Life (13 page)
Doris had this to say on the subject:
Doris:
From eighteen till he left home at twenty, Keith was in between jobs, nothing, that’s why his dad got on at him. Get your hair cut and get yourself a job. I waited till Keith left before I moved out. I wouldn’t go while he was at home. I couldn’t leave him, could I? Break his heart. Then on the day I moved out, Bert went to work; Keith wasn’t with me. I had an electric light bill in my hand, and I went out and I posted the electric light bill back in! So Bert could pay it. Nice gesture, wasn’t it? Bill bought a ground-floor flat, because I told him I had to get out. They were just finishing these new flats, and he went up, done a deal with the builders and we moved in. Bill had some money. Bought it straight out. First telephone I had was when Bill bought that flat. I phoned Keith up one night. He said, “Yes?” I said, “Keith, we’ve moved into this flat.” I said, “I’ve got a phone, isn’t it lovely?” He wasn’t that pleased.
It was here, in Beckenham, that we began mysteriously to collect this little core collection of early fans, including Haleema Mohamed, my first love. Recently someone sold back to me a diary I kept in 1963—I think the only diary I ever wrote, more like a logbook of the Stones’ progress in those dire days. I must have left it in one of the flats we were always vacating, and whoever it was held on to it for all that time. In its back pocket was a tiny picture of Lee, as I called her. She was a beauty, with a slightly Indian look about her. It was the eyes that always got me and her smile and they’re both in the picture, as I remember her. She was at least two or three years younger than me, fifteen or at the most sixteen, and she had an English mother. I never saw her father, but I remember meeting the rest of her family. I remember going to pick her up and just saying hello to them in Holborn.
I was in love with Lee. Our relationship was touchingly innocent—maybe partly because if we ever got close we’d have to bunk up in a room full of other people, like Mick or Brian. And she was very young and lived with her parents in Holborn, an only child, like me. She must have put up with a lot, however fond she was of me. And it’s clear that we had one breakup and then got together again. “Second time around” says the diary, bitterly.
She was one of a gang of girls who used to come around in 1962. Where they came from we never figured out, though my diary shows that we met at least once at the Ken Colyer Club. There wasn’t a fan club in those days. This was the pre–fan club period. I don’t even know if we’d had any gigs. We just used to sit around and practice and learn. And somehow we got invaded by a bunch of five or six cockney girls from Holborn and Bermondsey. They used to speak great cockney back slang; they were really young, but they took it on themselves to take care of us. They used to come around and do our washing and cooking and then stay overnight and do the rest. It was really no big deal. Sex then was mostly just like, it’s a bit chilly, let’s cuddle, the gas has gone out and no shillings left. I was in love with Lee for a long time. She was just incredibly nice to me. It wasn’t a big sexual thing, we just sort of grew into each other. Maybe we were a little pissed one night, and also that shit builds up. Whenever we saw each other, we kept looking at each other and you know there’s something between you, it’s whether… can you get across the gap? And eventually, it usually happens. And, according to the diary, she came back a second time.
She must have been around for our first gig as “the Rollin’ Stones,” a band name Stu highly disapproved of. Brian, after figuring how much it would cost, called up
Jazz News,
which was a kind of “who’s playing where” rag, and said, “We’ve got a gig at…” “What do you call yourselves?” We stared at one another. “It?” Then “Thing?” This call is costing. Muddy Waters to the rescue! First track on
The Best of Muddy Waters
is “Rollin’ Stone.” The cover is on the floor. Desperate, Brian, Mick and I take the dive. “The Rolling Stones.” Phew!! That saved sixpence.
A gig! Alexis Korner’s band was booked to do a BBC live broadcast on July 12, 1962, and he’d asked us if we’d fill in for him at the Marquee. The drummer that night was Mick Avory—not Tony Chapman, as history has mysteriously handed it down— and Dick Taylor on the bass. The core Stones, Mick, Brian and I, played our set list: “Dust My Broom,” “Baby What’s Wrong?” “Doing the Crawdaddy,” “Confessin’ the Blues,” “Got My Mojo Working.” You’re sitting with some guys, and you’re playing and you go, “Ooh, yeah!” That feeling is worth more than anything. There’s a certain moment when you realize that you’ve actually just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you. You’re elevated because you’re with a bunch of guys that want to do the same thing as you. And when it works, baby, you’ve got wings. You know you’ve been somewhere most people will never get; you’ve been to a special place. And then you want to keep going back and keep landing again, and when you land you get busted. But you always want to go back there. It’s flying without a license.
