You wanna do a sound check? Yeah and two.
Yeah. One, two, one, two, one, two.
One, two, one, two, one, two. Hello, hello, hello. Hello, hello.
Okay. I think we're good.
So, before we start, I just wanna ask you, how's your memory?
It's pretty good in some places and absolutely completely nonexistent on others.
I mean I can remember some things, but not other things.
But then it's written down usually somewhere.
What do I telI you? I can't remember much of it, to be honest.
Everybody has selective memories, you know.
And in the end I just think, "Oh, what the hell?"
I say that old adage, "Never let the truth spoiI a good story".
With me, we cover a lot of ground,
and it'll just be natural, you know. Whatever happens...
-Have you got a light? -Yeah, sure.
Oh, I got one.
Well, I don't know whether it's gonna be mystifying, you think?
I suppose it's not gonna be a glorification either.
Above all, it should be entertaining, and it should be fun
because that's what the band was.
I'm amazed by it myself. I mean, it's... You know what I mean?
It's almost a fairy story, you know?
Take three.
Last week New York City finally got to see and hear the Rolling Stones.
We were the last stop on a tour that took them into 30 cities in about six weeks,
it's a gruelling trip.
I went to Madison Square Garden to meet Mick Jagger, the singer with the group,
a fascinating man.
He's been described variously as
the "supreme sexual object in modern Western culture
"with a compound of menace and energy," a "sadomasochistic freak" and a "pussycat,"
various other things.
We have for you tonight an impression,
and I think a fairly accurate one,
of what goes on outside, inside and backstage at Madison Square Garden
when the Rolling Stones are in town.
As you look at this it's literally only minutes until he goes outside onto a stage
and exudes solid energy to 20,000 people.
Notice how calm we both are even though he had 20,000 people waiting,
and I had three listless staff members waiting for a cab for me.
Can you sort of tell me where, my way around in here?
I don't know who's who and what's what.
Doesn't all this upset you? All these people?
-Yeah, it's a great crowd for a morning show. -Yeah.
How did you sleep after opening night last night?
Not very well.
Say, I don't know if I was supposed to see this or not,
but there was a plate of something going around,
people offering little pills.
-Vitamins and salt. -Vitamins and salt pills.
-Yeah. -That's what they told me they were.
-Yeah, A, E, C, and salt. -But naturally I... Yeah.
Drink the salt with plenty of water.
Yeah. Will that help?
Do you want to do it all now, Dick? Excuse me if we can cut.
-Yeah we can cut. -Because I've gotta get ready.
How much has your technique and your sense of timing developed,
do you reckon, over the last five or six years?
Oh, you talk to me like an actor,
you know, I don't understand anything about all those things,
I just go on and do it, I don't know about timing or anything.
You give me the impression, and I've watched you,
of whether it's conscious or not, of being a very, very shrewd, professional performer.
No, it's not true.
Water.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.
All right! Good afternoon!
So let's recap on the Rolling Stones,
how did you all get together in the first place?
I think they all met in clubs, in London jazz clubs.
Actually, I answered an advert for a bass player that was up,
but the rest of them got together individually in jazz clubs and formed a sort of group.
-And we move on now to Brian. -Oh, hello.
Brian, how long have you been with the Rolling Stones,
are you one of the original members?
Yes, one of the original members.
What were you doing before you joined?
Well, just sort of bumming around waiting for something to happen, really.
I had quite a few jobs, and I was trying to get a band going,
but it was unsuccessful until I met up with Mick and Keith.
Do you think that perhaps the general public
started getting maybe a little bit tired of the Beatles and looked for something new?
No, I don't know about that.
What could you say to a thing like that?
Things started happening for us.
Well, why did they start happening?
I don't really know.
Something sort of... Chemical reaction seems to have happened somehow.
What would you say happened?
I really don't know.
The rise to popularity in London,
well the rise to popularity in the world was very short.
The first night there was about 80 people.
The second night there was about 120,
and the third night there were queues outside and they couldn't all get in.
When you saw those crowds growing every week,
you knew that you were striking a bell somewhere, you know,
and that something was happening.
Would you know why England became the pop centre?
It just happened that England had the right type of sound
and the right sort of visual image
that the kids over the world wanted at a particular time.
I think between Mick, Brian and me, we had a feeling,
the idea to put a band that was a little less show business
was exactly at the right time.
The show biz angle just was boring to us.
Thank you!
Of course we have to talk about Andrew Oldham,
who had been working for Brian Epstein with the Beatles.
He went around London and he heard we were kicking up a storm in some clubs.
He just looked around and said, "Hey, there can't be just one band in England".
Andrew wanted to make the Rolling Stones the anti-Beatles,
so if you got heroes, you've got an anti-hero like in a movie.
You got good guys and bad guys.
Andrew decided that the Rolling Stones were the bad guys.
It wasn't just an accident.
He thought the Rolling Stones would suit that image.
It helped to have people that go along with it or will fit the bill.
It's good to have an actor who'll play the part.
"We want the Stones! We want Mick!" "We want the Stones! We want Mick!"
It started, man, on the first tour,
halfway through things start to get crazy.
We didn't play a show after that
that ever was completed, I think, for two or three years.
We would take bets on how long a show would last.
You know, "You're on. Ten minutes".
And sure enough, wave after wave, some of them are fainting,
so the cops, and people and the attendants are dragging them out on stage,
you know what I mean.
