NINE: Culture Clash in the South

The Rolling Stones' gigs in Texas are hampered by the arrival of Truman Capote, who makes it clear that covering a rock 'n' roll road tour as a mere journalist is beneath him. The intrusion of the snobbish author and his entourage of Upper East Side Manhattan socialites (including Jackie Kennedy Onassis' sister) cramps the band's style, but they put up with it in hopes of crossing over into a different strata of social acceptance — until Keith finally snaps. Moving through the Deep South, the Stones have uneasy interactions with the bluesmen who inspired their music, raising questions about the fine line between appreciation and appropriation. Having embraced the rhythm and blues of the region, they were able to achieve mainstream crossover success due to the color of their skin — while their heroes toiled in obscurity. It's a tense trip, made all the more nerve wracking by the gun-toting Alabama sheriffs who aren't pleased by the presence of drug-taking long-hairs in their midst.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to
New Orleans. It's late June nineteen seventy two. The Rolling
Stones and their coterie converge on a warehouse blocks from
the banks of the Mississippi. They're here to attend a

(00:22):
party hosted by Ahmet Ertigan, the president of Atlantic Records
and distributor of the Rolling Stones musical output. Resplendent in
a crisp white suit, pressed blazer, and neatly trimmed goateee,
He's the only one who remains cool amid the stifling heat.
But then again, I'm at Ertigan's always cool. As the

(00:50):
founder and leader of one of the most successful R
and B record companies in America, Ahmet steeped in the
sound of The Stones, Sonic DNA, Ray, Charles, the Coasters,
Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha take your pick. He signed
the mall tonight. Ahmed has a special surprise for his
favorite British boys. He knows that for the Stones, New

(01:14):
Orleans means music, soul, funk, jazz, and especially the blues.
They're scholars of the blues. If the Stones go wandering
down the French Quarter, they may get lucky and catch
some old character playing a local honky talk. But the
true legends could be way out in Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Algiers,

(01:34):
or any one of one hundred Bayou bars. To get
the goods, you gotta go to the source. So Ahmet's
bringing the source to the stones. With the ease of
a wealthy man who has become even wealthier by pursuing
a business he loves, Ahmett makes some phone calls and

(01:56):
rounds up a murderer's row of proper legends. Roosevelt Sykes,
a balding blues man from Chicago known as the honey Dripper.
There's Snooks Egland, a blind guitarist and singer who many
people thought was long dead. And of course this Professor Longhair,
a man of indeterminate age and indeterminate birth name. His

(02:17):
face is compressed and narrow, and his skin resembles fine
parchment paper left for too long in the sun. When
these old blues men die, their music goes with them.
As America changes into one big city, joined by television

(02:39):
signals and super highways, it's native artists, the black blues
men are going to vanish. This party is a flashback
to a bygone age. These old men can still boogie,
and by midnight people are sweating and dancing, laughing and
slapping five and occasionally sniffing coke off the backs of

(03:00):
their hands. These old cats have been making music all
their lives without much reward, without ever becoming pop heroes
or cultural symbols. Now they sit playing for friends of
the Rolling Stones. They don't even know who the Stones are.
Mick Jagger, which one's he? One asks, ah me At
just smiles as he writes him a check in the corner.

(03:24):
That description comes courtesy of Robert Greenfield, the legendary rock
journalist who is Rolling Stone Magazine's dedicated Stones correspondent. As
a twenty something in the early seventies, he was there
on that long, hot night in New Orleans to witness
the meeting between the Rolling Stones and their musical forebears.
For the Stones, it was an evening they'll never forget.

(03:46):
For the musicians, it was just another gig. It's a
full circle moment, for sure, But the meeting depends where
on the circle you happen to be sitting. You could
say the Stones are on a pilgrimage, schlepping out to
pay their respects to these old timers on their turf,
but the transactional nature of the visit makes it all
a little muddy. The Stones took this Delta music and

(04:09):
sold it to the world. Now they've bought entry to
the juke joint of their fantasies for one night only.
Then they go back to their hotel suites in private jet,
and these guys, nearly twice their age, go back to
grinding it out in another dive bar. The inequity is
impossible to ignore. Then again, Welcome to the American South

(04:31):
circa nineteen seventy two. The Stones will pass through Texas,
Louisiana and Alabama and just under a week. What happens
when a band of white British drug taking long hairs
who made their name playing black music tours through the
heart of Dixie, Well, they don't go unnoticed, that's for sure.

(05:00):
In addition to Greenfield and his archive have never before
heard interviews with The Stones and their exile on Main Street,
Eric Glory will also be joined by his friend and
tour mate Gary Stromberg, a pr supremo who's represented a
whole jukebox of the twentieth century's greatest artists. My name
is Jordan Runtogg, and this is the Stones touring party.

(05:30):
The STP crew is a little ragged by the time
they touched down in Dallas on June twenty second. It's
understandable considering this is their third state that day. They
had awoken that morning in Chicago at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion,
a locale not exactly conducive to a good night's sleep.

(05:50):
From there, they flew to Kansas City, where the principal
players delivered ninety minutes of premium rock and roll on
the sauna like stage. Still glistening with that, reboarded their
private jet, the one emblazoned with the cartoon character of
Mick Jagger's lapping tongue. Then they flew on the Texas,
where they're scheduled to perform back to back double headers,

(06:12):
two in Dallas Fort Worth and two in Houston. All
of these will be filmed by a full sized Hollywood
crew and recorded for a proposed live album. This intensifies
the pressure on all concerns, and it shows the summer
camp spirit of joyous madness and innocence is evaporated, only
to be replaced by fatigue and frustration. This is all

(06:35):
made worse by the strangers in their midst. These Texas
dates have attracted a flock of so called VIP visitors,
presumably drawn to the aforementioned film crew like moths to
a flame. They're around for various reasons, some valid and
some not. Most are interlopers with no firsthand knowledge of
the rock world. Their presence is an unwonted distraction. Overall,

(06:59):
there's self centered and self important people and capable of
deferring to others. They demand recognition and equal treatment. Many
of these are that most loathsome of creatures I'm referring to,
of course professional writers. Robert Greenfield the sole exception of
that role. And Gary Stromberg explained.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Probably more writers on that tour than in the history
of rock and roll.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Name writers, big extraordinary journalists.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
And appear well terry Southern.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Terry southern. Truman Capodi, Well.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah, I don't count him as a writer, but that's okay,
Well not on that tour.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Oh well, that's what he was there for. He didn't
turn out.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
To be that didn't write anything, No, he did' and
Yon Winner you know, had brought Truman into you know,
star thing more Public City for Rolling Stone Magazine, and
you know he wasn't in real good shape at that point.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
It had been six years since Capodi's lurid masterpiece in
Old Blood, and the follow up was indefinitely delayed by
a vicious cycle of writer's block and substance abuse. By
the early seventies, Truman was coasting on his past literary success.
He spent his time gossiping on talk shows and dining
out with high society ladies who made a parlor game

(08:19):
of guessing which of their flighty friends had provided the
inspiration for his most famous creation, Holly go Lightly, the
heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Despite his follow period, Capoti
was still the flamboyant figurehead of American letters, his razor
wit examining the raw funk of the Stones. It was

(08:39):
just crazy enough to work or fail spectacularly. There was
really no middle ground, but the summit with Hugh Hefner
had gone well enough. Maybe the generational gap will be
bridged yet again. Some on the STP crew were at
least curious to see what he'd make of the tour craziness.
Stone's guitarist Mick Taylor was among them. Here he is

(09:00):
talking to Robert Greenfield back in nineteen seventy two, courtesy
of our friends at the Northwestern University Archives.

