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Talk
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
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"I'm gonna walk... before they make me run"
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Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
He himself said he had nothing to do with the song, what riff did he write?
And what about Sway?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-08 02:52 by treaclefingers.
And what about Ruby Tuesday? Mick has said he had nothing to do with that one. They obviously have a long standing business arrangement that works well for them, just doesn't work so well for other collaborators.
Odd statement nowadays, eh? Stu's profile got raised as Brian's tanked.
Of course, Stu had a lot more mileage and output with the band, so ...
OK, if that is true, then I would assume (legally) that a Jagger/Richards credit is correct. If it turns out he did not write any of it (I have no idea what he means when he says - I have nothing to do with it), is it still OK to give him a song writing credit? I know we have had this discussion in the past, but 2 or 3 past members feel that proper credits have not been fairly noted (we are only taking about maybe 4 or 5 songs total)! How do you feel about Lennon getting credit on Yesterday? Is that OK but Brian does not get credit for Ruby Tuesday?
Something that got hammered home from this article is that Brian truly didn't like the music that the Rolling Stones were making. Now I don't know if that's because he was jealous, or perhaps he didn't want to go back to the styles of music they did on Beggars Banquet. Maybe Brian was hearing in his head sounds that were more forward. He'd make his claim to being an early exponent of
world music with the Pipes of Pan recording. Keith said he was making interesting tapes, possibly experimenting with electronic music. He was certainly a restless soul. Maybe he truly was, "At odds with the discs we've been cutting."
Christ! How many times do we have to do this? He wrote the riff called "the japanese thing". He didn't have anything to do with RECORDING THE TRACK
I thought I wasn't on Moonlight Mile but the last riff everybody gets into playing is a riff I'd been playing on earlier tapes before I dropped out.
- Keith Richards, 1971
About Sway: That recording session, as you know, he did attend - if I'm not mistaken, he is wuite prominent in the mix during the choruses, and probably helped making it as well
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-08 12:40 by DandelionPowderman.
Easy easy....not everyone is a slave to all your posts!
Luckily (for them), they aren't
Doesn't it go back further, like to Aftermath? It may not have been as pronounced on Satanic Majesties because of the reduced guitar dominance. It's pretty obvious by Beggar's Banquet, and their subsequent appearance on Rock and Roll Circus, that they were a quartet. Brian had forced them to get along without him and they did.
Well the part about being "zonked out on the floor", I believe was really a 1968 statement. 1966-1967, Brian was playing all those other instruments, so at least he was active in the studio and not unconscious! But who knows his active state in 66/67 at all sessions. I know Bill Wyman stated in Stone Alone, that he first noticed a change in Brian around the release of Satisfaction - but probably just becoming disillusioned with the music and direction of the band (in other words, pissed off the band was not following his 100% direction)...
Christ! How many times do we have to do this? He wrote the riff called "the japanese thing". He didn't have anything to do with RECORDING THE TRACK
DandelionPowderman
Relax man, or you will end up at the CCU. How many times do you have to say it ? What's this "Japanese thing" ? It's Chinese at best. And whe never heard Keith playing it in the first place...and he had a big ego. No need for you to be a parrot. Moonlight Mile is played by Jagger basically using an 'ordinary' G maj pent scale, with the help of Mick Taylor. I agree it's one of the Stones's best though.. Now if you transpose the (above) 'Japanese scales' to the key of G, Keith would have been in even more trouble at that time
-----------> -------------> DandelionPowderman
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Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
24FPS
()
Date: January 7, 2013 10:09
Excerpts from the Rolling Stone Magazine Keith Richards interview, August 1971
So I get on this train one morning and there's Jagger and under his arm he has four or five albums. I haven't seen him since the time I bought an ice cream off him and we haven't hung around since we were five, six, ten years. We recognized each other straight off. "Hi, man," I say. "Where ya going?" he says. And under his arm, he's got Chuck Berry and Little Walter, Muddy Waters. "You're into Chuck Berry, man, really?" That's a coincidence. He said, "Yeah, I got few more albums. Been writin' away to this, uh, Chess Records in Chicago and got a mailing list thing and . . . got it together, you know?" Wow, man!
So I invited him up to my place for a cup of tea. He started playing me these records and I really turned on to it. We were both still living in Dartford, on the edge of London and I was still in art school.
There was another cat at art school named Dick Taylor, who later got the Pretty Things together. Mick found out – "Oh, you play?" he said to me. That's what amazed him. Mick had been singin' with some rock and roll bands, doin' Buddy Holly . . . Buddy Holly was in England as solid as Elvis. Everything came out was a record smash number one. By about '58, it was either Elvis or Buddy Holly. It was split into two camps. The Elvis fans were the heavy leather boys and the Buddy Holly ones all somehow looked like Buddy Holly.
To get back to Mick and I . . . He found out that I could play a little and he could sing a bit. "I dig to sing," he said, and he also knew Dick Taylor from another school they'd gone to and the thing tied up so we try and do something. We'd all go to Dick Taylor's house, in his back room, some other cats would come along and play, and we'd try to lay some of this Little Walter stuff and Chuck Berry stuff. No drummer or anything. Just two guitars and a little amplifier. Usual back room stuff. It fell into place very quickly.
Then we found Slim Harpo, we started to really find people. Mick was just singing, no harp. And suddenly in '62, just when we were getting together, we read this little thing about a rhythm and blues club starting in Ealing. Everybody must have been trying to get one together. "Let's go up to this place and find out what's happening." There was this amazing old cat playing harp . . . Cyril Davies. Where did he come from? He turned out to be a panel beater from North London. He was a great cat, Cyril. He didn't last long. I only knew him for about two years and he died.
Alexis Korner really got this scene together. He'd been playin' in jazz clubs for ages and he knew all the connections for gigs. So we went up there. The first or the second time Mick and I were sittin' there Alexis Korner gets up and says, "We got a guest to play some guitar. He comes from Cheltenham. All the way up from Cheltenham just to play for ya."
Suddenly, it's Elmore James, this cat, man. And it's Brian, man, he sittin' on his little . . . he's bent over . . . da-da-da, da-da-da . . . I said, what? What the @#$%&? Playing bar slide guitar.
We get into Brian after he finishes "Dust My Blues." He's really fantastic and a gas. We speak to Brian. He'd been doin' the same as we'd been doin' . . . thinkin' he was the only cat in the world who was doin' it. We started to turn Brian on to some Jimmy Reed things, Chicago blues that he hadn't heard. He was more into T-Bone Walker and jazz-blues stuff. We'd turn him on to Chuck Berry and say, "Look, it's all the same shit, man, and you can do it." But Brian was also much more together. He was in the process of getting a band together and moving up to London with one of his many women and children. God knows how many he had. He sure left his mark, that cat. I know of five kids, at least. All by different chicks, and they all look like Brian.
He was a good guitar player then. He had the touch and was just peaking. He was already out of school, he'd been kicked out of university and had a variety of jobs. He was already into living on his own and trying to find a pad for his old lady. Whereas Mick and I were just kicking around in back rooms, still living at home.
I left art school and I didn't even bother to get a job. We were still kids. Mick was still serious, he thought he was, everyone told him he ought to be serious about a career in economics. He was very much into it.
But Brian, he was already working at it. We said, "We're just amateurs, man, but we dig to play." He invited me up to listen to what he was getting together in some pub in London. It's then it starts getting into back rooms of pubs in Soho and places. That's where I met Stew [Ian Stewart]. He was with Brian. They'd just met. He used to play boogie-woogie piano in jazz clubs, apart from his regular job. He blew my head off too, when he started to play. I never heard a white piano like that before. Real Albert Ammons stuff. This is all '62.
A lot of these old cats had been playin' blues in those clubs for ages, or thought they were playin' blues. Just because they'd met Big Bill Broonzy at a party or played with him once, they thought they were the king's @#$%&.
Music was their love. They all wanted to be professional but in those days a recording contract was a voice from heaven. It was that rare. Not like now when you get a band together and hustle an advance. It was a closed shop.
Were you and Mick and Brian very strange for them?
That's right. They couldn't figure us out. Especially when I tried to lay Chuck Berry shit on them. "What are ya hangin' with them rock and rollers for?" they'd ask. Brian kicked a lot of them out and I really dug it. He turned around and said, "@#$%& off, you bastards, you're a load of shit and I'm going to get it together with these cats." This cat Dick Taylor shifted to bass by then. We were really looking for drums. Stew drifted with us for some reason. I sort of put him with those other cats because he had a job. But he said no too. "I'll stick around and see what happens with you."
So we got another back room in a different pub. Competition. Not that anybody came. Just rehearsin'.
Stew at that time used to turn up at rehearsals in a pair of shorts, on his bike. His piano used to be by the window and his biggest fear, the only thing that really stopped him at piano, was the thought that his bike might get nicked while he was playin'. So every now and then when someone walked past his bike, he'd stretch up and put his head out the window and keep playin', sit down again and then he'd see someone else lookin' at his bike. Up and up, still playing.
Were you playing electric then?
Yeah. With homemade amps, old wireless sets. It took a while longer to get the electric bit together. At the time we thought, "Oh, it just makes it louder," but it ain't quite as simple at that.
Brian was the one who kept us all together then. Mick was still going to school. I'd dropped out. So we decided we got to live in London to get it together. Time to break loose. So everybody left home, upped and got this pad in London. Chelsea.
Different Chelsea than now?
Edith Grove. World's End. That place . . . every room got condemned slowly. It was like we slowly moved till we were all in the end room. Every room was shut up and stunk to hell, man. Terrible. Brian's only possession was a radio-record player. That, and a few beds and a little gas fire. We kept on playin', playin', playin'.
Brian kicked his job. He was in a department store. He got into a very heavy scene for nickin' some bread and just managed to work his way out of it. So he thought, "@#$%& it. If I work anymore I'm gonna get in real trouble." Get into jail or something.He only nicked two pound . . . but he quit his job and his old lady had gone back to Cheltenham so he was on the loose again.
Are you gigging?
We didn't dare, man, we didn't dare. We were rehearsin' drummers. Mick Avery came by, the drummer of the Kinks. He was terrible, then. Couldn't find that off beat. Couldn't pick up on that Jimmy Reed stuff.
Is everybody still straight?
It was very hard to find anything. No one could afford to buy anything anyway. A little bit of grass might turn up occasionally but . . . everybody'd dig it . . . everybody's turn-on was just playing. It didn't matter if you were pissed. That was it. That was the big shot.
Mick was the only one who was still hovering because he was more heavily committed to the London School of Economics and he was being supported by a government grant, and his parents and all that. So he had a heavier scene to break away from than me because they were very pleased to kick me out anyway. And Brian too, they were glad to kick out. From university for making some chick pregnant or something.
Brian and I were the sort of people they were glad to kick out. They'd say, "You're nothing' but bums, you're gonna end up on skid row," and that sort of thing. Probably will anyway. But Mick was still doing the two things. Brian and me'd be home in this pad all day tryin' to make one foray a day to either pick up some beer bottles from a party and sell 'em back for thruppence deposit or raid the local supermarket. Try and get some potatoes or some eggs or something.
I went out one morning and came back in the evening and Brian was blowing harp, man. He's got it together. He's standin' at the top of the stairs sayin', "Listen to this." Whooooow. Whooow. All these blues notes comin' out. "I've learned how to do it. I've figured it out." One day.
So then he started to really work on the harp. He dropped the guitar. He still dug to play it and was still into it and played very well but the harp became his thing. He'd walk around all the time playing his harp.
Is there anything going in London in terms of music then?
Alexis had that club together and we'd go down once a week to see what they were doing and they wanted to know what we were doing. "It's coming," we'd tell 'em. "We'll be gigging soon." We didn't know where the @#$%& do ya start? Where do ya go to play?
But you were living together, unlike Cyril Davies or the older blues musicians, because you were young and broke . . .
Yeah. Just Mick and myself and Brian. We knew Charlie. He was a friend. He was gigging at the time, playing with Alexis. He was Korner's drummer. We couldn't afford him.