I could see the water just running down between the seats.
It was just a flood of urine pouring down the girls.
All the girls in the audience were wetting themselves.
Girls wet themselves when they get excited.
There were like these tiny, little girls that would get in there
and just scream and you couldn't hear anything.
I just was mouthing it, hoping it was gonna be okay.
Brian and l, we'd play Popeye the Sailor Man.
And then wait for the shit to hit the fan.
And you stayed there for as long as you could before it got besieged, you know?
And then you did a runner.
Getting in and out was the big deal of the day.
I hated that.
I hated being chased by girls and all that.
I really, it used to really embarrass me.
I wish I could have turned it off when the show stopped.
Has there ever been a time in the crowds
and getting into theatres and away from them
that you've really had the wind up your sails on occasion,
though you really were gonna be cut off from getting caught in the crowd.
Last night was bad.
Last night's a good example.
What is your worst experience?
We knocked a policeman off his bike, broke his leg or something.
Yeah, he's very cool, isn't he, he's very cool on his bike.
That's why we ran into him.
I guess the Rolling Stones aren't everyone's cup of tea,
and that's the understatement of the year.
There are whole armies of parents
who've become almost homicidal at the sight of them.
Both on the stage and off,
the Stones don't exactly generate an aura of sweetness and light.
And their carefully calculated air of, "Blow you, Jack"
has won them almost as many enemies as fans.
The Beatles are loved by pretty well everybody
from the mums down to the teenagers,
but what's your real appeal to the fans, do you think?
You do tend to present a sort of yobo-ish image, you know.
Moronic, I think, is the best word.
-Yes, moronic... -What's he talking about?
But the thing is that you've all had very good educations.
I mean, why do you present this image? Is it deliberate or is it a sort of...
There are lots of morons at grammar schools, you know.
Wish this was all on film, man, it could be great.
You see, you're thrust into the limelight in a youth-orientated thing.
It's not about growing up, it's about not growing up, in a way.
Then it's about bad behaviour.
Then you're about bad behaviour, so then you start behaving badly.
It was the weirdest situation.
If you if you did something wrong, even better.
And the Beatles got the white hat, you know.
What's left? The black hat.
We never abided by any rules that were gentlemanly things.
Never did it.
That was part and parcel of why we just got ostracised by everyone.
People, they used to shout at us.
"You're a load of girls," and "Get your bloody hair cut!"
And all this, you know, "Ha, ha, ha," make jokes about us,
you just see them all laughing, pointing and all that.
It's obvious that you don't get your hair cut, but do you get it trimmed from time to time?
Yes, I do. Last night, last night.
Last night? Certainly grown a lot since then.
We were just refusing to conform to what everybody wanted us to be.
This particular hotel manager was just sort of trying to be a bit over-officious.
And I don't, honestly and sincerely, don't have a tie, you see.
I used to wear a tie, but the boys didn't wear ties,
and I thought I'd looked a bit out if I wore one, so I stopped wearing them.
Brian used to get upset when they used to say,
"I stood next to 'em and I could see the fleas jumping off of their hair".
They used to call us "Neanderthals" and "The ugliest group in the world".
What sort of words have you been called, in fact?
-The four-letter words? -No, the ones that are repeatable.
We've been called just about everything from beautiful to revolting.
Brian was a very clever musician.
He played bottleneck guitar, electric, and nobody did that.
Well, except in America, but I mean nobody did it in London.
He'd had more experience, I think, in playing,
so he had some level of musical accomplishment
that really Keith and I really didn't.
Brian and Keith had the worst humour.
Cause they used to call ordinary working people "Ernies,"
and Brian always used to put his nose down like this
and put his ears out and talk like that.
You know, like working people.
Oh, they were awful.
Shit, by then they were like jerking it up, you know.
I mean, it was them against us in the most obvious way,
you know what I mean?
Sort of, I don't know, perverted anarchy.
What about the standard charge
that no one would let their daughter marry a Rolling Stone,
but they wouldn't mind if the daughter married a Beatle?
-Here's the living proof. -Two of them already did, you know.
-I married one. -You married a Rolling Stone?
What's this about you walking around in bathing suits
and being over those girls in Texas.
No, it was in Florida. No, it was in Georgia!
And what can you expect from Georgia?
Georgia is full of idiots.
You're always being accused of being vulgar, obstinate and hostile. Are you?
That's right, yes.
We're uncouth and obstinate.
Hostile, maybe, but I don't think vulgar and hostile.
-Hostile when we're approached by... -So many people don't like the truth, man.
What do you give credit for your success now? What is it?
-Music. -Music?
-Music. -Our records.
Anything that you'd like to say right now before the camera rolls out?
-Good-bye! -Good-bye!
How much of your act is acting?
Well, I suppose really all of it is acting, you know.
But it really there's a difference between acting and not enjoying it
and acting and just doing what you want to do.
It's like getting into a part.
As a singer and doing a performance,
you've gotta be very finely attuned to what's going on in the audience.
Little Richard literally taught me this stuff.
I watched how he would harangue the crowd almost.
He would tease them.
"Everybody stand up! I said stand up!" You know, and they would.
He was outrageous. But it kept it all alive, you know,
and you never quite knew what was going to happen.
In those days, we only played covers.
The first album's all covers.
I remember having to discussion,
"Well, what are we gonna do now, we can't make a second album of covers".
We already knew we'd come to the wall there.
