Life (2 page)

Bill Carter was finally tracked down to Little Rock, where he was having a barbecue at the house of a friend of his who happened to be a judge, a very useful coincidence. He would hire a plane and be there in a couple of hours, bringing the judge with him. Carter’s judge friend knew the state policeman who was going to search the car; told him that he thought the police had no right to do it and warned him to hold off a search until he got there. Everything froze for two more hours.

Bill Carter had grown up working on the local political campaigns from when he was in college, so he knew almost everybody of importance in the state. And people he had worked for in Arkansas had now become some of the most powerful Democrats in Washington. His mentor was Wilbur Mills, from kensett, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, second most powerful man after the president. Carter came from a poor background, joined the Air Force at the time of Korea, paid for law studies with his GI money until it ran out, when he joined the Secret Service and ended up guarding Kennedy. He wasn’t in Dallas that day—he was on a training course—but he’d been everywhere with Kennedy, planned his trips, and knew all the key officials in every state Kennedy had visited. He was close to the center. After Kennedy’s death he was an investigator on the Warren Commission and then started his own law practice in Little Rock, becoming a kind of people’s lawyer. He had a lot of balls. He was passionate about the rule of law, the correct way of doing things, the Constitution—and he taught police seminars on it. He’d gone into the defense attorney business he told me because he’d got fed up with policemen routinely abusing their power and bending the law, which meant almost all of them he encountered on tour with the Rolling Stones, in almost every city. Carter was our natural ally.

His old contacts in Washington had been his ace card when we were refused visas to tour in the United States in 1973. What Carter found when he first went to Washington on our behalf late that year was that the Nixon dictum prevailed and ran through the bureaucracy down to the lowest level. He was told officially that the Stones would never tour in the United States again. Apart from our being the most dangerous rock-and-roll band in the world, inciting riots, purveying gross misconduct and contempt for the law, there was widespread anger that Mick had appeared on stage dressed as Uncle Sam, wearing the Stars and Stripes. That by itself was enough to refuse him entry. It was bunting! You had to guard yourself against being attacked from that area. Brian Jones got pulled in because he picked up an American flag that was lying around backstage in the mid-’60s in Syracuse, New York, I think it was. He put it over his shoulder, but a corner of it touched the ground. This was after the show and we were making our way back and the police escort barged us all into an office and started screaming, “Dragging the flag on the ground. You’re demeaning my nation, an act of sedition.”

Then there was my record—no getting away from it. It was also widely known—what else did the press write about me?—that I had a heroin addiction. I’d just had a conviction in the UK for possession of drugs, in October 1973, and I had been convicted of possession in France in 1972. Watergate was heating up when Carter began his campaign—some of Nixon’s henchmen had been jailed and Nixon was soon to fall along with Haldeman, Mitchell and the rest—some of whom had been involved personally with the FBI in the underhanded campaign against John Lennon.

Carter’s advantage at the immigration department was that he was one of the boys, he came from law enforcement, he had respect for having been with Kennedy. He did an “I know how you boys feel” and just said he wanted a hearing because he didn’t think we were being treated fairly. He worked his way in; many months of slogging. He paid attention particularly to the lower-level staff, who he knew could obstruct things on technicalities. I underwent medical tests to prove that I was drug free, from the same doctor in Paris who had given me many a clean bill of health. Then Nixon resigned. And then Carter asked the top official to meet Mick and judge for himself, and of course Mick puts on his suit and charms the pants off him. Mick is really the most versatile bloke. Why I love him. He can hold a philosophical discussion with Sartre in his native tongue. Mick’s very good with the locals. Carter told me he applied for the visas not in New York or Washington but in Memphis, where it was quieter. The result was an astonishing turnaround. Waivers and visas were suddenly issued on one condition: that Bill Carter toured with the Stones and would personally assure the government that riots would be prevented and that there would be no illegal activities on the tour. (They required a doctor to accompany us—an almost fictional character who appears later in the narrative, who became a tour victim, sampling the medication and running off with a groupie.)

Carter had reassured them by offering to run the tour Secret Service–style, alongside the police. His other contacts also meant that he would get a tip-off if the police were planning a bust. And that’s what saved our asses on many occasions.