One day we picked up a drummer called Tony Chapman who was our first regular drummer. Terrible. One of the worst . . . cat would start a number and end up either four times as fast as he started it or three times as slow. But never stay the same.
We did say, "Hey Tony, d'y'know any bass players?" He said. "I do know one." "Tell him come to next rehearsal." So we all turned up and in walks . . . Bill Wyman, ladies and gentleman. Huge speaker he's got, and a spare Vox eight-thirty amp which is the biggest amp we've ever seen in our lives. And that's spare. He says, "You can put one of your guitars through there." Whew. Put us up quite a few volts goin' through there.
He had the bass together already. He'd been playin' in rock bands for three or four years. He's older than us. He knows how to play. But he doesn't want to play with these shitty rock bands anymore because they're all terrible. They're all doing that Shadows trip, all those instrumental numbers, Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser." There was no one who could sing very good.
Also, they don't know what to play anymore. At that point, nobody wants to hear Buddy Holly anymore. He's an old scene already to the rock and roll hip circuit. It's that very light pop thing they're all into . . . Bobby Vee was a big scene then. You wouldn't dream of going to play in a ballroom. They'd just hurl bricks at you. Still have to stick to this little circuit of clubs, back rooms for one night, a shilling for everyone to get in. For people who didn't want to go to ballrooms. Who wanted to listen to something different.
Most of these clubs at the time are filled with dixieland bands, traditional jazz bands. An alternative to all that Bobby Vee stuff. There was a big boom in that: the stomp, stompin' about, weird dance, just really tryin' to break the ceiling to a two beat. That was the big scene. They had all the clubs under control. That's where Alexis made the breakthrough. He managed to open it up at the Ealing Club. Then he moved on to the Marquee and R&B started to become the thing. And all these traddies, as they were called, started getting worried. So they started this very bitter opposition.
Which is one reason I swung my guitar at Harold Pendleton's head at the Marquee thing, because he was the kingpin behind all that. He owned all these trad clubs and he got a cut from these trad bands, he couldn't bear to see them die. He couldn't afford it.
But Alexis was packin' em in man. Jus' playing blues. Very similar to Chicago stuff. Heavy atmosphere. Workers and art students, kids who couldn't make the ballrooms with supposedly long hair then, forget it, you couldn't go into those places. You gravitated to places where you wouldn't get hassled. The Marquee's a West End club, where we stood in for Alexis a couple of times.
With Charlie drumming?
No. Our first gig was down at the Ealing Club, a stand-in gig. That's the band without Charlie as drummer. We played everything. Muddy Waters. A lot of Jimmy Reed.
Still living in Chelsea?
Yeah. We had the middle floor. The top floor was sort of two school teachers tryin' to keep a straight life. God knows how they managed it. Two guys trainin' to be school teachers, they used to throw these bottle parties. All these weirdos, we used to think they were weirdos, they were as straight as . . . havin' their little parties up there, all dancing around to Duke Ellington. Then when they'd all zonked out, we'd go up there and nick all the bottles. Get a big bag, Brian and I, get all the beer bottles and the next day we'd take 'em to the pub to get the money on 'em.
Downstairs was livin' four old whores from Liverpool. Isn't that a coincidence. "'Allo dahlin', 'ow are ya? All right?" Real old boots they were. I don't know how they made their bread, working . . . They used to sort of nurse people and keep us together when we really got out of it.
The cat that supported Brian, this is a long story. He came from Brian's hometown. He got 80 quid a year for being in the Territorial Army in England, which is where you go for two weeks on a camp with the rest of these guys. Sort of a civil defense thing. They all live in tents and get soakin' wet and get a cold and at the end they learn how to shoot a rifle and they get 80 quid cash depending on what rank you've managed to wangle yourself.
This cat arrived in London with his 80 quid, fresh out of the hills, from his tent. And he wants to have a good time with Brian. And Brian took him for every penny, man. Got a new guitar. The whole lot.
This weird thing with this cat. He was one of those weird people who would do anything you say. Things like, Brian would say, "Give me your overcoat." Freezing cold, it's the worst winter and he gave Brian this Army overcoat. "Give Keith the sweater." So I put the sweater on.
"Now, you walk twenty yards behind us, man." And off we'd walk to the local hamburger place. "Ah, stay there. No, you can't come in. Give us two quid." Used to treat him like really weird. This cat would stand outside the hamburger joint freezing cold giving Brian the money to pay for our hamburgers. Never saw him again after that.
No, no, it ended up with us tryin' to electrocute him. It ended up with us gettin' out of our heads one night. That was the night he disappeared. It was snowing outside. We came back to our pad and he was in Brian's bed. Brian for some reason got very annoyed that he was in his bed asleep. We had all these cables lyin' around and he pulled out this wire. "This end is plugged in, baby, and I'm comin' after ya."
This cat went screaming out of the pad and into the snow in his underpants. "They're electrocuting me, they're electrocuting me." Somebody brought him in an hour later and he was blue. He was afraid to come in because he was so scared of Brian.
Brian used to pull these weird things. The next day the cat split. Brian had a new guitar, and his amp re-fixed, a whole new set of harmonicas.
I guess the craziness comes from the chemistry of the people. The craziness sort of kept us together. When the gigs become a little more plentiful and the kids started picking up on us was when we got picked up by Giorgio Gomelsky. Before he was into producing records. He was on the jazz club scene. I don't know exactly what he did, promoting a couple of clubs a week. He cottoned on to us and sort of organized us a bit.
We still didn't have Charlie as a drummer. We were really lacking a good drummer. We were really feeling it.All I wanted to do is keep the band together. How we were going to do it and get gigs and people to listen to us? How to get a record together? We couldn't even afford to make a dub. Anyway we didn't have a drummer to make a dub with.
By this time we had it so together musically. We were really pleased with the way we were sounding. We were missing a drummer. We were missing good equipment. By this time the stuff we had was completely beaten to shit.
And the three of you get on? Are you the closest people for each other?
We were really a team. But there was always something between Brian, Mick and myself that didn't quite make it somewhere. Always something. I've often thought, tried to figure it out. It was in Brian, somewhere; there was something . . . he still felt alone somewhere . . . he was either completely into Mick at the expense of me, like nickin' my bread to go and have a drink. Like when I was zonked out, takin' the only pound I had in me pocket. He'd do something like that. Or he'd be completely in with me tryin' to work something against Mick. Brian was a very weird cat. He was a little insecure. He wouldn't be able to make it with two other guys at one time and really get along well.
I don't think it was a sexual thing. He was always so open with his chicks . . . It was something else I've never been able to figure out. You can read Jung. I still can't figure it out. Maybe it was in the stars. He was a Pisces. I don't know. I'm Sag and Mick's a Leo. Maybe those three can't ever connect completely all together at the same time for very long. There were periods when we had a ball together.
As we became more and more well-known and eventually grew into that giant sort of thing, that in Brian also became blown up until it became very difficult to work with and very difficult for him to be with us. Mick and I were more and more put together because we wrote together and Brian would – become uptight about that because he couldn't write. He couldn't even ask if he could come and try to write something with us. Where earlier on Brian and I would sit for hours trying to write songs and say, "Aw @#$%& it, we can't write songs."
It worked both ways. When we played, it gave Brian . . . man, when he wanted to play, he could play his ass off, that cat. To get him to do it, especially later on, was another thing. In the studio, for instance, to try and get Brian to play was such a hassle that eventually on a lot of those records that people think are the Stones, it's me overdubbing three guitars and Brian zonked out on the floor.
It became very difficult because we were working non-stop . . . I'm skipping a lot of time now . . . when we were doing those American tours in '64, '65, '66. When things were getting really difficult. Brian would go out and meet a lot of people, before we did, because Mick and I spent most of our time writing. He'd go out and get high somewhere, get smashed. We'd say, "Look, we got a session tomorrow, man, got to keep it together." He'd come, completely out of his head, and zonk out on the floor with his guitar over him. So we started overdubbing, which was a drag cause it meant the whole band wasn't playing.
Was Charlie drumming with you when Andrew first saw you work?
I'll tell you how we picked Charlie up. I told you about the people Brian was getting a band together with and then he turned on to us and he told those other people to @#$%& off, et cetera. Our common ground with Brian back then was Elmore James and Muddy Waters. We laid Slim Harpo on him, and Fred McDowell.
Brian was from Cheltenham, a very genteel town full of old ladies, where it used to be fashionable to go and take the baths once a year at Cheltenham Spa. The water is very good because it comes out of the hills, it's spring water. It's a Regency thing, you know Beau Brummel, around that time. Turn of the 19th century. Now it's a seedy sort of place full of aspirations to be an aristocratic town. It rubs off on anyone who comes from there.
The R&B thing started to blossom and we found playing on the bill with us in a club, there were two bands on, Charlie was in the other band. He'd left Korner, and was with the same cats Brian had said @#$%& off to about six months before. We did our set and Charlie was knocked out by it. "You're great, man," he says, "but you need a @#$%& good drummer." So we said, "Charlie, we can't afford you, man." Because Charlie had a job and just wanted to do weekend gigs. Charlie used to play anything then – he'd play pubs, anything, just to play, cause he loves to play with good people. But he always had to do it for economic reasons. By this time we're getting three, four gigs a week. "Well, we can't pay you as much as that band but . . . "we said. So he said, Ok and told the other band to @#$%& off, "I'm gonna play with these guys."
That was it. When we got Charlie, that really made it for us.
We started getting a lot of gigs. Then we got that Richmond gig with Giorgio and that built up to an enormous scene. In London, that was the place to be every Sunday night. At the Richmond Station Hotel. It's on the river Richmond, a fairly well-to-do neighborhood but kids from all over London would come down there on a Sunday night.
There's only so far you can go on that London scene; if you stay in that club circuit eventually you get constipated. You go round and round so many times and then suddenly, you're not the hip band anymore, someone else is. Like the High Numbers, they took over from us in a lot of clubs. The High Numbers turned out to become the Who. The Yardbirds took over from us in Richmond and on Sunday nights we'd find we were booked into a place in Manchester.
Stew is driving you around now?
Yeah, there was this whole thing, because for us Stew is one of the band up until Andrew. "Well, he just doesn't look the part," Andrew said, "and six is too many for them to remember the faces in the picture." But piano is important for us. Brian at that time is the leader of the band. He pulled us all together, he's playing good guitar, but his love is the harmonica. On top of that, he's got the pop star hangup – he wants to sing, with Mick, like "Walking the Dog."
You did some recording the first time over (in the States)?
Yeah, at Chess, "Michigan Avenue" and "It's All Over Now" and "Confessing the Blues." Oldham was never a blues man, which was one reason he couldn't connect with us. But a lot of things like "Spider and the Fly" were cut at the end of a session, while some guy was sweeping up. "Play With Fire" is like that, with Phil Spector on tuned-down electric guitar, me on acoustic, Jack Nitzsche on harpsichord, and Mick on tambourine with echo chamber. It was about seven o'clock in the morning. Everybody fell asleep.
Brian had some kind of genius for finding people, didn't he?
He did. He got us together . . . Charlie, Mick and me.
He brought Nico to the Velvet Underground.
He was into Dylan too, very early on. He was the only one of us who hung out with Dylan for a bit. A lot of people know Brian that I don't know, that I didn't know knew him who come up and say, "Yeah, I knew Brian."
He was great. It was only when you had to work with him that he got very hung up. Anita could tell you a lot about Brian, obviously, because she was Brian's chick for a long time. Brian did have that thing for pulling people together, for meeting people, didn't he?
Anita: Mixing. Mix it. Mix it, Charlie. Fix it, Charlie.
Keith: We're just trying to figure out why Brian couldn't be with Mick and me at the same time. "Why can't Mick come in?" "No, no," he'd say . . . he was a big whisperer too, Brian. Little giggles . . . you don't meet people like that. Since everybody got stoned, people just say what they want to say.