Andrew Oldham said,
"If you want to keep going, you've gotta... You need new material."
Well, this is something I couldn't have conceived.
I was songwriter, it's like, hey, the blacksmith does the ironwork,
and the horse wears 'em, you know what I mean?
Suddenly, you know, just playing guitar and playing blues,
suddenly wasn't enough, you know.
Now I wanted to invent things for me to play.
Write it on the top of this. Yeah.
I know, sometimes we can duplicate.
-Sitting on a fence. -Sitting on a fence?
It's very hard to play the proper title.
That's easy, that's good. That's all right.
But I just wanted to make it like he was sitting on a fence
and couldn't make up his mind between one girl and the other.
And he couldn't stand sitting on the fence because it was getting very painful.
We'd started experimenting with writing.
Well, we weren't maybe very good at it.
But we were trying. You know, maybe not everybody can write.
We went on to write a whole load of crap.
And we didn't dare for months, and months, and months
to write a song for the Stones, you know.
Oh, God, man, that's a whole other trip, you know.
The first song I remember writing with the Rolling Stones was Tell Me,
which is a tiny, minor, mini hit.
You know, it was very gratifying because we'd only done these cover songs.
Every little moment we had of hanging around,
Keith and I used to be sitting with guitars trying to write songs.
We wrote songs all the time. We were constantly coming up with ideas.
We started writing songs that were reflective of the time we were living in
and that struck a chord with our audience.
And you're connecting, you're getting a lot of feedback.
I mean, you're feeling what the audience is feeling.
So you're, you're exchanging with the audience a kind of ideas stream.
What's your opinion of the Rolling Stones?
I think that they're the greatest, they dress different,
and they're the best thing to ever happen in the United States.
They're so ugly that they're appealing.
What would happen if they took the Rolling Stones
and all these other rock and rollers away. What would happen to you kids?
I don't know, these parents would be very happy, I can tell you that much.
How's your popularity in Europe at this moment?
Very good, I think. Very healthy.
The kids are looking for something else, or some different moral value,
they gotta strive for something else,
instead of just the same routine their parents were born into.
Splash on Ice Blue Aqua Velva.
Creamy lather!
I can't express myself in the right way when I feel satisfied with the world.
It's very easy if I feel very dissatisfied with something, I can write about that.
Why then if you think that most of your records are about dissatisfaction and so on,
why do you think you're so popular?
Because most young people are dissatisfied.
In what way?
With the generation which they think is running their lives.
What things are you dissatisfied with?
The generation that runs our lives.
When these girls pounce upon Mick, and seem to want to tear him to pieces,
it's not essentially an act of aggression, but rather, an act of devouring him.
They want to incorporate his essence.
It's a sort of fetish, fetishism, which has more in common
with people collecting the relics of saints,
as they did in the ancient past, there's really no break
with the ancient tradition, it's just a question of form.
I've seen this with the most marvellous, dramatic intensity
with two or three thousand young girls in Manchester,
and these girls, they wept, they were possessed by the spirit,
and I may add that all their little panties were soaking wet at the end,
I mean complete physical and mental absorption.
I think that's very true and...
But I think what's more interesting is that in this country
the audience is, indeed, all girls,
and they do behave in this way,
but, in the rest of the world, this isn't true.
In lots of places, they're nearly all boys. With the boys, it erupts, you know.
-Aggressiveness can be... -Much more aggressively.
And they use it to have a great fight with the police,
they just beat the police up, as a show of sort of strength,
and a show of dissatisfaction with something.
We had riots every night.
It was insane.
I think they just wanted to be part of that rebellious thing that we were instigating.
They weren't attacking us, it was always having goes at police.
Now we're entering the area of social unrest manifesting itself in a crowd situation.
You're just merely the catalyst of the crowd,
it could be anything, a football match, but you're it on that day.
I mean, they like the group as well, otherwise they wouldn't come.
That's just only half of the show.
The other half of the show is them participating in a riot.
What makes you think there would be a riot?
Well, the Stones seem to have a history of creating violence wherever they go.
There are a lot of things that the establishment
does not like about Mick Jagger, but perhaps what rankles most is
that he speaks to a vast segment of the population that they can't.
They cross a barrier that at times, must be measured in light years,
the two generations eye each other warily and distrustfully.
It felt like an explosive moment.
People felt this sensation that something was going on
that had never happened before that they'd been waiting to happen.
And it was at that same time in London that all kinds of shit was hitting the fan.
And of course we joined in.
Our sort of success is a first-class ticket,
you know, to a lot of things.
We all smoked dope, I mean except for Bill, but it was pretty innocent stuff.
And then you got more and more different drugs coming in,
LSD, and cocaine, heroin and all these things.
What do you think of LSD? Is it nice?
It's very nice, I think. LSD's very nice.
It was like an orgy of drugs, actually.
And those drugs were a great interest to the press and the general public.
The News of the World was a newspaper
that liked to reveal the faults in society, and they follow people,
they put private detectives on people and unfortunately...
There's a set of unfortunate circumstances...
So, we're having this party at Keith's house in Redlands,
and we went off for this expedition.
We took acid, and then it took a long while to start. It always does.
And we met someone who was milking a cow.
I don't like milk very much.
And they said, "Oh, come on, Mick, try the milk".
When you're on acid, you know, everything's different.
I still didn't like the milk, I mean, acid, fresh, cow, you know, everything.
