Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye (11 page)

CHAPTER SIX

BRIGHTON, MARCH 10, 1971

AS I SIT BY HIS SIDE IN THE BACKSEAT
of the long black limo that has just picked me up outside my flat in London for the ninety-minute drive to Brighton, Marshall Chess reaches into his jacket pocket for a joint of what he says is the finest Jamaican weed. Firing it up, he takes a hit and then offers it to me.

“Marshall,” I say. “I can’t.”

“C’mon, man,” he says. “This is great stuff. And it’s my last joint.”

“You said that last night,” I tell him.

“So what?” he says. “This is the last one, I swear. Go on. Take a hit.”

Knowing he will pull this exact same routine on me the next time I see him, I do as I have been told. On this tour, Marshall Chess is a constant source of not just fine Jamaican weed but also the kind of boundless energy and enthusiasm that made him the perfect choice to run the Stones’ brand-new record label. Having just split up with his wife, Marshall is now so fully involved in being what he will later call “the creative director” of the Rolling
Stones that there is nothing he will not do to help the band. What I like best about him is that all we ever seem to do together is laugh at everything on a nonstop basis.

Needless to say, getting high back then was something quite different than the quasi-legal, rather ordinary lifestyle it has since become. Being in an altered state during this era was not a means of coping with what then passed for reality. Rather, it was a victory over the boring stupidity of the straight world, a declaration of individual independence, and also the easiest way to pretend you were someone you were not.

Within the protective web that surrounded the Stones, you could get as high as you liked without ever worrying about where you had left your bag or how in the world you were going to get back to the hotel at four in the morning in a city where all the public transport had long since shut down for the night. Being high around the Stones only reinforced the feeling of youthful invincibility that was then the essence of rock ’n’ roll. So long as you were with the band, nothing bad could ever happen to you. Or so it seemed to me back then.

In Brighton, the seaside resort where day-trippers from London have traveled by train to enjoy themselves by the sea for the past 130 years, the Stones are scheduled to play two shows in a 1920s dance hall that has been converted into an oversold, very smoky, and completely hellish ballroom called The Big Apple.

For the first and only time on this tour, due to what no doubt must have been some kind of mistake on their part, Keith, Anita,
Marlon, and Gram Parsons actually arrive at the gig on time only to find that the dressing room door is locked. Making matters just that much worse, no one seems to know where to find the key. Taking immediate charge of the situation, Marshall Chess sends off a variety of envoys to locate the hapless local promoter.

Trapped in a dark, dank corridor as deadly cold as only a corridor in England could then be, the Stones and all who travel with them wait for someone to come unlock the door. As they stand there shifting impatiently from foot to foot with their breath forming steaming clouds in the freezing air, the minutes seem to pass like hours. That the Rolling Stones cannot even get into their own dressing room before the show is an outrage that Keith Richards soon chooses to take completely personally.

As he has already proven on this tour, Keith is not just a consummate musician onstage but also a world-class performance artist who at a moment’s notice is perfectly willing to transform any situation that does not meet his needs into high drama. Cradling baby Marlon in his arms, Keith says, “The bloody nerve. Making us wait out here. Who do these people think they are?”

That no one can answer this question only seems to make Keith even angrier. What has been just another minor moment of annoyance on the road suddenly becomes something else again when Marlon starts to cough. Although the child still seems to be as healthy as a horse, the wheels in Keith’s brain begin spinning even faster than before.

In his mind, poor Marlon has now suddenly become a waif, a poor and pitiful orphan of the storm whom much like Tiny Tim will be lucky to get a hard crust of bread to eat on Christmas Eve. Exposed to these conditions, poor little Marlon’s cough could suddenly become the croup. And then simply because some promoter
has forgotten where he put the key to the dressing room door, Keith’s beloved baby boy could expire right in his arms. Not that this is going to happen. But it
could.
And so when Marshall tells Keith that everyone is still waiting for the promoter to appear, Keith says, “Sod the bloody promoter. The filthy lout. Who do these people think they are?”

