Life

by Keith Richards; James Fox

  I’ve talked to guys since like Joe Walsh of the Eagles and many other white musicians about what they listened to when they were growing up, and it was all very provincial and narrow and depended on the local, usually white, FM radio station. Bobby Keys reckons he can tell where someone came from by their musical tastes. Joe Walsh heard us play when he was at high school, and he’s told me that it had a huge effect on him simply because nobody he knew had ever heard anything like that because there wasn’t anything. He was listening to doo-wop and that was about it. He had never heard Muddy Waters. Amazingly, he was first exposed to the blues, he said, by hearing us. He also decided there and then that the minstrel’s life was for him, and now you can’t go into any diner without hearing him weaving that guitar of his on “Hotel California.”

  Jim Dickinson, the southern boy who played piano on “Wild Horses,” was exposed to black music through the powerful and only black radio station, WDIA, when he was growing up in Memphis, so when he went to college in Texas he had a musical education that exceeded that of anybody he met there. But he never saw any black musicians, even though he lived in Memphis, except once he saw the Memphis Jug Band with Will Shade and Good Kid on the washboard, when they were playing in the street when he was nine. But the racial barriers were so severe that those kinds of players were inaccessible to him. Then Furry Lewis —at whose funeral he played—and Bukka White and others were being brought out to play via the folk revival. I do think maybe the Stones had a lot to do with making people twiddle their knobs a little more.

  When we put out “Little Red Rooster,” a raw Willie Dixon blues with slide guitar and all, it was a daring move at the time, November 1964. We were getting no-no’s from the record company, management, everyone else. But we felt we were on the crest of a wave and we could push it. It was almost in defiance of pop. In our arrogance at the time, we wanted to make a statement. “I am the little red rooster / Too lazy to crow for day.” See if you can get that to the top of the charts, motherfucker. Song about a chicken. Mick and I stood up and said, come on, let’s push it. This is what we’re fucking about. And the floodgates burst after that, suddenly Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy are getting gigs and working. It was a breakthrough. And the record got to number one. And I’m absolutely sure what we were doing made Berry Gordy at Motown capable of pushing his stuff elsewhere, and it certainly rejuvenated Chicago blues as well.

  I keep a notebook where I write down sketches and song ideas, and it contains this:

  JUKE JOINT… ALABAMA? GEORGIA?

  Finally I’m in my element! An incredible band is wailing on a stage decorated with phosphorescent paint, the dance floor is moving as one, so does the sweat and the ribs cooking out back. The only thing that makes me stand out is that I’m white! Wonderfully, no one notices this aberration. I am accepted, I’m made to feel so warm. I am in heaven!

  Most towns, like white Nashville, for example, by ten o’clock were ghost towns. We were working with black guys, the Vibrations, Don Bradley, I think his name was. The most amazing act, they could do everything. They were doing somersaults while they were playing. “What are you going to do after the show?” This is already an invitation. So, get in the cab and we go across the tracks and it’s just starting to happen. There’s food going, everybody’s rocking and rolling, everybody’s having a good time, and it was such a contrast from the white side of town, it always sticks in my memory. You could hang there with ribs, drink, smoke. And big mamas, for some reason they always looked upon us as thin and frail people. So they started to mama us, which was all right with me. Shoved into the middle of two enormous breasts… “You need a rubdown, boy?” “OK, anything you say, mama.” Just the free-and-easiness of it. You wake up in a house full of black people who are being so incredibly kind to you, you can’t believe it. I mean, shit, I wish this happened at home. And this happened in every town. You wake up, where am I? And there’s a big mama there, and you’re in bed with her daughter, but you get breakfast in bed.