Speaker 5 (09:09):
It was very interesting to me to meet him because
I'd read his books and admired them, because in literature
is something.

Speaker 6 (09:15):
I'm interested in.

Speaker 5 (09:16):
It had never occurred to me before he went on
that to that Truman proposed he would be there, and
it didn't seem to be any logical connection. Well, I
think he's interested in spectacles, grand spectac Riston Lawrence.

Speaker 6 (09:27):
You know, whatever they may be.

Speaker 5 (09:29):
I mean, he is reputed as saying that he was
primarily interested in being on the Rolling Stones tim because
of its social significance and because of the.

Speaker 6 (09:38):
Vast boards of people that the Rolling Stones attracted throughout America.
That in itself is a very interesting thing to write about.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Capodi's reputation as a self promoter par excellence certainly pursued him,
and many in the Stones camp resented what seemed like
a fading star's transparent attempt to bask and the band's
reflected glory. Richards questioned his motivations from the start. He
didn't take kindly to Capodi, appropriating their lifestyle for his
own personal gain.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
I don't know why somebody like Capodi is the You know.

Speaker 7 (10:10):
Somebody must have wanted him that totally meet who is
always enamored with us as society seems in a strange
kind of like Gardner's.

Speaker 8 (10:21):
Boy, he is much wants to see Capodi around as Capo.
He wants to hang around with Nick Janga. I think
and just say it of jus.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Maybe Truman planned to meet the Stones with his own
personal cadre of New York socialites. It's either a symptom
of his addiction to celebrity or a craven bid to
upstage the band on their own home court. In either case,
a pervasive rumor sweeps through the STP ranks that he'll
be joined by one time Queen of America Jackie Kennedy

(10:54):
O Nassas. After four space days in Hugh Hefner's house.
It seems it's entirely possible that the former First Lady
and current wife of one of the richest men in
the world has nothing better to do than travel with
the Rolling Stones to Dallas, of all places. Tenanted preparations
for a welcome bank, what are made and the STP

(11:16):
support crew Quiz one another on the exact etiquette of
addressing an ex first lady. One of Robert Frank's documentary
film crew takes the opposite approach. Here, just Keith Richards
to press a joint into Jackie O's hand right in
the middle of her paulm He tells Keith, and I'll
zoom right in. Oh, and if you can sleep with her,
that's out of sight too. Sadly, the woman who did

(11:39):
end up accompanying Truman Capoti wasn't Jackie Kennedy, but her
sister Lee aka the Princess Lee Razawill. Despite having literal
royalty in their midst the disappointment among the STP squad
was palpable.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Truman came on to tour with his own little entourage.
She was traveling with Princess Leigh Radswell, Jacqueline Kennedy's sister,
and Peter Beard, a very famous photographer and an artist
and part of the Montauk Circle, which is where Truman
had the house right at the end of the point
and Mix stayed there during the tour before they worked

(12:19):
New York and everybody, well not everybody, Some people fond
over them and cater to them, and of course Smith did,
and anything that micked it, Keith of course would take
the opposite course, right, So this immediately.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
Set Keith off.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
And I just remember Princess Lee Radswell, very beautiful, very cultured,
very you know, high society. I just remember screaming calling
her Princess.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
Radish, right, that was her name.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
I mean, this is funny when you're on the road
with I don't know about it now.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
They were just used to being dealt with in a
different way than they were being dealt with on this tour,
a very different way than they were being dealt with.
When you're on a Stone's tour, there's no room for
any other personality other than the Stone, correct. And Capodi
was used to being catered to, and he wasn't being
catered to on this tour at all. He just had
to follow direction, which he's not it wasn't accustomed to

(13:15):
and complained constantly. I mean I was the source of
his complaining. So he was complaining all the time. And
nobody liked the guy. He took instant dislike for me,
What did he call you the New York Jew? He
got that wrong. I'm not from New York.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
He got half of it right, Truman elaborated on Gary
and the copious notes he takes for an article he
later decides not to write. Gary listens to this podcast.
We'll give him a few moments to skip ahead. Capodi
describes his quote glassy eyes shifting behind aviator shades, his
hair framed lips so painfully, producing the supplicant boot looking smile,

(13:54):
so indigenous to his image charming. Keith Richers wasn't exactly
pleased to Truman and Co. More than anyone else in
the band and perhaps anyone else on the tour. This
was emphatically not his scene.

Speaker 8 (14:08):
And that was the first time any Rioters, etc. Come
out on the roads, or any of those New York
society people that sort of put themselves out enough to
turn up in Houston and New Orleans and get sweaty
and uncomfortable and be treated like the Asian queens they
were instead of the center of attraction, which I guess

(14:30):
disturbs those kind of people because seems to me that
they stay in their own little world of which they're
the center.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Things got off to a rocky start from the moment
they met up at the Kansas City Gig, sipping a
Gin and tonic and his wide brimmed hat and sear
sucker jacket. Truman looked less like a rock and roll
road warrior and more like a very dignified, very small
US Senator. Mick the Stones resident diplomat, strolls up to
greet him. What are you doing in a dump like this?

(15:04):
He draws with his best little boy grin make his joking,
but Capodi doesn't see it like that. In fact, he
takes offense. The southern born author has spent quite a
lot of time in Kansas City. It's not a dump,
it's a swinging place. He doesn't appreciate the Stone's attitude,
this lack of respect they have for a country they
obviously know nothing about. It was clear from the start

(15:27):
that this connection was doomed. If even Mick Jagger can't
make contact this man who prides himself on getting along
with everyone from Princess Margaret to the Grateful Dead to
New York cabbies, then it was a lost cause. He
and Truman had met before in New York, and neither
came away impressed. Capote described Jagger as a scared little boy,

(15:49):
very much off his turf, and Jagger recalled Capode as shamelessly, desperately,
even trying to make everyone laugh at a cocktail party.
From the start, this relationship couldn't be salvaged, and Mick
knew it.

Speaker 6 (16:08):
Well, I didn't want to you on the two from
the beginning. And you only do it for money anyway,
is that what he says? Well, first of all, he
said they offered him one thousand dollars and it wasn't enoughing.
I said to our show, it wasn't enoughing anyway.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
We didn't want you on the tour anyway. You know,
he's not rock and roll tour.

Speaker 6 (16:23):
You know, he should de stick to what he does
or what he doesn't do anymore, which is nothing. But
he hasn't done anything for ageous is actually all he.

Speaker 9 (16:32):
Does is appear on talk shows that liberache and he
hasn't written a.

Speaker 6 (16:36):
Good book for years, but all he does is talk
about it.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
And he's been on all these.

Speaker 6 (16:40):
Different talk shows.