And we walked back down to the car and went back to Redlands,
and by which time it was evening.
So we're all coming down, and it's a very smooth come-down.
And we're just sitting around smoking a couple of joints.
And bang-bang-bang on the door.
What had been a lovely day on acid, turned out to be a really unpleasant evening.
The News of the World told the police there was a big drug party,
and they should go and break it up and arrest everybody.
A national newspaper had tipped off the police
that it would be worth their while to raid Richards' home
for drugs on the Sunday afternoon,
and the raid was carried out on that Sunday evening.
There was a gasp of pure horror
from the youngsters crowded into the public gallery.
At the moment, Judge Block said sternly to Richard
that the offence carried a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Emotionally speaking, it was very difficult.
Because they thought we're gonna be put away
and never make another record for years and years,
and people were going to have prison sentences.
It wasn't just a fine and a rap across the knuckles.
We just kinda thought that was the end of the band, really.
We never knew who was going to be in or out of jail,
and whether there was a future and all that.
Did you feel that you were being persecuted for being a Rolling Stone?
It was obvious that that notoriety plus the press thing turned it into,
you know, yes, you're, it was a good bust for the police, wasn't it?
And fun for the press.
There goes lunch for Richards and Jagger in the cells.
Prawn cocktail, roast lamb with mint sauce, fresh strawberries and cream,
twenty-one and six for Jagger.
Ice melon, salmon salad, fresh fruit, strawberries and cream,
twenty-two and six for Richards,
and a half bottle of Beaujolais at 10 bob a head for each.
I've never been in court before, and I can't stand the way he's talking to me.
He's pointing, calling me "reprobate,"
and, you know, "menace to society," and all that.
All I said was, "Sir, I'm not interested in your petty morals".
Which gave me a year in the slammer.
There was a dead silence as the judge added, "You will go to prison for one year".
And Richard, who earlier had talked in his evidence of what he called, "petty morals,"
went down to the cells without expression.
Jagger put his hand to his face as he was given three months.
For a moment he looked like fainting,
then prison officers moved forward to take his arms and help him down to the cells.
Mick was taken to Brixton, and they sent me to Wormwood Scrubs,
which is, like, even worse.
It's like Folsom.
And I’m walking, I’m doing my first day, you know, got the uniform on,
and we're walking around this courtyard in a circle, you know,
exercise, it's called.
And then I get a tap on the shoulder from one of the other cons behind me.
And he says, "You're out".
He said, "We heard it on the radio".
Thank Christ for that.
London, it's years since such crowds gathered to await an appeal verdict.
But this was a Rolling Stones case, with the fans out in force.
When Mick Jagger was conditionally discharged
and Keith Richards' sentence quashed,
the pop idols drove off, the shadow of jail no longer over them.
I think I looked at it at the time as like, "They can try all they want,
"they won't make it stick because I’ve got all these people out there.
"And unless I murdered somebody, they're gonna insist I’m out".
You've been targeted, but then you can revel in your rebelliousness if you want,
because people are doing that for you, don't forget people are saying,
"Oh, it's awful, they've been targeted".
It cemented our relationships with our generation, with the public.
And it sort of gave us a badge of honour, in a way, you know.
To me it just made me, like, say, "Okay, now you know who I am.
"You've basically given me a licence now". It was Jesse James time.
I mean the cops turned me into a criminal.
You know that's when I started carrying a shooter in America.
So, the outlaw was born?
Yeah, I mean it was fully blown.
That was when we really put the black hat on, you know?
I mean before that, it was just sort of off-grey.
Well, in a way I kind of felt that everybody else was writing a script for me.
And you're going to do what I can't.
Okay. That's a very easy role to slip into.
There's a slot available, and it was just built for me.
If you're a method actor, you always stay in character.
This character has changed.
Yes, it's changed a lot, this character's had a lot of changes.
It's not just one change, he's gone through,
you know, every six months another person.
Every actor's character is part of themselves.
You can only act what's in you.
The Jumping Jack Flash character is more
"been through the mill and come out the other side smiling".
The Sympathy character's much more complicated
because my inspiration for that came from Baudelaire and The Master of Margarita,
and so I had all these things going on.
It's very much for the time and everything.
I mean, it's got the violence of the time in it.
It's provocative.
The violence was all-pervasive, and you can't help but live in it
and reflect it back again,
and then of course it goes into a feedback loop.
I mean, in a way, the Rolling Stones overtake you.
And it's almost like you're sort of levitating.
You don't even want to touch the strings 'cause they're doing it themselves.
And, anyway, they'd be too hot.
Brian was this very talented, unusual guy.
He played all these things, which gave what we did a flavour,
but his involvement in the band dwindled.
Keith and I took drugs, but Brian took too many drugs of the wrong kind,
and he wasn't functioning as a musician.
I don't think he was that interested in contributing
to the Rolling Stones any more.
We didn't even expect him to be there.
If he turned up, we'd find something for him to do.
You know, I'll ask him, you know, "You got anything?"
You know, "What do you think about this? You want to put something over this?"
But, no, by then he was already in, you know, bye-bye land.
You certainly didn't know if he was gonna turn up
and what state he was gonna be,
and then what was he gonna be able to do in that state,
what job could you give him.
And then one time when we sat around on the floor,
we played in a circle, playing No Expectations,
and he picked up the guitar and played a very pretty lines on it,
which you can hear on the record.
