August 2, 2023 • 45 mins
The Rolling Stones’ 1972 US tour wasn’t merely the biggest musical event of the year; it redefined the modern rock tour as we know it, both in spectacle and debauchery… and risk. This was the band’s first trip to the States since the deadly disaster at Altamont in ’69. The bruise left by that show put a target on the bands’ back—particularly Mick Jagger—who became the pariah not only for conservative America, but the Hell’s Angels as well. As the World’s Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band swept across the country in limos and private jets, the question loomed large on everyone’s mind: Would someone try to assassinate Mick Jagger?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I guess to start most importantly, STP tour. Was it fun?
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Oh man, I've been trying to recreate that fun the
rest of my life and can not even come close.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
Yeah, it was more fun than anybody should ever have.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
It was like you were part of a conquering army
and you were sweeping across America. You were invulnerable, you
had security guys. You were inside the bubble. You never
saw the outside world unless you wanted to. All you
had to do was bring your bag down to the
lobby in the morning, and you were riding in the
(00:48):
black limos. And then you were in the next city.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
And you knew history was being made.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
We were front page news in every city.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
It permeated everything.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Everybody in the country was aware that there was a
Rolling Stones tour. I don't think you could say that
about any other rock group that toured. Everybody in the
country was aware. You know, it was on Johnny Carson,
who was on Dicavit. It was on every source of media.
You couldn't be awake the end of nineteen seventy two
and not known that the Rolling Stones had toured America.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
I'm not saying it was the greatest rock and roll
tour of all time? Why would I say that? They
certainly hasn't been anything like it since.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
My name's Jordan rundalg Welcome to the Stones Touring Party, Hollywood,
nineteen seventy two. Mid May kids in wannabse cruise sunset
with their car tops down, spilling the sounds of rock
and roll onto the crowded boulevard. Exile on Main Street.
(01:49):
The double disc epic by the Rolling Stones is new
to the airwaves and being beamed out constantly, hovering over
sunny La, like a dark cloud of decadence in the brevity.
If any of these kids knew what was going down
in the anonymous instrument rental shop they just sped past,
they'd probably have a head on. But like all the
best things in life, if you knew, you had to
(02:10):
know the right people, they won't tell you. At the
front desk, if you asked whether a certain band of
renegade English superstars were in their midst rehearsing for the
biggest tour in rock history at that very moment, you'd
be met with a blank stare. Don't believe them, Head
to the back down the hall, take a write. A
stunningly beautiful blonde with eyes like blue jade stands guard.
(02:32):
Don't worry, she's a friend. Stick with us. A sign
on the rehearsal room door reads Extraterrestrial Funk. But you
know this band by another name. On vocals, mister Mick Jagger,
who always seems smaller and quieter at first meeting than
he really is. On lead and rhythm guitars, Mister Keith Richards,
a person you would look at twice in any crowd,
(02:53):
once described by a lady who seemed quite taken with
him as quote, absolutely the most physically foreboding person I
have ever seen. Keith has added a golden rooster track
of frosting to one side of his thatched artichoke cut hair,
and around his neck he wears a turquoise necklace. On
lead and rhythm guitars, Mister Mick Taylor, the youngest in
the band, still nearly a kid, A beautiful soloist and
(03:16):
pure blues musician on drums, twirling the sticks in his
hands forever. Mister Charlie Watts, with a pile of empty
beer cans growing around his feet. On bass, Mister Bill Wyman,
who's the oldest person in the band if not rock
and roll, and along with Watt's possessor of one of
the great buster Keaton Stone faces ladies and gentlemen the
(03:36):
Rolling Stone. That description comes courtesy of Robert Greenfield, the
legendary rock journalist who is Rolling Stone Magazine's anointed Stones correspondent.
In the early seventies, as a twenty something, he accompanied
the band on the road for several tours and even
lived with Keith Richards for several weeks in southern France
(03:57):
while the Stones recorded Exile on Main Street. But nothing
will top their historic trek across the US and the
summer of seventy two, bringing Exile tracks to the masses
as the country threatened to come apart at the seams.
The experience formed the basis of Greenfield's hugely influential first book,
nineteen seventy three's STP. A Journey through America with the
(04:17):
Rolling Stones. What's STP? You ask, Well, here's Robert Greenfield
to clue you in.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Something I think semi interesting about the tour. It was
the first time into my knowledge that laminate's wherever you use.
Never before a laminate is a badge that you wear
everywhere because without your laminate you're a non person, and
so on the laminate below your face, and they took
(04:43):
everybody's photo. It said S dot T dot P s STP,
which stood for Stones Touring Party, which is so English,
like oh man, so proper, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
The first full length account of a rock and roll tour,
The STP book, was the result of Bob's unparalleled access
through weeks on the road and more than sixty hours
of interviews with the band and their entourage.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
My intention in the book was to write about America
in the summer of nineteen seventy two, as seen from
the vantage point of someone who was on the tour
with Rolling Stones, and it was very much about them,
but I kept trying to make it also about where
they were what we were doing. Wasn't particularly trying to
(05:27):
write a book about drugs and sex and rock and
roll that you know, that concept came about a long
time later. It was a lifestyle. But the Stones are
already separate from even that. They were doing what they
were doing on a level that no one else was
doing in terms of drugs and sex and rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Now, for the very first time, Bob's sharing his tape archive,
allowing us to sit in on intimate chats with the
Rolling Stones and their prime These interviews have been unheard
for half a century, courtesy of Robert Greenfield's archive at
the Northwestern University Library. You'll be deep in conversation with
the likes of Keith Richards.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
I mean, when you're on the road, who's having special
sort of states. I mean, you're not connected to the
real world too, and so everything has a different kind
of value and a different meaning.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
You and Mick Jagger.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
I mean, there was a few places that it did
get scary, and there was a lot of guns, confy
Scots and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Bob will be joined throughout this series by his good
friend and fellow STP Torvette Gary Stromberg, a rock PR
supremo who's represented a whole jukebox worth of the twentieth
century's greatest artists.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
In the early seventies, I was running I don't want
to sound boastful, but I had what was probably the
pre eminent PR firm in the music business, and we
were representing pretty much the who's who of rock and
roll at that time, almost everybody from England that was
of note other than the Beatles from Pink Floyd on down.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
His charming humility has prevented him from mentioning Ray, Charles Elton,
John The Doors, Crosby Stills, A Nash, and Three Dog Night.
With that kind of track record, it was only a
matter of time before he got a call about a
new proposition.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Would you be interested in representing the Stones? I was cocky,
and let's just say that I was cocky, and you know,
I didn't want to sound like it was too easy,
playing hard to get a little bit, and I said, yeah, well,
I'll think about that.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Shocker. Gary took the gig, thus earning him a spot
on the STP tour, where he met Robert Greenfield.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Gary and I still have this relationship fifty years later
and have known each other throughout our adult lives. It
speaks to the fact that it wasn't drudgery, it wasn't
a gig. It certainly was peak experience.
Speaker 8 (07:45):
It was.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
An experience that very few other people have ever had.
And so if you shared it and you came out
of it alive, and.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
It's going to say that surviving it was a in
and of itself, was a I mean, I had a
lot of people that aren't here today that are The
roadside is littered with people that didn't make it.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
From my experience in the rock and roll world.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
It's the time that's not going to come again. I
mean everything we're talking about is a combination of the
time and the people and the context. It's not understandable.
You could read about something that happened, you could see
a movie about something that happened the ways ago. But
unless people who were living through that are talking to
(08:34):
you about it, they're the only ones who can recreate
what it was like to be alive at a certain
point in time. We're back to the oral tradition. You
have to hear this from people who were there, who
experienced it, and it's been proven to me here for
Gary and I who now look at it and understand
it in a completely different way. Yeah, we have perspective, Yes,
(08:58):
which is God's grace. Yes, say thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Consider this show. You're very own stp Lamine on all
access pass that takes you from the front road to
backstage and from the private jets to the private after
show affairs. We're going on the road with the greatest
rock and roll band in the world. On the tour
that showed us what it means to party like a
rock star. Each episode will stop in a different city,
(09:26):
taking in the sights, sounds, riots, bombings, drug busts, another
assorted mayhem from this pivotal moment in American history. The
(09:49):
Rolling Stones were the last band standing at the dawn
of the seventies, or at least that's how it seemed.