  The first time I stared into a gun barrel was in the men’s room of the Civic Auditorium (I believe) in Omaha, Nebraska. It was in the fist of a big grizzled cop. I was with Brian, backstage at a sound check. We used to drink Scotch and Coke at the time. Anyhow, we took our paper cups with us and answered the call of nature, cup in hand. Happily we splashed away. I heard the door open behind us. “OK, turn around slowly,” a voice wheezed. “Fuck off,” Brian said. “I mean now,” came the wheeze. Shaking off the drips, we looked around. A massive cop with a huge revolver in his huge fist fixed us with a menacing regard. Silence ruled as Brian and I stared at the black hole. “This is a public building. No alcoholic beverages allowed! You will tip the contents of your cups into the john. Now! No quick moves. Do it.” Brian and I cracked up but did as we were told. He did have the upper hand. Brian said something about heavy-handed overreaction, which only infuriated the old bugger to the point that the barrel began to tremble. So we blabbered about being unaware of the city ordinance, to which he barked out something about ignorance not being a defense in the eyes of the law. I was about to ask how he knew we were drinking booze but thought better of it. We had another bottle in the dressing room.

  It was soon after that that I picked up a Smith & Wesson .38 special. It was the Wild West, and still is! I picked it up in a truck stop for twenty-five dollars, plus ammo. Thus began my illicit relationship with that venerable firm. I’m not on their books! Quite a few of the guys we were traveling with were carrying shooters. They were fucking hard cats who I worked with. I remember that other side of it. Pools of blood oozing out of dressing rooms and realizing there’s a beating going on and you don’t want to get involved. But the biggest horror of all was seeing the cops turn up. Especially backstage. You should have seen some of the bands run, baby. A lot of the cats on the road were on the run for one reason or another. Probably minor offenses, like not paying their alimony or auto theft. You were not working with saints here. They were good players and they could pick up a gig and disappear amongst the minstrels. They were streetwise like motherfuckers. Backstage, a squad of cops would arrive with a warrant for somebody that was playing guitar in some band. It was kind of like the press-gang had arrived. Oh, my God! The panic… You’d see Ike Turner’s piano player zooming down the stairs.

  By the end of that first American tour, we thought we’d blown it in America. We’d been consigned to the status of medicine shows and circus freaks with long hair. When we got to Carnegie Hall in New York, we were suddenly back in England with screaming teenyboppers. America was coming around. We realized that it was just starting.

  Mick and I hadn’t come all the way to New York in ’64 not to go to the Apollo. So I hooked up again with Ronnie Bennett. We went to Jones Beach with all the Ronettes in a red Cadillac. The desk rang up, “There’s a lady downstairs.” “Come on, let’s go.” And it was James Brown’s week at the Apollo. Maybe Ronnie should describe what nice English boys we were—contrary to popular belief:

  Ronnie Spector: The first time Keith and Mick came to America, they weren’t successful, they slept on my mother’s living room floor up in Spanish Harlem. They had no money, and my mom would get up in the morning and make them bacon and eggs, and Keith would always say, “Thank you, Mrs. Bennett.” And then I took them to see James Brown at the Apollo, and that’s what made them so determined. Those guys went home and came back superstars. Because I showed them what I did, how I grew up, and how I went to the Apollo Theater when I was eleven years old. I took them backstage and they met all these rhythm and blues stars. I remember Mick standing there shaking when we passed James Brown’s room.

  The first time I went to heaven was when I awoke with Ronnie (later Spector!) Bennett asleep with a smile on her face. We were kids. It doesn’t get any better than that. Just more refined. What can I say? She took me to her parents’ house, took me to her bedroom. Several times, but that was the first time. And I’m just a guitar player. You know what I
mean?

  James Brown had the whole week there at the Apollo. Go to the Apollo and see James Brown, damn fucking right. I mean, who would turn that down? He was a piece of work. So on the button. We thought we were a tight band! The discipline in the band impressed me more than anything else. On stage, James would snap his fingers if he thought somebody had missed a beat or hit a wrong note, and you could see the player’s face fall. He would signal the fine he had imposed with his fingers. These guys would be watching his hands. I even saw Maceo Parker, the sax player who was the architect of James Brown’s band—who I finally got to work with in the Winos—get fined about fifty bucks that night. It was a fantastic show. Mick’s looking at his foot moves. Mick took more notice than I did that day—lead singer, dancing, he calls the shots.