Speaker 10 (16:41):
I mean, even while I was doing in America on
the tour, right drive and everyone.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
About how he's on the wrong ste.

Speaker 6 (16:46):
Like some sort of middle aged groupie.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Mick may have detested Truman personally, but at least he
brought a certain class to the proceedings. The same can't
really be said of Terry Southern, the kind of class
writer behind the darkly comic novels Candy and The Magic Christian,
both of which had recently been made into controversial movies
featuring Ringo Starr. He also panned the screenplay for Stanley

(17:11):
Kubrick's absurdist nuclear farst Doctor Strangelove and an early draft
of the quintessential hippie road movie Easy Rider. Invited along
to cover the tour for the Saturday Review, Terry Southern's
pension for drugs made him something of a liability, but
unsurprisingly Keith got along with him.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Famously, Capodi pretty much was looking at Jagger all the
time because Jagger is the guy the focus. But Keith
had Terry Southern on the tour, who, as you may know,
was a wild man. Yeah, totally wild man. And that
was Keith's guy. So they were drug buddies.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Terry had written Candy, a very riotous novel. He'd written movies,
very well respected. I was awed to meet him.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yes, and it's big a drug addict, probably more than
even Keith. There was a one show I think it
was in Mobile. That my part of my job was
to be responsible for the journalists, to keep them in
line and keep them happy and give them access. So,
according to Keith, Terry could go anywhere he wanted. He
had Keith's approval, so Terry would stand on the side

(18:18):
of the stage and watch the show. At the show,
I think it was Mobile, Alabama, Terry was so loaded
that hetted I was watching him and he starts swaying
and he's like having a hard time just staying up,
and all of a sudden he leans over and out
of his shirt pocket rolls a bunch of kills and
I think was an amal nitrate was an hand It's

(18:39):
rolling across the stage as they're performing, and Terry is
now on his hands and knees going to it. Picked
up this thing, and Keith thinks this is hysterical. And
in addition, the chief of police of Mobile, Alabama is
standing right next to where Terry had originally been standing.
And I'm trying to figure out how to I can
smooth over this and make this all work, and somehow

(19:02):
got through it. Terry he picked up these drugs, and
Keith was just having a great old time.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Whither writers. Gary was managing a stable of unhinged human beings.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yes, when he wasn't busy sniffing out substances. The rumpled,
bearded and permanently stoned. Terry Southern spent much of his
one on one time with the Stones trying to sell
them on a movie idea he was developing. Mick and
Keith would play two musicians from Kansas City trying to

(19:33):
make it in the Big Apple. Keith would often reply
with a good natured but mostly serious are you joking?
Mixed response is lost to history, but it was certainly
less jovial. You'd be forgiven for thinking that something isn't
adding up. Mick Jagger is a lawn to himself, the
head of the Imperial Court, a sort of hyper sexualized

(19:55):
sun King of the stp Tour. Should anyone dare to
displease him, he could have them remove from his presence
with a mere look, probably even ejected from the plane
at thirteen thousand feet. Terry Southern might have been a
little trickier because of his relationship with Keith, but if
Mick truly didn't want, say Truman Capodi there, then he
wouldn't be simple as that. None of the Stones suffered

(20:17):
fools gladly Why was Mick putting up with these high
maintenance journalists who only make him miserable. It was all
part of the long game when he played intuitively and
perhaps unconsciously, to elevate the Stones to a new level
of cultural importance. By attracting the attention of a figure
like Capodi, they attracted the attention of every intellectual in

(20:39):
the nation. This was new. It was obvious that Capodi
didn't give a damn about the music, but Mick recognized
his compulsive need to cling to younger stars like a
social vampire. Though neither man could stand one another, it
was a mutually beneficial relationship, parasitic even, and Nick understood it.
He was a genius being perceived.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Well in terms of media, Jagger was something extraordinary. There
was I've never been with anybody like and who had
the sense of how to do this stuff and how
to create the interest and exclusivity that he created. It
looked like he was there for everybody, but he wasn't.
You know. He was very withholding. He knew how to withhold,

(21:27):
he knew how to create that demand for himself, and
he just He's a star. There's just no two ways
about it. A star he said, you don't give them
what they want. He said, you give them what they want.
He said, they'll cheot you up, spit you out, and
they'll move on to the next guy. He said, leave
them wanting you. He says, more important for that they
want you. I thought that was pure genius. I'd never
heard that before, you know, like Bob was suggesting, this

(21:48):
is an educated man who's very bright and just intuitively
knew how to control. Nobody I've ever worked with before
or after had the innate sense of how to do
this that Jagger had. It was far exceeded my understanding
of how media stuff worked. I thought I was pretty
good at doing my job, but Jagger was much better
at it than I was.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
And you're Gary, you're not doing any publicity for Keith.
Does he do anything?

Speaker 3 (22:13):
No, because it's Jagger's show. It's amazing Keith gets some
of the residual effects of that.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
That he cares.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
No, he doesn't care. He doesn't care, and that's pretty
much all cares about. That's not fair, but he cares
about it a lot. The way it's perceived, the way
the tour is being perceived. He's the one who hired me.
I was partial to Keith because I loved the watching
Keith and his lifestyle was more appealing to me than Jaggers.
But yeah, it was Jagger's show.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
As much as Keith despise the pr game, he understood why,
as fellow glimmer Twin put up with these bores, and
there was a certain level he appreciated it, even if
it wasn't especially important to him.

Speaker 8 (22:55):
You've probably thought it was a good new area of publicize.

Speaker 6 (22:59):
I think, just out of the usual sort of under.

Speaker 8 (23:01):
Round magazines, which is where you tend to end up
these days. Any Rock and roll Stones not on this tour,
I mean, not the cover of Life and Time and
news Week and every major public oation in America. Yeah,
maybe because we invited those kind of people along, you know.

Speaker 9 (23:16):
I mean, you only get the kind of coverage when
you make it possible for those kind.

Speaker 6 (23:19):
Of people to coll act.

Speaker 8 (23:21):
Yeah, I want us to do a certain and none
of that. If you're going to do a big buster
of a tour across America, you know you I mean,
why playing those huge auditoriums and not talk to Time
and Newsweek if they want you to, you know, because
it's all part of the same thing. They just put
a name in front of people that probably wouldn't read
about it.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Animis you know, So it was a means to an end.
The Stones resented the intrusion from these upper class snobs
who had no idea what they were all about, so
the blow off steam they began to act out.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
There was no tolerance. If you didn't pass the smell tests,
you were dead, and would insists yeah, I mean like
you just feel badly for her now, like honey, what
are you doing?

Speaker 3 (24:06):
She was so out of her loo.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Well that's right, Like you know, you thought, oh, this
is gonna be fun. No, not when Keith is calling
you Princess Radish in the middle of the night like
you know, god lover or she didn't do anything wrong.

