Old Gods Almost Dead (10 page)

Early in July, the Stones were offered their first TV slot on a summer spin-off of
Thank Your Lucky Stars.
The gig had come through Easton, who repped the show's host. Andrew sent the band to a tailor for matching jackets in houndstooth check with black velvet collars. When the finished suits arrived and the Stones showed up to try them on, there were only five suits. Andrew had told the tailor not to bother with Stu's because he was out of the band.

The crushing news was broken to Stu by Brian, who told him Andrew insisted on it. Stu was older, straighter, a big geezer type who didn't fit the image. The Rolling Stones had to be pretty, thin, longhaired boys. At a band meeting on Eel Pie Island, Andrew facetiously explained that six was too fucking many for a band anyway, since the kids could only count to five. Brian didn't like Andrew, was nervous about his obvious preference for Mick as point man and sex symbol, but went along. So did the others.

It was a big moment, the end of the R&B band called the Rollin' Stones and the beginning of the group that would rival the Beatles. Stu took being fired from the band he and Brian had founded philosophically. “I mean,” he said later, “there would have been a group exactly like the Rolling Stones, and they would have been as good as the Rolling Stones, whether Brian and I existed or not.”

They asked Stu to stay on as road manager, to keep playing piano at the gigs and on the records, and bighearted Stu agreed, not without some lingering bitterness. He grew to hate Brian Jones for this easy betrayal. As for Andrew Oldham, despite his admiration for Andrew's careful and brilliant handling of the group in days to come, Stu said, “I wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire.”

Lucky Stars

Birmingham, Sunday, July 7.
The Rolling Stones appeared smiling nervously on TV for the first time (
Lucky Stars Summer Spin
), miming to a tape of “Come On” in their juvenile black-velvet-collared checked suits, last on a bill with half a dozen now-forgotten acts. Mick shook his Beatles-cut hair and twitched spastically as the studio crew looked on in horror. Critics in the papers began to compare the Stones unfavorably to the more charming Beatles. Words like “apes” and “cavemen” were deployed in an ultimately successful effort to brand the Stones as the ugly, thuggish flip side of the sunny and engaging lads from Liverpool. Andrew thought this was brilliant and encouraged it, to the dismay of the Stones' families.

On July 13, the Stones opened for the Hollies in one of the Stones' first shows outside London. The north of England was a foreign country to the London-bred Stones. Keith had never been farther north than the north of London. The Hollies, from Manchester, were a pop group (“Bus Stop”) featuring close harmony vocals that influenced the Stones in a more pop direction. Graham Nash and the other Hollies became close to the Stones, and Brian, in his almost desperate run for the rainbow, suddenly wanted to emulate their lighter style. Even Stu liked them. Ex-choirboy Keith was a good harmony singer and a plausible alternative vocalist, unlike Brian, who had an ugly singing voice. Bill Wyman started to sing backup vocals with Keith.

On July 21, the Stones played Studio 51 on Great Newport Street in Soho, their first London gig since their record came out. The tiny sweat lodge of a club was crammed with young musicians—future Small Faces, Kinks, and Zombies; proto-Zeppelins—eager to hear the Stones, who didn't bother to play their new record or even play to their audience. Instead, they pumped out their lusty, rumbling R&B and impressed everyone by not smiling or “entertaining” like every other hopeful young band. The Rolling Stones just stood there and played, cool to the point of intimidation, radiating a tough, potent, and extremely influential Evil.

                

Andrew Oldham's
brilliant “styling” of the Stones began in earnest with the next round of interviews and photo sessions. In a process of spontaneous and instinctive invention relying as much on language as on a look or an attitude, he styled the Stones as sullen, inarticulate droogs. Photos displayed the group's dissolute, delinquent body language, cribbed from icons of coolness in French New Wave cinema. Interviews were deliberately monosyllabic and unhelpful. Charlie Watts was ordered to stick out his tongue at newsreel cameras. If the Beatles were a blast of oxygen into a wheezing England, the Rolling Stones would be a dopey whiff of nitrous oxide. Teen rebellion and rock and roll had gone steady since the mid-1950s, but Andrew Oldham's rethink of the Stones' image built a successful model of pouting, rudeness, and contempt since used by hundreds of bands through four decades of rock, punk, and Brit-pop.