Dezo Hoffmann / Rex USA
Mick, Brian and me in Edith Grove, summer of ’62. Learning Chicago blues. Marquee, Ealing Club, Crawdaddy Club. Turf fights with the trad jazzers. Bill Wyman comes with his Vox. Wongin’ the pog at the Station Hotel. We get Charlie on board. Andrew Loog Oldham signs us with Decca. First UK tour with the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley and Little Richard; our music drowned in riots. The Beatles give us a song. Andrew locks Mick and me in a kitchen and we write our first one.
T
he Rolling Stones spent the first year of their life hanging places, stealing food and rehearsing. We were paying to be the Rolling Stones. The place where we lived—Mick, Brian and I—at 102 Edith Grove, in Fulham, was truly disgusting. We almost made it our professional business for it to be so, since we had little means to make it otherwise. We moved in in the summer of 1962 and lived there for a year through the coldest winter since 1740, as records attested, and the shillings we fed into the meter for warmth, for electricity and gas, were not that easy to come by. It was mattresses and no furniture to speak of, only a threadbare carpet. There was no fixed rotation between the two beds and a couple of mattresses. And it didn’t really matter much; usually all three of us would wake up on that floor, where we had the enormous radiogram that Brian had brought with him, a great ’50s warm-up number.
We’d sit around working out the music in the Wetherby Arms, in the King’s Road, Chelsea. Usually I’d go round the back and steal their empties and then sell them back to them. You got a couple of pence on a beer bottle. Which in those times was not a lot of money. We stole empties at the parties we went to as well. Get one of us in first, and then the rest would come in in gang formation.
Edith Grove was a funny household. Three chicks underneath on the ground floor, student teachers from Sheffield; two poofters from Buxton above us. We had the middle floor. What the hell are we doing in Chelsea living between these northerners? It was a real slice of “Welcome to London,” since nobody came from there.
The student teachers from Sheffield are probably headmistresses now. But at the time they were a randy bunch. Which we had very little time for. We were in and out like Flynn. Mick and Brian were down there, but I never got involved with them. I didn’t fancy ’em. But I found they came in handy. They would do a bit of laundry for you. Or my mum would send the washing via Bill from her washing-machine demonstrations. The two incipient poofters hung out in the pubs in Earls Court with the Australian poofters, of which there were many at that time. Earls Court was Australia, basically. And a lot of them were wang-danglers because they could be more poofter in London than they could in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane. The guys above us would be talking with an Australian accent when they came back from these Earls Court outings. They’re going, “Hello, cobber!” “I thought you were from Buxton.”
Our flatmate was called James Phelge, the origin of half of the early pen name for our songwriting, Nanker Phelge. A “nanker” is a look—the face stretched to terrible contortions by the fingers inserted into all available orifices—a great Brian speciality. We advertised for a flatmate over the mike at the Ealing Club, someone to share the rent. Phelge must have sensed what he was getting into. He turned out to be perhaps the only person on the planet who could have lived in that terrible place with us—and even outflank us in gross and unacceptable behavior. He was in any case apparently the only one willing to live with this bunch pounding through the night, learning their crap, trying to find a gig. We were just idiotic together. We were still teenagers at the time, although at the top end of the scale. We dared each other: who could be more disgusting than anybody else. You think you can disgust me? I’ll show you. We’d get back from a gig and Phelge would be standing at the top of the stairs saying “Welcome home,” stark naked with his shitty underpants on his head, or pissing on you or flobbing at you. Phelge was a serious flobber. Mucus from every area he could summon up. He loved to walk into a room with a huge snot hanging out of his nose and dribbling down his chin, but otherwise be perfectly charming. “Hello, how are you? And this is Andrea, and this is Jennifer…” We had names for all different kinds of flob: Green Gilberts, Scarlet Jenkins. There was the Gabardine Helmsman, which is the one that people aren’t aware of; they snot it and it hangs on their lapel like a medal. That was the winner. Yellow Humphrey was another. The Flying V was the one that missed the handkerchief. People were always having colds in those days; things were always running out of their noses and they didn’t know what to do with them. And it can’t have been cocaine; it was a little too early. I think it was just bad English winters.
