Old Gods Almost Dead

by Stephen Davis

  It was Mick’s idea that the Stones convene in Toronto, Canada’s cultural capital, in February. Keith had been found guilty of cocaine possession in January and fined, which again made his entry into the United States a problem. The Stones wanted to record some classic R&B songs in a nightclub atmosphere to include on their live album, partly as a “golden handshake” for departing executive Marshall Chess, whose family’s publishing company still controlled the rights to the old Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry numbers the Stones would cut. By recording in Toronto, Mick could commute to the ongoing label negotiations and his family in New York, where the live album was also being mixed.

  On February 16, the Stones announced their new record deal with the British company EMI to distribute Rolling Stones Records everywhere except America. One of the deal’s perks involved EMI providing free studio time to the Stones at the company’s famous Pathé-Marconi Studios in Paris, where they would record their next five albums. It was Marshall Chess’s last deal for the Stones. Later that year, the Stones re-signed their North American distribution deal with Atlantic Records after Ahmet Ertegun coughed up a reported $20 million.

  The Stones and their huge entourage, still captained by Peter Rudge, arrived in Toronto in mid-February to rehearse for a three-night stand at the suitably sleazy El Mocambo nightclub early in March. They checked into the Harbour Castle Hotel and waited for Keith, who didn’t show up.

  He and Anita were wintering at Redlands, where their only visitors seemed to be dope dealers making smack and coke runs from London. Still trying to recover from the death of their baby, struggling to cut down their drug intake by themselves, the couple seemed to sense that they were approaching some kind of tragic catharsis. With writer Barbara Charone present, Anita tore into Keith one night as he stared vacantly at the flickering TV. “It’s impossible to get laid around here,” she yelled. “I’m going to walk the streets of the town. I’ll probably have better luck.” When Keith pointedly ignored her, Anita let him have it.

  “You think you’re Superman, don’t you? Well, you’re only Superman when you play the guitar! You think you can handle drugs, but you can’t! I know what I am, and I’ve been that way for seven years. You pretend! You’re afraid. You pretend that you don’t have a drug habit. You just go upstairs to the bathroom! You think people don’t know? You’re no different than anybody else. You can’t handle drugs either!”

  It had been a long time since Keith’s last detox, and he was in a state of physical decline and a week late getting to Canada. He’d insisted the Stones rehearse before the club dates, but was unable to pack his things and get his family to Canada. Mick and the band sent him frantic “Where are you?” telegrams every day. Without Keith, the Stones were going into panic mode.

  On February 23, Keith and Anita finally packed their clothes, guitars, and toys into twenty-eight cases, and locked Redlands up tight. They took Keith’s dog Tabasco over to Doris Richards’s house in Dartford and said good-bye to Angela, as daughter Dandelion was now called. Dressed in flamboyant, matching black and white silk suits, with Marlon in his usual shorts and Wellington boots, Keith and Anita boarded the British Airways flight that would take them to the final act of their ten-year romance.

  * * *

  Watch Yer Bottoms, Keith

  Toronto, February 24, 1977. At the airport, Keith looked like Lazarus before Jesus sorted him out. He’d cooked his last shot of smack on the plane, then gallantly tossed the burned spoon into Anita’s bag. Anita seemed agitated going through customs and made a scene, so they brought in the dogs, found a lump of hash, the spoon, and the usual traces of residue in her luggage. The police busted her for suspected narcotics violations, but let her go on to the Stones’ hotel.

  Three days later, acting on a tip that Keith had a large stash on hand, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came looking for him. Keith was sleeping in one of the many “floater” suites the Stones kept in the hotel, so it took the Mounties a couple of hours to even find him. When they did, his door was mysteriously unguarded by the security detail that usually protected him. Keith was deeply asleep, almost comatose. The cops were unable to wake him during a prolonged search, which uncovered enough dope to charge him with being a heroin trafficker under Canadian law.

  One of the cops started slapping him. He came around enough to hear the cops say, “You’re under arrest for conspiracy to traffic in narcotics.”

  Next day: major headlines. The Stones borrowed $100,000 in cash from Canadian promoter Michael Cohl, but Keith was bailed at only $1,000. He begged the cops for a couple of grams of heroin to tide him over, but they weren’t amused. Meetings with lawyers, who confirmed that Keith could go to jail for life for this sixth drug arrest in ten years (no one in Canada had beaten a drug-dealing rap lately). The Stones were upset, Mick despondent. Their new record deals were seriously threatened, and there were fears the new live album could be the Stones’ last.