Andrew got the Stones an endorsement deal with Vox, makers of instruments and amplifiers, and the Stones went to the Vox factory (in Dartford) to be photographed in skinny ties and leather vests. Vox gave Brian Jones the pear-shaped white guitar that he famously used for the next three years. Late in July, the Stones played a deb party for the daughter of Lord and Lady Killerman. Mick liked these affairs, but Brian hated them. He got drunk, vomited in Stu's minibus, and passed out, missing the gig entirely.

Meanwhile, the nervous brewery that owned the Station Hotel evicted the Crawdaddy Club. Gomelsky moved to the clubhouse of the Richmond Athletic Association, a bigger room where it got even crazier on Sunday nights as the Stones were finishing their sets with Chuck Berry's “Bye Bye Johnny.” More girls showed up, hoisted onto their boyfriends' shoulders. More fights broke out as rabid kids pushed up to get close to the band. The Stones were getting too big for the club, and soon found themselves booked out of town on Sunday nights. Giorgio replaced them with the Yardbirds, Eric Clapton's raving R&B group, or the Detours, an early incarnation of the Who before Keith Moon joined on drums. Wistfully the Stones would find themselves headed up north on Sunday afternoons, while their friendly, familiar Crawdaddy slot (where their friends came to see them) was filled by a rival band.

                

In August,
Eric Easton began booking the Stones into the circuit of ballrooms they had previously shunned. Their days as a blues band were over; now they had to come up with catchy dance numbers. Decca wanted another single right away, and Andrew was desperately trying to find the right song. “Come On” had sold forty thousand records, Eric Easton told the band as he doled out their royalties, amounting to a pathetic eighteen pounds apiece. The Beatles were writing their own hit records, but the Stones depended on covering American R&B songs unreleased in England. On August 19 in Decca's studio, they recorded the Coasters' “Poison Ivy” and the hoodoo shuffle “Fortune Teller.” This second single was canceled by Decca after a few hundred copies had already been pressed. Everyone involved was frustrated that the Stones' canned-sounding versions of American records couldn't match the intense rush of their live sound.

On August 23, the Stones mimed “Come On” during their first appearance on the new pop TV show
Ready Steady Go!
on the independent ITV channel.
Ready Steady Go!,
hosted by mod fashion plate Cathy McGowan, had recently begun showcasing young English acts and visiting Motown stars lip-synching on pop art sets and scaffolds on Friday nights. Andrew had been hanging out in
RSG
's trendy greenroom since it first went on the air, and had an easy entrée to the show. Its young director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was sympathetic to the Stones and took care to project the sullen, Byronic image of the band that Andrew desired.
RSG
helped make the Stones major figures in England. Their long hair and angular features were perfect for the glare and shadows of black-and-white television. The hot TV lights cast a glowing corona around Brian's golden head, and there was an inherent visual drama in the backlit faces of Mick and especially Bill Wyman, on whom the camera seemed to linger in fascination. Mick's childhood TV experience helped his natural ability to deliver a song, almost matching his intimate appeal on a club-size stage. TV brought the Stones into English living rooms and made them seem more human, more familiar. All except for Brian Jones: his watchful, serious charisma and untouchable, otherworldly mystique were only enhanced by the cathode-ray aura that seemed to radiate from his image on a television screen.

August also saw the end of the Stones' residence at 102 Edith Grove. Brian had already left to move in with the family of his new girlfriend, Linda Lawrence, a sixteen-year-old hairdressing student he'd met at the Ricky Tick in Windsor, where he liked to walk the Lawrences' pet white goat on a lead through the streets while exquisitely dressed in the latest fashion. Mick and Keith moved into a flat at 33 Mapesbury Road, West Hampstead, and were soon joined by Andrew, who turned up on their doorstep claiming that his mother had thrown him out of her house. A few weeks later, Chrissie Shrimpton moved in as well. She and Mick fought all the time about almost everything. Andrew noted how often she hit Mick with her little fists. Keith also had a new girlfriend, Linda Keith, a cool, beautiful Jewish model he'd met through Andrew's girlfriend Sheila Klein. Linda Keith was a star-quality free spirit, the first serious love of Keith's life.