And that was the last thing I remember him doing that was Brian,
or the Brian that could contribute something very pretty and sensitive,
and it made the record sound wonderful.
My ultimate aim in life was never to be a pop star.
I enjoy it with reservations.
But I’m not really sort of satisfied either artistically or personally.
Let's face it.
The future as a Rolling Stone is very uncertain.
I remember Mick and Keith saying,
you know, "We can't go on like this, we need another guy".
We did need somebody else.
Do you remember what happened that day when you went over there?
No. Can't remember.
But I remember it wasn't very nice.
It was a very, very difficult decision to make.
This was someone that you'd
spent the beginning of the band with and, I mean, it was horrible.
We said to Brian, "This isn't working out,"
and he sort of said, "Yes, it isn't". And, it was very sad.
And it was, I felt awful afterwards, I remember that, I felt really terrible.
He was the author of his own misfortunes, really,
but when you look back on it now, you think surely we could have done something.
You know, did something more than just that.
We were working in the studio with Jimmy Miller.
And someone came in and said, "Brian's just died".
Everybody just looks at each other and goes,
"Finally".
It was almost like it was bound to happen, one way or another.
It was a horrible moment,
and I don't know how many months later that was from when we went down to see him.
He died three weeks later.
Fuck.
About midnight, Jones went for a swim with his Swedish girlfriend, Anna Wohlin,
and another friend, Mr Frank Thorogood.
After a time, Mr Thorogood and the girl went back to the house.
When they returned they saw Jones at the bottom of the pool,
and they pulled him out.
You know, it doesn't hit you straight away,
I mean, I think my first reaction was, "Brian, after all of the things we've been through,
"it's, you know, you don't have to croak over it".
Was there a reason you didn't go to his funeral?
It was gonna be too much of a circus.
And, anyway, I don't, I never even went to my mother's funeral, or my father's.
They didn't have one.
We're like that in my family, you know? My dad is now an oak tree.
We put his ashes in this enormous oak tree growing,
and every year it gets a little bigger.
And my mom, she said, "Don't make no fuss over me, boy".
I promise I’ll make no fuss, Mom.
And Hyde Park was the funeral.
And the bit about burying and the shovels and all of that,
it's not that important to me, that was his funeral.
The Hyde Park concert was two days after Brian died.
In front of almost 500,000 people in London.
The concert had become in his memory when it obviously hadn't been planned like that,
but it had assumed that feeling.
That morning of the concert, they all met in my suite.
Mick was in the corner and he was in tears.
I said, "Mick, you've gotta just toughen up and move on.
"That's all you do, that's all we can do.
"We just move on and do what we planned to do".
The Stones are real-live people, not like the Beatles
with these seven days in bed, and they're true to life.
They're totally anti-establishment,
and everybody in the establishment has always bugged the Stones.
And people are gonna have that feeling for them.
What do you make of all this?
As a member of the older generation, do you think it's all out of place here?
Of course, in a way, yes. Of course.
What about your wife? What do you make of this, madam?
-That's not my wife. -That's not your wife, I’m very sorry.
I mean, you see Hyde Park covered in people,
instead of, you know, the normal view, you know, grass.
And, I haven't been on stage for a year or so, you know?
And it was like a sort of talk about, into the deep end.
"Oh, let's try a club or two first". Naw, Hyde Park, 500,000.
But I think it was a good baptism of fire for Mick Taylor.
John Lennon once said
that the Rolling Stones would break up over Brian Jones' dead body.
What do you think it is about the Stones that enable them to stay together?
I think, basically, it was their decision to start touring again.
Because before I joined the group, they'd been making records.
They hadn't really played before the public for nearly two years.
So in a sense, when I joined the group, it was virtually a new group.
I was 20, almost 21.
I had just finished a six-week American tour with John Mayall.
I got a phone call from Mick saying
the Stones will need a replacement for Brian, and...
So I became part of the band.
We were playing at stadiums, that were, you know, full.
You could sort of glance back over the amplifiers,
and you could see the limousines bouncing,
you know, because the energy in the stadium was so... It was electric.
To me, the real interest in playing guitar is to play guitar with another guy.
Two guitars together, if you get it right,
it can become like an orchestra.
And Mick Taylor's a virtuoso.
Oh, yeah!
Thank you kindly!
I’ve been following the Stones ever since they first started.
-How old were you then? -Thirteen.
-Do you have tickets? -Yes.
There's a rumour that Mick Jagger's supposed to come out in his birthday suit.
Are you expecting that?
I hope he does.
-You won't be shocked? -Of course not!
At the end of the '69 tour, we went to Muscle Shoals,
and we cut Wild Horses, Brown Sugar and You Gotta Move, which are great tracks.
During those recording sessions, or just before,
somebody must have put it to somebody in the Stones organisation
that we went to Altamont to do a free concert.
It was never planned to be part of the 1969 tour.
It was really just a throwaway.
You know, a lot of these free shows were going on, and we said,
well, you know, "Why don't we do one?"
I read in one of the papers that you will be giving a free concert in San Francisco.
We are doing a free concert in San Francisco.
-When? -On December 6th.
It's creating a sort of a microcosmic society, which sets an example to the rest of America,
as to how one can behave in large gatherings.
Your mind is not really on that gig,
so we'll just get it together, and when they've got it together, we'll go there and do it.
Simple as that.
Just a quick question, though, you were at Woodstock,
and you've now been out to Altamont, right? Last night.