  There was nothing to do but press on. Keith tried cold-turkey withdrawl in his bathroom. Ronnie and Bill Wyman dropped in while he was having a seizure. Worried that Keith was dying, they found some heroin for him. Keith then pulled himself together enough to work. The Stones, with Billy Preston and Ollie Brown, rehearsed at El Mocambo early in March. Under pressure, they morphed into a bar band again and just let it rock. Keith: “Everyone’s talking doom and disaster, but we’re up onstage and never felt better. We sounded great! People were asking, ’Is this the end of the Rolling Stones?’ In actual fact, it was a period of real productivity for us.”

  The first gig took place on March 4 in front of three hundred radio contest winners. Opening was local band April Wine, which got the slot as a favor to the guy who had helped out the Stones when their truck was bombed in Montreal in ’72. Keith recalled how purely amazed the packed Canadian kids looked as they jammed in within touching range of the band. The Stones played a long set in the wild, smoky atmosphere, enjoying the lost intimacy of a club date. Sitting near the front of the crowd was a large saucer-eyed woman, grooving and having a good time. She was twenty-eight-year-old Margaret Trudeau, the wife of the Canadian prime minister, and she was about to enter the Rolling Stones legend forever.

  Madcap Maggie (as the Canadian press called her) had married Pierre Trudeau, almost thirty years older, six years earlier. He was the preeminent Canadian politician of his era, holding power between 1968 and 1984, a dashing liberal intellectual who symbolized an invigorated Canada. The Trudeaus had been the nation’s golden couple, with three children and a seemingly happy marriage. But free-spirited, ex-hippie Maggie had chafed under the tight security forced on her family by the same Quebec separatists who’d firebombed the Stones in Montreal in 1972. She had been hospitalized for mental strain several times and was considered unstable, with a taste for pot and recklessness. In early 1977, she and her husband had separated, secretly and informally, and she was visiting a friend in Toronto when the Stones came to town that winter.

  Mrs. Trudeau moved into a suite at the Harbour Castle and joined the party. “Someone said she wanted to go to the gig, so we took her,” Mick said. “I had never met her before, but I guess she likes to go out to clubs and go rocking and rolling just like everyone else—a young girl, you know.” Margaret threw a champagne party for the Stones in her suite after the show. Mick took her aside and pointed to his portly press agent. “Don’t talk to Wasserman,” he whispered. “He’s trying to get publicity for us, but he’s an arsehole.” Later that night, Maggie answered a knock on her door, in her white pajamas, to find the press agent offering her a bottle of champagne. She accepted it and closed the door. In the morning, Paul Wasserman leaked a story that Mrs. Trudeau had been seen in the corridors of the Stones’ hotel in her pajamas. The next day’s headlines—PM’S WIFE AND ROLLING STONES—signaled the end of her marriage as the rumor spread that she was having an affair with Mick Jagger. But it was actually Woody she was friendly with. They were both going through marital separations, and they
bonded with each other over mutual pain. Bill Wyman described their relationship as a “liaison.” On Saturday, the second night at El Mocambo, Ronnie invited her along with her camera to take pictures of the band. Sitting up front as the Stones blasted forth, she shot Mick with his jumpsuit unzipped to his pubis as young ladies fondly massaged his crotch, trying to get him hard between songs. “It was great up to a point,” Mick said the next day, “but then it got difficult to sing.” The Stones were paid half the night’s bar money, $371.

  The Stones stayed in town for a few days after the shows, mixing the Toronto tapes in a local studio. Mrs. Trudeau had dinner with Woody and Charlie Watts, and ended up shooting dice and smoking hash with Wood and friends until nine the next morning, which fueled further headlines: SEX ORGY IN CANADIAN PM’S WIFE’S SUITE. Late that afternoon, a frightened Marlon Richards knocked on her door. “Where’s everybody gone?” the little boy asked. “Daddy’s lying on the floor crying, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Margaret went with Marlon to Keith’s filthy, cluttered suite. Anita had gone shopping. Keith was lying in a fetal position and moaning. She knew he was due in court to face narcotics charges the next day. She got Keith into bed, covered him up, and played with Marlon until Anita returned.

