Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye

by Robert Greenfield

  Eager to be of service, I lead Gram out into the still-freezing corridor. Pushing open the door I think will lead us into the cavernous hall where 2,000 sweaty kids are smoking as much hash as they can to prepare themselves for the Stones, we instead find ourselves standing before a steep flight of stairs. Since the only way to go is up, I lead Gram to a landing only to discover that the door is locked.

  Up two more flights of stairs we go, only to encounter yet another locked door. With no other choice, we keep on climbing. Feeling like a kid trapped changing classes in a high school of the perpetually damned, I look over my shoulder to see how Gram is doing. With his breath so labored that he cannot speak and his face even more deathly pale than it was before, Gram Parsons is now seriously losing it in every possible way.

  Knowing this is not cool at all and I am failing miserably at taking care of Gram in the manner to which he has long since become accustomed, I start climbing the stairs faster than before. After what seems like an eternity even to me, I finally find a door that has not been locked. When Gram joins me, I shove open the door and we walk through it together only to find ourselves standing on the completely deserted balcony of a huge movie theater.

  Right in front of us on a screen that looks to be at least twenty feet high and twice as wide, the extremely awful movie Myra Breckinridge is being shown in very lurid living color. As Raquel Welch, Mae West, and John Houston cavort before us like overblown figures from a fever dream by Hieronymus Bosch, Gram and I look at one another in horror. Both of us know we have entered another dimension. Gram Parsons and I are now in the twilight zone.

  Getting out of there just as fast as we can, Gram and I run back down the stairs like the hellhounds are on our trail. Making our way back to the dressing room, we head to the other end of the corridor, go up some stairs, and walk through an open door into what looks like a big barn of a discotheque. Because the wooden floor beneath us is sprung, it actually moves up and down when we step on it, thereby making everything seem even more surreal.

  After I finally deposit Gram Parsons by the side of the stage, I start apologizing for having led him on a nightmare journey I am fervently hoping he is much too stoned to remember for long. While I would like to say I am doing this out of concern for him, the truth is that I am far more worried about how all this might affect my standing with the Stones. When I am done telling Gram how truly sorry I am, he just looks at me. Opening his mouth to speak for the first time since we left the dressing room, he says, “Wow, man. Wow.” And then, just like the ghost he will soon become, Gram Parsons turns his back and vanishes into the crowd.

  Although it is still freezing cold in the downstairs corridor outside the dressing room, it is so hot inside the Big Apple itself that when the Stones finally take the stage for the first show of the night no one can stay in tune for long. No doubt to express their enthusiasm for what they are hearing, kids in the audience begin heaving the pillows on which they have been sitting toward the stage.

  Spinning end over end in beams of red, green, and yellow light, the pillows come thudding down on the gear. When one of them knocks over the long brown tapered bottle of German white wine Bill Wyman always keep on top of his amp during the show, the Stones just go right on playing.

  Having spent much of my free time on the tour writing lovesick poems about how lonely I was on the road, I ended up spending the night in Brighton with a lovely English girl named Julia who wore high lace-up boots and had an infectious smile. As I would later learn, she was the daughter of a full colonel in a British cavalry regiment. That he would not have hesitated to shoot me dead on sight from horseback for what she and I did together that night, I had no doubt. And although this turned out to be not just a one-night stand but the beginning of a brief but somewhat meaningful relationship that I still look back on fondly, I cannot now remember her last name for the life of me.

  Riding back to London on the train the next day all by myself, I was high as a kite on the power that came from touring with the Stones. Although there was no black limo waiting outside Victoria Station to take me home, I realized that being on tour with the Rolling Stones was in fact the ultimate adolescent fantasy.

  Getting to stay up just as late as you liked each night, you could order whatever you liked in any restaurant without ever having to pay for it and there was no one around to tell you what to do. The rush that came from being on the road with the band was so addictive that those who had already become far more accustomed to this lifestyle than me were always perfectly willing to do whatever was required in order to remain within the inner circle. No doubt about it. After just six days on the road with the Stones, I was hooked.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LIVERPOOL, MARCH 12, 1971

  IN LIVERPOOL’S LIME STREET STATION, Mick steps off the train from Euston in London looking somewhat like an altar boy with his hair cut short. Although the storied Empire Theatre, where local luminaries like the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, and a host of others have all performed, is just half a block away and Mick could easily walk there in no time, it is still much too early for him to show up at the hall. With Bianca by his side, Mick slides instead into the backseat of a long black limo that takes them to the old, dark, cavernous hotel where they spend the rest of the afternoon.

  While Mick may in fact have nasty habits and take tea at three, the hotel is so boring that a few hours later he finds himself escorting Bianca into the tearoom off the lobby at the far more proper time of four o’clock. Sitting down at a table in the corner, they both watch the ancient waitress who looks like she has been working here forever shuffle slowly toward them while pushing a trolley stacked high with cups and saucers, pots of tea, and toast and jam.

  Catching sight of Mick for the first time as she begins sliding a cup and saucer onto his table, the waitress suddenly straightens up and exclaims, “You! The last time you were here, you didn’t pay the bill!”