How does it stack up, do you have the room.
-I think we have the room, sure. -Is this going to be Woodstock west?
Well, it's going to be San Francisco.
You know, we were doing an arena tour and jumped off the engine
to free concerts in empty hills.
They hit Mick, somebody hit him!
There are a number of people on and around this stage who should not be here.
No!
I want to see Mick Jagger, God damn!
The whole thing was out of control.
I mean, all normality and control had gone, there was no, nothing.
The Hells Angels were the people doing the security,
so, you know, we thought, "That's the way they do things in San Francisco," you know.
It was a very hippie, dippie thing.
Except, these were actual, proper Hells Angels.
It was a bit like asking the Nazi Party to sort out the front of the auditorium.
When I got a bad vibe about it,
was when I saw the condition of the Angels.
Now I can tell, these guys are on acid and ripple wine.
And they're already in the early afternoon, they're starting to get antsy, you know.
These guys are out there, just looking for trouble.
And I think, "Uh-oh".
This will get ugly tonight.
And it did.
Oh, babies.
There are so many of you.
Just be cool down up front there and don't push around.
Just keep still, keep together.
Oh, yeah.
We were scared. I mean, it was scary.
And these people were crazy,
and they were like standing next to you,
and we didn't know how to control it, stop it, it was completely out of our control.
It was just a nightmare.
Everybody was fucking scared, man. But I mean,
I’m sure it's far more frightening to people in the audience than it was for us.
Keith! Keith! Keith! Keith, will you cool it, and I’ll try and stop it.
Hey, people.
Everybody just cool out!
What we should have done is just close shop and gone home.
But you couldn't. You got 300,000 people out there that have come, you know.
People, I mean, who's fighting and at what for?
It's a hard line to call, you know what I mean?
If we'd have walked off, I think there would have been a riot.
Why are we fighting?
So I just did the best I fucking could under bad circumstances, you know?
Look, cat, that guy there!
If he doesn't stop it, man!
Listen, either those cats cool it, man, or we don't play.
It was just realising that you were out of control.
The whole thing was out of control.
If you were in any kind of arena or theatre, you can just leave, you know, off stage.
There wasn't, you were very aware that you were sort of surrounded,
so you were very vulnerable, so that was the feeling.
That's why you shouldn't have been in this situation.
And then some bastard gets killed.
What happened here anyway?
-He pulled out a gun. -He did?
Yes. The Hells Angels took the gun away from him.
One of them has it now, he showed it to me.
And they proceeded to put him down on the ground and started kicking him.
And he has a couple stab wounds in his back and one over his ear here.
We tried to keep him alive, and when we got here, the doctor checked him out,
-and that was it. -We pronounced him dead at 6:20.
We were pretty beat up after Altamont.
We were always thought of after that as dangerous.
We weren't really dangerous,
but that's the way they looked at it, you know.
You had to endure all this bloodletting and blame-throwing.
So, you know, it wasn't a very good mood.
We were in this maelstrom daily.
It was like being in a river, you know, that was flooded.
And you were just being dragged all the way down this river.
It's all a bit of a kaleidoscope.
I was definitely on another planet at the time.
Everybody's got a different way of dealing,
and I didn't for a while, I took to the stuff.
As I say, I never had a problem with drugs, I just had a problem with cops.
I'd been pushed up against my front door by them leaping out of the bushes.
They were just harassment, really. You know there was a definite move on.
It became obvious that, you know, you had to make a decision.
"Okay, we're moving".
Keith always says that he was chased out of England by the cops.
He may believe that, but I mean it's not actually true.
The real reason the band left was money.
We all thought that our taxes had been paid.
We discovered in 1971 that we all owed in the region of 100,000 pounds each.
The income tax was so high that to earn the money to pay back the tax,
we decided that the best way of doing that was to leave the UK.
You know, we got shipped to France.
I think in France I felt a sort of lifting of the weight
that I didn't realise was on me in England.
We couldn't find a studio in the south of France,
so eventually we were rummaging, I said, "I’ve got an enormous basement".
I’d love to live on the factory, you know? Saves going to the studio.
It was great, just go downstairs.
That whole period was incredibly intense because it was a new beginning for the band,
and once we picked up our guitars, we were in our own world.
It was a troglodyte existence down there
and 9:00/10:00 at night until 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning.
The idea of playing a note before the sun went down was ludicrous.
I mean, it's like Dracula time.
My kind of structure is a kind of loose structure,
but when you have no structure, it's really bad.
Recording in the south of France was like that
because of all the drugs and everything.
The junk was there to help me do the music.
It gave me a space that I probably wouldn't have found otherwise.
I’d take anything if it helps me stay up long enough to finish this damn song.
There's a little bit of fighting in the tempo.
You know, we would almost get to the point of recording a song,
Keith would have to leave because he wanted another fix or whatever reason.
It's a nightmare.
Instead of working on a song for two hours, you worked on it for two fucking weeks.
It just becomes disorganised.
You got some recording engineers strung out on heroin, you know,
because they all want to be strung out on heroin
because they think it's the thing to do.
Well, it isn't the thing to do for a recording engineer, I can assure you.
I thought it was quite amusing a lot of it.
People sort of... They hang around Keith,
and they think they're Keith. It's like... It's ridiculous.
Like your band always thrives
-when there's... -Adversity.