As Robert Greenfield observes an stp they were the only
great group of the sixties still around on the original form,
playing original rock and roll. The nineteen seventy two tour
was their first trip to the state since their friendly
rivals the Beatles, had dissolved, and their absence had re
established the rock and roll pecking order. Simply put, with
(10:13):
the Beatles gone, everybody moved up one. After ten years
of playing together, the Stones have become the number one
attraction in the world and released a string of their
best loved albums, culminating an exile on Main Street that spring.
As Robert writes, they were royalty, undeniably by acclamation, and
to America they came. They received their crown.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
Seventy two is the end of the first act of
their career. It's the highlight reel of the end of
the first act where they really have made the best
three albums back to back to back. This was them
at their artistic peak, you know, Beggar's Banquet, let it Bleed,
sticky Fingers, Eggsile, and they're the kings of America for
(10:57):
however many weeks as the tour win and everybody wrecked,
they become the world's greatest rock and roll band. On
the nineteen seventy two tour.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Drummer Charlie Watts was a little more humble in this
assessment of his group's abilities.
Speaker 9 (11:09):
And we've never been a band of musicians, you know,
it's always set out to be, you know, girlfew Arsen Dunes.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
You know, it was so fast, everything was moving at
lightning speed. It felt like there was no stopping. They
did so many gigs, so many gigs. He never cut
your breath. You just moved from one to the next.
There was no time for reflection ever for me.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
In the blazing heat of summer in America, at a
time when there was you know, fighting in the streets,
it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Over no, not not even by long shot. Was it over.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
The stones nineteen seventy two tour was a dangerous trek
through a country at war with itself, the flames of
the sixties revolution still smolder. This was especially true on
college campuses, where students protested the conflict in Vietnam, which
dragged into its seventh year with no end in sight.
In nineteen seventy National Guard has been gunned down four
(12:07):
students during a peaceful protest that ken state to the
youth of America. The tragedy summarized the savage lengths the
establishment would god to eliminate opposition. Figures of hope and
change like Martin Luther, King, Malcolm X, and Robert F.
Kennedy had all been shot to death under cloudy circumstances.
(12:29):
Black Panther activist Fred Hampton was assassinated in his bed
by law enforcement, while fellow Panthers Angelo Davis and Bobby
Seal rotted in prisoned. This paranoid brutality seemed to extend
to the very top of US government. Two weeks before
the STP tour kicked off in the summer of seventy two,
(12:49):
burglar Is, acting on orders from President Nixon's administration, broke
into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, igniting
a scandal that would alter American politics forever. Nixon's FBI chief,
the notoriously reactionary jag Er Hoover, kept thick files on
the outspoken members of the left leaning rock establishment who
held tremendous way over the enormous block of newly eligible
(13:12):
young voters. Figures like John Lennon, Jimmy Hendrix, and the
Monkeys were monitored and even harassed, but Hoover reserved special
scorn for the Stones. According to a former FBI operative,
jag Or Hoover hated Jagger probably more than any other
pop cultural figure of his generation. By embarking on the
STP tour, the Rolling Stones were headed for a crossfire hurricane.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
Counterculture was pretty much out on its feet. Okay, hippie
thing was still going on. It was real political been
a lot of political violence. It was a serious time
of transition. This tour was fraught with insanity coming from
out side. You have a bombing in Montreal, they're setting
(14:03):
fire to Boston. The Hell's Angels are serving you with
legal papers, making you think they're coming after you in
more than one way. And they generated this energy. Mad
mad mad so I'm sure it made the concerts better.
Don't ask me why.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
This mad energy came to a head on The Stone's
previous American tour in nineteen sixty nine. During their infamous
free concert at the Altamont Speedway that December, conceived as
a thank you to their fans, the good intentions were
undermined by the decision to hire the Hell's Angels of security,
where according to rock Myth, they were paid for their
services with five hundred dollars worth of beer. The all
(14:41):
day concert was a logistical nightmare, beset by chaos and violence.
For the Stones, the mood was set from the moment
they exited their helicopter when Mick Jagger got punched in
the face by an agitated attendee. As the day wore on,
Hell's Angels speed Freaks attempted to maintain order by cracking
pool cues over the skulls of eq will. He blasted
acid casualties. They even knocked out Jefferson Airplane singer Marty
(15:04):
Ballen in the middle of the band's performance.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
We talk about Altamont. The ultimate test of Altamont is
the Grateful Dead turned around and went home. So if
there's a gig that the Grateful Dead are not going
to play because it's too chaotic for them.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Whoa The beatings continued throughout the audience all afternoon, but
it turned deadly at nightfall. During the Stone set, eighteen
year old Meredith Hunter pulled a pistol out of his
jacket his feet from the front of the stage. One
of the Hell's angels descended on him with a knife,
stabbing him at least six times. The terrified band saw
(15:39):
the skirmish, but fearing a riot, finished the concert anyway.
It wasn't until later that they learned they just witnessed
a murder. The killing was captured on camera by filmmakers
Albert and David Masels. It became the pivotal scene in
their groundbreaking nineteen seventy rock documentary Gimme Shelter. The film
(16:01):
ends with Mick Jagger watching the grizzly footage in an
editing room, his face impassive. For one of the most
image conscious celebrities of his generation, this was a rare
misstep and a damaging one.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
More people saw the documentary than had been at Altamont. Obviously,
that documentary had an incredible impact at the time because
you can hear about violence, but when you see a
Hell's Angel stab of black man to death and they
caught it on film.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Altamont was instantaneously mythologized as the death of rock and
Roll's innocence, or at least whatever innocence rock and Roll
ever had. The Stones became the subject of scathing op
eds claiming that the band, and particularly Mick Jagger, then
deep into his Lucifer guys, had more or less brought
this on themselves. No sympathy for the devil this time around.
(16:56):
Rightly or wrongly, the band were held responsible by critics, fans,
and even fellow musicians. The Hell's Angels may have committed
the crime, they reasoned, but the Stones should have known
better than to get mixed up with them in the
first place. According to guitarist Mick Taylor, the guilt was
something that the entire band shouldered.
Speaker 10 (17:13):
I think it affected all of us very profoundly. The
only thing we were very upset about was being accused
and how responsible for what happened. And you can't really
blame anybody in that kind of mass hysteria. People in
America know that the Hell's Angels are a violent organization.
(17:34):
And for that reason alone, I don't think they should
have been highed, as security are automatically gives them an excuse.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Rolling Stone magazine published an exhaustive twenty thousand word report
weeks later, describing the event as the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude,
money manipulation, and at base of fundamental lack of concern
for humanity, implicitly and unfairly laying the blame squarely at
Mick Jagger's feet.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
I think it was about fame and money and success.
It was about a lot of people don't like the Kardashians.
Can't imagine why, but you know the Jagger has it
all yeah, and we want it and he made the
money off our backs. Interesting, huh. You have class warfare
here on some level. Anytime the Stones came to America,
(18:30):
they always crystallized what was going on. Came here in
sixty nine, you got it, revolution chaos. If he's you know,
the dark side of Woodstock, you know, blah blah blah.
It was that undefined anger that in fact defines America.
Everybody in America is always pissed off about something. Now
(18:51):
it's how much gas costs? Okay, it's very expensive, but
you can't exactly torch the gas station. You know, the
Stones drew this puss out of American society. It makes sense.
It's like some kind of virus, you know, they just
bring everything out. People are galvanized by them to do
(19:12):
stuff that normal human beings wouldn't otherwise do. Back then,
at least, you know, in.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
A sense, this phenomenon had dogged the Stones since they
first arrived on American shores back in nineteen sixty four.