  Laughing out loud, Mick explains to Bianca that when the Stones played in Liverpool in 1966, a group of hysterical teenage female fans broke into the tearoom while he was there. Forced to flee for his life, Mick did in fact leave the bill behind. Promising the waitress he will not be doing this again today, Mick promptly charms her into serving him and Bianca tea.

  Several floors above them in Marshall Chess’s suite, things are not nearly so calm and civilized and for a very good reason. At the moment, no one knows where Keith Richards happens to be. Whatever rough jungle telegraph has kept Marshall and Jo Bergman apprised of Keith’s whereabouts as he journeyed to every previous gig to which he was also late seems to have finally collapsed under its own weight today. With just two hours to go before the first show starts, Keith is, for want of a better term, missing in action.

  Although Ian Stewart has already told me about the night the Stones went onstage in Aylesbury without Brian Jones after he had driven the wrong way in the fog and that the band did four shows without him during their 1964 American tour, this is a kettle of completely different fish. As a band, the Rolling Stones cannot even walk out onstage without Keith. In other words—no Keith, no show.

  And so it is that as the afternoon wends on and the time to leave for the hall draws near, the general mood among those gathered in Marshall’s suite gets just as dark as the oncoming night. Having spent a fair amount of his adult life waiting for Mick or Keith to show up, Charlie Watts seems completely unconcerned about it all as he sits in an overstuffed chair in the living room avidly watching the latest episode of Dr. Who.

  By this time, the popular BBC science fiction series has been on the air for so long in England that when I ask Charlie if he can help me understand it, he just throws his hands up in the air and says, “No, I can’t. If you haven’t seen the show since the start, it’s impossible.” Without another word, he then leans forward and directs all his attention to the screen.

  Having sat as a teenager with my parents in my living room in Brooklyn each
Sunday night watching one group after another from Liverpool perform on The Ed Sullivan Show during the British Invasion in 1964, you might think that I would have been eager to leave the hotel to get my own look at this tough-as-nails, working-class city on the River Mersey from which all that great music had come.

  Stuck in limbo in a hotel that could have easily passed for the setting of a rock ’n’ roll version of No Exit, the thought never even entered my mind. Being on the road with the Stones was so all-consuming that the central drama of the day—would Keith Richards make it to the gig?—was all that really mattered to me.

  What I did come to realize as that seemingly endless afternoon wore on was just how much time the Stones spent waiting to go onstage while they were on the road. At times it must have seemed even to them that the waiting was all there really was. Which back then was about as existential as I ever got.

  Backstage at the Empire Theatre, twenty people doing their best to pretend they have no idea what time it is crowd a very small dressing room waiting for Keith to arrive. With the first show already an hour late and Tony McPhee and the Groundhogs having long since finished their opening set, Chip Monck is now playing an extended version of his greatest hits collection to keep the crowd from freaking out.

  Looking for all the world as though he was brought here by the same swirling black funnel cloud that transported Dorothy and Toto from Kansas to Oz, Keith Richards suddenly bursts through the dressing room door with Boogie in his arms. Although Keith’s hair looks a bit ruffled, his face is completely unmarked and he does not seem to be bleeding from any of his extremities which means he should be able to go onstage tonight.

  Having made what even on the Broadway stage would have to rank as one hell of a dramatic entrance, Keith does not bother to offer a single word of explanation as to why it has taken him this long to get here. Looking around the dressing room, he says instead, “Is there anything to smoke?”

  Slouched on a couch next to Bianca in the far corner, Mick answers the question by quietly saying, “We have to go on. They’ve been waiting.”

  What makes Mick’s statement truly remarkable is the complete lack of emotion in his voice. Having been through all this before with Brian Jones, Mick is not about to offer any kind of judgment whatsoever about Keith’s behavior or let him know just how overwrought some people have been all afternoon long. In situations like this, that is simply not what Mick Jagger does. And while everyone including Mick would love to know where the hell Keith Richards has been all day long, this is neither the time nor the place to ask that particular question.

  Since Keith always arrives at the hall in the same clothes he wears onstage, the good news is that no one will have to wait for him to select an outfit in which to perform this evening. As Keith charges into the next room to find his guitar, Anita sinks into a chair across from Mick and Bianca while balancing Marlon on her lap. Essentially naked tonight in a skimpy pair of silver lamé hot pants and a black push-up bra over bare skin, she looks every inch like the queen of rock ’n’ roll.

  Acting as though he now has all the time in the world and nothing better to do, Mick gets Marlon laughing by making funny faces at him. “You been on the road now for eighteen months, Marlon,” Mick says. “How do you like this life, eh?”

  As soon as Keith appears with a guitar in his hand, the Stones get to their feet and head out the dressing room door. Trailing in their wake, everyone else follows them toward the stage. Decked out this evening in what looks like a coat made from human hair and a see-through blouse, Bianca unwittingly steps in front of Anita as they both head down the hall.

  Coming to a dead stop as Bianca keeps right on walking, Anita shoots her a killing look and hisses, “Fuck-eeng bourge-oise cunt voo-man!” Fortunately for all concerned, no one else hears her say this and then at long last, the first show finally begins.