Speaker 4 (24:20):
Nobody ever talked to her like that.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
But he wasn't going to bow for anybody.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
This is back to, you know, working class anchorman.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Most crucially, these guests inhibited the Stone's ability to do
their job. Their show in Kansas City was to put
up mildly subdued. Everyone agreed it was the worst gig
of the tour. Instead of considering the NonStop partying in
Chicago the days before, they directed their ire, at the
celebrity entourage miling around their dressing room, and especially at

(24:54):
the diminutive writer watching from alongside the amps. They're all
aware of Trueman's reputation for being positively lethal with his pen,
and they fear that he's looking for the slightest flaw
to exploit. You can't be self conscious while playing rock
and roll. Worse still, the next four gigs are going
to be filmed for a concert doc. No one wants

(25:17):
to suck on the big screen. They have to figure
it out and fast, but Truman continues to cramp their style.
He's everywhere inside their plane, inside their limos, and watching
their concerts from his privileged perch in the wings. He's
the kind of person who can find out all about

(25:39):
you merely by looking at you. To Mick Taylor, the
effect is unnerving.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
He was an observer, really, you know.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
He's the kind of.

Speaker 6 (25:50):
Person that doesn't really miss a thing.

Speaker 5 (25:53):
Even though he may not appear to.

Speaker 6 (25:54):
Be involving himself too much and saying very much.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Truman can be so absolutely polite and well mannered that
it's impossible to tell whether he likes you or hates you.
And many stp crew are very concerned about which it is.
Truman doesn't help matters by throwing a dinner party during
his tour tenure, inviting only those he deems the most
important and professional of us, setting off a bomb of

(26:25):
paranoia and bad feelings throughout the organization. This didn't endear
him the Keith, how much contact.

Speaker 4 (26:33):
A germ with proposed as you having conversations with him?

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Not really?

Speaker 8 (26:37):
No, I did him a very good turn painting him
back his credit cards which he dropped at the Cosmos
Factory New Orleans, I which I should have fucking kept,
a use to which I received no thanks, let alone
and renumeration.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
All in all, the culture clash made the atmosphere tense. Ordinarily,
Mick knows how to play these situations perfectly, but he's
in the midst of a grueling tour and consequently very vulnerable.
Society's games are hard to play on the road, and
the mask can slip at any time. In a high
pressure situation like this, the best they can hope for

(27:18):
is in an easy dayton where they don't speak much
to one another. But Keith Richards decides to take a
more direct approach for this. He enlists the help of
Gary Stromberg.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
It was late at night and I was in my
room getting ready for bed, and Keith comes to my
room and says, come on, we're going to go get him.
And when he said him, I knew exactly what we meant.
We went down the hall and it was like probably
three in the morning, and we walked down the hall
and we got to Capoti's room. We knew what the
room was, and sitting on the in the hallway is

(27:52):
a tray, a room service tray with the food that
he had eaten previously, and there was a bottle of ketchup.

Speaker 4 (27:59):
There we go.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Keith picks up the ketchup and he splatters it all
over there, and I'm laughing hysterically, and then he starts
banging on the door and he'll start come out you
queen for screaming at him, and Capodia in a very
shaky voice, going.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Go away, go away.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
He's like terrified, and Keith is screaming at him and laughing,
and it went on for a mote.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
So again more context, I didn't know you were a
henchman in that.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Oh yeah, that was nicky. So I think I gave
him the ketchup. But if I can remember correctly.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
They won't bust you man. You got away with it.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Keith would later defend what would become known as the
in cold ketchup incident by insisting that he just wanted
Truman to come to the party, you know, so we'd
finally get a sense of what this whole rock and
roll thing was all about. Speaking to Robert Greenfield back
in nineteen seventy two, he would take the opportunity to
throw Gary Stromberg under the bus.

Speaker 4 (28:55):
He told me that he knew it was you who
was banging on the door, see, but that he wasn't
going to come out.

Speaker 8 (29:00):
Sure, well he could just quote as a loose but
I mean it was really strong Berg scene. He wanted
me to do it.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Truman would later opt out of writing a piece on
the tour. It didn't excite him creatively. He said, what
I like is something beyond my imagination that sets me off.
He said, a vision. Nothing on the tour was remotely
like that, and I had no insight into it. Nick Taylor,
for one, was disappointed.

Speaker 5 (29:27):
I looked forward to seeing a piece that he rose
to be right or is I've heard that he's not
writing it?

Speaker 4 (29:32):
Says he has no special insight into this topic whature,
which I think is.

Speaker 6 (29:37):
Exactly right myself.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Truman, as we find out later, he was taking various
you know, pills and talking about a book Answer Prayers,
a novel that never appeared, but he never wrote anything.
And then you know, the ending to this little movie
is he goes on the Tonight Show and he calls
them the Beatles.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Okay, he dashes the.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Capodi doesn't seem to have a kind word to say
about any of the Stones. They're complete idiots. Intuition tells
me they'll never tour this country again, and in fact
will not exist in three years. He said in nineteen
seventy two. They're effervescent people who are not important. Jagger
can't sing, his voice isn't the least bit charming, and
he can't dance. He moves in the most awkward kind

(30:32):
of curious parody between an American major ette girl and
Fred Astaire. But what I think is amazing about him
is that there's no single thing of all the things
he does that he's really good at. He has no
talent save for a kind of fly eyed wonder. He'll
never be a star. That unisex thing is a no
sex thing. Believe me, he's about as sexy as a

(30:53):
pissing toad. Say what you will about Trueman Cappodi. The
guy has away words. The vibes had gotten worse. By

(31:20):
the time the STP crew touched down in New Orleans.
The horde of entitled outsiders had become even more egregious
and aggressive, and the inner circles on edge. After three
weeks on the road, cracks have begun to appear in
the shiny black STP wetsuit that's kept everyone dry. Small
arguments become major incidents and feuds. Mushroom and the sticky

(31:42):
wet heat like orchids bursting into bloom and a tropical rainforest.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
The New Orleans is where it really started going south
on some level in terms of the intercession of strangers.
There were people who had no business being there and
didn't belong and might have been allowed on a plane.
This is the insanity of that time.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
The band are frustrated, in part by the previous day's
concerts and Texas, which were filmed for the documentary Ladies
and Gentlemen the Rolling Stones. The gigs weren't complete disasters,
but that's about the best that could be said about them.
They were slightly stilted due to the presence of cameras,
though that's to be expected. But the greater disruption was

(32:26):
the contingent of writers, photographers, and record biz people who
descended on their narrow dressing room like a swarm of
locusts and a bell jar. New faces and strange bodies
angle for drinks at the buffet table and desperately try
to make conversation with a Stone or at least someone

(32:49):
close to them. The crush in the dressing room is
so bad that the Stones retreat to a smaller, top
secret room down the hall, popping in only occasionally for
a bird like swoop towards the food and drink. They
feel like guests at their own gig, and they don't
like it. Adding insult to injury. Most of these trespassers

(33:09):
can't be bothered to tear themselves away from the free
buffet to catch the concert. To them, the music is
a byproduct, hardly worth discussing, really, unless you're trying to
impress one of the musicians by telling him what you
thought of his individual performance. But that's just overkill. The
stage may have provided the Stones with a moment of
relief from the busy bodies, but it had its own

(33:32):
unique discomforts. The Texas sun combined with the band's steady
the art lighting rig, which included six fifteen hundred watts
Super Trooper spotlights, The result transformed the area in there
was sweltering hellscape. For Bill Wyman. It was a low
light of the tour, I.