The Beatles, we'd beat them by a few months, were
the heroes of the British invasion. So the Stones were
forced into the role of anti heroes.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
This just goes back to the nineteen fifties. They've come
for your daughters. The Black Nation is taking over our children.
But the Stones, unlike the Beatles, the Stones were despised immediately. Well,
the Beatles are so cute. Oh Paul, I love Paul.
You know ringo, it's so cute. Nobody called it rolling
(19:52):
Stones cute. They were punks. Maryann Faithful said that about them.
They were the first punks. They were ugly, they were angry, defiant,
defiant man. And so that what it happens here we
go law of karma that engender's anger, repression, and fear.
(20:14):
When they were here in sixty four for the first
time into Texas State Fair, cop pulled a gun on Keith.
Keith was drinking a cocktail of some do you know
this story? Keith was drinking something, well, Keith is always
drinking something. He was having a refreshment, you know, an
adult beverage, and the cop told him to pour it out.
Keith looked at him like, you must be joking. You're
(20:34):
not talking to me, Bro. And then the cop said
it again, and Keith didn't do it, and the cop
took out his gun and he held it on Keith
and said, boy, you know Texas, Imagine what Keith looked
like in Texas in sixty four, Bro, I want to
shoot him on side, okay? And he made him pour
it out into the toilet and flush it and then
(20:56):
the cop left. And after that, Keith never went on
tour unless it was armed. He got the message.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Keith was also aware that his reputation is one of
rock's most notorious renegades, was also a liability.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
I mean really, the press and just an extent that
public could have made the role in the stones outside
of the law, not above it, but outside of it.
For you to be a special thing in somebody's head,
you know, makes it impossible for you to really be
treasy fairly, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But nineteen sixty four was a long way from nineteen
seventy two. In eight years, the teenybop mop topped music
fans had graduated in the full fledged adults, politicized by
the tumultuous decade of their youth, and imbued with liberal
and liberated cultural attitudes.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
What seventy two represented for me was that we were
taking over. We being our generation. Now we're in power.
It created a much different dynamic in the way we
interacted with the world.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
On the STP tour, Mick Taylor and Keith Richards found
a very different America than the one they'd seen just
three years earlier.
Speaker 10 (22:10):
Nature of American society and in particularly the young people,
had changed. I got the feeling that they were more
genuinely enthusiastic this time, whereas on sixty nine till I
think your point earlier on about the rolling stones symbolizing
some kind of rebellious force against the establishment was probably
(22:32):
more believable then.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
America to me.
Speaker 7 (22:43):
This ship.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
People just seem to be a good time and look
to watch their big symbol perform, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Whatever.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
Right in the stage you just see used to be
like you say, they came to see a show.
Speaker 7 (23:04):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
It actually has to do with Woodstock. Woodstock was the
event that crossed the counterculture and the music into coverage
by straight television. Cabot had Crosby Stills, Nash Young and
Jony On and she didn't go, but they were there
because this was a cultural event. Newsweek covered Woodstock. The
(23:25):
Stones were merged from having been the outlaw counterculture band
because when they played sixty nine, that was the meeting
of the tribes. You know, guys, you had to go
see the Stones man.
Speaker 10 (23:38):
You see, I never really believed that rock music has
had any real redeeming cultural significance at all. It's only
because it's young people's music and it provides a sense
of community. I suppose most young people, you know, rock theaters,
concerts where they can meet and discuss all kinds of things.
(24:04):
I mean, young people aren't just interested in rock music,
so naturally political issues and all the kinds of things
tend to come up as well. Why that's why you know,
when we're at a press conference, we're asked, we're asked
what our feelings are about the Vietnam War, as anybody
(24:24):
who would be in that position would be.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
As is often the case, these changes in culture led
the changes in business.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Record companies previously owned their artists, and the artists they
did what they were told. In seventy two, the artists
were the power. They weren't obliged to the dictates of
these big record companies. They were able to assert their own,
their own wishes, and their own control. So the Stones
had it all their own way at that in that tour,
(24:52):
nobody told them what to do. Music business had not
been set up previously to accommodate that kind of control.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
And Gary's exactly right. The artists had taken over and
they dictated the terms because the money they generated was insane.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
The Stones had spent the sixties signed to a draconian
deal with Decca Records, which left their personal finances and
chaos and next to nothing in the bank. So when
their contract expired at the start of the decade, they
created their own label, Rolling Stones Records, with a little
help from legendary music executive and Atlantic Records co founder
Ahmed Ertigen.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
A'med Ertigan had established Rolling Stones Records. Marshall Chess, the
son of Leonard Chess and his uncle Phil Chess Chess Records,
was running the label for the first time in their history,
which sounds insane. They were in charge of their own fate.
They ran their own business. Mick to businessman and I'm
(26:00):
a brilliant, brilliant businessman and brilliant human being. Saw it
as a way to cross them over, to cross the
Stones over from being the outlaw band, which is what
they still were, being the hippie band into another level
of popular acclaim.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
For i'm at Ertigan, the Stones and their songs were
never just going to be a flavor of the week.
Even then in nineteen seventy two, he recognized them for
what they were, timeless.
Speaker 6 (26:29):
This is all still blues music, and blues music ain't
show business.
Speaker 7 (26:36):
Is bigger than show business, is better than show business,
you know what I mean, is more soulful than show business.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Then they emerged from having been the outlaw counterculture band.
Now even though the audiences were still young, they were
now accepted in the mainstream. It was the highest grossing
tour in the history of rock and roll to that point,
and that was not an accident.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
I mean, the success of.
Speaker 11 (27:03):
The tour was I guess it was the most successful
rock and roll tour, you know, don't.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
You think so. I've never gotten as many requests for
tickets all over the country.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I mean for every one of.
Speaker 7 (27:16):
Those concerts, we had people calling it. I mean people
I hadn't heard from in ten years, five years call
me up with distressed you know voices saying I must
have two tickets, I.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Mean said, you know, it's I mean, I think that
I could have sold out of each concert myself, you know, just.
Speaker 7 (27:34):
From the Flying Me exactly. But there's never been.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
A concert of sword that had held that kind of.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
General interest, general interest, mainstream. Those are dangerous words in
rock and roll. Well, the Stones about to become God
forbid respectable, not as far as Mick Jagger was concerned, but.
Speaker 11 (27:53):
I mean, I think it's very difficult to make rolling
Stones respectable. But I don't think that the wrong stars
would be ever made respectable by that.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
By that Bassis Bill Wyman.
Speaker 8 (28:02):
Agreed, society kind of accepted us. Halfway through that tour,
we found that society was very interested in this I
couldn't care less. I'm not very interested in society, but
society like a music Good.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Luck to me.
Speaker 6 (28:19):
Well, I don't know if I'm not playing.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Music for society, And so did Mick Taylor.
Speaker 5 (28:24):
I think.
Speaker 10 (28:25):
I think to say that it's been accepted is much
better than to say that it's.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Being made respectiveness. I just think it's touched more people.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It certainly touched a lot of people. Ticket demand was unprecedented.
In Chicago, thirty four thousand seats sold out in just
five and a half hours. Remember this was back in
a pre internet time and it was a lot tougher
than just refreshing the page. In Chicago, there were one
hundred and twenty thousand requests for twelve thousand seats. In
other words, only one in ten Stones fans got satisfaction.
(28:59):
Given the lack of supply, capitalism took over, giving way
to the relatively new phenomenon known as scalping. A ticket
retailing for six fifty would go for upwards of fifty
or even one hundred dollars on the street, or trade
for tickets to Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tall and the Dead combined.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
You couldn't get a ticket, you know, everything sold out instantaneously.