  For reasons that may have nothing whatsoever to do with Keith’s as yet still unexplained disappearance this afternoon, the Stones do the only truly bad show of the tour. While others have been less than perfect musically, there has always been electricity, excitement, and real contact with the audience. Tonight there is nothing. While the set is not unrepresentative of the music the Stones have been making on the tour and the show might actually be considered a good one by some lesser band, the magic that makes the Rolling Stones so special when they perform onstage simply is not there.

  After the show is over, the band gathers in the dressing room for a postmortem that quickly comes to resemble the kind of group therapy session in which none of them would ever willingly participate. Looking even sadder than usual, Bill Wyman sits on the couch staring disconsolately at the floor for so long that Keith finally tells him, “Bill, I’m just saying, don’t be so brought down.”

  “I just want everyone to say it was shit,” Bill says. “They queued for five hours and….”

  “If you think it’s my fault ‘cause I missed the train,” Keith says, “just say it, Bill.”

  “I do, yeah,” Bill tells him.

  Still not exhibiting a shred of guilt about any of this, Keith says, “I was two minutes late at the station. We went to the airport and the jet broke down. Then they brought in a prop and it broke down.”

  Doing her best to cheer Bill up, Astrid says, “They don’t know the difference, Bill. The audience enjoyed themselves. It doesn’t matter to them.”

  Shaking his head stubbornly from side to side, Bill says, “We were shit and you all know it.”

  Trying to make everyone feel better, Bobby Keys says, “Ah was great. Ah was fantastic. Ah carried y’all.” Although a few people smile weakly at the remark, everyone still looks just as grim as they did before.

  “It’s the house,” Keith says. “There’s no contact.”

  Putting an end to the conversation as only he can, Mick says, “I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. Well, when I’m onstage, maybe. But I’m off now.” Reaching out to ruffle Boogie’s brown-and-white fur, Mick says, “Right now, I’m petting this little dog here, and that’s what I care about.” Getting to his feet, he then slowly walks out of the room.

  After Mick is gone, Keith looks around the room and says, “Anyone have a joint?”

  “Yeah,” Gram Parsons says. “Where are the dope dealers when you really need them?”

  Sticking his head out of the door, Gram cups both hands around his mouth and yells, “Dope dealers?”

  Two minutes later as I was making my way up a backstage staircase looking for a bathroom in which I could relieve myself and write down some notes, I nearly stumbled headfirst over Mick Jagger. Looking very much like a lovelorn high school kid, he was sitting on a landing as Bianca held him tightly in her arms. The scene was so intensely personal that all I could do was turn around silently and go right back down the way I had come. So much for Mick Jagger as the devil incarnate or a rock star so utterly jaded that he could not be bothered to care about anything once he was done with it.

  For me, this was the night when I realized for the first time just how much the Rolling Stones still really cared about what they were doing. As I would later see proven again and again in the music business, great talent could only take you so far. Right from the start, both Mick and Keith had always shared a laser-like focus on the music. Without it, the Rolling Stones could never have stayed together long enough to be upset about having played one bad show in Liverpool.

  And yes, just as I had seen them do in Coventry six nights earlier, the band then went back out onstage for the second show and kicked ass in every way imaginable. At one point, as a skinhead began waltzing an aging usher around in circles and a fifty-five-year-old matron wearing eyeglasses bumped her pelvis obscenely to the beat, Mick Jagger actually found himself standing on top of the piano. It was all great stuff and for the first time on the entire tour the crowd actually applauded Mick Taylor’s scorching blues solo in “Love in Vain,” which I suppose showed just how really cool the audience in Liverpool still was even i
n 1971.

  Before we leave the city where the Mersey Beat first came spilling into the street from the cellar full of noise on Mathew Street known as the Cavern Club and the Beatles then proceeded to change the face of popular music only to have so recently fallen apart thanks in part to the influence of Linda McCartney and Yoko Ono, the time has come for us to examine what was really going on between Bianca and Anita on this tour.

  As Anita herself had so plainly demonstrated while walking toward the stage before the first show, there was absolutely no love lost between her and Bianca. Nor had they liked one another before the tour began. The two women had first met on the night of September 22, 1970, when Bianca came to see the Stones perform at the Palais des Sports in Paris. Standing in the wings in a flowing black cloak, she immediately caught Mick’s eye.

  As Rose Millar would later say, “I remember when Mick first saw Bianca. She was with Eddie Barclay in Paris and Mick came over to me at the dinner table and said, ‘I really like her. But she belongs to somebody else.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s not going to stop you, is it?’ I always thought they were wonderful together. Real foils for one another. She was feisty and had lots of spirit and was very bright. Apparently, she thought I was boring, but I really liked her and thought she was great.”

  As everyone soon learned, Bianca had absolutely nothing in common with Anita. Then twenty-seven years old, Anita was a former model and actress who had appeared in six films, most notably the shocking and utterly scandalous Performance, in which she not only was frequently naked on screen but also shared a bath with her costars Michele Breton and Mick Jagger, with whom she was then having a torrid on-set affair.