Brian got very fragile. As he went along, he got more and more fragile and delicate. His personality and physically. I think all that touring did a lot to break him. We worked our asses off from '63 to '66, right through those three years, non-stop. I believe we had two weeks off. That's nothing, I mean I tell that to B.B. King and he'll say, "I been doing it for years." But for cats like Brian . . . He was tough but one thing and another he slowly became more fragile. When I first met Brian he was like a little Welsh bull. He was broad, and he seemed to be very tough.
For a start, people were always laying stuff on him because he was a Stone. And he'd try it. He'd take anything. Any other sort of trip too, head trips. He never had time to work it out 'cause we were on the road all the time, always on the plane the next day. Eventually, it caught up.
Right until the last, Brian was trying to get it together. Just before he died, he was rehearsing with more people. Because it happened so quickly, people think . . .
Anita: They think he was really down. But he was really up.
Keith: And they also think that he was one of the Stones when he died. But in actual fact, he'd left. We went down to see him and he said, "I can't do it again. I can't start again and go on the road again like that again." And we said, "We understand. We'll come and see you in a couple weeks and see how you feel. Meantime, how do you want to say. Do you want to say that you've left?" And he said, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's say I've left and if I want to I can come back." "Because we've got to know. We've got to get someone to take your place because we're starting to think about getting it together for another tour. We've got itchy feet and we've got Mick Taylor lined up." We didn't really, we didn't have Mick waiting in the wings to bring on. But we wanted to know if we should get someone else or if Brian wanted to get back into it again. "I don't think I can," he said, "I don't think I can go to America and do those one-nighters anymore. I just can't." Two weeks later, they found him in the pool, man.
In those two weeks, he'd had musicians down there every day. He was rehearsing. I'd talk to him every day and he'd say, "It's coming along fine. Gonna get a really funky little band together and work and make a record."
Do you think his death was an accident?
Well, I don't want to say. Some very weird things happened that night, that's all I can say. It could have as well been an accident. There were people there that suddenly disappeared . . . the whole thing with Brian is . . .
Anita: They opened the inquiry again six months after his death.
Keith: But nothing happened. None of us were trying to hush it up. We wanted to know what was going on. We were at a session that night and we weren't expecting Brian to come along. He'd officially left the band. We were doing the first gig with Mick Taylor that night. No, I wouldn't say that was true. Maybe Mick had been with us for a week or so but it was very close to when Mick had joined. And someone called us up at midnight and said, "Brian's dead."
Well, what the @#$%&'s going on? We had these chauffeurs working for us and we tried to find out . . . some of them had a weird hold over Brian. There were a lot of chicks there and there was a whole thing going on, they were having a party. I don't know, man, I just don't know what happened to Brian that night.
Do you think he was murdered?
There was no one there that'd want to murder him. Somebody didn't take care of him. And they should have done because he had somebody there who was supposed to take care of him. Everyone knew what Brian was like, especially at a party. Maybe he did just go in for a swim and have an asthma attack. I'd never seen Brian have an attack. I know that he was asthmatic. I know that he was hung up with his spray but I've never seen him have an attack. He was a good swimmer. He was a better swimmer than anybody else around me. He could dive off those rocks straight into the sea.
He was really easing back from the whole drug thing. He wasn't hitting 'em like he had been, he wasn't hitting anything like he had. Maybe the combination of things. It's one of those things I just can't find out. You know, who do you ask?
Such a beautiful cat, man. He was one of those people who are so beautiful in one way, and such an @#$%& in another. "Brian, how could you do that to me, man?" It was like that.
How did you feel about his death?
We were completely shocked. I got straight into it and wanted to know who was there and couldn't find out. The only cat I could ask was the one I think who got rid of everybody and did the whole disappearing trick so when the cops arrived, it was just an accident. Maybe it was. Maybe the cat just wanted to get everyone out of the way so it wasn't all names involved, et cetera. Maybe he did the right thing, but I don't know. I don't even know who was there that night and trying to find out is impossible.
Maybe he tried to pull one of his deep diving stunts and was too loaded and hit his chest and that was it. But I've seen Brian swim in terrible conditions, in the sea with breakers up to here. I've been underwater with Brian in Fiji. He was all right then. He was a goddamn good swimmer and it's very hard to believe he could have died in a swimming pool.
But goddammit, to find out is impossible. And especially with him not being officially one of the Stones then, none of our people were in direct contact so it was trying to find out who was around Brian at that moment, who he had there. It's the same feeling with who killed Kennedy. You can't get to the bottom of it.
Anita: He was surrounded by the wrong kind of people.
Keith: Like Jimi Hendrix. He just couldn't suss the @#$%& from the good people. He wouldn't kick out somebody that was a shit. He'd let them sit there and maybe they'd be thinking how to sell off his possessions. He'd give 'em booze and he'd feed 'em and they'd be thinking, "Oh, that's worth 250 quid and I can roll that up and take it away." I don't know.
Anita: Brian was a leader. With the Stones, he was the first one that had a car. He was the first into flash clothes. And smoke. And acid. It was back when it seemed anything was possible. Everybody was turning on to acid, young and beautiful and then a friend of Brian's died and it affected him very much. It made it seem as if the whole thing was a lie.
Did he stop taking acid then?
Anita: No. He got further into it. And STP. DMT, which I think is the worst, no? Too chemical. The first time Brian and I took acid we thought it was like smoking a joint. We went to bed. Suddenly we looked around and all these Hieronymus Bosch things were flashing around. That was in 1965. Musically he would have got it together. I'm sure of it. He and Keith couldn't play together any more. I don't know what causes those things but they couldn't.
Was there a gap between Brian and the rest of the Stones because he had taken acid and they hadn't?
Anita: Yes, as far as I know, Mick took his first trip the day he got busted, in '67. Keith had started to suss, he saw us flying around all over the place. He started to live with us. Every time Brian was taking trips, he was working, making tapes. Fantastic.
He didn't dig the music the Stones were making and he really got a block in his head that he couldn't play with them. Now, he would dig it. He never really stopped playing. It was just so different from what they were playing, he couldn't play in sessions. I'm positive he could have gotten it together. Positive. He was just a musician. Pure, so pure a musician.
Keith: I remember once in Philadelphia some kids had picked up on an interview Brian had done with somebody, he'd used one of those intellectual words like "esoteric." And so, right in the front, these kids had big signs that said, "Brian, you're so esoteric." It had that aura. It was down to Sixteen magazine. Everything you did in America then, it could all be in Sixteen magazine.
But there's a time in everybody's life when they come out, when they bloom and it was just about then for the Stones.
Keith: Brian was like that at Monterey.
Anita: He was on STP at Monterey.
Did he come back from there with a lot of things in his head?
Keith: Yeah, he did.
Anita: With a lot of STP.
Keith: He changed . . . because we changed around Brian, Anita and I. We had that whole thing in Morocco and that kind of blew Brian too, on top of everything else. The thing I've forgotten about was when we were in court waiting to hear if there was to be bail before the real trial, that's when they busted Brian, man. They had it timed down to the minute. When we were actually in the @#$%& courtroom up in London, an hour and a half drive away, they were going into Brian's house to do him so that the papers would come out with "Rolling Stones Keith Richards and Mick Jagger on trial for this, meanwhile Brian Jones just been found with this" – so they could lay that on. "Well, they must be guilty."
Anita: They were going to come down and see us . . . and we called from Brian's house and said, "Don't bother. The cops are here."
Keith: "Don't come down. We'll come up." Unbelievable. It's really weird because people think of England as far more tolerant and genteel than America but when they laid that one on us, when they want to lay it down, they can be just as heavy. They just don't carry guns, that's all.
To talk about the music then, with Brian into acid before anyone and having been to the West Coast, was there a reluctance to play just rock and roll?
There was a point where it was difficult to do that. People would say. "What you playin' that old shit for?" Which really screwed me up 'cause that's all I can play. We just sort of laid back and listened to what they were doing in Frisco whereas Brian was making great tapes, overdubbing. He was much more into it than we were. And we were digging what we were hearing, for what it was but that other thing in you is saying, "Yeah. But where's Chuck Berry? What's he doing?" It's got to follow through. It's got to connect.
Did it feel like an end to anybody?
It did to Brian, thinking about it. Not to me. I just sort of picked it up again. I think Brian felt that was it. He was really a sensitive cat, too sensitive, the thought of going back on the road really horrified him. In '66 when we last saw America it was 45's and teenyboppers and in three years it established a completely different order. What a change in America, just amazing.
And he was OK on that last tour?
Yeah, we were all very stoned. The last gig was in L.A. We came back to England with pockets full of acid. In '65 you hardly saw any grass. By '66, it was becoming common. It was still a spade trip before that, a spade laid it on you and it was a pleasure to get a joint. It was one of those turn-ons, like when we get to America, we'll get joints laid on us if we get a spade act with us.
Apart from a visit to New York in '67 to do the cover for Satanic Majesties, which we constructed in a day, and a couple months in '68, I was there just before the convention . . . the only contact I had was the underground press and whatever came through.
How did that picture of the band in drag come about?
There was a big rush for "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?" Jerry Schatzberg took the picture and Andrew ordered a truckload of costumes and Brian just laid on me this incredible stuff. He just said, "Take this." We walked down from Park Lane in that gear and we did the pictures. It was very quiet, Saturday afternoon, all the businesses are shut but there's traffic . . .
Wearing high heels?
Yeah, and the whole bit. Bill in a wheelchair. It took a while to get this picture and going back, what do you do? Do you take half the stuff off and walk back . . . or do you keep it on? Anyway, I'm thirsty, let's go and have a beer. We all zip down to this bar. Hey, what voice do you do? We sat there and had a beer and watched TV and no one said anything. But it was just so outrageous because Bill stayed in his wheelchair and Brian was pushing him about.
Do you like that record?
I loved the track of it. I never did like the record. It was cut badly. It was mastered badly. It was mixed badly. The only reason we were so hot on it was that the track blew our heads off, everything else was rushed too quickly. Tapes were being flown . . . and lost. It needed another couple weeks. The rhythm section thing is almost lost completely.
Of course, there was still "Lady Jane."
Brian was getting into dulcimer then. Because he dug Richard Farina. It has to do with what you listen to. Like I'll just listen to old blues cats for months and not want to hear anything else and then I just want to hear what's happening and collect it all and listen to it. We were also listening to a lot of Appalachian music then too. To me, "Lady Jane" is very Elizabethan. There are a few places in England where people still speak that way, Chaucer English.
Brian played flute on "Ruby Tuesday."
Yeah, he was a gas. He was a cat who could play any instrument. It was like, "there it is, music comes out of it, if I work at it for a bit, I can do it." It's him on marimbas on "Under My Thumb" and mellotron on a quite a few things on Satanic Majesties. He was the strings on "Two Thousand Light Years From Home," Brian on mellotron, and the brass on "We Love You," all that Arabic riff.
How about earlier stuff like "Paint It Black"?
Mick wrote it. I wrote the music, he did the words. Get a single together.
What's amazing about that one for me is the sitar. Also, the fact that we cut it as a comedy track. Bill was playing an organ, doing a takeoff of our first manager who started his career in show business as an organist in a cinema pit. We'd been doing it with funky rhythms and it hadn't worked and he started playing it like this and everybody got behind it. It's a two-beat, very strange. Brian playing the sitar makes it a whole other thing.
[How about "Get Off My Cloud"?
That was the follow-up to "Satisfaction." I never dug it as a record. The chorus was a nice idea but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in L.A. and it was time for another single. But how do you follow "Satisfaction"? Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew's worse productions.
"Mother's Little Helper"?
In those days, Mick and I were into a solid word-music bag unless I thought of something outstanding, which could be used in the title or something. I would spend the first two weeks of the tour, because it was done on the road, all of it was worked out . . . an American tour meant you started writing another album. After three, four weeks you had enough and then you went to L.A. and recorded it. We worked very fast that way and when you came off a tour you were shit hot playing, as hot as the band is gonna be.
"Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown," "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby," "Mother's Little Helper," they're all putting down another generation.