There wasn't anybody don't want to see them, who cared
about music.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
You know, selling out a tour like that on the
first day the tickets go on sale unheard of.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Unheard of. Typically you would.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Sweat it out to the very last day to sell
as many tickets as you could in hopes of going
into the black.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
They hadn't been here for three years, so now we've
gone through a pandemic where musicians have not worked and
you know, but it was different then. I mean, it
sounds so crazy. Time changes over time, if that makes
sense to you. Three years was a lot longer period
of time. Back then. It was almost like a semi
era where people who hadn't been into the stones before
(30:00):
Sticky Fingers changed a lot of minds. Okay, look at
the music that's on Sticky Fingers, right, and so the
energy generated by that album and not being able to
see them, it meant more. You couldn't see them on
the internet, there was no video, couldn't go to the movie.
You had to be there, and that was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Mick Taylor considered the confluence of forces that brought the
fans out and.
Speaker 10 (30:24):
Droves so it's not They're not there just for the music.
They can listen to the music in their own homes,
you know, they're they're there the spectacle and for the
our physical presence and the charisma, you know. I mean
they read whatever they like into it. But I mean essentially,
we're only there to play music. But it becomes much
more than that. But I think it comes from the
(30:46):
whole group, you know, really actually being there physically playing.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
The excitement may have built in the three years since
the band toured America, but it also meant they were
three years older by nineteen seventy two. The Stones have
been rolling for a decade, which equals roughly a millennium
when converted to rock and roll years. New Boy Mick
Taylor may have been twenty three, but for Mick Jagger
and Keith Richards, the sun was setting on their twenties.
This was the era when people wore buttons that bore
(31:16):
the slogan don't trust anyone over thirty. Now, the Stones,
those heroes of hell raising and youthful rebellion, were approaching
this all important generational demarcation. Would they still be able
to connect with a new legion of young fans they'd
acquired with sticky fingers. Could the Stones still rock at
age thirty?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
There may have been an age difference that the energy,
and he was a very youthful thirty, very energy and
fashion wise, I mean he was right on point fashion wise.
He never aged and at that time he had an
aged He still probably has an age. I mean he's
seventy five and and still.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
I agree with Gary. There was no age cap any
anybody in that audience was just freaking out and dancing,
and you know, they just were having a time of
their life.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Even Keith marveled at the Stone's ability to transcend shifts
in the youth movement.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
The thing that's certain which fans rage, that you seem
to have managed to keep the interest of the original
kids from the earliest sixties, you know, and also attract
a fair number of younger ones that were probably eight
or nine when we first went round.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
You know, it was the event of the summer in
popular culture.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
And also in a very positive way. There wasn't any
negativity around this at all.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
It was all positive and ultimat was all negative, all negative.
They left American in sixty nine as the villains. They
killed somebody they're evil and dark.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
Yeah, so this was a positive.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
This was you know, you could have a rock and
roll tour and excite the country and come away with it.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
There's a big success.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
If Mick Jagger was feeling the strain of this mammoth undertaking,
he refused to let it show.
Speaker 7 (33:05):
What was that that?
Speaker 11 (33:05):
I mean that seventy two too, it was even bigger
than sixty nine. I didn't think you'd get any bigger
than that. More interest, yes, more pressure, No, really reckon
the interest them.
Speaker 7 (33:17):
I don't know.
Speaker 10 (33:19):
I think a lot of the interestingness could have been
stimulated by the fact that the nineteen sixty nine too,
was so disastrous at the end, and lots of people
expected us to probably fail.
Speaker 5 (33:32):
But I was a bit worried about.
Speaker 10 (33:33):
It, you know, because of what had happened before. But
I think the security arrangements the organization was so bad on.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
The sixty sixty nine tour was dark, like criminal renne
cars that were abandoned and everybody ripped off, and chaos
and anarchy in an amateur manner and arrogant. They resulted
in ultimont you know. And Bill Graham called it the
Pearl Harbor Rock. There was no accident. The karma of
(34:04):
the sixty nine tour was truly dark, not so in
seventy two. It was a joyous occasion for many people
on a multiple levels.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
From the earliest planning stages, the STP tour aimed to
correct the mistakes of their previous track. As Mick Jagger says,
the difference was night and day.
Speaker 11 (34:23):
On the fact that Interesting nine there was no transportation,
no logistics probably arranged, there was no proper accommodation, and
the band was genuinely interested in doing another tour and
doing a good one, you know, and like going to
like picking out all these towns because like we had
never been there since X and what the.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
Interesting dif from the public is just very gratifying.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And Bill Wyman agreed.
Speaker 8 (34:52):
It was definitely because it's so incredibly well organized, which
us never are.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
You always you always.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
Getting up always.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
According to Mick Taylor, the size was the crucial difference.
Speaker 10 (35:07):
We played in the same kind of places really to
the same kind of audience. The really real difference was
the scale.
Speaker 7 (35:16):
Of the two was a much more sai.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
No k and roll tours are never saying I know
that not.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Thus the metaphorical stage was set for nineteen seventy two's
STP tour. That stands for the Stones Touring Party, but
the fact that SDP is also the street name for
a psychedelic amphetamines probably not complete coincidence. The tour had
multiple objectives. On the surface, it was designed to promote
the Stones' new album Exile on Main Street, but it
would also provide the Stones with a chance to mend
(35:51):
fences after the deadly disaster at Altamont, and finally, there
was a slightly less altruistic goal make a lot of money.
SDP marks the first tour of the modern rock era.
Planned for maximum efficiency, the forty eight date run would
be staged on a scale previously unseen in popular music,
with the largest entourage and rock history up to that point.
(36:12):
They had their own security team, their own film crew,
their own doctor, and a press corps that rivaled most
political campaigns. When all the laminits were printed up for
the more than forty person organization, it was clear that
this wasn't just a tour, but a grand event, an
all encompassing, hedonistic binge across the country.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
This is the next step up for the business of
rock and roll. On tour they hadn't been there for
three years. Man, So when you have that much time,
that led to a lot of the planning. The headquarters
of the tour with the Beverly Rodeo Hotel Beverly Hills
was not then what it has become. The bar at
the Beverly Rodeo was all hookers. I'm not judging, you
(36:56):
know whatever, but it was kind of funky. Was a
funky little hotel. And they were in this room or
a suite of rooms, and it was Alan Dunn and
Joe Bergman and Peter Rudge and they were doing everything.
They were on four phones and they were eating breakfast
room service and talking and doing everything.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
To mouth of tour on this scale, you needed someone
with an unparalleled logistical mind fueled by a mix of
ambition and insanity. As Keith Richards notes, such figures were
in short supply.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
If you're going to do a big tour, you have
to have it playing down to the last detail, you know.
Peter r Yeah, I mean somebody that's done it and
as good at it and takes pride in doing it
properly and gets really screwed up if it.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
Doesn't go right.
Speaker 9 (37:43):
I mean it's got to be like that.
Speaker 6 (37:45):
He's going to be somebo who's as interested in his
end of it as musicians are in there, which it's hard.
Speaker 7 (37:52):
To find people like that, you know, people like Raji, very.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Rare, Peter rug who was the manager of this too.
It was probably the most intense guy that I've ever
worked with.
Speaker 5 (38:03):
Went to Cambridge. Brilliant human being, you know, mad driven,
you know, no sleep. He could do it. He could
do it.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
His focus and determination to get things done, his way
was unmatched and unrivaled, and thanks to him, it kept going.
But he just was a bull in a china shell. Yes,
he just bowled over anything in his way.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
Oh my god. And he could talk fast.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
He would sweat and his hair was he had long
hair that would stick to his head because he was
always always sweating, and just in a frenzy. He'd wake
up in the morning, he'd come down from the hotel,
he was already in a frenzy. And this is like
eight o'clock in the morning and Peter's already into you know,
a nine on a tense scale of frenziness. So and
(38:50):
that was the level that he operated on constantly. And
but you know, I think that largely. This thing got
done because Peter was that intense.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
But Regie's intensity he quickly went over Bill Wyman and
the rest of the band.
Speaker 8 (39:02):
I found that right. He's incredible because no only did
he get the whole thing together before we even wait
said it out, well, he got the right people and
he arranged every detail right down to the tiniest little
things that were always left to somebody else and never
(39:23):
always got done all the time.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
You know, he has planned this tour security wise, Like
he's got measurements on drain pipes that lead to the area.