Things had hardened up since the 1972 tour, with all the demonstrations and antiwar marches and the Nixon period. The first evidence of this was in San Antonio on June 3. This was the tour of the giant inflatable cock. It came rising up from the stage as Mick sang “Starfucker.” It was great was the cock, though we paid for it later in Mick’s wanting props at every tour after that, to cover his insecurities. There was a huge business of getting elephants on stage in Memphis until they ended up crashing through ramps and shitting all over the stage in rehearsals and were abandoned. We never had a problem with the cock in our opening shows at Baton Rouge. But the cock was a lure to the coppers who had given up trying to bust us in the hotel or while we were traveling or in the dressing room. The only place they could get us was on stage. They threatened to arrest Mick if the cock rose that night, and there was a mighty standoff. Carter warned them that the kids would burn down the arena. He’d taken the temperature and realized the kids weren’t going to stand for it. In the end Mick decided to defer to the sentiments of the authorities, and it didn’t erect itself in San Antonio. In Memphis when they threatened to arrest Mick for singing the lyrics “Starfucker, starfucker,” Carter stopped them in their tracks by producing a playlist from the local radio station that showed they’d been playing it on the air without any protest for two years. What Carter saw and was determined to fight every inch of the way was that every time the police moved, in every city, they violated the law, acted illegally, tried to bust in without warrants, made searches without probable cause.

S
o there was some
form on the books already by the time Carter finally got to Fordyce, with the judge under his arm. A great press corps was established in town; roadblocks had been erected to stop more people coming in. What the police wanted to do was to open the trunk, where they were sure they would find drugs. First they charged me with reckless driving because my tires had squealed and kicked up gravel as I left the restaurant car park. Twenty yards of reckless driving. Charge two: I had a “concealed weapon,” the hunting knife. But to open the trunk legally they needed to show “probable cause,” meaning there had to be some evidence or reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed. Otherwise the search is illegal and even if they find the stuff the case will be thrown out. They could have opened the trunk if they’d seen contraband when they looked through the car window, but they hadn’t seen anything. This “probable cause” business was what generated the shouting matches that frequently erupted now between the various officials as the afternoon wore on. First off, Carter made it clear that he saw a trumped-up charge. To invent a probable cause, the cop who stopped me said that he smelled marijuana smoke coming through the windows as we left the car park and this was their cue to open the trunk. “They must think I fell off a watermelon truck,” Carter told us. The cops were trying to say that in the minute between leaving the restaurant and driving out of the car park there was time to light up a spliff and fill the car with enough smoke that it could be smelled many yards away. This was why they had arrested us, they said. That alone destroyed the credibility of the police evidence. Carter discussed all this with an already enraged chief of police, whose town was under siege, but who knew he could stop our sold-out concert the following night at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas by keeping us in Fordyce. In Chief Bill Gober, Carter saw and we saw the archetype redneck cop, the Bible Belt version of my friends from Chelsea police station, always prepared to bend the law and abuse their powers. Gober was a man personally enraged by the Rolling Stones—their dress, their hair, what they stood for, their music and above all their challenge to authority, as he saw it. Disobedience. Even Elvis said “Yes, sir.” Not these long-haired punks. So Gober went ahead and opened the trunk, warned by Carter that he would challenge him all the way to the Supreme Court. And when the trunk was opened that was the real creamer. It was legs-in-the-air laughter.

When you crossed the river from Tennessee, then mostly a dry state, into West Memphis, which is in Arkansas, there were liquor stores selling what was basically moonshine with brown paper labels. Ronnie and I had gone berserk in one of them, buying every bizarre bottle of bourbon with a great label, Flying Cock, Fighting Cock, the Grey Major, little hip flasks with all of these exotic handwritten labels on them. We had sixty-odd in the trunk. So now we were suddenly suspected of being bootleggers. “No, we bought them, we paid for them.” So I think all of that booze confused them. This is the ’70s and boozers are not dopeheads, in those days there was that separation. “At least they’re men and drink whiskey.” Then they found Freddie’s briefcase, which was locked, and he told them he’d forgotten the combination. So they smacked it open and there, sure enough, were two small containers of pharmaceutical cocaine. Gober thought he had us, or at least he had Freddie, cold.