Mick's always written a lot about it. A lot of the stuff Chuck Berry and early rock writers did was putting down that other generation. That feeling then, like in '67. We used to laugh at those people but they must have gotten the message right away because they tried to put rock 'n' roll down, trying to get it off the radio, off records. Obviously they saw some destruction stemming from . . . they felt it right away.
Was the Hyde Park concert scheduled before Brian's death?
It was. Don't forget, it was our first thing with Mick Taylor. We wanted to get Mick Taylor up on stage to be seen. We wanted to do something in London. And we wanted it to be free. Which is also a bastard. Because the two free things we've done have been that and Altamont. Both so totally different. people trying to pull that old riff on us, going there in armor. Maybe it was the wisest thing. So we went in an armored ambulance. Took about two hours to drive through the crowd. And we played pretty bad. Until near the end, 'cause we hadn't played for years. And nobody minded 'cause they just wanted to hear us play again. It was nice they were glad to see us because we were glad to see them. Coming after Brian's death, it was like a thing we had to do. We had that big picture of him on stage and it comes out looking like a ghost in some pictures.
Was Brian's death still unreal?
It didn't hit me for months because I hadn't seen him a lot. The only time we'd see him was down at the courthouse, at one of his trials. They really roughed him up, man. He wasn't a cat that could stand that kind of shit and they really went for him like when hound dogs smell blood. "There's one that'll break if we keep on." And they busted him and busted him. That cat got so paranoid at the end like they did to Lenny Bruce, the same tactics, break him down. Maybe with Mick and me they felt, well, they're just old lads.
Mick read a poem for Brian at the concert.
He read something from Shelley. He wanted to do it for Brian. It's a tough thing . . . the first thing you've done on stage before an audience in two years. To get up and read a Shelley poem. He wanted to do it for Brian. He said it was necessary to make some sort of incantation.
And the butterflies . . . they were really nice. Biggest public gathering in London for over two hundred years. The last time they had a gathering that big in England, it started a people's revolt. Had to be put down with the dragoons.
Do you and Mick still write now the way you used to then?
Well, I haven't seen him for a couple weeks because he went and got married, but basically yes. We do bits that we hear and then we throw them all together on a cassette or something, and listen to it. Mick writes more melodies now than he used to.
The first things, usually I wrote the melody and Mick wrote the words. It's not gotten like the Lennon-McCartney thing got where they wrote completely by themselves. Every song we've got have pieces of each other in it. The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice. We were all surprised at the way that album fell together. Sticky Fingers – it pulled itself together.
Concerning Sticky Fingers and the new tongue logo:
Slowly and slowly, we've been finding the right people to do the right thing like Marshall Chess, like Jo Bergman. All those people are as important as we are. Especially now that we've got Rolling Stones records, with the Kali tongue . . . nobody's gotten into that yet, but that's Kali, the Hindu female goddess. Five arms, a row of heads around her, a sabre in one hand, flames coming out the other, she stands there, with her tongue out. But that's gonna change. That symbol's not going to stay as it is. Sometimes it'll take up the whole label, maybe slowly it'll turn to a cock, I don't know yet.
You going to put two pills on the tongue?
We're going to do everything with it, slowly. Don't want to let it grow stale. It's growing change. Got to keep it growing.
Do you want to make 70?
I can't even imagine what it's like, to be 70. When I was 20 I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be 28.
So I get on this train one morning and there's Jagger and under his arm he has four or five albums. I haven't seen him since the time I bought an ice cream off him and we haven't hung around since we were five, six, ten years. We recognized each other straight off. "Hi, man," I say. "Where ya going?" he says. And under his arm, he's got Chuck Berry and Little Walter, Muddy Waters. "You're into Chuck Berry, man, really?" That's a coincidence. He said, "Yeah, I got few more albums. Been writin' away to this, uh, Chess Records in Chicago and got a mailing list thing and . . . got it together, you know?" Wow, man!
So I invited him up to my place for a cup of tea. He started playing me these records and I really turned on to it. We were both still living in Dartford, on the edge of London and I was still in art school.
There was another cat at art school named Dick Taylor, who later got the Pretty Things together. Mick found out – "Oh, you play?" he said to me. That's what amazed him. Mick had been singin' with some rock and roll bands, doin' Buddy Holly . . . Buddy Holly was in England as solid as Elvis. Everything came out was a record smash number one. By about '58, it was either Elvis or Buddy Holly. It was split into two camps. The Elvis fans were the heavy leather boys and the Buddy Holly ones all somehow looked like Buddy Holly.
To get back to Mick and I . . . He found out that I could play a little and he could sing a bit. "I dig to sing," he said, and he also knew Dick Taylor from another school they'd gone to and the thing tied up so we try and do something. We'd all go to Dick Taylor's house, in his back room, some other cats would come along and play, and we'd try to lay some of this Little Walter stuff and Chuck Berry stuff. No drummer or anything. Just two guitars and a little amplifier. Usual back room stuff. It fell into place very quickly.
Then we found Slim Harpo, we started to really find people. Mick was just singing, no harp. And suddenly in '62, just when we were getting together, we read this little thing about a rhythm and blues club starting in Ealing. Everybody must have been trying to get one together. "Let's go up to this place and find out what's happening." There was this amazing old cat playing harp . . . Cyril Davies. Where did he come from? He turned out to be a panel beater from North London. He was a great cat, Cyril. He didn't last long. I only knew him for about two years and he died.
Alexis Korner really got this scene together. He'd been playin' in jazz clubs for ages and he knew all the connections for gigs. So we went up there. The first or the second time Mick and I were sittin' there Alexis Korner gets up and says, "We got a guest to play some guitar. He comes from Cheltenham. All the way up from Cheltenham just to play for ya."
Suddenly, it's Elmore James, this cat, man. And it's Brian, man, he sittin' on his little . . . he's bent over . . . da-da-da, da-da-da . . . I said, what? What the @#$%&? Playing bar slide guitar.
We get into Brian after he finishes "Dust My Blues." He's really fantastic and a gas. We speak to Brian. He'd been doin' the same as we'd been doin' . . . thinkin' he was the only cat in the world who was doin' it. We started to turn Brian on to some Jimmy Reed things, Chicago blues that he hadn't heard. He was more into T-Bone Walker and jazz-blues stuff. We'd turn him on to Chuck Berry and say, "Look, it's all the same shit, man, and you can do it." But Brian was also much more together. He was in the process of getting a band together and moving up to London with one of his many women and children. God knows how many he had. He sure left his mark, that cat. I know of five kids, at least. All by different chicks, and they all look like Brian.
He was a good guitar player then. He had the touch and was just peaking. He was already out of school, he'd been kicked out of university and had a variety of jobs. He was already into living on his own and trying to find a pad for his old lady. Whereas Mick and I were just kicking around in back rooms, still living at home.
I left art school and I didn't even bother to get a job. We were still kids. Mick was still serious, he thought he was, everyone told him he ought to be serious about a career in economics. He was very much into it.
But Brian, he was already working at it. We said, "We're just amateurs, man, but we dig to play." He invited me up to listen to what he was getting together in some pub in London. It's then it starts getting into back rooms of pubs in Soho and places. That's where I met Stew [Ian Stewart]. He was with Brian. They'd just met. He used to play boogie-woogie piano in jazz clubs, apart from his regular job. He blew my head off too, when he started to play. I never heard a white piano like that before. Real Albert Ammons stuff. This is all '62.
A lot of these old cats had been playin' blues in those clubs for ages, or thought they were playin' blues. Just because they'd met Big Bill Broonzy at a party or played with him once, they thought they were the king's @#$%&.
Music was their love. They all wanted to be professional but in those days a recording contract was a voice from heaven. It was that rare. Not like now when you get a band together and hustle an advance. It was a closed shop.
Were you and Mick and Brian very strange for them?
That's right. They couldn't figure us out. Especially when I tried to lay Chuck Berry shit on them. "What are ya hangin' with them rock and rollers for?" they'd ask. Brian kicked a lot of them out and I really dug it. He turned around and said, "@#$%& off, you bastards, you're a load of shit and I'm going to get it together with these cats." This cat Dick Taylor shifted to bass by then. We were really looking for drums. Stew drifted with us for some reason. I sort of put him with those other cats because he had a job. But he said no too. "I'll stick around and see what happens with you."
So we got another back room in a different pub. Competition. Not that anybody came. Just rehearsin'.
Stew at that time used to turn up at rehearsals in a pair of shorts, on his bike. His piano used to be by the window and his biggest fear, the only thing that really stopped him at piano, was the thought that his bike might get nicked while he was playin'. So every now and then when someone walked past his bike, he'd stretch up and put his head out the window and keep playin', sit down again and then he'd see someone else lookin' at his bike. Up and up, still playing.
Were you playing electric then?
Yeah. With homemade amps, old wireless sets. It took a while longer to get the electric bit together. At the time we thought, "Oh, it just makes it louder," but it ain't quite as simple at that.
Brian was the one who kept us all together then. Mick was still going to school. I'd dropped out. So we decided we got to live in London to get it together. Time to break loose. So everybody left home, upped and got this pad in London. Chelsea.
Different Chelsea than now?
Edith Grove. World's End. That place . . . every room got condemned slowly. It was like we slowly moved till we were all in the end room. Every room was shut up and stunk to hell, man. Terrible. Brian's only possession was a radio-record player. That, and a few beds and a little gas fire. We kept on playin', playin', playin'.
Brian kicked his job. He was in a department store. He got into a very heavy scene for nickin' some bread and just managed to work his way out of it. So he thought, "@#$%& it. If I work anymore I'm gonna get in real trouble." Get into jail or something.He only nicked two pound . . . but he quit his job and his old lady had gone back to Cheltenham so he was on the loose again.
Are you gigging?
We didn't dare, man, we didn't dare. We were rehearsin' drummers. Mick Avery came by, the drummer of the Kinks. He was terrible, then. Couldn't find that off beat. Couldn't pick up on that Jimmy Reed stuff.
Is everybody still straight?
It was very hard to find anything. No one could afford to buy anything anyway. A little bit of grass might turn up occasionally but . . . everybody'd dig it . . . everybody's turn-on was just playing. It didn't matter if you were pissed. That was it. That was the big shot.
Mick was the only one who was still hovering because he was more heavily committed to the London School of Economics and he was being supported by a government grant, and his parents and all that. So he had a heavier scene to break away from than me because they were very pleased to kick me out anyway. And Brian too, they were glad to kick out. From university for making some chick pregnant or something.
Brian and I were the sort of people they were glad to kick out. They'd say, "You're nothing' but bums, you're gonna end up on skid row," and that sort of thing. Probably will anyway. But Mick was still doing the two things. Brian and me'd be home in this pad all day tryin' to make one foray a day to either pick up some beer bottles from a party and sell 'em back for thruppence deposit or raid the local supermarket. Try and get some potatoes or some eggs or something.
I went out one morning and came back in the evening and Brian was blowing harp, man. He's got it together. He's standin' at the top of the stairs sayin', "Listen to this." Whooooow. Whooow. All these blues notes comin' out. "I've learned how to do it. I've figured it out." One day.
So then he started to really work on the harp. He dropped the guitar. He still dug to play it and was still into it and played very well but the harp became his thing. He'd walk around all the time playing his harp.
Is there anything going in London in terms of music then?
Alexis had that club together and we'd go down once a week to see what they were doing and they wanted to know what we were doing. "It's coming," we'd tell 'em. "We'll be gigging soon." We didn't know where the @#$%& do ya start? Where do ya go to play?
But you were living together, unlike Cyril Davies or the older blues musicians, because you were young and broke . . .
Yeah. Just Mick and myself and Brian. We knew Charlie. He was a friend. He was gigging at the time, playing with Alexis. He was Korner's drummer. We couldn't afford him.
One day we picked up a drummer called Tony Chapman who was our first regular drummer. Terrible. One of the worst . . . cat would start a number and end up either four times as fast as he started it or three times as slow. But never stay the same.