I don't know, probably by then,
I mean, we felt very much like a sort of pirate nation to ourselves,
and you dig in your heels and say,
"We may go down, but we're not going down your way," you know.
So it kind of got where the bulldog comes out.
Before the 1972 tour, there was a letter from the US State Department
basically saying that if there was any kind of fallout, we could be in trouble.
They made a lot of threatening noises, which creates this back-to-the-wall,
Winston Churchill kind of stuff.
That's all very, kind of, galvanising and breeds a nice team spirit.
If there are a lot of people who are convinced
that, in some way, you and your music are an evil influence.
That must be a challenge that you would take seriously
-and want to reply to... -Oh, yeah, I don't take it seriously any more.
I think we've won, you know.
Were there any rules on that tour?
Rules?
There's no rules on any of them.
Hedonism was very much on the rise.
It was the hedonistic period.
Any nature of restraint had been a bit pummelled.
The idea of being restrained and disciplined
was, perhaps, a kind of no-no.
It's got its own film crew, it's got journalism, it's got its celebrities.
It becomes more than just a tour, it becomes the grand event.
And that also became the kind of fashion of tours,
its rather ill-disciplined, hedonistic binge around America.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.
When we got together, something happened.
Something magical happened, and no one could ever copy that.
Every band followed the drummer.
We don't follow Charlie, Charlie follows Keith.
So the drums are very slightly behind Keith.
It's only fractions of seconds, you know, miniscule.
And I tend to play ahead.
It's got a sort of a wobble,
and it's dangerous because it can all fall apart at any minute.
You talk about Rolling Stones,
I mean, it was an unstoppable momentum going on,
and, in a way, you're swept along with it.
I mean, it's not as if you were particularly in control of it or any of us were.
There was not really any time for self-doubt
or second-guessing.
We were just going on instincts and doing what we wanted.
We were almost like a law unto ourselves.
What is a Rolling Stone?
"What is a Rolling Stone?"
Someone that's not settled,
like a pirate or a gypsy.
Someone who likes to travel, voyage, an adventurer.
Another concert.
My mum's out there. I don't want no indecent gestures, you understand?
None of that wiggly stuff out there in front of me mum now.
Okay, Mrs Keyes, this is for you!
Hi, there.
f-You know who he is? -I do.
He's one of those hippie long-haired... One of those hippie radicals.
Really all you wanted to do was play music, you know.
You're always trying to get it better, trying to get the band tighter.
After a show, we'd be in the hotel room
knocking out songs for the next album or the next single.
It was a continual, day-by-day process.
When you're working with another person, it's great to bounce things off, you know,
and if you're really working well together,
you feed off each other's ideas and build upon each other's ideas.
So you've got someone that takes your thing and takes it to another level.
Writing songs is a great thing,
it's like a jigsaw puzzle and a kaleidoscope put together,
except it's all done through the ears.
And on that, I would say Mick and l are probably very much on the same groove.
If I wanted the essence of Jagger and Richards together,
I suppose it would be Midnight Rambler.
Anybody else could have written any of our other songs,
but I don't think anybody could have written Midnight Rambler except Mick and me.
And nobody else would have thought of making an opera out of the blues.
When you unzip your suit and put your jeans back on or whatever,
that's all finished with.
I don't wanna be my extrovert character all the time.
A lot of times when you're being interviewed,
you don't want to talk about what they want to talk about.
You kind of don't answer their question, you kind of get rid of lt.
-Where are we going, by the way? -I don't know.
It's a kind of protection against intrusion.
What are you trying to protect?
You're trying to protect your inner self, I think, is the answer.
The Rolling Stones arrived in Sydney today to begin their 1973 Australian tour.
You've been thrown into this, I mean, you started and you're a blues player,
and then suddenly this fame thing comes in.
And everybody has to handle that in their own way.
Charlie hates it.
Charlie's perfect world would be to be in the Rolling Stones,
except nobody gives a shit who you are.
Are you still enjoying playing in the group as much as you used to do
about seven or eight years back?
Yeah, it's the same, really.
Then the plans for the next future.
Can you tell us something about that?
For the next future...
Carry on making records, I suppose.
Try to do some things, I don't know.
I think the Rolling Stones are great.
But I kind of don't see me in it somehow.
I never really lived or admired that world, anyways, so I don't really believe it.
But I’m very much a loner. I always have been.
How do you see yourself?
That's the most difficult thing of all,
I mean, that's what it takes your whole life to find out.
What you are. I mean, I don't know.
But you're not this image that people have of Mick.
I don't know what that is.
There's a lot of things you know that go out to make up one person's personality,
and so that you can be everything.
How do you keep yourself grounded?
I don't know. I didn't for a while.
Heroin can...
A sort of state of suspended animation, really.
Keith just got busted all the time.
And he got away with it all the time. That was the amazing thing.
He ended up with just small fines and warnings,
and it just went through his life like that.
And you're always worried because if Keith gets busted,
we just thought it was the end of the band, really.
He'd drive off the road regularly, and he should never have been driving.
I was always worried that there was gonna be a call
when Keith had driven off the road, and that was the end of Keith.
Keith's there's in England, kind of an underground top ten
about people that are expected to die soon.
Am I on the list?
You are taken to number one position...
Great, okay. I’ll let you know.
Mick Taylor said to me then, "I’m thinking of leaving".
And then, of course, he deteriorated
because he started to get into drugs and all that sort of shit.
I always thought he left 'cause he got bored.