Speaker 9 (33:51):
Think, whereas well as the hate, you know, we moved
playing in that tremendous face in some places. You heard
about the lottery we took on stage one night, chipmun
Tricks and Nightcap on the stage, see what the temperature
was on stage, And then when we were going back
from the show, we were having a luxury what the
temperature was? You know, I need you know, five dollars
each or something, and we well guessing.

Speaker 8 (34:13):
I think I said ninety.

Speaker 9 (34:14):
Eight and Mick Taylor at one hundred and five and.

Speaker 6 (34:18):
It was one hundred and forty seven. Wasn't really remendous head.

Speaker 9 (34:21):
Planned you came up at that stage, you know, like me,
I don't do imagine stage. I don't leap about too
much to us and I was completely worked out and
washed out.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
It was in this delicate moment As the band staggers
off stage, having deposited their requisite pound of flesh, pints
of blood, and gallon of sweat, that writer Terry Southern
decides to approach an exhausted and dope sick Keith. He
ambles over, puts his arm around his shoulder, and goes
right back in the pitching Keith this movie idea. Keith

(34:55):
finally explodes. Can't you see I'm sick? What do you
want from me? Just leave it? He says, or words
to that effect.

Speaker 8 (35:04):
I just wanted to fuck up and stop bugging me
because he kept going on the hustling. When you've just
come off stage, there's selfish. People are incredibly self censored.
You know, they have blue other thought, their own advancement moons.
I came off stage with stomach crimps and everything, you know,
just being like shit. He started games this movie thing

(35:24):
against I just had to fuck up, you know it
is fair enough.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
The incident is a crucial turning point in the STP
social dynamic. It falls the tour manager, Peter Rudge to
bring the hammer down on the freeloaders, joy riders and
anyone who wasn't serving a function or pulling their weight
too many people have been hopping into limos like they
owned them, and now action must be taken, Changes must
be made, heads must roll. Some folks are going home.

(35:53):
A line forms outside Rudgie's hotel room. Writers and photographers
and other non essentials are called upon to justify their
place on the gravy trend and explain exactly why they
shouldn't be sent back to wherever they'd come from. Terry
Southern's the most obvious scapegoat. It's he who committed the
unpartable sin of irritating one of the principles by getting

(36:14):
too close, and now he must pay the ultimate price,
the revocation of his stp tour a laminate in this circle,
it's a fate worse than death. Terry's Southern chief.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
And you know his arguments and.

Speaker 9 (36:30):
Me, sorry, Souther, mcfin's systems are really silly, and his
attitude is great tolls.

Speaker 7 (36:35):
And then it does.

Speaker 9 (36:36):
You can be silly funny, and you can be silly boring,
you know, And he was silly boring most of the time.
And it just never took the hint, you know, when
it was time to say good night and let you
go to bed, he would sit there and go on
and knock on your door and go down the court
and knocking somebody else. It does come to a head,
especially as Cleith isn't as quicker to flare up than
anybody else in the band.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Really, it's a bad scene. As Rudge dismissed, this is
a number of the ancillary stp crew, those who remain
in the fear that their days are numbered. But even
after all that noise, no one actually leaves. No they
stick around exploring New Orleans, hoping that Keith and Rudge
and everybody chills out and prior transgressions will be forgiven

(37:19):
and forgotten. Shockingly, that's exactly what happens. New Orleans was
just too much fun to fight.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
We stayed in this really cool hotel in the French Quarter,
right We all bought these ridiculous hats that I have
a picture of myself looking like a fool sitting in
front of a large gilt mirror, and we went to
the Voodoo Cemetery.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
I went with Truman Capodi to the house that he
was lived in when as a boy in a French.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Quarter saw a street car named Desire. Because there was
a streetcar with the name Desire, you know Desire is
a street or you know that was a trip Tennessee.
Williams was at the final show. There's another small unity
and the food insane.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
But the highlight of their stay in New Orleans, if
not the highlight of the whole tour, was the party
thrown by Ahmed Urtigen, president of Atlantic Records, which distributes
the Rolling Stones Records label. The suave and sophisticated son
of a Turkish diplomat, Ahmed always makes a point to
come out on the road to see his artists perform.
An Unlike Capodi and the rest of the crew, he's

(38:25):
a welcome to presence. See Omitt knows what the Stones
like and he's determined to give it to them. This
means pure, unadulterated Delta blues. It's the best gift anyone
could ever give the Stones.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
The greatest party I ever went to was in New Orleans.
At the Warehouse was one hundred degrees or close. And Ahmed,
who was in heaven because New Orleans was the sight
of so many of these great music He brought into
play that night Snooks Eaglin, Professor Longhair.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
And Roosevelt Sykes. Okay, and we got to see them.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
And people were walking the second line on the floor
and snorting cocaine off the back of their hands and
waving handkerchiefs in this cauldron of heat. And Ahmit was
sitting at the back, beaming in a suit without a
drop of sweat anywhere.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
Impeccable.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
And as each great Black musician finished, he wrote the
check and he handed to him. It was so from
another era. It was the greatest. But to see these guys,
they don't really relate to one another. Roosevelt Sykes is Chicago,
and Ahmitt knew who they wanted to see, the Stones,
the guys that and just get to see long hair
in New Orleans was incredible.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Greenfield talked to Ahmet about this musical summit just a
few months later in nineteen seventy two. Here he is
courtesy of our friends at the north Western University Archives.

Speaker 6 (40:02):
I knew that wanted to hear some New Orleans music.

Speaker 10 (40:04):
Now, you know, it's one thing. I mean, I've been
to New Orleans there. It's one of you arrive in
New orleanss like a tourist, you know what I mean,
And you start walking around the streets and you look
up in some music you know what I mean.

Speaker 6 (40:15):
On Bourbon Street, there'll be some band playing in a bar.
You know, some of the old guys, you know, terrific, right,
but I hadn't read.

Speaker 10 (40:22):
What they did is like black blues music, and it's
not easy to you know.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
In one evening, especially that we're driving in.

Speaker 10 (40:31):
They arrived at eleven o'clock at night, well after eleven weather,
hell was could we go?

Speaker 6 (40:36):
So I figured, well, I'm trying to do. I got
in touch with some friends.

Speaker 10 (40:40):
I said, hey, man, heyway, I come play right Rolling Stone?

Speaker 6 (40:43):
Rolling Stones?

Speaker 1 (40:44):
What is that?

Speaker 11 (40:45):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 6 (40:46):
Well they knew a little bit, you know, but uh,
I tell you.

Speaker 11 (40:49):
One of the this friends of my brothers.

Speaker 10 (40:51):
Who runs the preservation hall, you know, asked one of
the guys a brass band, you know, say she said,
what'd you think of Mick Jagger?

Speaker 6 (40:57):
He says, well, man, I didn't know which one he
was all which one was?

Speaker 4 (41:06):
You know?

Speaker 10 (41:06):
Those all the guys are terrific, but they don't, you know,
they don't keep up with what's going on.

Speaker 6 (41:10):
You know.