We did say, "Hey Tony, d'y'know any bass players?" He said. "I do know one." "Tell him come to next rehearsal." So we all turned up and in walks . . . Bill Wyman, ladies and gentleman. Huge speaker he's got, and a spare Vox eight-thirty amp which is the biggest amp we've ever seen in our lives. And that's spare. He says, "You can put one of your guitars through there." Whew. Put us up quite a few volts goin' through there.
He had the bass together already. He'd been playin' in rock bands for three or four years. He's older than us. He knows how to play. But he doesn't want to play with these shitty rock bands anymore because they're all terrible. They're all doing that Shadows trip, all those instrumental numbers, Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser." There was no one who could sing very good.
Also, they don't know what to play anymore. At that point, nobody wants to hear Buddy Holly anymore. He's an old scene already to the rock and roll hip circuit. It's that very light pop thing they're all into . . . Bobby Vee was a big scene then. You wouldn't dream of going to play in a ballroom. They'd just hurl bricks at you. Still have to stick to this little circuit of clubs, back rooms for one night, a shilling for everyone to get in. For people who didn't want to go to ballrooms. Who wanted to listen to something different.
Most of these clubs at the time are filled with dixieland bands, traditional jazz bands. An alternative to all that Bobby Vee stuff. There was a big boom in that: the stomp, stompin' about, weird dance, just really tryin' to break the ceiling to a two beat. That was the big scene. They had all the clubs under control. That's where Alexis made the breakthrough. He managed to open it up at the Ealing Club. Then he moved on to the Marquee and R&B started to become the thing. And all these traddies, as they were called, started getting worried. So they started this very bitter opposition.
Which is one reason I swung my guitar at Harold Pendleton's head at the Marquee thing, because he was the kingpin behind all that. He owned all these trad clubs and he got a cut from these trad bands, he couldn't bear to see them die. He couldn't afford it.
But Alexis was packin' em in man. Jus' playing blues. Very similar to Chicago stuff. Heavy atmosphere. Workers and art students, kids who couldn't make the ballrooms with supposedly long hair then, forget it, you couldn't go into those places. You gravitated to places where you wouldn't get hassled. The Marquee's a West End club, where we stood in for Alexis a couple of times.
With Charlie drumming?
No. Our first gig was down at the Ealing Club, a stand-in gig. That's the band without Charlie as drummer. We played everything. Muddy Waters. A lot of Jimmy Reed.
Still living in Chelsea?
Yeah. We had the middle floor. The top floor was sort of two school teachers tryin' to keep a straight life. God knows how they managed it. Two guys trainin' to be school teachers, they used to throw these bottle parties. All these weirdos, we used to think they were weirdos, they were as straight as . . . havin' their little parties up there, all dancing around to Duke Ellington. Then when they'd all zonked out, we'd go up there and nick all the bottles. Get a big bag, Brian and I, get all the beer bottles and the next day we'd take 'em to the pub to get the money on 'em.
Downstairs was livin' four old whores from Liverpool. Isn't that a coincidence. "'Allo dahlin', 'ow are ya? All right?" Real old boots they were. I don't know how they made their bread, working . . . They used to sort of nurse people and keep us together when we really got out of it.
The cat that supported Brian, this is a long story. He came from Brian's hometown. He got 80 quid a year for being in the Territorial Army in England, which is where you go for two weeks on a camp with the rest of these guys. Sort of a civil defense thing. They all live in tents and get soakin' wet and get a cold and at the end they learn how to shoot a rifle and they get 80 quid cash depending on what rank you've managed to wangle yourself.
This cat arrived in London with his 80 quid, fresh out of the hills, from his tent. And he wants to have a good time with Brian. And Brian took him for every penny, man. Got a new guitar. The whole lot.
This weird thing with this cat. He was one of those weird people who would do anything you say. Things like, Brian would say, "Give me your overcoat." Freezing cold, it's the worst winter and he gave Brian this Army overcoat. "Give Keith the sweater." So I put the sweater on.
"Now, you walk twenty yards behind us, man." And off we'd walk to the local hamburger place. "Ah, stay there. No, you can't come in. Give us two quid." Used to treat him like really weird. This cat would stand outside the hamburger joint freezing cold giving Brian the money to pay for our hamburgers. Never saw him again after that.
No, no, it ended up with us tryin' to electrocute him. It ended up with us gettin' out of our heads one night. That was the night he disappeared. It was snowing outside. We came back to our pad and he was in Brian's bed. Brian for some reason got very annoyed that he was in his bed asleep. We had all these cables lyin' around and he pulled out this wire. "This end is plugged in, baby, and I'm comin' after ya."
This cat went screaming out of the pad and into the snow in his underpants. "They're electrocuting me, they're electrocuting me." Somebody brought him in an hour later and he was blue. He was afraid to come in because he was so scared of Brian.
Brian used to pull these weird things. The next day the cat split. Brian had a new guitar, and his amp re-fixed, a whole new set of harmonicas.
I guess the craziness comes from the chemistry of the people. The craziness sort of kept us together. When the gigs become a little more plentiful and the kids started picking up on us was when we got picked up by Giorgio Gomelsky. Before he was into producing records. He was on the jazz club scene. I don't know exactly what he did, promoting a couple of clubs a week. He cottoned on to us and sort of organized us a bit.
We still didn't have Charlie as a drummer. We were really lacking a good drummer. We were really feeling it.All I wanted to do is keep the band together. How we were going to do it and get gigs and people to listen to us? How to get a record together? We couldn't even afford to make a dub. Anyway we didn't have a drummer to make a dub with.
By this time we had it so together musically. We were really pleased with the way we were sounding. We were missing a drummer. We were missing good equipment. By this time the stuff we had was completely beaten to shit.
And the three of you get on? Are you the closest people for each other?
We were really a team. But there was always something between Brian, Mick and myself that didn't quite make it somewhere. Always something. I've often thought, tried to figure it out. It was in Brian, somewhere; there was something . . . he still felt alone somewhere . . . he was either completely into Mick at the expense of me, like nickin' my bread to go and have a drink. Like when I was zonked out, takin' the only pound I had in me pocket. He'd do something like that. Or he'd be completely in with me tryin' to work something against Mick. Brian was a very weird cat. He was a little insecure. He wouldn't be able to make it with two other guys at one time and really get along well.
I don't think it was a sexual thing. He was always so open with his chicks . . . It was something else I've never been able to figure out. You can read Jung. I still can't figure it out. Maybe it was in the stars. He was a Pisces. I don't know. I'm Sag and Mick's a Leo. Maybe those three can't ever connect completely all together at the same time for very long. There were periods when we had a ball together.
As we became more and more well-known and eventually grew into that giant sort of thing, that in Brian also became blown up until it became very difficult to work with and very difficult for him to be with us. Mick and I were more and more put together because we wrote together and Brian would – become uptight about that because he couldn't write. He couldn't even ask if he could come and try to write something with us. Where earlier on Brian and I would sit for hours trying to write songs and say, "Aw @#$%& it, we can't write songs."
It worked both ways. When we played, it gave Brian . . . man, when he wanted to play, he could play his ass off, that cat. To get him to do it, especially later on, was another thing. In the studio, for instance, to try and get Brian to play was such a hassle that eventually on a lot of those records that people think are the Stones, it's me overdubbing three guitars and Brian zonked out on the floor.
It became very difficult because we were working non-stop . . . I'm skipping a lot of time now . . . when we were doing those American tours in '64, '65, '66. When things were getting really difficult. Brian would go out and meet a lot of people, before we did, because Mick and I spent most of our time writing. He'd go out and get high somewhere, get smashed. We'd say, "Look, we got a session tomorrow, man, got to keep it together." He'd come, completely out of his head, and zonk out on the floor with his guitar over him. So we started overdubbing, which was a drag cause it meant the whole band wasn't playing.
Was Charlie drumming with you when Andrew first saw you work?
I'll tell you how we picked Charlie up. I told you about the people Brian was getting a band together with and then he turned on to us and he told those other people to @#$%& off, et cetera. Our common ground with Brian back then was Elmore James and Muddy Waters. We laid Slim Harpo on him, and Fred McDowell.
Brian was from Cheltenham, a very genteel town full of old ladies, where it used to be fashionable to go and take the baths once a year at Cheltenham Spa. The water is very good because it comes out of the hills, it's spring water. It's a Regency thing, you know Beau Brummel, around that time. Turn of the 19th century. Now it's a seedy sort of place full of aspirations to be an aristocratic town. It rubs off on anyone who comes from there.
The R&B thing started to blossom and we found playing on the bill with us in a club, there were two bands on, Charlie was in the other band. He'd left Korner, and was with the same cats Brian had said @#$%& off to about six months before. We did our set and Charlie was knocked out by it. "You're great, man," he says, "but you need a @#$%& good drummer." So we said, "Charlie, we can't afford you, man." Because Charlie had a job and just wanted to do weekend gigs. Charlie used to play anything then – he'd play pubs, anything, just to play, cause he loves to play with good people. But he always had to do it for economic reasons. By this time we're getting three, four gigs a week. "Well, we can't pay you as much as that band but . . . "we said. So he said, Ok and told the other band to @#$%& off, "I'm gonna play with these guys."
That was it. When we got Charlie, that really made it for us.
We started getting a lot of gigs. Then we got that Richmond gig with Giorgio and that built up to an enormous scene. In London, that was the place to be every Sunday night. At the Richmond Station Hotel. It's on the river Richmond, a fairly well-to-do neighborhood but kids from all over London would come down there on a Sunday night.
There's only so far you can go on that London scene; if you stay in that club circuit eventually you get constipated. You go round and round so many times and then suddenly, you're not the hip band anymore, someone else is. Like the High Numbers, they took over from us in a lot of clubs. The High Numbers turned out to become the Who. The Yardbirds took over from us in Richmond and on Sunday nights we'd find we were booked into a place in Manchester.
Stew is driving you around now?
Yeah, there was this whole thing, because for us Stew is one of the band up until Andrew. "Well, he just doesn't look the part," Andrew said, "and six is too many for them to remember the faces in the picture." But piano is important for us. Brian at that time is the leader of the band. He pulled us all together, he's playing good guitar, but his love is the harmonica. On top of that, he's got the pop star hangup – he wants to sing, with Mick, like "Walking the Dog."
You did some recording the first time over (in the States)?
Yeah, at Chess, "Michigan Avenue" and "It's All Over Now" and "Confessing the Blues." Oldham was never a blues man, which was one reason he couldn't connect with us. But a lot of things like "Spider and the Fly" were cut at the end of a session, while some guy was sweeping up. "Play With Fire" is like that, with Phil Spector on tuned-down electric guitar, me on acoustic, Jack Nitzsche on harpsichord, and Mick on tambourine with echo chamber. It was about seven o'clock in the morning. Everybody fell asleep.
Brian had some kind of genius for finding people, didn't he?
He did. He got us together . . . Charlie, Mick and me.
He brought Nico to the Velvet Underground.
He was into Dylan too, very early on. He was the only one of us who hung out with Dylan for a bit. A lot of people know Brian that I don't know, that I didn't know knew him who come up and say, "Yeah, I knew Brian."
He was great. It was only when you had to work with him that he got very hung up. Anita could tell you a lot about Brian, obviously, because she was Brian's chick for a long time. Brian did have that thing for pulling people together, for meeting people, didn't he?
Anita: Mixing. Mix it. Mix it, Charlie. Fix it, Charlie.
Keith: We're just trying to figure out why Brian couldn't be with Mick and me at the same time. "Why can't Mick come in?" "No, no," he'd say . . . he was a big whisperer too, Brian. Little giggles . . . you don't meet people like that. Since everybody got stoned, people just say what they want to say.
Brian got very fragile. As he went along, he got more and more fragile and delicate. His personality and physically. I think all that touring did a lot to break him. We worked our asses off from '63 to '66, right through those three years, non-stop. I believe we had two weeks off. That's nothing, I mean I tell that to B.B. King and he'll say, "I been doing it for years." But for cats like Brian . . . He was tough but one thing and another he slowly became more fragile. When I first met Brian he was like a little Welsh bull. He was broad, and he seemed to be very tough.