  The press fury grew into a crisis and the prime minister was under fire. The Canadian dollar dropped in value. Pierre Trudeau had to deny that his wife had run off with the Rolling Stones. Opposition newspapers attacked the credibility of the government, and Margaret Trudeau’s official duties were suspended. Charlie Watts sniffed, “I wouldn’t want my wife associating with us.”

  On March 7, Keith appeared in court to hear that he was being charged with possessing cocaine in addition to heroin. On the way out of court, he was pushed and spat on by unknown bystanders. That afternoon, there was a heavy-duty band meeting. Keith was still using heroin and Mick was jittery, worried they were under surveillance and certain another bust was coming down. The hotel was full of undercover cops, and the Stones fretted there was an informer on their staff. Mick decided the Stones would leave Keith in Canada until his case was resolved. The album had to be mixed while Keith tried another detox. Bill Carter was deputized to somehow persuade the U.S. government to let Keith enter the country on an emergency visa, to try to save his life.

  On March 8, Keith was bailed again for $25,000 and given his passport back. Disgusted, Mick left Canada, but was stopped at the airport and searched before he was allowed to get on a plane. The rest of the band followed him the next day. Ron Wood’s departure hurt Keith badly. “They all vanished,” Anita said bitterly. Margaret Trudeau flew to New York as well, further igniting press speculation that she and Jagger were an item, despite firm denials by both of them. Whatever had or hadn’t happened in Toronto, she never saw any of the Rolling Stones again. Her marriage ruptured, and she spent two years in New York, becoming part of the Studio 54 disco scene. Bianca, undisputed sultana of Studio 54, believed the stories about her and Mick and refused to speak to her.

  Stranded with his family in Toronto, facing an uncertain future as he shuffled between court dates, Keith sought some solace in music. Ian Stewart booked him into Sounds Interchange studio on March 12–13, where he cut a sequence of brokenhearted country songs in a Bakersfield mood, with Stu on piano, to have product in the can if his bail was revoked and he went to prison. The songs, never released but often bootlegged, plumbed the depths of his feelings in the poignant voice of the debauched ex-chorister that Keith had become.

  Keith’s situation in Canada gave new meaning to the concept of persona non grata, but in New York and Washington, Keith’s people pleaded with the new administration of President Jimmy Carter to let Keith enter the country to detox. Early in April, he and Anita were permitted by special dispensation to fly to New York for treatment. No one was more shocked by this than Keith. “I was down-and-out in Toronto, stuck there, right? And America let me in to clean up—gave me a medical visa to clean up. And that amazed me, y’know? You don’t ever expect from government the helping hand, y’know?”

  Keith entered a private rehab clinic near Philadelphia and was on ice for the next six weeks. Mick sent him cassettes of his favorite New York reggae radio shows to help keep his spirits up. He and Anita went through a “black box” cure that used electric shocks to stimulate the brain to overproduce narcotic-like bio-endorphins, allowing a narcotics addict to detox slowly.

  The cure worked—for a few weeks. But although Keith got into heroin again, he now really wanted to let it go. The thing that most pleased him was the looks on the faces of the drug dealers when he began to turn them down. He later admitted that the Toronto bust had been a huge blessing and had saved his life. “I wanted to come back,” he said, “and prove that what I had gone through had made a difference, to justify this kind of suffering.”

  * * *

  The Human Riff in Paris

  May 1977. Bianca Jagger’s birthday party at Studio 54 featured Mrs. Jagger riding around the club on her husband’s present, a white Arab pony led by almost naked, glitter-sprinkled black model Sterling St. Jacques—a tabloid image flashed around the world. The waiters all wore diapers and nothing else. The other Stones could only shake their heads. The Jaggers’ marriage was over, a casualty of his serial infidelity and her longtime affair with actor Ryan O’Neal. Mick now made a big play for Jerry Hall, the brassy, sensual Texas model with a sense of humor and a straight-up sexuality. Everyone always had fun around Jerry Hall. When Jerry danced, the whole world seemed to undulate around her, and she was known for dispensing cheerful, up-to-the-minute tips on oral sex. She liked to say the best method of keeping a man was to drop everything for two seconds and give him a blow job. When her father died while Bryan Ferry was touring in Australia, Mick was there with massive bouquets and sympathy. He won her heart by the end of the year.