  Backstage that night, James wanted to show off to these English folk. He’s got the Famous Flames, and he’s sending one out for a hamburger, he’s ordering another to polish his shoes and he’s humiliating his own band. To me, it was the Famous Flames, and James Brown happened to be the lead singer. But the way he lorded it over his minions, his minders and the actual band, to Mick was fascinating.

  *

  When we got back to England, the big difference was seeing old friends, mostly musicians, who were already amazed that we were the Rolling Stones, but now “You’ve been to the States, man.” You were suddenly aware that you had been distanced just by the fact that you’d been to America. It really pissed off the English fans. It happened with the Beatles’ fans too. You were no longer “theirs.” There was a sense of resentment. Never more so than in Blackpool. There, at the Empress Ballroom, a few weeks after our return, we faced the mob again, though this time a rabble army of Scotch drunks baying for blood. They used to have what they called Scotch week. All of the factories in Glasgow shut down and nearly everybody from there went to Blackpool, the seaside resort. We start the gig, and it’s jam-packed, a lot of guys, a lot of them very, very pissed, all dressed up in their Sunday best. And suddenly while I’m playing, this little redheaded fucker flobs on me. So I move aside, and he follows me and flobs on me again and hits me in the face. So I stand in front of him again and he spits at me again and, with the stage, his head was just about near my shoe, like a penalty shot in football. I just went bang and knocked his fucking head off, with the grace of Beckham. He’s never walked the same since. And after that, the riot broke out. They smashed everything, including the piano. We didn’t see a piece of equipment that came back any bigger than three inches square with wires hanging out. We got out of there by the skin of our teeth.

  In the days after our return from the US we appeared on Juke Box Jury, a long-established format presided over by a TV pro called David Jacobs, in which the celebs on the “jury” discussed the records Jacobs played and then voted them hits or misses. This was one of those landmark moments that completely escaped us while it was happening. But in the media later it was seen as a declaration of generational war, the cause of outrage, fear and loathing. On the same day we’d taped a show called Top of the Pops to promote our Bobby Womack single “It’s All Over Now.” I’d gotten used to lip-synching without blushing; that’s the way it was done. Very few shows were live. We were getting a little bit cynical about the tripe market. You realized that you were really in one of the sleaziest businesses there is, without actually being a gangster. It was a business where the only time people laughed was when they’d screwed someone else over. I have a feeling that by then we kind of realized the role that we were being cast in, and that there was no fighting it and anyway, nobody had really played it before, and this would be kind of fun. And we didn’t give a shit. Andrew Oldham describes our Juke Box Jury appearance in his book Stoned.

  Andrew Oldham: With no prompting from me, they proceeded to behave as complete and utter yobos and in twenty-five minutes managed to confirm the nation’s worst opinion of them for once and all. They grunted, they laughed among themselves, were merciless towards the drivel that was played and hostile towards the unflappable Mr. Jacobs. This was no planned press move. Brian and Bill made some effort to be polite, but Mick and Keith and Charlie would have none of it.

  Nobody was particularly witty or anything. We just trashed every record they played. While the record was playing, we were going, “I’m not fit to comment on this,” “You can’t listen to this stuff. Be serious.” And there’s David Jacobs trying to cover up the dirt. Jacobs was smarmy, but he was actually quite a nice guy. It had been so easy up until then: Helen Shapiro and Alma Cogan, reliable Variety Club sorts of people, all of those showbiz comfy societies that everybody was roped into, and then we come out of nowhere. I’ve no doubt that David was thinking, “Thanks a lot, BBC, and I want a raise after working with this lot.” It won’t get any better. Wait for the Sex Pistols, mate.

  The Variety Club was like the inner circle, at the time, in showbiz. You didn’t know if it was Freemasons or a charity; it was a clique that basically ran show business. Weirdly archaic, English showbiz mafia. We were thrown into all this in order to tear it apart. They were still playing their game. Billy Cotton. Alma Cogan. But you realized that all these celebs, and really very few of them were talented, had an incredible swing on things. Who got to play where, who would close doors on you and who would open them. And luckily, the Beatles had already shown them all what was what. The writing was on the wall already, so when they had to deal with us, they didn’t know quite which way to pussyfoot.

