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Stone Free
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Stone Free, by Andrew Oldham, Exerpts 1-5
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IT’S REALLY ALL about gangs. My attraction to the Rolling Stones had less to do with their ambitions, which were quite modest in the beginning, or my own, however much I may have emulated the grandiosity of my exemplar Phil Spector, than simply wanting to be in their gang. The Beatles’ fascination for us all was even more elemental: we wondered secretly, “Would they like me if they met me? . . . I hope so.” When I got to know Adrian Millar, whom you will now meet forthwith, I wanted to be in his gang, too.
Sometime in 1965, a rather obnoxious but not unappealing character parked his purple E Type Jaguar behind my Rolls Royce Phantom, opposite the Cromwellian Club in Kensington. Adrian Millar, I was to learn, came from the North London borough of Barnet, the same neighborhood where, on the day we met, George Michael was probably sucking on a dummy. It showed: Adrian was alone, aloof, arrogant and most probably in heat. I was with a couple of Rolling Stones and a sizable cast of supporting characters. We may have just finished a recording session at Olympic Recording Studios in Barnes.
“Oi! I wanna be a pop star too,” he shouted at us, and we Stones, approaching the top of our game, smiled at this cheeky recognition of our success. Adrian was at once presumptuous, aggressive and quite amusing. But though he may have warranted a place holder in my mental rolodex, we did not henceforth become fast friends.
Allen Klein was born in Newark, New Jersey, on December 18, 1931. Keith Richards was born on the same day twelve years later, so Sagittarians both, with some karma together. Sagittarians are rather expansive and yet jolly in their cheek; if they are caught out, they tend to politely say, “Sorry, where were we before this?”
Keith himself has said rather recently of Allen, “I can never get a hard-on against Allen Klein. He did raise us to the heights, in a way. He’s an operator, man.” Less recently, Keith opined that he only needed to see Allen Klein twice a year, and a signature would do, the two days being paydays. Somewhere between the honeymoon and the divorce, Keith noticed Allen at a pre-show meet and greet (the Stones are too big and too jaded to do “after parties”), and asked, “Who left the barn door open?”
For although it was by now and for always Keith’s party, he’d never bothered to nail shut the dog door that let Allen in. Keith may have “99 problems” but money ain’t one so he can afford to be generous in his judgments, even though in a candid moment he did say something to the effect that the Stones got the silver and Klein got the gold. There are other Rolling Stones for whom Klein remains anathema, but they tend not to greet visitors before showtime. They probably worry more about money, however much they may already have. They have no book, they have no memory. It all works out.
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I’VE OFTEN WONDERED how deeply Phil Spector got stuck in the word-play Tom Wolfe created around him in his 1965 essay, “The First Tycoon of Teen.”
“Spector,” he wrote, “while still in his teens, seemed to comprehend the proletariat vitality of rock and roll that has made it the darling holy beast of intellectuals in the United States, England and France. There have been teenagers who have made a million dollars before, but invariably they are entertainers, they are steered by older people, such as the good Colonel Tom Parker steers Elvis Presley. But Phil Spector is a bona-fide Genius of Teen. Every baroque period has a flowering genius who rises up as the most glorious expression of its style of life—in latter-day Rome, the Emperor Commodus; in Renaissance Italy, Benvenuto Cellini; in late Augustan England, the Earl of Chesterfield; in the sal volatile Victorian age, Dante Gabriel Rossetti; in late-fancy neo-Greek Federal America, Thomas Jefferson; and in Teen America, Phil Spector is the bona-fide Genius of Teen.”
You have to hope that Wolfe is taking the piss and that this fawning portrait was not the reason Spector named one of his children Dante. It’s not unlikely, however, that Phil took Wolfe literally and thus never got over being a “teen tycoon,” let alone a “flowering genius.” Had Phil Spector the adult lived up to Wolfe’s purple prose, he’d have self-destructed long before his fatal tryst with Lana Clarkson.
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The Rolling Stones stopped being a band in 1986—that’s when with the recording and release of “Dirty Work” they made their last concerted effort as a band. From that point on, they were solely a brand, with Mick CEO and Keith, Charlie and Ronnie Wood part of the talent managed by the brand. Charlie, Ronnie Wood and Bill Wyman, whilst he was still on board, really did not matter except when they took to the stage. They may have been asked for an opinion on a book of old snaps or any other item dreamed up by mickrophelia. Or asked to approve the design of some t-shirts or other merchandising clobber. But as to what the Stones would do or not was all up to Chairman Mick.