  In June, Mick and Keith began the final mixes of Love You Live. Billy Preston brought his own mixing engineer to Atlantic Studios one night, an act of hubris that got him fired from the band by Keith. (Preston had never signed his 1975–76 touring contracts with the Stones, and was able to hold up the live album for a considerable percentage of the action.) As part of their new record deal, Atlantic gave the Stones an office suite in the Warner Communications building in Rockefeller Center. Atlantic executive Earl McGrath replaced Marshall Chess as president of Rolling Stone Records. Chess was grateful to the Stones, who’d backed him up as a heroin addict in charge of their careers. “They stuck up for me,” he later said. Within a year of leaving, Chess recovered from his addiction.

  They were also writing songs. Keith was living at the Mayflower Hotel in a suite stuffed with reggae singles acquired in nightly forays to Jamaican shops in the Bronx. If a primal reggae group like the Heptones was playing out on Long Island, Keith was there. He and Wood were jamming from 3 A.M. to noon, often at Mick’s West Side house, working on his last plea to Anita, “Beast of Burden.”

  Bebe Buell’s baby girl, Liv, was born in New York on July 1. Her first visitors were Mick and Ron Wood. Mick tried to convince Woody the tiny thing with huge lips was his child, and there was some slight resemblance, since her real father, Steven Tyler, had big lips too. (“Aerosmith was really wild,” Bebe Buell said later. “They made the Rolling Stones look like a kindergarten!”)

  That summer, Keith and Anita moved to a secluded estate in South Salem, New York, about an hour north of Manhattan. Commuting to the city to work with John Phillips, Keith stumbled back into heroin use. He went through yet another rehab at the Stevens Clinic in New York and was told by his lawyers that he had to live separately from Anita if he intended to stay dope-free and out of prison. Blamed by Mick for the Toronto bust and for Keith’s decline, Anita began to be treated as a scapegoat and an outcast. It was the end of her era as a member of the Rolling Stones.

  Mick flew to Paris to look at the studios they would start to use later in the year. Then he and Bianca took off on a cruise around the Aegean S
ea on a last attempt to patch things up. By the time they returned to New York, they had broken up.

  With a lurid cover by Andy Warhol, part of a sequence of distasteful photos of the Stones biting each other, Love You Live was released in September 1977. It bore a dedication to Keith Harwood: “Those whom the gods love, grow young.” The Stones held a party for the album at Trax, the West Side music hangout. Three sides of the double album were from the previous year’s Paris shows, with one side reserved for a selection of Chicago blues cut at El Mocambo. Love You Live was a Top Ten album on both sides of the Atlantic that fall.

  In October, the Stones gathered in Paris to begin recording. Keith and Woody flew in on the Concorde supersonic jet. Keith got in a cab, forgot the address of the apartment he’d owned for years in Paris, and had to be rescued. Mick was staying in L’Hôtel, small and discreet, where he was joined by Jerry Hall, who moved in with Mick permanently soon after.

  It was now do-or-die for the Stones, who had to make a great album in the wake of the punk/new wave challenges of pathetic Old Fartism. And there was serious strain within the band. Ron Wood was firmly allied with Keith, who openly ridiculed Mick’s artificial, chameleon personality and social pretentions. Mick patronized Keith, telling Nick Kent they would never tour “with a geezer pushin’ a heroin charge.” Charlie was put off by the bitchiness, and extremely annoyed that his daughter, Seraphina, was taunted at school with “Your dad’s a junkie too.” Hardly anyone spoke to Bill. Stu was alienated and had to be begged to come to Paris at all.

  When they first looked at Pathé-Marconi, the Stones were unimpressed by the sterile facilities in the quiet suburb of Boulogne. Disliking the actual studios, Keith instead picked out a large rehearsal and storage room as the Stones’ new Paris atelier. Keith: “The room is as important as the band and the song and the producer and the engineer. The room is at least as important as all that to the total sound. You can’t separate rock and roll music, instrument by instrument. It can only be recorded by jamming the sound all together.” At Pathé-Marconi, he reconfigured a space to his specifications, and all or part of the next five Rolling Stones albums were recorded at 62 rue des Sèvres.