Speaker 9 (41:10):
That's why they're able to play out music so authentically enough.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
The presence of a man in a suit with a
checkbook left some in the STP contingent, including Gary Stromberg,
feeling a bit uneasy about the proceedings.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
It was also secondarily the feeling that Ahmed had bought
these black guys to play for the entertainment of these
white guys, which didn't feel right to me. I was
there was a sensitivity in the room that right. I mean,
these guys were purchased for the amusement of the Stones.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
You know, this is such a great conversation. That's that's
on another level because they also probably got paid more
than they made, correct, you get it right, cuts both ways.
You're a musician, hey man, I need to check, you know.
And I would say for them, they didn't care who
they were playing for.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
No, true the gig. It's just the perception of it.
You know this, this wealthy white guy was buying black
guys for the entertainment of the Stones.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Well yeah, yeah, whether that's been kind of the history
of the music business.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
All along, well yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
The Stones were certainly a much more appreciative audience than
the average white boys who paid them a visit. For
guitarist Mick Taylor, this was the stuff that made him
want to make music in the first place. In effect,
it made the Stones who they were.

Speaker 6 (42:25):
I mean, it was quite a revelation to see those
guys out play. He's only really well that well known
in the South and in England.

Speaker 5 (42:35):
Yes, well, I used to listen to the kind of
music that the Stones disn'cing, which was American music.

Speaker 6 (42:40):
A blues artists, in particular that they were influenced by
Chuckberry Boy, Deadly Muddy Water's Whole String, I sort of
blues artists.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
It's really strange how it took white English people to
get black for American people pot with white Americans.

Speaker 6 (43:00):
It seems to be that way. Yes, I didn't know why.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
True British kids had long been reverent followers of American
R and B, even as these artists were largely shunned
by the mainstream and their homeland. Their influence was whitewashed
in the fifties when so called race records were re
recorded by milk toast white singers. Kruner Pat Boone famously

(43:24):
turned in an embarrassingly tame version of Little Richard's two
Dy Fruity. The Chord's early do wop classic Shaboom was
turned into an even bigger hit by the crew cuts,
their name not so subtly shaded with racial coding, and
el was presley initially broke through with a whitened up
cover of Big Mama Thornton's blues belter Hound Dog. English

(43:45):
Ears were a little more open as the Beatles exploded
onto the global stage. They were quick to point out
that they were part of a continuum and sung the
praises of the soul acts whose songs they delighted in,
covering the Miracles, the Charelles and the Ice Bros. On
their first trip to the States in nineteen sixty four,
the Fabs phoned in the radio networks not to request

(44:06):
their own songs, but the latest records by the Ronettes
or Marvin Gay for white American teens. This endorsement went
a long way and raising awareness of these black artists.
So did the early singles from the Stones, which were
covers of tunes by Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Here's the point about cultural appropriation. Having lived through all this,
there was no connection between white and black music. You
listen to the soul stations wwrlwwvj WNJR and New York,
so most white people never even heard the music. The
separation was so big, and the Stones, among others, they

(44:49):
broke more black acts to white audiences than any Bill
Graham did it too, BB King and Albert King and
all the great blues guys. But we don't remember this,
you know. It's assumed that this is all one music,
one culture.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
It wasn't.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
The Stones came of age in the thriving R and
B scene of early sixties London. The big names where
Alexis Corners, Blues Incorporated, Cyril Davies, All Stars, Long, John
Baldry and the Hucci Coucie Men, and John Mayle's Blues Breakers.
These groups may not have notched major hits, but they
proved a crucial training ground for the inaugural class of

(45:33):
English rock gods, including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Rod Stewart
and Elton John not to mention the Stones own Charlie
Watts and Mick Taylor. To them, the Blues was the truth.
Rock and roll in its most pure form. The deceptively
simple riffs proved an easy access point. It didn't take

(45:54):
much to strum ale one four or five pattern or
Honker harmonica, but capturing the emotional complexities the blues proved
a little more elusive to these British white boys, as
Scenester and future Yardbirds manager Simon Napier Bell later observed,
when a down trodden black Southerner saying I'm a man,
he meant I'm a human being. When Mick Jagger saying

(46:15):
I'm a man, he meant I've got a heart on soo,
the point's well taken. The Stones were among the most
ardent R and B adherents on the scene. As Bill
Wyman attested to Robert Greenfield, their early set lists were
stacked with deep cuts.

Speaker 9 (46:32):
Honey, what's wrong do you know that road Runner did?
The one that was on the B side of Come
On which I Want to be Loved? Two more of
Bright Lights, Big City to Me Red so very nice,
and all the record company said, no, thank you.

Speaker 6 (46:52):
The singer sounds too colored.

Speaker 9 (46:55):
Yeah, that's what the BBC said when we first went
for an audition.

Speaker 6 (46:58):
To go on radio show.

Speaker 9 (47:01):
The band will Ryan, but we don't know the single.
He sounds too much like a Negro. We could use
the band for back and other artists.

Speaker 6 (47:07):
I could visit an artists from American but don't number
of that scene.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
So what the record company said, just a cursory.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Listen to early and even later Rolling Stones music raises
very valid issues of cultural appropriation. It's a concept that
didn't exist in nineteen sixty four. The band were never
shy about acknowledging their influences. Hell their name is a
nod to Muddy Waters. They went out of their way
to credit the original artists they covered and even collaborated

(47:42):
with a few. After Satisfaction went to number one in
nineteen sixty five, they refused to appear on the American
music TV show Shindig unless producers also booked bluesman Holan Wolfe.
That was a big stand for a group of English
kids new to show biz. On tours of America, the
Stones specifically hired black artists as their opening acts, most

(48:05):
recently with Stevie Wonder. The Stones wanted to help them
cross over to a new audience, just as they were
trying to do with Truman Capote. At the time, this
marked them as progressives, but it reads very differently now.
The line between appreciation and appropriation or even exploitation is
a blurry one. Truth be told, The Stones became richer

(48:29):
and wildly more successful than the African American artists whose
music formed the foundation of their sound. Totaling the good
the Stones did for racial quality versus how much they
personally profited is an impossible task, but, according to Gary Stromberg,

(48:53):
for the band, the music transcended taste, style, fads or money.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
I think the Mick felt that that's who he was.
He was a creation from that music. That wasn't something
he just capitalized on. That's who he was in his soul. Yeah.
I think more than a responsibility, there was just a
genuine love. Yeah, he loved that music. That's who he was.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
While The Stones, the Beatles and other British invasion groups
may have drawn attention to black artists, the seism mixonic
shift they inadvertently began changed the American musical landscape forever,
and many of the figures they admired were left behind
by the mid sixties. American R and B X like
Geno Washington, Gloria Jones, Doris Troy, Major Lance and PP

(49:39):
Arnold relocated to the UK after bookings dried up. Once there,
they enjoyed a vibrant second or in some cases, first career,
savoring the success and respect they'd been denied at home.
Among these ex Pats was a guitarist named Jimmy Hendrix
who shot to fame after arriving in England following years

(50:02):
of toiling and obscurity as a sideman in the States.
Jimmy Aside, most of these artists became stars of the
Northern Soul movement, a musical subculture populated by unusually dedicated
obsessives who held all night raves fueled by breakneck American
R and B forty fives. I'm at Urdigan, a man

(50:23):
who'd done more than his fair share to bring black
music to white audiences, had his own theory as to
why soul on R and B seemed to resonate so
deeply with English kids who otherwise had little in common
the people who made it socially, culturally or otherwise, well,
very few American kids, you know, more reverence.

