone to make a contract and write a book?

      I tried to digest bouillabaisse and these questions while sitting after dinner with Jo, Sandison, Steckler, and the Watts family. The night was cool, and in the fireplace four gas jets were blasting a stack of wood logs to blazes. A couple of people stopped by, one with a large vial of cocaine, so after everybody else had gone to bed, Sandison, Steckler, and I were up talking. Steckler had no coke but was excited to be away from home. He was in his late thirties, in this crowd an older man, and he worked for Allen Klein, who as the manager of the world’s two most popular acts, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, may have been the most powerful man in show business; but Steckler, so close to all that power and money, seemed naive, too earnest about the poetry and truth of rock music. He had a neat brown haircut, a baby-pink face, and sincere eyes that would do many unpleasant things but would never lie to you.

      ‘Who’s Schneider?’ I asked him when the logs were white powder, the fire four blue jets of flame.

      ‘Klein’s nephew.’

      ‘Besides that.’

      ‘He worked for Klein until a few weeks ago. They had a disagreement and Ronnie formed Rolling Stones Promotions to do this tour.’

      ‘What besides this tour does he do for the Rolling Stones?’

      ‘Not a thing,’ Steckler said.

      After everyone else had gone to bed, I carried a typewriter from the office to the kitchen, closed all the connecting doors, and wrote a letter to myself from the Rolling Stones, assuring me of their cooperation, with their names typed below, spaced to leave room for their signatures. Then I took the typewriter back and tiptoed to bed.

      FOUR

      One night this guy comes into the bar with his cap on sideways, you know. And this is Elmore.

      WARREN GEORGE HARDING LEE JACKSON: Living Blues

      Valentino, a scarred grey tabby cat who once belonged to Brian Jones, yawned and stretched on the terrace. Keith and I were sitting on a Moroccan carpet in the side yard, nine-month-old Marlon, born last year, 1969, crawling naked in the grass, little yellow baby-turds shooting out his ass. His mother, the flashing-eyed Anita, was still upstairs in the tapestry-bedecked bedroom where she and Keith slept, on the dresser in a silver frame a small photograph of Brian. Inside the lid of the downstairs toilet was a collage of Rolling Stones photographs. These people didn’t try to hide things. The first night I spent at Keith’s house, Anita