Bill Wyman was living in Penge with his wife and son, but was beginning his reign as the Stones' priapic love machine by bedding every girl he could find on the road, notching the tally of deflowered virgins in his diary like a bean counter. Charlie was already involved with the slightly older art student Shirley Ann Shepherd, whom he would soon secretly marry.

The squalid flat at Edith Grove was left to Jimmy Phelge. “Lovable,” Keith later said of him. “A hidden hero.” A tattered Rolling Stones poster pasted to the outside wall of the house would remain for almost fifteen years.

                

Late in August,
Brian started missing gigs. He had trouble breathing, a possible asthmatic condition aggravated by constant drinking and anxiety attacks. He was still the nominal “leader” of the Stones, trying to hold his tenuous position by playing Mick and Keith off against each other, constantly whispering lies and gossip about one to the other, succeeding only in planting jealousy and confusion in his own group. Brian and Andrew were suspicious of each other and barely spoke. Andrew was only interested in pushing Mick to the fore and was also bothering Mick and Keith to start writing songs together. Brian was left out of this, couldn't come up with a simple pop melody, and he resented this, which didn't help his health problems. If he couldn't make the gig, Stu sat in on piano, if one was available.

This newly fragile Brian could barely take the long journeys in Stu's bus as it bumped along Britain's primitive roads crammed with gear, amps, and sullen, chain-smoking musicians. Crafty Bill claimed he got carsick and could only ride in the front seat next to Stu. So the others were stuffed in the back. Plus, they were always running late, and Stu would refuse to stop when they had to relieve themselves. Keith complained bitterly that he had to piss out of the VW's air vent as the Stones hurtled along on ten-hour drives to far-off gigs in deepest Wales. They ate mainly greasy eggs, chips, and sausages at truck stops, lived on restless exhaustion, could only dream of collapsing when they got home late at night. It was a way of life none of them would have traded for the world.

Mick: “It was very exciting, the whole thing. The first time we got our picture in
Record Mirror
was so exciting, you couldn't believe it . . . And then to go from the music-oriented press to the national press and national television, and everyone seeing you [on the] two television channels, and then being recognized by everyone from builders to people working in shops . . . It goes to your head—a very champagne feeling.”

Wanna Be Your Man

Tuesday, September 10, 1963.
Summer held on to gray London. The Profumo Scandal was raging. Red double-decker buses and black cabs choked the streets with diesel smoke. Andrew Oldham was walking along Jermyn Street, St. James, head down, wondering where the Rolling Stones' second single was coming from. The band was rehearsing in Soho. Andrew had just gotten them a spot on a package tour going out later in the month with their heroes Bo Diddley and the Everly Brothers. The Stones would get an education in classic rock and roll, but first Andrew had to find their next record and was coming up with fuck-all.

A black taxi pulled up sharply next to him. “Get in, Andy, we've got something for you.”

It was half the Beatles, John and Paul, jolly and a bit tight, having had one or two at the Variety Club Awards luncheon at the Savoy. The Beatles had just appeared on the big TV variety show
Sunday Night at the London Palladium
and were certified Big Stars, currently working on their second album. Andrew jumped into the cab, speed-rapping about his single problem with the Stones until Paul helpfully mentioned,
“We've
got some fresh numbers that might be right for the Stones.”

Andrew ordered the driver to take them to Studio 51 in Great Newport Street. They crashed down the steps to the basement club. “Mick!” John called. “We've got yer next fookin' record!” Handed guitars, Lennon and McCartney played them the first verse and chorus of “I Wanna Be Your Man,” which they'd written for Ringo to sing.

Andrew's problem was solved. Rescued by the Beatles! Andrew told them he wanted the song, and John said, “Well, we have to finish it, then, don't we?” They sat in a corner and wrote the middle eight bars on the spot. The simple mating chant was so hot that after the Stones recorded it, the Beatles did too. Even Bob Dylan, soon to be besotted with the English bands, would cut a version.

The confidence, speed, and ease they saw in John and Paul impressed Mick and Keith. “I mean, the way they used to hustle tunes was great,” Mick said. It knocked them all out.