Speaker 10 (50:44):
But there's more reverence because it's not part of their
heritage immediately, I mean as one step removed for Europeans,
even one further step removed, right, But the English speaking
countries who are not an American country music and blues
music and so forth is an acquired taste almost.

Speaker 6 (51:05):
It's also they recognize it as an art form a well.

Speaker 11 (51:08):
They're recognizing an art form in the same sense analogically
that an American who loves Flamenco music would think of
it as an art form more.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
Than some cat you know in Seville.

Speaker 10 (51:24):
You know what I mean, who has been playing guitar
down there, you know, five years, you know, and he's
a white shit man. We're just playing what we play,
you know, and so on, you know, So to that extent,
it's a funny thing.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
You know what I always say about these guys, and
it applies to make But I'm going to tell you
a key story. They are encyclopedias of music. Their knowledge there,
and it wasn't easy back then. You couldn't go up
on the net and just brow great blues artists, you know,
you had to really find these, especially in England. You know,

(52:07):
there was more respect for the blues in England. They
were playing it. But that's not the point.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
When I was at nell Cut with Keith Okay doing
the Rolling Stone interview, it wasn't hanging out and what
he was completely obsessed with them was a song called
Jerk by the Larks. Okay, Jerk, I want to see
you were Okay, fine, play it an hour at dinner
and people were coming to pitch the tour. Now we're

(52:31):
back in John Taplin, who managed the band. They were
coming to audition for The Stones in this villa in
the south of France, and Keith more than not was
ignoring them like you and may be talking. And it
was heartbreaking, you know what I mean, Like these guys
are powerful. Keith, you know, couldn't be bothered man anyway.

(52:52):
Point being, probably when I went to interview him for
the book I did with Bill Graham in New York,
I wanted to give him some I'm saying, you always
want to give Keith something, and I got him a
forty five of Jerk by the Larks, you know, okay, fine,
so you know it's like behay bro I said, Keith,
this for you. He looked at me and said, oh man,

(53:13):
the original label. I mean, that's insane to me. But
both he and Mick were scholars.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Even Ahmet, a man who'd spent a portion of his
life traveling great distances and as significant personal risk to
seek out these blues men and out of the way
juke joints, admired the Stones devotion to this music.

Speaker 6 (53:32):
The thing about the.

Speaker 10 (53:33):
Rolling Stones is that they're really, really are knowledgeable.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
About where they come from.

Speaker 6 (53:39):
I mean, they know where their roots are.

Speaker 10 (53:42):
They know the whole library of jazz, blues.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Robert rolland us.

Speaker 10 (53:48):
And it's not just said that they like Chuck Berry
and Ray Charles, you know what I mean.

Speaker 6 (53:53):
I mean they know who Johnny Dodds is.

Speaker 9 (53:55):
Charlie Away.

Speaker 11 (53:57):
Yeah, well, I mean, but you know, like make Jaggon.

Speaker 10 (54:00):
You know that Louis Armstrong has five records, you know
what I mean, And he knows who General Mortin was.
And they know the early blues, and they know Bessie
Smith and Lucille Bogan right and Ida Cox, you know,
and even much more obscure people, you know, not just
the highlights, do you know what I mean, the blind
Willie Johnson, so everybody know, they also know that.

Speaker 6 (54:21):
I mean, they're really into that.

Speaker 10 (54:22):
And Keith Richard Man, he knows more blues than anybody
I know, you know what I mean, really understands it
and loves it. You know, they know all of Bassi's
early records and Lunsford and you know that whole world
is not in any way alien to the not only
not alien, it's very very much part of what they did.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
The first place they went when they came to New
York was the Apollo, Okay, and Keith was having an
affair with Ronnie of the Rowetts, which is my favorite
thing ever.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
You know, in the apartment in Spanish Harlem.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
I mean Keith comes out to breakfast with missus Ronnie,
your mom is making breakfast.

Speaker 4 (55:02):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
The thing is, it's easy to look at everything now
and say, oh, you know, it's all show business.

Speaker 4 (55:11):
It kind of wasn't. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (55:45):
The Deep South wasn't exactly hospitable to a bunch of
English rockers and long haired dope takers in the summer
of seventy two. Too many reasons for unwanted comments, derision, abuse,
and possibly arrest are worse they'd all seen. Eader, New
Orleans was an oasis of reasonably friendly, freakiness and otherwise

(56:05):
hostile territory, so the STP crew wisely decided to stay
there and use it as a home base for nearby gigs.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
We spent three or four days in New Orleans. We
centered in New Orleans and we worked. We was ion
stage working, No, they worked mobile from New Orleans and
somewhere else. Tuscaloosa I keep saying mobile and we were
in Tuscogo both we were in two gigs in Alabama.

Speaker 4 (56:34):
That's insane.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Last time the Stones had worked there in nineteen sixty nine,
the biggest cheer of the evening resulted not from satisfaction,
but an announcement that curfews for women had been suspended.
Perhaps Alabama is a hard place for an outsider to know.
You come in with all these myths in your head,
and then you see them outside the hall with stomachs

(56:59):
bulging over their mo belts, thirty eight magnums hanging obscenely
off their hips, and billy clubs in their hands, whipping
lamp posts and sometimes each other just to keep loose.
Four cops refuse to work inside the concert hall after
being told they'll have to remove their guns. Even more
show up in riot gear just in case I hear

(57:21):
they even causing hail everywhere. The go one says they
better know we mean business here. The assistant mayor on
hand to present the Stones with an honorary key to
the city, for some perverse reason, has a tie tax
shaped like a gun. The concert promoter is a colonel

(57:42):
in the state militia and has a signed picture of
segregationist governor George Wallace hanging in his office. The local
police captain does a double take when the Stone's chief
of security, Stand, the man more reveals himself to be black.
The interaction goes It's about as well as one could hope,
though the captain can't resist referring to Stand, a linebacker

(58:05):
sized man who towers over him as boy.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
I was always aware that we had black security guys
when we were in the South who were armed. Yeah,
just knew that these guys wouldn't tolerate any So we
didn't feel threatened at all because these guys are really good.
But it was kind of ironic that our security was
black in the South.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Over at the motel with a stage crew is staying,
managements decided that this bunch looks untrustworthy and demands they
pay in advance for lodging and any potential phone calls
they might make. They even drained the pool so that
the long hairs don't foul up the filtration system. Indeed,
the hair and mobile, A breezy little city across the

(58:52):
border from Mississippi, is shorter than anywhere else on the tour.
Kids have come from the entire Southern Tier estates Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia,
and Kentucky. They file respectfully down the street and obediently
formed lines in the soft, honeyed twilight outside the venue.
On their way they passed Robert Greenfield.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
So we played mobile and my deal was, you know,
young reporter, always be outside before the show. I didn't
want to be I didn't want to be backstage. I
was outside, and so I was on the street. And
also there was also violence on the street and people
trying to break into concerts, and I was always on
the street before the show. To my recollection, the venue

(59:37):
was in a black neighborhood and I was there what
And I hope I'm not casting racist suspersions of what
I would have called shotgun shocks really old. They were fine,
but they were old. And there were a lot of
older black people sitting.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
On the porch.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
It was summer, it was hot, and I was trying
to be respectful as always, and many of them had
never heard of the Rolling Stones. I was actuallying, Hey,
do you know he's playing here tonight? No, we don't know,
you know, I said, we're Rolling Stones?