For a start, people were always laying stuff on him because he was a Stone. And he'd try it. He'd take anything. Any other sort of trip too, head trips. He never had time to work it out 'cause we were on the road all the time, always on the plane the next day. Eventually, it caught up.
Right until the last, Brian was trying to get it together. Just before he died, he was rehearsing with more people. Because it happened so quickly, people think . . .
Anita: They think he was really down. But he was really up.
Keith: And they also think that he was one of the Stones when he died. But in actual fact, he'd left. We went down to see him and he said, "I can't do it again. I can't start again and go on the road again like that again." And we said, "We understand. We'll come and see you in a couple weeks and see how you feel. Meantime, how do you want to say. Do you want to say that you've left?" And he said, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's say I've left and if I want to I can come back." "Because we've got to know. We've got to get someone to take your place because we're starting to think about getting it together for another tour. We've got itchy feet and we've got Mick Taylor lined up." We didn't really, we didn't have Mick waiting in the wings to bring on. But we wanted to know if we should get someone else or if Brian wanted to get back into it again. "I don't think I can," he said, "I don't think I can go to America and do those one-nighters anymore. I just can't." Two weeks later, they found him in the pool, man.
In those two weeks, he'd had musicians down there every day. He was rehearsing. I'd talk to him every day and he'd say, "It's coming along fine. Gonna get a really funky little band together and work and make a record."
Do you think his death was an accident?
Well, I don't want to say. Some very weird things happened that night, that's all I can say. It could have as well been an accident. There were people there that suddenly disappeared . . . the whole thing with Brian is . . .
Anita: They opened the inquiry again six months after his death.
Keith: But nothing happened. None of us were trying to hush it up. We wanted to know what was going on. We were at a session that night and we weren't expecting Brian to come along. He'd officially left the band. We were doing the first gig with Mick Taylor that night. No, I wouldn't say that was true. Maybe Mick had been with us for a week or so but it was very close to when Mick had joined. And someone called us up at midnight and said, "Brian's dead."
Well, what the @#$%&'s going on? We had these chauffeurs working for us and we tried to find out . . . some of them had a weird hold over Brian. There were a lot of chicks there and there was a whole thing going on, they were having a party. I don't know, man, I just don't know what happened to Brian that night.
Do you think he was murdered?
There was no one there that'd want to murder him. Somebody didn't take care of him. And they should have done because he had somebody there who was supposed to take care of him. Everyone knew what Brian was like, especially at a party. Maybe he did just go in for a swim and have an asthma attack. I'd never seen Brian have an attack. I know that he was asthmatic. I know that he was hung up with his spray but I've never seen him have an attack. He was a good swimmer. He was a better swimmer than anybody else around me. He could dive off those rocks straight into the sea.
He was really easing back from the whole drug thing. He wasn't hitting 'em like he had been, he wasn't hitting anything like he had. Maybe the combination of things. It's one of those things I just can't find out. You know, who do you ask?
Such a beautiful cat, man. He was one of those people who are so beautiful in one way, and such an @#$%& in another. "Brian, how could you do that to me, man?" It was like that.
How did you feel about his death?
We were completely shocked. I got straight into it and wanted to know who was there and couldn't find out. The only cat I could ask was the one I think who got rid of everybody and did the whole disappearing trick so when the cops arrived, it was just an accident. Maybe it was. Maybe the cat just wanted to get everyone out of the way so it wasn't all names involved, et cetera. Maybe he did the right thing, but I don't know. I don't even know who was there that night and trying to find out is impossible.
Maybe he tried to pull one of his deep diving stunts and was too loaded and hit his chest and that was it. But I've seen Brian swim in terrible conditions, in the sea with breakers up to here. I've been underwater with Brian in Fiji. He was all right then. He was a goddamn good swimmer and it's very hard to believe he could have died in a swimming pool.
But goddammit, to find out is impossible. And especially with him not being officially one of the Stones then, none of our people were in direct contact so it was trying to find out who was around Brian at that moment, who he had there. It's the same feeling with who killed Kennedy. You can't get to the bottom of it.
Anita: He was surrounded by the wrong kind of people.
Keith: Like Jimi Hendrix. He just couldn't suss the @#$%& from the good people. He wouldn't kick out somebody that was a shit. He'd let them sit there and maybe they'd be thinking how to sell off his possessions. He'd give 'em booze and he'd feed 'em and they'd be thinking, "Oh, that's worth 250 quid and I can roll that up and take it away." I don't know.
Anita: Brian was a leader. With the Stones, he was the first one that had a car. He was the first into flash clothes. And smoke. And acid. It was back when it seemed anything was possible. Everybody was turning on to acid, young and beautiful and then a friend of Brian's died and it affected him very much. It made it seem as if the whole thing was a lie.
Did he stop taking acid then?
Anita: No. He got further into it. And STP. DMT, which I think is the worst, no? Too chemical. The first time Brian and I took acid we thought it was like smoking a joint. We went to bed. Suddenly we looked around and all these Hieronymus Bosch things were flashing around. That was in 1965. Musically he would have got it together. I'm sure of it. He and Keith couldn't play together any more. I don't know what causes those things but they couldn't.
Was there a gap between Brian and the rest of the Stones because he had taken acid and they hadn't?
Anita: Yes, as far as I know, Mick took his first trip the day he got busted, in '67. Keith had started to suss, he saw us flying around all over the place. He started to live with us. Every time Brian was taking trips, he was working, making tapes. Fantastic.
He didn't dig the music the Stones were making and he really got a block in his head that he couldn't play with them. Now, he would dig it. He never really stopped playing. It was just so different from what they were playing, he couldn't play in sessions. I'm positive he could have gotten it together. Positive. He was just a musician. Pure, so pure a musician.
Keith: I remember once in Philadelphia some kids had picked up on an interview Brian had done with somebody, he'd used one of those intellectual words like "esoteric." And so, right in the front, these kids had big signs that said, "Brian, you're so esoteric." It had that aura. It was down to Sixteen magazine. Everything you did in America then, it could all be in Sixteen magazine.
But there's a time in everybody's life when they come out, when they bloom and it was just about then for the Stones.
Keith: Brian was like that at Monterey.
Anita: He was on STP at Monterey.
Did he come back from there with a lot of things in his head?
Keith: Yeah, he did.
Anita: With a lot of STP.
Keith: He changed . . . because we changed around Brian, Anita and I. We had that whole thing in Morocco and that kind of blew Brian too, on top of everything else. The thing I've forgotten about was when we were in court waiting to hear if there was to be bail before the real trial, that's when they busted Brian, man. They had it timed down to the minute. When we were actually in the @#$%& courtroom up in London, an hour and a half drive away, they were going into Brian's house to do him so that the papers would come out with "Rolling Stones Keith Richards and Mick Jagger on trial for this, meanwhile Brian Jones just been found with this" – so they could lay that on. "Well, they must be guilty."
Anita: They were going to come down and see us . . . and we called from Brian's house and said, "Don't bother. The cops are here."
Keith: "Don't come down. We'll come up." Unbelievable. It's really weird because people think of England as far more tolerant and genteel than America but when they laid that one on us, when they want to lay it down, they can be just as heavy. They just don't carry guns, that's all.
To talk about the music then, with Brian into acid before anyone and having been to the West Coast, was there a reluctance to play just rock and roll?
There was a point where it was difficult to do that. People would say. "What you playin' that old shit for?" Which really screwed me up 'cause that's all I can play. We just sort of laid back and listened to what they were doing in Frisco whereas Brian was making great tapes, overdubbing. He was much more into it than we were. And we were digging what we were hearing, for what it was but that other thing in you is saying, "Yeah. But where's Chuck Berry? What's he doing?" It's got to follow through. It's got to connect.
Did it feel like an end to anybody?
It did to Brian, thinking about it. Not to me. I just sort of picked it up again. I think Brian felt that was it. He was really a sensitive cat, too sensitive, the thought of going back on the road really horrified him. In '66 when we last saw America it was 45's and teenyboppers and in three years it established a completely different order. What a change in America, just amazing.
And he was OK on that last tour?
Yeah, we were all very stoned. The last gig was in L.A. We came back to England with pockets full of acid. In '65 you hardly saw any grass. By '66, it was becoming common. It was still a spade trip before that, a spade laid it on you and it was a pleasure to get a joint. It was one of those turn-ons, like when we get to America, we'll get joints laid on us if we get a spade act with us.
Apart from a visit to New York in '67 to do the cover for Satanic Majesties, which we constructed in a day, and a couple months in '68, I was there just before the convention . . . the only contact I had was the underground press and whatever came through.
How did that picture of the band in drag come about?
There was a big rush for "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?" Jerry Schatzberg took the picture and Andrew ordered a truckload of costumes and Brian just laid on me this incredible stuff. He just said, "Take this." We walked down from Park Lane in that gear and we did the pictures. It was very quiet, Saturday afternoon, all the businesses are shut but there's traffic . . .
Wearing high heels?
Yeah, and the whole bit. Bill in a wheelchair. It took a while to get this picture and going back, what do you do? Do you take half the stuff off and walk back . . . or do you keep it on? Anyway, I'm thirsty, let's go and have a beer. We all zip down to this bar. Hey, what voice do you do? We sat there and had a beer and watched TV and no one said anything. But it was just so outrageous because Bill stayed in his wheelchair and Brian was pushing him about.
Do you like that record?
I loved the track of it. I never did like the record. It was cut badly. It was mastered badly. It was mixed badly. The only reason we were so hot on it was that the track blew our heads off, everything else was rushed too quickly. Tapes were being flown . . . and lost. It needed another couple weeks. The rhythm section thing is almost lost completely.
Of course, there was still "Lady Jane."
Brian was getting into dulcimer then. Because he dug Richard Farina. It has to do with what you listen to. Like I'll just listen to old blues cats for months and not want to hear anything else and then I just want to hear what's happening and collect it all and listen to it. We were also listening to a lot of Appalachian music then too. To me, "Lady Jane" is very Elizabethan. There are a few places in England where people still speak that way, Chaucer English.
Brian played flute on "Ruby Tuesday."
Yeah, he was a gas. He was a cat who could play any instrument. It was like, "there it is, music comes out of it, if I work at it for a bit, I can do it." It's him on marimbas on "Under My Thumb" and mellotron on a quite a few things on Satanic Majesties. He was the strings on "Two Thousand Light Years From Home," Brian on mellotron, and the brass on "We Love You," all that Arabic riff.
How about earlier stuff like "Paint It Black"?
Mick wrote it. I wrote the music, he did the words. Get a single together.
What's amazing about that one for me is the sitar. Also, the fact that we cut it as a comedy track. Bill was playing an organ, doing a takeoff of our first manager who started his career in show business as an organist in a cinema pit. We'd been doing it with funky rhythms and it hadn't worked and he started playing it like this and everybody got behind it. It's a two-beat, very strange. Brian playing the sitar makes it a whole other thing.
[How about "Get Off My Cloud"?
That was the follow-up to "Satisfaction." I never dug it as a record. The chorus was a nice idea but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in L.A. and it was time for another single. But how do you follow "Satisfaction"? Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew's worse productions.
"Mother's Little Helper"?
In those days, Mick and I were into a solid word-music bag unless I thought of something outstanding, which could be used in the title or something. I would spend the first two weeks of the tour, because it was done on the road, all of it was worked out . . . an American tour meant you started writing another album. After three, four weeks you had enough and then you went to L.A. and recorded it. We worked very fast that way and when you came off a tour you were shit hot playing, as hot as the band is gonna be.
"Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown," "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby," "Mother's Little Helper," they're all putting down another generation.
Mick's always written a lot about it. A lot of the stuff Chuck Berry and early rock writers did was putting down that other generation. That feeling then, like in '67. We used to laugh at those people but they must have gotten the message right away because they tried to put rock 'n' roll down, trying to get it off the radio, off records. Obviously they saw some destruction stemming from . . . they felt it right away.
Was the Hyde Park concert scheduled before Brian's death?