What if they come through the drain pipe. I was
in meetings with them and they like, the officials are
looking at each other, there's a drain pipe there, Like,
we don't need where he got the map, We have
no clue. He was obsessed with security and Jagger's personal safety.
(39:49):
That's what it was really all about, okay, and the
safety of the concert.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Safety was the paramount concern for British bands. The United
States was always a hazardous gauntlet run. Violence was simply
part of the cultural psyche as American as apple Pie.
Weeks before the tour was due to kick off, Alabama's
segregationist governor turned presidential candidate George Wallace was gunned down
in a suburban shopping center outside Washington, d C. I'm
(40:16):
hard pressed to think of a sentence that better sums
up America. In nineteen seventy two, for Charlie Watts, the
country had a fearsome nage.
Speaker 9 (40:25):
America scares the shit out on me, in the sense
that if anyone wants to do anything.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Then they're going to try.
Speaker 9 (40:31):
You know, they either go to prison, or they get up,
or they get off it.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Keith Richards hope that the advanced planning would prevent deadly disasters,
but there's only so much that could be done.
Speaker 6 (40:42):
I found things like that only happened when there isn't
adequate secures. That's that's been taking to fill that extra
three years, you know, until they can get away with
that kind of you know, is a Kasi example new secures.
Speaker 7 (41:02):
Then they went crazy.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
These weren't abstract threats. The Hell's Angels felt that the
Stones had left them high and dry following the murder
at Altamont, thereby sowing the good name of their motorcycle
club and the pages of every American news outlet. Now
they wanted revenge. Rumors spread throughout the underground that the
Hell's Angels planned to kidnap Mick Jagger and hold them
for ransom or worse. Some said there was a bounty
(41:25):
on his head.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
It swirled around the entire tour. Is somebody going to
try to assassinate Mick Jagger? Not some random We're living
in a time of random assassinations everywhere. The Angels blamed
Jagger for taking the hit for what they had done
for five hundred dollars worth of beer.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Every precaution was taken private planes, limos, and higher stages
to prevent audience invasions. The bands were assigned a pair
of linebacker sized bodyguards, lovingly known as stand the Man
More and Big Leroy Leonard. They followed McK and keith everywhere,
including some say into their hotel suites. At night. The
band's entire floor would be blocked off to outsiders, but
(42:07):
several members of the Honorage were prepared to take the
law into their own hands. Rolling Stones's Record's chief Marshall
Chess carried loaded thirty eight caliber handgun. But, as Bill
Wyman says, when you're playing in front of ten thousand people,
there's only so much you can do to defend yourself.
Speaker 8 (42:21):
I mean, you're always open to being shot on stage.
You're always you think about You're always aware of that.
Speaker 6 (42:26):
I mean, you're so well home you don't think about it.
Speaker 8 (42:29):
But anybody with any sense of Toad's going to think
there's a possibility at some time or other, some cranks especially.
I mean we've been shut out the airgun before in stage,
and Charlie got a palette in his cheeks.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Ian Stewart, an original Rolling Stone Turns Roady by nineteen
seventy two, echoed the sentiment.
Speaker 6 (42:50):
The way I think about it is if anybody was
going to do do him with a rifle from the
back of the hall or something like that, if anybody
really set out to bloody kill him, they kill it.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
For Mick, every night on stage was two hours in
the crosshairs. The show would go on, though the cost
couldn't have been any higher. In truth, he didn't have
a choice. It was the only way he could keep
on being Mick Jagger.
Speaker 11 (43:16):
I mean, either I stopped he or I didn't, you know.
Speaker 7 (43:20):
I mean, it was as simple as that.
Speaker 11 (43:22):
And a few people would like to say, don call
the friends of mine.
Speaker 7 (43:26):
I said, you really got to be came from you
can't go I said, wait more, or this what I do?
So I'm going to do it in either I do
it or don't do it. If I don't do it,
what am I.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Going to do?
Speaker 3 (43:36):
You know?
Speaker 7 (43:37):
There was a few places that it did get scary,
and there was a lot of guns, comfy scows and
stuff like that.
Speaker 11 (43:46):
That I wasn't scared, you know, I was scared shitless.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
A hit on Mick was that the Stone's only problem
as they crossed the Flaming Continent. Their equipment van is
bombed in Montreal, they're jailed in Rhode Island, they're opening
night in Vancouver's derailed by rioters, and they nearly burned
down the Playboy Mansion in Chicago. Plus there's trouble in
the band's inner circle. Keith's descending the heroin addiction threatens
his bond with Mick and his life, drug dealing scammers
(44:26):
invade their ranks, and the Stones cope with the fact
that they're nearly broke. But it's too late to stop now,
so hop on, there's a show to do.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Stone's touring Party is written and hosted by Jordan runtaff
the co executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan Runtok,
Edited and sound designed by Noel Brown and Michael Older June.
Original music composed and performed by Michael Older June and
Noel Brown. The additional instruments performed by Chris Suarez, Nick
John's Cooper and Josh Thay. Vintage Rolling Stones audio courtesy
of the Robert Greenfield Archive at the Charles Deering McCormick
(44:58):
Library of Special collect in Northwestern University Libraries.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
Stone's Touring Party.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I guess to start most importantly, STP tour. Was it fun?
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Oh man, I've been trying to recreate that fun the
rest of my life and can not even come close.
Speaker 4 (00:17):
Yeah, it was more fun than anybody should ever have.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
It was like you were part of a conquering army
and you were sweeping across America. You were invulnerable, you
had security guys. You were inside the bubble. You never
saw the outside world unless you wanted to. All you
had to do was bring your bag down to the
lobby in the morning, and you were riding in the
(00:48):
black limos. And then you were in the next city.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
And you knew history was being made.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
We were front page news in every city.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
It permeated everything.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Everybody in the country was aware that there was a
Rolling Stones tour. I don't think you could say that
about any other rock group that toured. Everybody in the
country was aware. You know, it was on Johnny Carson,
who was on Dicavit. It was on every source of media.
You couldn't be awake the end of nineteen seventy two
and not known that the Rolling Stones had toured America.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
I'm not saying it was the greatest rock and roll
tour of all time? Why would I say that? They
certainly hasn't been anything like it since.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
My name's Jordan rundalg Welcome to the Stones Touring Party, Hollywood,
nineteen seventy two. Mid May kids in wannabse cruise sunset
with their car tops down, spilling the sounds of rock
and roll onto the crowded boulevard. Exile on Main Street.
(01:49):
The double disc epic by the Rolling Stones is new
to the airwaves and being beamed out constantly, hovering over
sunny La, like a dark cloud of decadence in the brevity.
If any of these kids knew what was going down
in the anonymous instrument rental shop they just sped past,
they'd probably have a head on. But like all the
best things in life, if you knew, you had to
(02:10):
know the right people, they won't tell you. At the
front desk, if you asked whether a certain band of
renegade English superstars were in their midst rehearsing for the
biggest tour in rock history at that very moment, you'd
be met with a blank stare. Don't believe them, Head
to the back down the hall, take a write. A
stunningly beautiful blonde with eyes like blue jade stands guard.
(02:32):
Don't worry, she's a friend. Stick with us. A sign
on the rehearsal room door reads Extraterrestrial Funk. But you
know this band by another name. On vocals, mister Mick Jagger,
who always seems smaller and quieter at first meeting than
he really is. On lead and rhythm guitars, Mister Keith Richards,
a person you would look at twice in any crowd,
(02:53):
once described by a lady who seemed quite taken with
him as quote, absolutely the most physically foreboding person I
have ever seen. Keith has added a golden rooster track
of frosting to one side of his thatched artichoke cut hair,
and around his neck he wears a turquoise necklace. On
lead and rhythm guitars, Mister Mick Taylor, the youngest in
the band, still nearly a kid, A beautiful soloist and
(03:16):
pure blues musician on drums, twirling the sticks in his
hands forever. Mister Charlie Watts, with a pile of empty
beer cans growing around his feet. On bass, Mister Bill Wyman,
who's the oldest person in the band if not rock
and roll, and along with Watt's possessor of one of
the great buster Keaton Stone faces ladies and gentlemen the
(03:36):
Rolling Stone. That description comes courtesy of Robert Greenfield, the
legendary rock journalist who is Rolling Stone Magazine's anointed Stones correspondent.