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Yeah? Who are they?

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
You know? They were all very southern.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
True.

Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
It's really interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
When the locals do hazard a guess, the response is
usually oh yeah, Stevie Wonder. Stevie and his band have
been on the road for the better part of a year,
having done across country Joe Cocker tour just before going
out with the Stones, and they are tight, but they're
still openers their accommodations. There are always roadside motels with Stevie,

(01:00:35):
who's apontified star, staying right with the band. As one
SDP wit suggests, maybe it's a good thing Stevie's blind,
then he can't see some of the places they got
him in. Some less than enlightened industry minds felt that
having Stevie is the opening act was a bad call
for the Stones. After all, they reasoned, he wasn't going

(01:00:56):
to bring more white kids to the show. But taste,
tallerant and common decency prevailed.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Stevie Wonder killed it every night on that tour, and
by the time the show had started, you'd be backstage,
and you never went on stage until the Stones went
on stage because you're two.

Speaker 4 (01:01:17):
You can't be bothered men.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
But everybody would go out to see him do My
Baby Superwoman, Superstition killed it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:25):
What a band, you know?

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
And so I saw and I'm going to say eighteen thousand,
I don't know how many the audience was completely white.
I saw them get up, dance, scream, go crazy, and
I can't help but think that's some form of cultural transformation.
You could say, Oh, they go back home and they
still feel the same way about black people. I don't
know how they felt about black people coming in, but

(01:01:49):
it was astonishing. That was the whitest audience I've ever seen,
and Stevie killed them. So to me, whether that's for
Stevie or for the culture, that's moment.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
It's also why Stevie did the tour for the He
probably made nothing on that tour.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
But established himself as Summers to play venues that size
to white order.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
And that the Stones acknowledged him amazingly. They had the
Nose endorsement of Mick, which meant a lot for the
crossover the.

Speaker 4 (01:02:16):
Kiss of the Spider Woman. Huh you been endorsed man.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Yeah, But as Robert Greenfield discovered while pounding the pavement
before the gig, this crossover didn't seem to go both ways,
at least back on the summer of seventy two. Gary
Stromberg noticed it as well.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
One thing that I was sort of surprised at. Like
I said, I thought with the addition of Stevie to
that tour that there would be more of a black
awareness than there wasn't. There just wasn't a black awareness
at all of the Stones.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
It was a reputation that dogged the band for years.
The Rolling Stones made knock off rhythm and blues music
for white people. Some of their more inflammatory lyrical content
almost seemed like an intentional dare, a desperate bid for
acknowledgement from the black community, even if the acknowledgment was negative.
Just check the lyrics to Brown Sugar or, as Greenfield

(01:03:08):
notes nineteen seventy eight, some Girls.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
The line in it, I didn't write this rince black
girls just like to fuck all night. So there was
some concern about this. The album came out, nothing happened
for eight months, and I'm a toold Mick. See I
was right. No black people have ever listened to any
of your albums. And then of course they got into

(01:03:31):
it and they had to change write. They blanked the lyric,
they paid money, they apologized, they did all they have
brown Sugar though that well my favorite and God loved
Keith Richards. Just recently they stopped playing it, and Keith said,
and nobody can make up to Stylight said, yeah, the
sisters didn't like it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Excuse me, like they adopted on this last tour.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
Yeah, he said, yeah, I don't know why. The sisters
said we shouldn't play it anymore, Like do you know them?
You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
It's a big group of people.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
You just nailed there, But that's case. Yeah, but he
respected that.

Speaker 10 (01:04:05):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Crossover both social and racial was painful in nineteen seventy two,
but at least it was becoming possible. From Truman in
Texas to racial tensions and Tuscaloosa. The STP crew is straining.
They have a badly needed four day break on the horizon.
The goal is to get out of Alabama without anything
untour it happening. Then, as if on que, the bus

(01:04:33):
heading to the airport blows a tire. This can't be happening,
thinks tour manager Peter Rudge. He urges the driver to
keep on going bad call tire starts smoking. Game over.
They limp into a nearby gas station. Everyone piles out,
and sure enough, one rear tire is crushed and mangled.

(01:04:56):
They aren't going anywhere anytime. Soon the STP machine stop dead,
a total breakdown and procedure. Stuck inside a mobile with
the gas station blues again, the vast majority of the
team are drugged out and deeply contemplating the vending machine. Correctly,
sensing that he'll get no assistance from them, Peter Rudge

(01:05:17):
runs off down the highway in search of help. Soon
a collection of Alabama State Police cars pull into the station,
tires screeching, red beams whirling with SDP immunity. Everyone hops
in those other cabs outside the plaza, and once again
they're en route to the airport. For Robert Greenfield and

(01:05:41):
Gary Stromberg, it's like their own personal limo. But then
the scene takes a turn as their chauffeur gets nasty.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Now tell me if you remember this, Do you remember
being escorted in the back of the state trooper car?

Speaker 6 (01:06:01):
You and me?

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
So we leave the show and I.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
Don't know listen in Alabama.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Yes, it's just like speaks to how in the bubble
we are Gary Stromberg and Bob Greenfield, two long haired
juice in the heart of the South, big trooper, not
looking at us, just driving. I remember this clear, and
we're talking like and he turned around and he said

(01:06:27):
something like something. Wasn't shut the f up. It was
just something. And all of a sudden, you know, that cold, chill,
primitive fear. I thought, Oh, this guy hates us. He
wants to kill us, and he's just trying to get
us out of Alabama as fast as he can. We're

(01:06:49):
saying like, oh man, this is so great, thanks for
the favor.

Speaker 4 (01:06:52):
And he hated us.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
We represented everything that the certain.

Speaker 4 (01:06:58):
People in America still hate.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
We're back to that we were the enemy, we were
the revolution, we were the communists, or whatever you want
to say.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
The police cars storm into the airport and slam into
a stop one behind another. Lightning cracks, thunder booms, and
great drops of rain dot the landing strip, but it's
always sunny above the clouds. Charlie Watts does a celebratory
somersault down the aisle of the plane as it takes flight.
All problems remain back down on Earth, the stones, and

(01:07:31):
they're chosen. Few are above it all.

Speaker 12 (01:07:52):
The Stone's Touring Party is written and hosted by Jordan
Rundog Co. Executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan Rundalk.
Designed by Noel Brown and Michael Alder June. Original music
composed and performed by Michael Alder June and Noel Brown,
with additional instruments performed by Chris Suarez, Nick Johns Cooper
and Josh Thame. Vintage Rolling Stones audio courtesy of the

(01:08:13):
Robert Greenfield Archive at the Charles Deering McCormick Library of
Special Collections in Northwestern University Libraries.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 12 (01:08:32):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.