  The only reason we got a record deal with Decca was because Dick Rowe turned down the Beatles. EMI got them, and he could not afford to make the same mistake twice. Decca was desperate—I’m amazed the guy still had the job. At the time, just like anything else in “popular entertainment,” they thought, it’s just a fad, it’s a matter of a few haircuts and we’ll tame them anyway. But basically we only got a record deal because they could just not afford to fuck up twice. Otherwise they wouldn’t have touched us with a barge pole. Just out of prejudice. That whole structure was Variety Club, a nod and a wink here and there. It served its purpose at the time, no doubt, but suddenly they realized, bang, welcome to the twentieth century, and it’s 1964 already.

  Things happened incredibly fast from the moment Andrew turned up. To me at least, there was a certain feeling that things were running away from us. But you also realize you’ve just been noosed, honey, and you’re going to have to go with it. I was a little bit hesitant to run with it to start with, but Andrew knows it didn’t take me long. We were of a very similar mind—let’s figure out how to use Fleet Street. This was partly provoked by an incident at a photo session we did, when one of the photographers said to Andrew, “They’re so dirty.” Andrew’s flash point was low, and he decided then that from now on he’d give them what they described. He suddenly saw the beauty of opposites. He’d already done the Beatles stuff with Epstein, so he was a street ahead of me. But he did find a willing partner in me, I must say. Even at that age there was a chemistry between us. Later we became firmer friends, but at the time, I looked at him just as Andrew looked at us—“I can use these bastards.”

  The media were so easy to manipulate, we could do anything we wanted. We’d get thrown out of hotels, piss on a garage forecourt. Actually that was a total accident. Once Bill wants to take a pee, it doesn’t stop for about half an hour. Jesus Christ, where does the little bloke put all that? We went to the Grand Hotel in Bristol deliberately to get thrown out. Andrew called Fleet Street to say if you want to watch the Stones get thrown out of the Grand Hotel, be there at such and such a time—because we were dressed incorrectly. The way Andrew could set them up, we’d have them panting for nothing. And of course it provoked things like “Would you let your daughter marry one?” I don’t know whether Andrew planted that idea on somebody or whether it was just one of those Lunchtime O’Booze ideas.

  We were obnoxious. But these people were so complacent. They didn’t know what hit them. It was blitzkrieg, really, an assault on the
whole PR setup. And suddenly you realize there’s this landscape out there, these people that need to be told what to do.

  While we were pulling all these stunts, Andrew was going around in a Chevrolet Impala driven by Reg, his butch gay chauffeur from Stepney. Reg was a very nasty piece of work. In those days it was a miracle to get four lines from a rock journalist in New Musical Express, but it was important because there was very little radio and not much TV. There was a writer at the Record Mirror called Richard Green who had used that precious space to write about my complexion. I didn’t even suffer from the blemishes he described. But this was the last straw for Andrew. He took Reg and barged into the writer’s office. And with Reg holding his hands under the open window, he said to Richard—I quote again from Andrew’s memoir:

  Andrew Oldham: Richard, I got a call this morning from a very hurt and upset Mrs. Richards. You don’t know her, but she’s Keith Richards’ mum. She said, “Mr. Oldham, can you do anything to stop what this man keeps saying about my boy’s acne? I know you can’t stop that rubbish about how they don’t wash. But Keith is a sensitive boy, even if he doesn’t say so. Please, Mr. Oldham, can you do anything?” So, Richard, this is the story. If you ever again write something about Keith that is out of line, that is hurtful to his mum, because I’m responsible to Keith’s mum, your hands will be where they are now, but with one big difference. Reg here will bring that fuckin’ window crashing down on your ugly hands, and you will not be writing, you malicious fat turd, for a long fucking time, and you won’t be dictating either, ’cause your jaw will be sewn up from where Reg fucking broke it.