In the early seventies, as a twenty something, he accompanied
the band on the road for several tours and even
lived with Keith Richards for several weeks in southern France
(03:57):
while the Stones recorded Exile on Main Street. But nothing
will top their historic trek across the US and the
summer of seventy two, bringing Exile tracks to the masses
as the country threatened to come apart at the seams.
The experience formed the basis of Greenfield's hugely influential first book,
nineteen seventy three's STP. A Journey through America with the
(04:17):
Rolling Stones. What's STP? You ask, Well, here's Robert Greenfield
to clue you in.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Something I think semi interesting about the tour. It was
the first time into my knowledge that laminate's wherever you use.
Never before a laminate is a badge that you wear
everywhere because without your laminate you're a non person, and
so on the laminate below your face, and they took
(04:43):
everybody's photo. It said S dot T dot P s STP,
which stood for Stones Touring Party, which is so English,
like oh man, so proper, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
The first full length account of a rock and roll tour,
The STP book, was the result of Bob's unparalleled access
through weeks on the road and more than sixty hours
of interviews with the band and their entourage.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
My intention in the book was to write about America
in the summer of nineteen seventy two, as seen from
the vantage point of someone who was on the tour
with Rolling Stones, and it was very much about them,
but I kept trying to make it also about where
they were what we were doing. Wasn't particularly trying to
(05:27):
write a book about drugs and sex and rock and
roll that you know, that concept came about a long
time later. It was a lifestyle. But the Stones are
already separate from even that. They were doing what they
were doing on a level that no one else was
doing in terms of drugs and sex and rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Now, for the very first time, Bob's sharing his tape archive,
allowing us to sit in on intimate chats with the
Rolling Stones and their prime These interviews have been unheard
for half a century, courtesy of Robert Greenfield's archive at
the Northwestern University Library. You'll be deep in conversation with
the likes of Keith Richards.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
I mean, when you're on the road, who's having special
sort of states. I mean, you're not connected to the
real world too, and so everything has a different kind
of value and a different meaning.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
You and Mick Jagger.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
I mean, there was a few places that it did
get scary, and there was a lot of guns, confy
Scots and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Bob will be joined throughout this series by his good
friend and fellow STP Torvette Gary Stromberg, a rock PR
supremo who's represented a whole jukebox worth of the twentieth
century's greatest artists.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
In the early seventies, I was running I don't want
to sound boastful, but I had what was probably the
pre eminent PR firm in the music business, and we
were representing pretty much the who's who of rock and
roll at that time, almost everybody from England that was
of note other than the Beatles from Pink Floyd on down.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
His charming humility has prevented him from mentioning Ray, Charles Elton,
John The Doors, Crosby Stills, A Nash, and Three Dog Night.
With that kind of track record, it was only a
matter of time before he got a call about a
new proposition.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Would you be interested in representing the Stones? I was cocky,
and let's just say that I was cocky, and you know,
I didn't want to sound like it was too easy,
playing hard to get a little bit, and I said, yeah, well,
I'll think about that.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Shocker. Gary took the gig, thus earning him a spot
on the STP tour, where he met Robert Greenfield.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Gary and I still have this relationship fifty years later
and have known each other throughout our adult lives. It
speaks to the fact that it wasn't drudgery, it wasn't
a gig. It certainly was peak experience.
Speaker 8 (07:45):
It was.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
An experience that very few other people have ever had.
And so if you shared it and you came out
of it alive, and.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
It's going to say that surviving it was a in
and of itself, was a I mean, I had a
lot of people that aren't here today that are The
roadside is littered with people that didn't make it.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
From my experience in the rock and roll world.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
It's the time that's not going to come again. I
mean everything we're talking about is a combination of the
time and the people and the context. It's not understandable.
You could read about something that happened, you could see
a movie about something that happened the ways ago. But
unless people who were living through that are talking to
(08:34):
you about it, they're the only ones who can recreate
what it was like to be alive at a certain
point in time. We're back to the oral tradition. You
have to hear this from people who were there, who
experienced it, and it's been proven to me here for
Gary and I who now look at it and understand
it in a completely different way. Yeah, we have perspective, Yes,
(08:58):
which is God's grace. Yes, say thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Consider this show. You're very own stp Lamine on all
access pass that takes you from the front road to
backstage and from the private jets to the private after
show affairs. We're going on the road with the greatest
rock and roll band in the world. On the tour
that showed us what it means to party like a
rock star. Each episode will stop in a different city,
(09:26):
taking in the sights, sounds, riots, bombings, drug busts, another
assorted mayhem from this pivotal moment in American history. The
(09:49):
Rolling Stones were the last band standing at the dawn
of the seventies, or at least that's how it seemed.
As Robert Greenfield observes an stp they were the only
great group of the sixties still around on the original form,
playing original rock and roll. The nineteen seventy two tour
was their first trip to the state since their friendly
rivals the Beatles, had dissolved, and their absence had re
established the rock and roll pecking order. Simply put, with
(10:13):
the Beatles gone, everybody moved up one. After ten years
of playing together, the Stones have become the number one
attraction in the world and released a string of their
best loved albums, culminating an exile on Main Street that spring.
As Robert writes, they were royalty, undeniably by acclamation, and
to America they came. They received their crown.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
Seventy two is the end of the first act of
their career. It's the highlight reel of the end of
the first act where they really have made the best
three albums back to back to back. This was them
at their artistic peak, you know, Beggar's Banquet, let it Bleed,
sticky Fingers, Eggsile, and they're the kings of America for
(10:57):
however many weeks as the tour win and everybody wrecked,
they become the world's greatest rock and roll band. On
the nineteen seventy two tour.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Drummer Charlie Watts was a little more humble in this
assessment of his group's abilities.
Speaker 9 (11:09):
And we've never been a band of musicians, you know,
it's always set out to be, you know, girlfew Arsen Dunes.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
You know, it was so fast, everything was moving at
lightning speed. It felt like there was no stopping. They
did so many gigs, so many gigs. He never cut
your breath. You just moved from one to the next.
There was no time for reflection ever for me.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
In the blazing heat of summer in America, at a
time when there was you know, fighting in the streets,
it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Over no, not not even by long shot. Was it over.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
The stones nineteen seventy two tour was a dangerous trek
through a country at war with itself, the flames of
the sixties revolution still smolder. This was especially true on
college campuses, where students protested the conflict in Vietnam, which
dragged into its seventh year with no end in sight.
In nineteen seventy National Guard has been gunned down four
(12:07):
students during a peaceful protest that ken state to the
youth of America. The tragedy summarized the savage lengths the
establishment would god to eliminate opposition. Figures of hope and
change like Martin Luther, King, Malcolm X, and Robert F.
Kennedy had all been shot to death under cloudy circumstances.
(12:29):
Black Panther activist Fred Hampton was assassinated in his bed
by law enforcement, while fellow Panthers Angelo Davis and Bobby
Seal rotted in prisoned. This paranoid brutality seemed to extend
to the very top of US government. Two weeks before
the STP tour kicked off in the summer of seventy two,
(12:49):
burglar Is, acting on orders from President Nixon's administration, broke
into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, igniting
a scandal that would alter American politics forever. Nixon's FBI chief,
the notoriously reactionary jag Er Hoover, kept thick files on
the outspoken members of the left leaning rock establishment who
held tremendous way over the enormous block of newly eligible
(13:12):
young voters. Figures like John Lennon, Jimmy Hendrix, and the
Monkeys were monitored and even harassed, but Hoover reserved special
scorn for the Stones. According to a former FBI operative,
jag Or Hoover hated Jagger probably more than any other
pop cultural figure of his generation. By embarking on the
STP tour, the Rolling Stones were headed for a crossfire hurricane.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
Counterculture was pretty much out on its feet. Okay, hippie
thing was still going on. It was real political been
a lot of political violence. It was a serious time
of transition. This tour was fraught with insanity coming from
out side. You have a bombing in Montreal, they're setting
(14:03):
fire to Boston. The Hell's Angels are serving you with
legal papers, making you think they're coming after you in
more than one way. And they generated this energy. Mad
mad mad so I'm sure it made the concerts better.