Because we had nothing much to do, we had very few gigs, we ended up studying people. And we’d always be nicking things from the other flats. Go down and rifle the girls’ drawers while they were out, find a shilling or two. The bog was rigged up for recording. We’d just switch on if somebody went in there, especially if one of the chicks downstairs said, “Can I use your john?” because theirs was occupied. “Yes, sure.” “Quick! Turn it on.” And then, after every “performance,” when the chain was pulled it sounded like incredible applause. We’d play it back later. After every visit there it sounded like Sunday night at the London Palladium.
The worst horror, certainly for any visitors to Edith Grove, was the pile of unwashed dishes in the “kitchen,” the substances growing out of the crockery, the greasy, cold pans piled in junked pyramids of foulness that no one could bear to touch. Yet it is true that one day we looked at this mess, Phelge and I, and thought that there was perhaps nothing else to do than to clean it. Given that Phelge was one of the filthiest people in the world, that was some historic decision. But that day we were overwhelmed by the amount of rubbish and so we went downstairs and stole a bottle of washing-up liquid.
At the time, the poverty seemed constant, unmovable. To go through that winter of ’62 was rough. It was a cold winter. But then Brian had this fantastic idea of bringing up his friend Dick, who had his Territorial Army bonus, and Brian was merciless towards Dick. We didn’t mind because we were getting the fallout. This is when nobody’s got two pennies to rub to-fucking-gether. Dick Hattrell was his name, and he was from Tewkesbury. And Brian almost killed the man. He would force him to walk behind him and pay for everything. Cruel, cruel, cruel. He would make him stand outside while we ate and he paid. Even Mick and I were shocked, and we were pretty cold-blooded. Sometimes he’d let him in for dessert. There was a streak of real cruelty in Brian. Dick Hattrel was Brian’s old school friend and he was panting like a little puppy after Brian. Once Brian left the poor sod outside with no clothes on, and it’s snowing and he’s begging and Brian’s laughing, and I’m not going to go to the window, I’m laughing too much. How could a guy let himself get into that position? Brian stole all his clothes and then sent him outside in his underpants. In a snowstorm. “What do you mean I owe you twenty-three pounds? Fuck off.” He’s just paid for us all evening; we’ve been feasting like kings. Terrible really, terrible. I said, “Brian, that’s just cold-blooded, man.” Brian, a cold-blooded, vicious motherfucker. Only short and blond with it. I wonder what happened to Hattrell. If he survived that, he could survive anything.
We were cynical, sarcastic and rude where necessary. We used to go to the local caff, which we called the “Ernie” because everyone in there was named Ernie, or so it seemed. “Ernie” became everybody else. “What a fucking Ernie, Christ.” Anybody that insisted on doing his job without doing you a favor was a fuckin’ Ernie. Ernie was the working man. Only got one thing on his mind, making another extra shilling.
If I’d had the choice of finding a diary of any three-month period of the Stones’ history, it would have been this one, the moment the band was hatching. And I did find one, covering January to March of 1963. The real surprise was that I kept any record of this period. It covers the crucial span when Bill Wyman arrived, or, more important, his Vox amplifier appeared and Bill came with it, and when we were trying to snare, to coin a phrase, Charlie Watts. I even kept accounts of the money we earned at gigs, the pounds, shillings and pence. Often it just said “0” when we played for beer at tiny end-of-term school dances. But entries also show January 21, Ealing Club: 0; January 22, Flamingo: 0; February 1, Red Lion: £1 10s. At least we’d got a gig. As long as you’ve got a gig, life is wonderful. Somebody called us up and booked us! I mean, wow. We must be doing something right. Otherwise shoplifting, picking up beer bottles and hunger was the order of the day. We used to pool our money for guitar strings, mending amplifiers and valves. Just to keep what we had going was an incredible expense.