It was. Don't forget, it was our first thing with Mick Taylor. We wanted to get Mick Taylor up on stage to be seen. We wanted to do something in London. And we wanted it to be free. Which is also a bastard. Because the two free things we've done have been that and Altamont. Both so totally different. people trying to pull that old riff on us, going there in armor. Maybe it was the wisest thing. So we went in an armored ambulance. Took about two hours to drive through the crowd. And we played pretty bad. Until near the end, 'cause we hadn't played for years. And nobody minded 'cause they just wanted to hear us play again. It was nice they were glad to see us because we were glad to see them. Coming after Brian's death, it was like a thing we had to do. We had that big picture of him on stage and it comes out looking like a ghost in some pictures.
Was Brian's death still unreal?
It didn't hit me for months because I hadn't seen him a lot. The only time we'd see him was down at the courthouse, at one of his trials. They really roughed him up, man. He wasn't a cat that could stand that kind of shit and they really went for him like when hound dogs smell blood. "There's one that'll break if we keep on." And they busted him and busted him. That cat got so paranoid at the end like they did to Lenny Bruce, the same tactics, break him down. Maybe with Mick and me they felt, well, they're just old lads.
Mick read a poem for Brian at the concert.
He read something from Shelley. He wanted to do it for Brian. It's a tough thing . . . the first thing you've done on stage before an audience in two years. To get up and read a Shelley poem. He wanted to do it for Brian. He said it was necessary to make some sort of incantation.
And the butterflies . . . they were really nice. Biggest public gathering in London for over two hundred years. The last time they had a gathering that big in England, it started a people's revolt. Had to be put down with the dragoons.
Do you and Mick still write now the way you used to then?
Well, I haven't seen him for a couple weeks because he went and got married, but basically yes. We do bits that we hear and then we throw them all together on a cassette or something, and listen to it. Mick writes more melodies now than he used to.
The first things, usually I wrote the melody and Mick wrote the words. It's not gotten like the Lennon-McCartney thing got where they wrote completely by themselves. Every song we've got have pieces of each other in it. The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice. We were all surprised at the way that album fell together. Sticky Fingers – it pulled itself together.
Concerning Sticky Fingers and the new tongue logo:
Slowly and slowly, we've been finding the right people to do the right thing like Marshall Chess, like Jo Bergman. All those people are as important as we are. Especially now that we've got Rolling Stones records, with the Kali tongue . . . nobody's gotten into that yet, but that's Kali, the Hindu female goddess. Five arms, a row of heads around her, a sabre in one hand, flames coming out the other, she stands there, with her tongue out. But that's gonna change. That symbol's not going to stay as it is. Sometimes it'll take up the whole label, maybe slowly it'll turn to a cock, I don't know yet.
You going to put two pills on the tongue?
We're going to do everything with it, slowly. Don't want to let it grow stale. It's growing change. Got to keep it growing.
Do you want to make 70?
I can't even imagine what it's like, to be 70. When I was 20 I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be 28.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
ash
()
Date: January 7, 2013 11:33
Thanks that's really interesting especially as it's still fairly close to the events in question. Keith's very positive about Brian on the whole compared to his later interviews where he seems pretty dismissive other than for Brian's early contributions in getting the band together and playing ability.
Much as the Jones-era is my favourite, i don't have a lot of sympathy for Brian myself. I can well imagine that Keylock finally had enough and lost it if you know what i mean.
However his contribution to the Stones remains critical 50 years later and we have a lot to be thankful for even if he was "just too much of an @#$%&".
The other thing that stands out is the whole "spade" bit. Hmm i know he doesn't mean to be racist (and obviously he wasn't/isn't) but i can't imagine a rock star saying that kind of thing in a major publication today. Thankfully the times they have a changed a little bit since then.
Much as the Jones-era is my favourite, i don't have a lot of sympathy for Brian myself. I can well imagine that Keylock finally had enough and lost it if you know what i mean.
However his contribution to the Stones remains critical 50 years later and we have a lot to be thankful for even if he was "just too much of an @#$%&".
The other thing that stands out is the whole "spade" bit. Hmm i know he doesn't mean to be racist (and obviously he wasn't/isn't) but i can't imagine a rock star saying that kind of thing in a major publication today. Thankfully the times they have a changed a little bit since then.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
dcba
()
Date: January 7, 2013 12:15
Imo Keith was looking for a father figure (sth he did for a looong time: think about Freddie Seesler...) and at that early time Brian was one...
Then (1965-66?) Keith realized Brian was in fact a selfish c°nt and Keith "killed" Dad... >
<
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-07 17:28 by dcba.
Then (1965-66?) Keith realized Brian was in fact a selfish c°nt and Keith "killed" Dad... >
<Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-07 17:28 by dcba.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
Koen
()
Date: January 7, 2013 16:18
How about that last question. 
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
24FPS
()
Date: January 7, 2013 17:35
Yes, Keith seems to have gotten annoyed to be asked about Brian later. It's almost like he thought this article would have taken care of everything Brian forever and ever. My crackpot theory is that Anita was a constant reminder, and that maybe Keith hadn't dealt with his own anger and guilt towards him. Bill said pretty early on that Keith had a decent memory and it shows in this interview. I remember reading it when it was published and I'd forgotten how Brian-centric the interview was. There were some other parts that were rehashes of Altamont that didn't really shine any light on what was recently shown in the Crossfire Hurricane film.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
dandelion1967
()
Date: January 7, 2013 19:00
Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
--------------------------------------------
"I'm gonna walk... before they make me run"
--------------------------------------------
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
2000 LYFH
()
Date: January 7, 2013 22:28
Quote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
lem motlow
()
Date: January 8, 2013 02:14
always good to see a little something from keith before he went crazy.he really was the real deal then-told the truth instead of some prepared one-liner that he thought looked clever in print.
and his perspective on mick and brian seemed pretty fair,it didnt have all the bitterness and anger of his later recollections.
and his perspective on mick and brian seemed pretty fair,it didnt have all the bitterness and anger of his later recollections.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: January 8, 2013 02:28
Quote
2000 LYFHQuote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
treaclefingers
()
Date: January 8, 2013 02:45
Quote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
2000 LYFHQuote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
He himself said he had nothing to do with the song, what riff did he write?
And what about Sway?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-08 02:52 by treaclefingers.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
latebloomer
()
Date: January 8, 2013 02:54
Quote
treaclefingersQuote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
2000 LYFHQuote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
He himself he had nothing to do with the song, what riff did he write?
And what about Sway?
And what about Ruby Tuesday? Mick has said he had nothing to do with that one. They obviously have a long standing business arrangement that works well for them, just doesn't work so well for other collaborators.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
TheDailyBuzzherd
()
Date: January 8, 2013 03:14
Thanks for this, 24. One of the earliest in-depth pieces I read on the band in The '80s.
Times change, so do people's sensibilities. Keith seems to have exhibited Brian-envy
after this interview appeared. Quite natural, I think, 'cuz as all here know, the best
career move one can make is die young.
Times change, so do people's sensibilities. Keith seems to have exhibited Brian-envy
after this interview appeared. Quite natural, I think, 'cuz as all here know, the best
career move one can make is die young.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
SweetThing
()
Date: January 8, 2013 04:28
Keith: "Stew drifted with us for some reason"
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
TheDailyBuzzherd
()
Date: January 8, 2013 04:46
Quote
SweetThing
Keith: "Stew drifted with us for some reason"
Odd statement nowadays, eh? Stu's profile got raised as Brian's tanked.
Of course, Stu had a lot more mileage and output with the band, so ...
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
2000 LYFH
()
Date: January 8, 2013 04:52
Quote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
2000 LYFHQuote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
OK, if that is true, then I would assume (legally) that a Jagger/Richards credit is correct. If it turns out he did not write any of it (I have no idea what he means when he says - I have nothing to do with it), is it still OK to give him a song writing credit? I know we have had this discussion in the past, but 2 or 3 past members feel that proper credits have not been fairly noted (we are only taking about maybe 4 or 5 songs total)! How do you feel about Lennon getting credit on Yesterday? Is that OK but Brian does not get credit for Ruby Tuesday?
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
24FPS
()
Date: January 8, 2013 05:00
The greatest irony of course is that Keith became all those things Brian was. The decadent face of the band. An uncontrollable addict. Contributing less and less musically to the band. Endangering their ability to tour. And finally, more in love with fame than the music.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
TheDailyBuzzherd
()
Date: January 8, 2013 05:33
Ironic yes, but Brian's big mistake was derailing as Keith was escalating stylistically.
If Brian had managed to hold on awhile longer things would've been different.
The winner writes the history.
If Brian had managed to hold on awhile longer things would've been different.
The winner writes the history.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
24FPS
()
Date: January 8, 2013 07:12
Quote
TheDailyBuzzherd
Ironic yes, but Brian's big mistake was derailing as Keith was escalating stylistically.
If Brian had managed to hold on awhile longer things would've been different.
The winner writes the history.
Something that got hammered home from this article is that Brian truly didn't like the music that the Rolling Stones were making. Now I don't know if that's because he was jealous, or perhaps he didn't want to go back to the styles of music they did on Beggars Banquet. Maybe Brian was hearing in his head sounds that were more forward. He'd make his claim to being an early exponent of
world music with the Pipes of Pan recording. Keith said he was making interesting tapes, possibly experimenting with electronic music. He was certainly a restless soul. Maybe he truly was, "At odds with the discs we've been cutting."
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
TheDailyBuzzherd
()
Date: January 8, 2013 08:20
Perhaps, he certainly wasn't satisfied doing it by the numbers, yet this article
is formed around the old Keith/Anita axis, so there's some polluting of the facts
here, particularly the ludicrous lines Anita offers: "He and Keith couldn't play together
any more. I don't know what causes those things but they couldn't" and "He didn't
dig the music the Stones were making and he really got a block in his head that he
couldn't play with them. Now, he would dig it. He never really stopped playing.
It was just so different from what they were playing, he couldn't play in sessions".
To me, it's all convenient damage control with a healthy serving of denial. We now
know how that triangle came about and Keith has changed his tune since then, and
much of that is because he dumped Pallenberg, but it does appear true that Jones
was on one musical journey while the band on another. If the only real lasting effect
of the maligned "Satanic ..." record was Jones' continued fascination with electronics,
then that explains his lack of interest in roots recordings The Stones resumed the
following year. That, and his other interest in African music still had a tangent
common to The Stones output, but perhaps Jones' insecurity made it impossible for him
to incorporate such musings into session time. Therefore his recording was released
posthumously. I can't help but wonder if such recordings had an influence on "Sympathy".
Since "Steel Wheels" has a nod to Jones and the musicians of Joujouka, one must assume
it did.
is formed around the old Keith/Anita axis, so there's some polluting of the facts
here, particularly the ludicrous lines Anita offers: "He and Keith couldn't play together
any more. I don't know what causes those things but they couldn't" and "He didn't
dig the music the Stones were making and he really got a block in his head that he
couldn't play with them. Now, he would dig it. He never really stopped playing.
It was just so different from what they were playing, he couldn't play in sessions".
To me, it's all convenient damage control with a healthy serving of denial. We now
know how that triangle came about and Keith has changed his tune since then, and
much of that is because he dumped Pallenberg, but it does appear true that Jones
was on one musical journey while the band on another. If the only real lasting effect
of the maligned "Satanic ..." record was Jones' continued fascination with electronics,
then that explains his lack of interest in roots recordings The Stones resumed the
following year. That, and his other interest in African music still had a tangent
common to The Stones output, but perhaps Jones' insecurity made it impossible for him
to incorporate such musings into session time. Therefore his recording was released
posthumously. I can't help but wonder if such recordings had an influence on "Sympathy".
Since "Steel Wheels" has a nod to Jones and the musicians of Joujouka, one must assume
it did.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: January 8, 2013 09:47
Quote
treaclefingersQuote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
2000 LYFHQuote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
He himself said he had nothing to do with the song, what riff did he write?
And what about Sway?
Christ! How many times do we have to do this? He wrote the riff called "the japanese thing". He didn't have anything to do with RECORDING THE TRACK
I thought I wasn't on Moonlight Mile but the last riff everybody gets into playing is a riff I'd been playing on earlier tapes before I dropped out.