Don't ask me why.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
This mad energy came to a head on The Stone's
previous American tour in nineteen sixty nine. During their infamous
free concert at the Altamont Speedway that December, conceived as
a thank you to their fans, the good intentions were
undermined by the decision to hire the Hell's Angels of security,
where according to rock Myth, they were paid for their
services with five hundred dollars worth of beer. The all
(14:41):
day concert was a logistical nightmare, beset by chaos and violence.
For the Stones, the mood was set from the moment
they exited their helicopter when Mick Jagger got punched in
the face by an agitated attendee. As the day wore on,
Hell's Angels speed Freaks attempted to maintain order by cracking
pool cues over the skulls of eq will. He blasted
acid casualties. They even knocked out Jefferson Airplane singer Marty
(15:04):
Ballen in the middle of the band's performance.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
We talk about Altamont. The ultimate test of Altamont is
the Grateful Dead turned around and went home. So if
there's a gig that the Grateful Dead are not going
to play because it's too chaotic for them.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Whoa The beatings continued throughout the audience all afternoon, but
it turned deadly at nightfall. During the Stone set, eighteen
year old Meredith Hunter pulled a pistol out of his
jacket his feet from the front of the stage. One
of the Hell's angels descended on him with a knife,
stabbing him at least six times. The terrified band saw
(15:39):
the skirmish, but fearing a riot, finished the concert anyway.
It wasn't until later that they learned they just witnessed
a murder. The killing was captured on camera by filmmakers
Albert and David Masels. It became the pivotal scene in
their groundbreaking nineteen seventy rock documentary Gimme Shelter. The film
(16:01):
ends with Mick Jagger watching the grizzly footage in an
editing room, his face impassive. For one of the most
image conscious celebrities of his generation, this was a rare
misstep and a damaging one.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
More people saw the documentary than had been at Altamont. Obviously,
that documentary had an incredible impact at the time because
you can hear about violence, but when you see a
Hell's Angel stab of black man to death and they
caught it on film.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Altamont was instantaneously mythologized as the death of rock and
Roll's innocence, or at least whatever innocence rock and Roll
ever had. The Stones became the subject of scathing op
eds claiming that the band, and particularly Mick Jagger, then
deep into his Lucifer guys, had more or less brought
this on themselves. No sympathy for the devil this time around.
(16:56):
Rightly or wrongly, the band were held responsible by critics, fans,
and even fellow musicians. The Hell's Angels may have committed
the crime, they reasoned, but the Stones should have known
better than to get mixed up with them in the
first place. According to guitarist Mick Taylor, the guilt was
something that the entire band shouldered.
Speaker 10 (17:13):
I think it affected all of us very profoundly. The
only thing we were very upset about was being accused
and how responsible for what happened. And you can't really
blame anybody in that kind of mass hysteria. People in
America know that the Hell's Angels are a violent organization.
(17:34):
And for that reason alone, I don't think they should
have been highed, as security are automatically gives them an excuse.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Rolling Stone magazine published an exhaustive twenty thousand word report
weeks later, describing the event as the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude,
money manipulation, and at base of fundamental lack of concern
for humanity, implicitly and unfairly laying the blame squarely at
Mick Jagger's feet.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
I think it was about fame and money and success.
It was about a lot of people don't like the Kardashians.
Can't imagine why, but you know the Jagger has it
all yeah, and we want it and he made the
money off our backs. Interesting, huh. You have class warfare
here on some level. Anytime the Stones came to America,
(18:30):
they always crystallized what was going on. Came here in
sixty nine, you got it, revolution chaos. If he's you know,
the dark side of Woodstock, you know, blah blah blah.
It was that undefined anger that in fact defines America.
Everybody in America is always pissed off about something. Now
(18:51):
it's how much gas costs? Okay, it's very expensive, but
you can't exactly torch the gas station. You know, the
Stones drew this puss out of American society. It makes sense.
It's like some kind of virus, you know, they just
bring everything out. People are galvanized by them to do
(19:12):
stuff that normal human beings wouldn't otherwise do. Back then,
at least, you know, in.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
A sense, this phenomenon had dogged the Stones since they
first arrived on American shores back in nineteen sixty four.
The Beatles, we'd beat them by a few months, were
the heroes of the British invasion. So the Stones were
forced into the role of anti heroes.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
This just goes back to the nineteen fifties. They've come
for your daughters. The Black Nation is taking over our children.
But the Stones, unlike the Beatles, the Stones were despised immediately. Well,
the Beatles are so cute. Oh Paul, I love Paul.
You know ringo, it's so cute. Nobody called it rolling
(19:52):
Stones cute. They were punks. Maryann Faithful said that about them.
They were the first punks. They were ugly, they were angry, defiant,
defiant man. And so that what it happens here we
go law of karma that engender's anger, repression, and fear.
(20:14):
When they were here in sixty four for the first
time into Texas State Fair, cop pulled a gun on Keith.
Keith was drinking a cocktail of some do you know
this story? Keith was drinking something, well, Keith is always
drinking something. He was having a refreshment, you know, an
adult beverage, and the cop told him to pour it out.
Keith looked at him like, you must be joking. You're
(20:34):
not talking to me, Bro. And then the cop said
it again, and Keith didn't do it, and the cop
took out his gun and he held it on Keith
and said, boy, you know Texas, Imagine what Keith looked
like in Texas in sixty four, Bro, I want to
shoot him on side, okay? And he made him pour
it out into the toilet and flush it and then
(20:56):
the cop left. And after that, Keith never went on
tour unless it was armed. He got the message.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Keith was also aware that his reputation is one of
rock's most notorious renegades, was also a liability.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
I mean really, the press and just an extent that
public could have made the role in the stones outside
of the law, not above it, but outside of it.
For you to be a special thing in somebody's head,
you know, makes it impossible for you to really be
treasy fairly, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But nineteen sixty four was a long way from nineteen
seventy two. In eight years, the teenybop mop topped music
fans had graduated in the full fledged adults, politicized by
the tumultuous decade of their youth, and imbued with liberal
and liberated cultural attitudes.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
What seventy two represented for me was that we were
taking over. We being our generation. Now we're in power.
It created a much different dynamic in the way we
interacted with the world.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
On the STP tour, Mick Taylor and Keith Richards found
a very different America than the one they'd seen just
three years earlier.
Speaker 10 (22:10):
Nature of American society and in particularly the young people,
had changed. I got the feeling that they were more
genuinely enthusiastic this time, whereas on sixty nine till I
think your point earlier on about the rolling stones symbolizing
some kind of rebellious force against the establishment was probably
(22:32):
more believable then.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
America to me.
Speaker 7 (22:43):
This ship.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
People just seem to be a good time and look
to watch their big symbol perform, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Whatever.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
Right in the stage you just see used to be
like you say, they came to see a show.
Speaker 7 (23:04):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
It actually has to do with Woodstock. Woodstock was the
event that crossed the counterculture and the music into coverage
by straight television. Cabot had Crosby Stills, Nash Young and
Jony On and she didn't go, but they were there
because this was a cultural event. Newsweek covered Woodstock. The
(23:25):
Stones were merged from having been the outlaw counterculture band
because when they played sixty nine, that was the meeting
of the tribes. You know, guys, you had to go
see the Stones man.