Inside the cover of the pocket diary are the heavily inked words “Chuck,” “Reed,” “Diddley.” There you have it. That was all we listened to at the time. Just American blues or rhythm and blues or country blues. Every waking hour of every day was just sitting in front of the speakers, trying to figure out how these blues were made. You collapsed on the floor with a guitar in your hands. That was it. You never stop learning an instrument, but at that time it was still very much searching about. You had to make sounds if you wanted to play a guitar. We went for a Chicago blues sound, as close as we could get it—two guitars, bass and drums and a piano—and sat around and listened to every Chess record ever made. Chicago blues hit us right between the eyes. We’d all grown up with everything else that everybody had grown up with, rock and roll, but we focused on that. And as long as we were all together, we could pretend to be black men. We soaked up the music, but it didn’t change the color of our skin. Some even went whiter. Brian Jones was a blond Elmore James from Cheltenham. And why not? You can come from anywhere and be any color. We found that out later. Cheltenham, admittedly, is a bit far-fetched. Blues players from Cheltenham, there ain’t a lot. And we didn’t want to make money. We despised money, we despised cleanliness, we just wanted to be black motherfuckers. Fortunately we got plucked out of that. But that was the school; that’s where the band was born.
T
he early days
of the magic art of guitar weaving started then. You realize what you can do playing guitar with another guy, and what the two of you can do is to the power of ten, and then you add other people. There’s something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It’s really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it’s all for one purpose, and there’s no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it’s all up to you. It’s really jazz—that’s the big secret. Rock and roll ain’t nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
Jimmy Reed was a very big model for us. That was always two-guitar stuff. Almost a study in monotony in many ways, unless you got in there. But then Jimmy Reed had something like twenty hits in the charts with basically the same song. He had two tempos. But he understood the magic of repetition, of monotony, transforming itself to become this sort of hypnotic, trancelike thing. We were fascinated by it, Brian and I. We would spend every spare moment trying to get down Jimmy Reed’s guitar sounds.
Jimmy Reed was always pissed out of his brain. There was one famous time, he was already like an hour and forty-five minutes late for a show, finally they get him onto the stage and he goes, “This one’s called ‘Baby What You Want Me to Do?’ ” And he threw up over the whole first two rows. Probably happened many times. He always had his wife with him, whispering the lyrics in his ear. You can even hear it on the records sometimes: “Going up… going down,” but it worked. He was a solid favorite to the black folks in the South, and occasionally in the whole world. It was a fascinating study in restraint.
Minimalism has a certain charm. You say, that’s a bit monotonous, but by the time it’s finished, you’re wishing it hadn’t. There’s nothing bad about monotony; everyone’s got to live with it. Great titles—“Take Out Some Insurance.” This is not your everyday song title. And it would always come down to him and his old lady having a fight or something. “Bright Lights, Big City,” “Baby What You Want Me to Do?” “String to Your Heart,” wicked songs. One of Jimmy’s lines was “Don’t pull no subway, I rather see you pull a train.” Which actually means don’t go on the dope, don’t go underground, I’d rather see you either drunk or on cocaine. Took me years and years to decipher this.
And I was heavily into Muddy Waters’s guitarist Jimmy Rogers, and the guys that played behind Little Walter, the Myers brothers. Talk about an ancient form of weaving, they were the masters. Half of the band was the Muddy Waters band, which included Little Walter as well. But while he was making these records, he had another little team, Louis Myers and his brother David, founders of the Aces. Two great guitar players. Pat Hare used to play with Muddy Waters and also did a few tracks with Chuck Berry. One of his unreleased numbers was called “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby,” dug up from the Sun vaults after he did just that, and then killed the policeman sent to investigate. He went in for life in the early ’60s and died in a Minnesota jail. There was Matt Murphy and Hubert Sumlin. They were all Chicago blues players, some more solo than others. But as teams, if we keep it down to that, the Myers brothers definitely go way up to the top of the list. Jimmy Rogers with Muddy Waters, an amazing pair of weavers. Chuck Berry is fantastic, but he would weave by himself, with himself. He did great overdubs with his own guitar because he was too cheap to hire another guy most of the time. But that’s just on records; you can’t re-create that live. But his “Memphis, Tennessee” is probably one of the most incredible little bits of overdubbing and tinkering that I’ve ever heard. Let alone a sweet song. I could never overstress how important he was in my development. It still fascinates me how this one guy could come up with so many songs and sling it so gracefully and elegantly.