By the time of the ‘89 "Steel Wheels" tour, Keith as a shareholder had let go of a lot of his voting power, his clout and authority. He could toy with Mick on stage whilst he took his time with kicking off this riff or that, but off-stage the toys were all in Mick’s room. For too much of the time the Rolling Stones seemed like a dead issue to Keith, a long gone affair. There didn’t seem to be a way to bring it back. And as Mick seems to be the only one without health or addiction issues, apart from the perennial Bill—there could be no doubting Mick’s ability to lead. His qualifications, his focus, his agenda was making all of his shareholders very wealthy indeed, and himself even wealthier.
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Dylan was wiry and wired, well-heeled and icepick thin, given to deciding without asking. The gray in Bob’s face reflected the infinitude of monochromatic shades he discerned in the world about him, while Grossman’s Shetland sweater brought out the premature touch of grey in his still business-like coiffure. I was Sidney Falco meets Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in a wasp-waisted, vested suit and Chelsea boots. My life has always been blessed by encounters with incredible ladies and gentlemen who with Zen-like mastery of the present moment knew about me that which I did yet not know about myself.
Fast forward four years that might as well have been four decades, and Grossman would shed his neat sweaters and suits, grow his hair out to a leonine mane he wore in a ponytail, and become the squire of Woodstock where he provided the managerial backdrop against which Dylan would rewrite the possibilities of popular song. Dylan’s rise was meteoric but his rocketing career was launched from the terra firma of Grossman’s careful husbandry.
Mick and Keith: Excerpt 1
The world has read for half a century as to how in 1960 Mick and Keith both came from Dartford and bonded over music when they met on their local train station. Mick’s first ever press cutting in a musical paper in the issue dated May 19th, 1962, read so:
“Singer Joins Korner”
“A nineteen-year-old Dartford rhythm and blues singer, Mick Jagger, has joined Alex Korner’s group, Blues Incorporated, and will sing with them regularly on their Saturday night dates at Ealing and Thursday sessions at the Marquee Jazz Club, London. Jagger, at present completing a course at the London School of Economics, also plays harmonica.”
Eleven months later, “Come On,” the first single by the Rolling Stones was released. It was amazing how quickly Mick laundered himself from a terraced house in Dartford to a very large castle in Ireland. It had taken the Guinnesses a hundred and fifty years to achieve the same transformation. It took Mick seven years.
We all know that urban areas change from block to block. Cross over Regent Street on the Savile Row side and you are in Soho, two totally different bolts of cloth. In the Hampstead I grew up in, I only had to stray five blocks south or ten blocks north to realize I lived on the dividing line between the haves and have-nots. So “born in Dartford” is a misleading generalization. Socially, at least, Mick and Keith were born on different sides of the tracks.
Keith Richard’s mission for years has been to draw attention to Jagger’s ambition, conceit, social aspirations and so forth, attempting, perhaps, to be the anchor to reality as his old Dartford conspirator. More recently, he let Mick have it in his autobiography.
The hostility and rancor displayed in Keith’s brilliant, salty and searing tome, Life, was unrepentant. The gist of Richard’s message is that whilst he has stayed true to his freewheeling, subversive roots, Mick has become a pretentious, power-struck, scheming, sex addled and obsessed Dorian Gray, without any recent portraits worth living through.
“Sometimes I think; I miss my friend,” Keith wrote. “I wonder; where did he go?”
This is selective penmanship at its best. I use the word penmanship with fond memories of Keith calling me some eight years ago in Vancouver.
Keith and I exchanged pleasantries without discussing the weather. Then he congratulated me on my recent books, which he had read, “admiring my penmanship.” Then he asked me if I’d like to do PR for them again. I was a little taken aback. Keith went on to tell me that they had a decent record ready for the next tour, “A Bigger Bang” on both counts, and that the band could do with a fresh face on their press. I was still taken aback, Keith added, “Of course, I’ll have to clear it with Madame, but it would be fun to work together again.” I never found out if Keith raised the subject with Mick, nor did I enquire. As appreciative as I was as regards Keith’s warm response to my written works, I knew that whilst so much of my life had been formed working with the man now known as Madame, it was much too late in the day to consider working for him.
The last time Mick and I had spoken was in Buenos Aires in 1994. It involved four words, “Hallo, Mick” and “Hallo, Andrew.” Hey, when the train leaves the station, all you have is your clipped ticket. Perhaps he had never forgiven me for all the contracts he had signed with Allen Klein. It is all very natural if you are familiar with age and what time does to feelings that you thought were forever. One day you woke up a little bit older and feelings of a lifetime had for no apparent reason just shifted. To quote ‘Papa’ John Phillips “there is nothing more permanent then change.”
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Watch for the next 4 excerpts Tues-Friday of this week.