It took some time to find the judge, now late in the evening, and when he arrived he’d been out on the golf course all day, drinking, and by this time he was flying.

Now we have total comedy, absurdity, Keystone Kops as the judge takes to his bench and the various lawyers and cops try to get him to follow their versions of the law. What Gober wanted to do was to get the judge to rule that the search and the finding of the coke were legal and that all of us would be detained on felony charges—i.e., put in the slammer. On this little point of law, arguably, hung the future of the Rolling Stones, in America at least.

What then happened is pretty much as follows, from what I overheard and from Bill Carter’s later testimony. And this is the quickest way to tell it, with apologies to Perry Mason.

The Cast:

Bill Gober. Police Chief. Vindictive, enraged.

Judge Wynne. Presiding judge in Fordyce. Very drunk.

Frank Wynne. Prosecuting attorney. The judge’s brother.

Bill Carter. Well-known, aggressive criminal lawyer, representing the Rolling Stones. Native of Arkansas, from Little Rock.

Tommy Mays. Prosecuting attorney. Idealistic, fresh out of law school.

Others present: Judge Fairley. Brought along by Carter to witness fair play and to keep him out of jail.

Outside Courthouse:
Two thousand Rolling Stones fans who are pressed against barricades outside the town hall, chanting “Free Keith. Free Keith.”

Inside Courtroom:

Judge:
Now, I think what we are judging here is a felony. A felony, gennnmen. I will take summmissions. Mr. Attorney?

Young Prosecuting Attorney:
Your Honor, there is a problem here about evidence.

Judge:
Y’all have to excuse me a minute. I’ll recess.

[Perplexity in court. Proceeding held up for ten minutes. Judge returns. His mission was to cross the road and buy a pint bottle of bourbon before the store closed at ten p.m. The bottle is now in his sock.]

Carter
[on telephone to Frank Wynne, the judge’s brother]: Frank, where are you? You’d better come up. Tom’s intoxicated. Yeah. OK. OK.

Judge:
Proceed, Mr.… ah… proceed.

Young Prosecuting Attorney:
I don’t think we can legally do this, Your Honor. We don’t have justification to hold them. I think we have to let them go.

Police Chief
[to judge, yelling]: Damn we do. You gonna let these bastards go? You know I’m gonna place you under arrest, Judge. You damn right I am. You are intoxicated. You are publicly drunk. You are not fit to sit on that bench. You are causing a disgrace to our community. [He tries to grab him.]

Judge
[yelling]: You sonofabitch. Gerraway from me. You threaten me, I’m gonna have your ass outta… [A scuffle.]

Carter
[moving to separate them]: Whoa. Now, boys, boys. Let’s stop
squabbling
. Let’s keep
talking.
This is no time to get the liver out and put the knives in ha ha… We got TV, the world’s press outside. Won’t look good. You know what the governor’s going to say about this. Let’s proceed with the business. I think we can reach some agreement here.

Courtroom Official:
Excuse me, Judge. We have the BBC on live news from London. They want you now.

Judge:
Oh yeah. ’Scuse me a minute, boys. Be right back. [He takes a nip from the bottle in his sock.]

Police Chief
[still yelling]: Goddamn circus. Damn you, Carter, these boys have committed a felony. We found cocaine in that damn car. What more do you want? I’m gonna bust their asses. They gonna play by our rules down here and I’m gonna hit ’em where it hurts. How much they payin’ you, Hoover boy? Unless I get a ruling that the search was legal, I’m gonna arrest the judge for public drunk.

Judge
[v/o to BBC]: Oh yeah, I was over there in England in World War Two. Bomber pilot, 385th Bomb Group. Station Great Ashfield. I had a helluva time over there.… Oh, I love England. Played golf. Some of the great courses I played on. You got some great ones there.… Wennnworth? Yeah. Now to inform y’all, we’re gonna hold a press conference with the boys and explain some of the proceedings here, how the Rolling Stones came to be in our town here an’ all.