I thought he was fed up with playing with us.
I’d no idea why he left the band.
It was the stupidest idea I had ever heard.
And he never told me, really, the reason.
Why, in the world, would you leave the Rolling Stones?
I don't know, maybe I thought that
I would be able to protect my family from, not Keith's orbit, but drugs.
Because I slowly became addicted to heroin.
There comes a point where you have to choose between one or the other or you die.
And l, you know, I’ve survived.
Mick Taylor leaving was a curveball because that was a really good band,
and it had this balance between Keith and Mick Taylor.
In a way, I was surprised, but it's always a drag.
I spent years putting this line-up together. Then, just as I’m getting it right...
There's another part of me that seems that it was somehow inevitable.
I was there at Robert Stigwood's party
sitting between Mick Taylor and Mick Jagger when Taylor leaned across me,
and he said to Jagger, "I’m leaving the band".
And Mick went, "What?" He said, "Is he serious?"
I said, "I think he is, Mick".
So, Mick Taylor said, "Yes, I am," and he got up and walked out.
And Mick said, "Will you join?"
And I said, "Yes, of course, in a New York minute!"
Ronnie was like a real breath of fresh air, in a way.
His personality was... I mean, he's such a barrel of laughs.
He fitted like a glove.
Ronnie became the link between the two strong egos and the two light egos.
And it worked great.
Tune-out room session!
Fitting into their mould was easy for me.
I found the compatibility with playing, the whole lifestyle, the humour,
the camaraderie, you know, it was like, "I’m home".
We were transitioning into a more of, kind of, not so dangerous.
The feeling was that you're having a good time.
It was more, kind of, fun.
But it was more colourful, and produced,
and it wasn't supposed to be taken too seriously,
and I think it was very much the Ronnie thing.
It's in the blood, you see, it all comes down to those two hours on stage.
They're the reward.
He's a great guitar player and also very sympathetic.
Ronnie was somebody I’d party with as well.
I mean, he was well-versed in every manner.
Nearly one million applications had been received for their 13 British concerts alone.
But most will be out of luck.
Only 80,000 seats are available
for what will be the Stones' first tour of Britain in three years.
Oh, man, the Rolling Stones are just it, you know?
What do you mean?
They're the greatest rock and roll band in the world!
How long have you been here?
Since Friday morning about 8:00 a.m.
How do you eat?
We take a walk to the liquor store, buy a loaf of bread,
some bologna and cheese, and put it all together, and we eat it, man.
We lived and breathed the songs, Keith and I.
Morning, noon, and night,
and when we slept, which was very rare, very rare.
And we lived and breathed other influences, whether it be Mozart or Marley.
The whirlwind, the hurricane, the tornado of just being caught up in the band,
and the highs of the dope and the drink,
my feet never really touched the ground for many years.
You felt almost pretty much immune to exterior hassles, you know.
It seems perilous now.
At this time, it was like, "Come on, throw it at us, see what you got".
And you can get used
to that feeling of invulnerableness, even though it's not true.
It was ridiculous.
Fancy coming into Canada with all that heroin. It's dotty.
Police found one ounce of heroin, and one-fifth of an ounce of cocaine...
Lead guitarist Keith Richard was charged with possession of heroin
for the purpose of trafficking.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life for trafficking.
It got a bit close, I thought, letting the guy into prison or being locked up.
Perhaps Keith played that role really too well, you know?
It was the realisation in Canada that I was actually jeopardising the band.
And if they were gonna put me away, I mean, it was bye-bye.
That's why I stopped, that's it.
The experiment is now... We are pulling the plug on this once and for all.
It was an end of chapter there and turn the page.
Richards is taking psychiatric treatment to end his addiction
and continue as a musician.
Judge Lloyd Graburn said Richards' effort to remove himself from the drug culture
was an example for others,
so he was put on probation for a year and ordered to continue psychiatric treatment.
As part of his probation, he would have to give a concert
at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
Usually, it's the guy in the black hat that gets killed at the end, you know.
Not this time, brother, not this time.
In a way, the Stones saved me
because one thing that was more important than smack was the band, you know.
I was quite relieved that he cleaned up some.
I mean, we did things quicker. I think we were a bit more focused.
There's more effort and more energy.
It was a renewal.
We had gone through all this shit and all that,
and we were brothers-in-arms.
After all, we always said, whether we liked it or not, the band comes first.
Their popularity's never been greater.
And with a following like this, the Stones don't even have to advertise.
You love the Rolling Stones more than you love God!
The Rolling Stones have done it again.
100,000 fans watched Mick Jagger prance and dance as he has for nearly 20 years.
They are starting a tour, which will take them to 21 cities,
to be seen by 1.5 million adoring fans.
The anti-heroes of the 60s are back on the road for their biggest tour ever.
The Rolling Stones had gone from being the band everyone hated
to the band everyone loved.
We'd gone from unacceptable to totally acceptable.
Everything had changed.
We became a kind of institution, and we hadn't even got to be 40 yet.
Cats have nine lives,
and we've seem to have got through about 20 fuckin' lives so far.
I don't know how we do it.
We had never been as high as this, we'd never been as successful.
We've done it.
You just don't fuck with the Stones, you know, this is a simple rule, it don't pay.
You had this kind of, "Fuck the world, you could do anything" attitude.
For a moment, that was definitely there.
I mean, you felt you're riding in the wave and all that.
But you can't be young forever.