Working the scene for all he is worth, Keith stomps angrily back and forth across the narrow corridor a few times while continuing his diatribe. Finally deciding to take action, he hands Marlon to Anita and launches a full frontal assault on the door.
Rattle-rattle
goes the knob in his hand.
Bam-bam-bam
goes the flat of his palm against the frame.

Realizing this door is not just most definitely locked but also so sturdy that it is not about to give way, Keith reaches into his pocket for the single tool he is never without. Producing a knife, he promptly starts going to work with the tip of the blade on the screws that hold the hinges of the door in place. Although I have yet to exchange a single word with Keith on this tour and doubt he even knows who I am or what I am doing here, I have now become such an integral part of the Stones’ traveling party in my own mind that before I know it I am standing right beside Keith with a metal comb in my hand doing all I can to help him.

Twist-twist-twist,
out come the screws one after another. Like a pair of safecrackers working on a vault in the Bank of England, neither one of us speaks as we focus on the task at hand. Sagging backward, the door suddenly falls open before us. Hauling it into the dressing room, we fling it to the floor and then stand back so everyone can file past us into what for the Stones before a show is always a safe haven where no one but those they know and trust can ever go.

When at long last the promoter finally shows up with a set of keys dangling from his hand, everyone just ignores him. Innocent as newborn babes, none of them has any idea at all who could have done this dastardly deed. Having just aided and abetted Keith Richards in committing the crime of breaking and entering in the name of justice, rock ’n’ roll style, I now feel certain that I do in fact belong on this tour.

Dear old Keith. What a lad indeed he was back then. Unlike Mick, Keith seemed to have no interest whatsoever in high society, nor any real need to seek approval from anyone but what was often overlooked about him was the aspirational aspect of his personality. As working-class as he had been raised and still so often seemed to be in many ways, Keith always gravitated to the company of natural-born aristocrats who, just like him, had been born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Unwilling to cut his conscience to fit this year’s fashions, Keith never met his betters on any terms but his own. What you saw with Keith was what you got. If you liked it, great. You could join the party and try to hang out with him for as long as your system would allow. If not, then you could just ride on, baby, and find something else to do with your precious time.

Much like Mick, Keith could also sometimes be truly impossible to control. Shortly before the tour began, Keith had set everyone’s nerves on edge by failing to show up at all in the studio for the session during which the Stones had cut “Moonlight Mile,” the final track on
Sticky Fingers.
Asked if this had caused any tension between Mick and Keith, a longtime Stones insider who was on the tour would later say, “Well, if your lead guitarist doesn’t turn
up for the session when you’re cutting the final track on your new album, I’m sure there’s bound to be a bit of tension, yes. Whether Mick accepted it is another question because he’d already seen what had happened to Brian and might have thought, ‘Here’s another casualty waiting to happen.’”

While this was in fact precisely the kind of behavior Brian Jones had exhibited before being asked to leave the band, Keith was made of far sterner stuff. Despite how out of it he had seemed at times during the 1970 European tour, Keith had still somehow made it through all those gigs intact. The man’s commitment to the Rolling Stones was so deep that even if he was at death’s door, everyone knew Keith would always be there when the show began.

Already well on his way to developing the full-blown Pirate King persona he would refine over the coming years into a character only Johnny Depp could have played on screen, Keith had not yet ever spoken to anyone at length for publication. He was the one who made the music while Mick did all the talking. Long before they ever became known as “The Glimmer Twins,” this was an arrangement that seemed to suit them both perfectly.

It was not until I spoke to Keith again recently for a book on which I was then working that I realized how much this aspect of his personality had changed over the years. After so many phone calls notifying me precisely when he would come on the line that I began wondering if I was about to speak to the President of the United States, I picked up the phone in my office only to hear Keith shout out my name as though it had been only a few days since we had last seen one another.

Although the topic at hand was supposed to be the life and times of Ahmet Ertegun, Keith began telling me that the reason
Phil Spector had been so good at recording in mono was because he was deaf in one ear. Although Phil could also sometimes be an asshole, Keith said he was now thinking of sending him a cake in jail. When I asked if the cake would contain a file, Keith said, “No, a bomb!”