- Keith Richards, 1971
About Sway: That recording session, as you know, he did attend - if I'm not mistaken, he is wuite prominent in the mix during the choruses, and probably helped making it as well
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-01-08 12:40 by DandelionPowderman.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
tonterapi
()
Date: January 8, 2013 12:01
Thanks a million for posting this. It was a long time ago I read it.
Anyway, Brian did like returning to the roots with JJF. Some people claim he actually bounced back a little in the beginning of 68 and did less drugs.
What he got fed up with AFAIK was that his opinion and musical suggestions didn't matter anymore in the studio. Jagger and Richards had taken over what once was "arranged by the Rolling Stones" and had full control. I think we can all agree on that being expected to shut up and play guitar wasn't what Brian had shown interest in during the last years.
Well, it takes one to know one. He didn't kill him. He became him.Quote
dcba
Then (1965-66?) Keith realized Brian was in fact a selfish c°nt and Keith "killed" Dad... >
No, generally speaking it seems like he didn't like the music. According to ALO Brian had an attitude that music should be kept real and for him I guess that was to stay true to his heroes and not change things just to reach the stars. It's also known that he disliked the image ALO created for them pointing them out as filthy and rough. I think the interview with Brian in Charlie is My Darling say a lot about how he felt. He wasn't satisfied on a musical level but liked the benefits that came with the fame too much to say FU and do his own thing. I guess his insecurity played a major part as well in that.Quote
24FPS
Something that got hammered home from this article is that Brian truly didn't like the music that the Rolling Stones were making. Now I don't know if that's because he was jealous, or perhaps he didn't want to go back to the styles of music they did on Beggars Banquet. Maybe Brian was hearing in his head sounds that were more forward. He'd make his claim to being an early exponent of
world music with the Pipes of Pan recording. Keith said he was making interesting tapes, possibly experimenting with electronic music. He was certainly a restless soul. Maybe he truly was, "At odds with the discs we've been cutting."
Anyway, Brian did like returning to the roots with JJF. Some people claim he actually bounced back a little in the beginning of 68 and did less drugs.
What he got fed up with AFAIK was that his opinion and musical suggestions didn't matter anymore in the studio. Jagger and Richards had taken over what once was "arranged by the Rolling Stones" and had full control. I think we can all agree on that being expected to shut up and play guitar wasn't what Brian had shown interest in during the last years.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
duke richardson
()
Date: January 8, 2013 16:29
glad this interview is being talked about again. i read it when it first came out, Keith on the cover, the shark tooth earring, etc, etc..then the in-depth discussion Keith started in that interview became what my friends and i talked of for months..
as for Brian..he lost interest in the band, after it became clear that Keith and Mick were another songwriting force like Lennon-McCartney.. imagine how he must have felt..
the Stones wanted nothing more than to work, and play live..and they had to..
something Brian no longer had the health or discipline for. he was f**ked.
as for Brian..he lost interest in the band, after it became clear that Keith and Mick were another songwriting force like Lennon-McCartney.. imagine how he must have felt..
the Stones wanted nothing more than to work, and play live..and they had to..
something Brian no longer had the health or discipline for. he was f**ked.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
treaclefingers
()
Date: January 8, 2013 16:51
Quote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
treaclefingersQuote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
2000 LYFHQuote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
He himself said he had nothing to do with the song, what riff did he write?
And what about Sway?
Christ! How many times do we have to do this? He wrote the riff called "the japanese thing". He didn't have anything to do with RECORDING THE TRACK
I thought I wasn't on Moonlight Mile but the last riff everybody gets into playing is a riff I'd been playing on earlier tapes before I dropped out.
- Keith Richards, 1971
About Sway: That recording session, as you know, he did attend - if I'm not mistaken, he is wuite prominent in the mix during the choruses, and probably helped making it as well
Easy easy....not everyone is a slave to all your posts!
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
DandelionPowderman
()
Date: January 8, 2013 17:00
Quote
treaclefingersQuote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
treaclefingersQuote
DandelionPowdermanQuote
2000 LYFHQuote
dandelion1967Quote
The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice.
Somebody call Mick Taylor to pay him his royalties!!
Right on! So much for the argument that only the people who actually write the song is to have their name on the credits. So if Keith did not have "anything" to do with it, why is he listed as co-author? Did Jagger write this 100% or did maybe Taylor have some input which should be a song writing credit?
However, I do know that the Stones had played the ending to MM in the studio while Keith was present before they recorded it but it was probably just part of a jam piece and not yet part of MM.
He didn't participate in the recording session. He wrote one of the riffs in the song, hence the credit, of course.
He himself said he had nothing to do with the song, what riff did he write?
And what about Sway?
Christ! How many times do we have to do this? He wrote the riff called "the japanese thing". He didn't have anything to do with RECORDING THE TRACK
I thought I wasn't on Moonlight Mile but the last riff everybody gets into playing is a riff I'd been playing on earlier tapes before I dropped out.
- Keith Richards, 1971
About Sway: That recording session, as you know, he did attend - if I'm not mistaken, he is quite prominent in the mix during the choruses, and probably helped making it as well
Easy easy....not everyone is a slave to all your posts!
Luckily (for them), they aren't
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
emotionalbarbecue
()
Date: January 8, 2013 17:23
Despite being 1971 Keith showed an excellent memory and explains the subjects in an elaborate way. 
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
2000 LYFH
()
Date: January 8, 2013 17:40
"When we played, it gave Brian . . . man, when he wanted to play, he could play his ass off, that cat. To get him to do it, especially later on, was another thing. In the studio, for instance, to try and get Brian to play was such a hassle that eventually on a lot of those records that people think are the Stones, it's me overdubbing three guitars and Brian zonked out on the floor."
Do you think Keith is talking mainly about Beggars Banquet here?
Do you think Keith is talking mainly about Beggars Banquet here?
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
24FPS
()
Date: January 8, 2013 18:02
Quote
2000 LYFH
"When we played, it gave Brian . . . man, when he wanted to play, he could play his ass off, that cat. To get him to do it, especially later on, was another thing. In the studio, for instance, to try and get Brian to play was such a hassle that eventually on a lot of those records that people think are the Stones, it's me overdubbing three guitars and Brian zonked out on the floor."
Do you think Keith is talking mainly about Beggars Banquet here?
Doesn't it go back further, like to Aftermath? It may not have been as pronounced on Satanic Majesties because of the reduced guitar dominance. It's pretty obvious by Beggar's Banquet, and their subsequent appearance on Rock and Roll Circus, that they were a quartet. Brian had forced them to get along without him and they did.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
2000 LYFH
()
Date: January 8, 2013 18:23
Quote
24FPSQuote
2000 LYFH
"When we played, it gave Brian . . . man, when he wanted to play, he could play his ass off, that cat. To get him to do it, especially later on, was another thing. In the studio, for instance, to try and get Brian to play was such a hassle that eventually on a lot of those records that people think are the Stones, it's me overdubbing three guitars and Brian zonked out on the floor."
Do you think Keith is talking mainly about Beggars Banquet here?
Doesn't it go back further, like to Aftermath? It may not have been as pronounced on Satanic Majesties because of the reduced guitar dominance. It's pretty obvious by Beggar's Banquet, and their subsequent appearance on Rock and Roll Circus, that they were a quartet. Brian had forced them to get along without him and they did.
Well the part about being "zonked out on the floor", I believe was really a 1968 statement. 1966-1967, Brian was playing all those other instruments, so at least he was active in the studio and not unconscious! But who knows his active state in 66/67 at all sessions. I know Bill Wyman stated in Stone Alone, that he first noticed a change in Brian around the release of Satisfaction - but probably just becoming disillusioned with the music and direction of the band (in other words, pissed off the band was not following his 100% direction)...
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
24FPS
()
Date: January 8, 2013 20:40
Doesn't it go back further, like to Aftermath? It may not have been as pronounced on Satanic Majesties because of the reduced guitar dominance. It's pretty obvious by Beggar's Banquet, and their subsequent appearance on Rock and Roll Circus, that they were a quartet. Brian had forced them to get along without him and they did.[/quote]
Well the part about being "zonked out on the floor", I believe was really a 1968 statement. 1966-1967, Brian was playing all those other instruments, so at least he was active in the studio and not unconscious! But who knows his active state in 66/67 at all sessions. I know Bill Wyman stated in Stone Alone, that he first noticed a change in Brian around the release of Satisfaction - but probably just becoming disillusioned with the music and direction of the band (in other words, pissed off the band was not following his 100% direction)...[/quote]
If you watch the NME performances and the Sullivan appearances you can see the ebb and flow of Brian's participation (and Bill's). In the earliest days (as seen in Crossfire) Brian is wild and singing. By the first Sullivan appearance you can tell he's been told to tone down and give the spotlight to Mick. Brian begins to recede and Bill gets to step forward and even add harmony until that embarrasing spot on 'Time Is On My Side'. Brian seems to retreat even further until 'Little Red Rooster' lets him shine. Then he's a zombie again by 'Satisfaction'. He remains that way, barely strumming rhythm until he grabs the attention again by setting himself apart by playing sitar on PIB and recorder on Ruby Tuesday.
That's pretty much the last TV appearance we can judge until Rock and Roll Circus. Bill had long ago left Brian's side on stage right to go stand next to Keith and Charlie. And you can see Brian didn't care about being part of the group unless it concerned him, ala 'No Expectations'. He was definitely selfish, way too sensitive, and not practical. He would never have as good a platform to promote his own interests than the Rolling Stones. He sealed his own fate by not progressing on guitar. He had as much claim to ownership in the group as any of them. He should have fought for his place in it.
Well the part about being "zonked out on the floor", I believe was really a 1968 statement. 1966-1967, Brian was playing all those other instruments, so at least he was active in the studio and not unconscious! But who knows his active state in 66/67 at all sessions. I know Bill Wyman stated in Stone Alone, that he first noticed a change in Brian around the release of Satisfaction - but probably just becoming disillusioned with the music and direction of the band (in other words, pissed off the band was not following his 100% direction)...[/quote]
If you watch the NME performances and the Sullivan appearances you can see the ebb and flow of Brian's participation (and Bill's). In the earliest days (as seen in Crossfire) Brian is wild and singing. By the first Sullivan appearance you can tell he's been told to tone down and give the spotlight to Mick. Brian begins to recede and Bill gets to step forward and even add harmony until that embarrasing spot on 'Time Is On My Side'. Brian seems to retreat even further until 'Little Red Rooster' lets him shine. Then he's a zombie again by 'Satisfaction'. He remains that way, barely strumming rhythm until he grabs the attention again by setting himself apart by playing sitar on PIB and recorder on Ruby Tuesday.
That's pretty much the last TV appearance we can judge until Rock and Roll Circus. Bill had long ago left Brian's side on stage right to go stand next to Keith and Charlie. And you can see Brian didn't care about being part of the group unless it concerned him, ala 'No Expectations'. He was definitely selfish, way too sensitive, and not practical. He would never have as good a platform to promote his own interests than the Rolling Stones. He sealed his own fate by not progressing on guitar. He had as much claim to ownership in the group as any of them. He should have fought for his place in it.
Re: Keith Richards (a lot on Brian) -Rolling Stone Magazine 1971
Posted by:
VT22
()
Date: January 8, 2013 21:29
Christ! How many times do we have to do this? He wrote the riff called "the japanese thing". He didn't have anything to do with RECORDING THE TRACK
DandelionPowderman
Relax man, or you will end up at the CCU. How many times do you have to say it ? What's this "Japanese thing" ? It's Chinese at best. And whe never heard Keith playing it in the first place...and he had a big ego. No need for you to be a parrot. Moonlight Mile is played by Jagger basically using an 'ordinary' G maj pent scale, with the help of Mick Taylor. I agree it's one of the Stones's best though.. Now if you transpose the (above) 'Japanese scales' to the key of G, Keith would have been in even more trouble at that time
-----------> -------------> DandelionPowderman
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