Speaker 10 (23:38):
You see, I never really believed that rock music has
had any real redeeming cultural significance at all. It's only
because it's young people's music and it provides a sense
of community. I suppose most young people, you know, rock theaters,
concerts where they can meet and discuss all kinds of things.
(24:04):
I mean, young people aren't just interested in rock music,
so naturally political issues and all the kinds of things
tend to come up as well. Why that's why you know,
when we're at a press conference, we're asked, we're asked
what our feelings are about the Vietnam War, as anybody
(24:24):
who would be in that position would be.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
As is often the case, these changes in culture led
the changes in business.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Record companies previously owned their artists, and the artists they
did what they were told. In seventy two, the artists
were the power. They weren't obliged to the dictates of
these big record companies. They were able to assert their own,
their own wishes, and their own control. So the Stones
had it all their own way at that in that tour,
(24:52):
nobody told them what to do. Music business had not
been set up previously to accommodate that kind of control.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
And Gary's exactly right. The artists had taken over and
they dictated the terms because the money they generated was insane.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
The Stones had spent the sixties signed to a draconian
deal with Decca Records, which left their personal finances and
chaos and next to nothing in the bank. So when
their contract expired at the start of the decade, they
created their own label, Rolling Stones Records, with a little
help from legendary music executive and Atlantic Records co founder
Ahmed Ertigen.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
A'med Ertigan had established Rolling Stones Records. Marshall Chess, the
son of Leonard Chess and his uncle Phil Chess Chess Records,
was running the label for the first time in their history,
which sounds insane. They were in charge of their own fate.
They ran their own business. Mick to businessman and I'm
(26:00):
a brilliant, brilliant businessman and brilliant human being. Saw it
as a way to cross them over, to cross the
Stones over from being the outlaw band, which is what
they still were, being the hippie band into another level
of popular acclaim.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
For i'm at Ertigan, the Stones and their songs were
never just going to be a flavor of the week.
Even then in nineteen seventy two, he recognized them for
what they were, timeless.
Speaker 6 (26:29):
This is all still blues music, and blues music ain't
show business.
Speaker 7 (26:36):
Is bigger than show business, is better than show business,
you know what I mean, is more soulful than show business.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Then they emerged from having been the outlaw counterculture band.
Now even though the audiences were still young, they were
now accepted in the mainstream. It was the highest grossing
tour in the history of rock and roll to that point,
and that was not an accident.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
I mean, the success of.
Speaker 11 (27:03):
The tour was I guess it was the most successful
rock and roll tour, you know, don't.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
You think so. I've never gotten as many requests for
tickets all over the country.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I mean for every one of.
Speaker 7 (27:16):
Those concerts, we had people calling it. I mean people
I hadn't heard from in ten years, five years call
me up with distressed you know voices saying I must
have two tickets, I.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Mean said, you know, it's I mean, I think that
I could have sold out of each concert myself, you know, just.
Speaker 7 (27:34):
From the Flying Me exactly. But there's never been.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
A concert of sword that had held that kind of.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
General interest, general interest, mainstream. Those are dangerous words in
rock and roll. Well, the Stones about to become God
forbid respectable, not as far as Mick Jagger was concerned, but.
Speaker 11 (27:53):
I mean, I think it's very difficult to make rolling
Stones respectable. But I don't think that the wrong stars
would be ever made respectable by that.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
By that Bassis Bill Wyman.
Speaker 8 (28:02):
Agreed, society kind of accepted us. Halfway through that tour,
we found that society was very interested in this I
couldn't care less. I'm not very interested in society, but
society like a music Good.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Luck to me.
Speaker 6 (28:19):
Well, I don't know if I'm not playing.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Music for society, And so did Mick Taylor.
Speaker 5 (28:24):
I think.
Speaker 10 (28:25):
I think to say that it's been accepted is much
better than to say that it's.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Being made respectiveness. I just think it's touched more people.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It certainly touched a lot of people. Ticket demand was unprecedented.
In Chicago, thirty four thousand seats sold out in just
five and a half hours. Remember this was back in
a pre internet time and it was a lot tougher
than just refreshing the page. In Chicago, there were one
hundred and twenty thousand requests for twelve thousand seats. In
other words, only one in ten Stones fans got satisfaction.
(28:59):
Given the lack of supply, capitalism took over, giving way
to the relatively new phenomenon known as scalping. A ticket
retailing for six fifty would go for upwards of fifty
or even one hundred dollars on the street, or trade
for tickets to Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tall and the Dead combined.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
You couldn't get a ticket, you know, everything sold out instantaneously.
There wasn't anybody don't want to see them, who cared
about music.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
You know, selling out a tour like that on the
first day the tickets go on sale unheard of.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Unheard of. Typically you would.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Sweat it out to the very last day to sell
as many tickets as you could in hopes of going
into the black.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
They hadn't been here for three years, so now we've
gone through a pandemic where musicians have not worked and
you know, but it was different then. I mean, it
sounds so crazy. Time changes over time, if that makes
sense to you. Three years was a lot longer period
of time. Back then. It was almost like a semi
era where people who hadn't been into the stones before
(30:00):
Sticky Fingers changed a lot of minds. Okay, look at
the music that's on Sticky Fingers, right, and so the
energy generated by that album and not being able to
see them, it meant more. You couldn't see them on
the internet, there was no video, couldn't go to the movie.
You had to be there, and that was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Mick Taylor considered the confluence of forces that brought the
fans out and.
Speaker 10 (30:24):
Droves so it's not They're not there just for the music.
They can listen to the music in their own homes,
you know, they're they're there the spectacle and for the
our physical presence and the charisma, you know. I mean
they read whatever they like into it. But I mean essentially,
we're only there to play music. But it becomes much
more than that. But I think it comes from the
(30:46):
whole group, you know, really actually being there physically playing.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
The excitement may have built in the three years since
the band toured America, but it also meant they were
three years older by nineteen seventy two. The Stones have
been rolling for a decade, which equals roughly a millennium
when converted to rock and roll years. New Boy Mick
Taylor may have been twenty three, but for Mick Jagger
and Keith Richards, the sun was setting on their twenties.
This was the era when people wore buttons that bore
(31:16):
the slogan don't trust anyone over thirty. Now, the Stones,
those heroes of hell raising and youthful rebellion, were approaching
this all important generational demarcation. Would they still be able
to connect with a new legion of young fans they'd
acquired with sticky fingers. Could the Stones still rock at
age thirty?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
There may have been an age difference that the energy,
and he was a very youthful thirty, very energy and
fashion wise, I mean he was right on point fashion wise.
He never aged and at that time he had an
aged He still probably has an age. I mean he's
seventy five and and still.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
I agree with Gary. There was no age cap any
anybody in that audience was just freaking out and dancing,
and you know, they just were having a time of
their life.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Even Keith marveled at the Stone's ability to transcend shifts
in the youth movement.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
The thing that's certain which fans rage, that you seem
to have managed to keep the interest of the original
kids from the earliest sixties, you know, and also attract
a fair number of younger ones that were probably eight
or nine when we first went round.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
You know, it was the event of the summer in
popular culture.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
And also in a very positive way. There wasn't any
negativity around this at all.
Speaker 5 (32:41):
It was all positive and ultimat was all negative, all negative.
They left American in sixty nine as the villains. They
killed somebody they're evil and dark.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
Yeah, so this was a positive.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
This was you know, you could have a rock and
roll tour and excite the country and come away with it.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
There's a big success.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
If Mick Jagger was feeling the strain of this mammoth undertaking,
he refused to let it show.
Speaker 7 (33:05):
What was that that?
Speaker 11 (33:05):
I mean that seventy two too, it was even bigger
than sixty nine. I didn't think you'd get any bigger
than that. More interest, yes, more pressure, No, really reckon
the interest them.
Speaker 7 (33:17):
I don't know.
Speaker 10 (33:19):
I think a lot of the interestingness could have been
stimulated by the fact that the nineteen sixty nine too,
was so disastrous at the end, and lots of people
expected us to probably fail.
Speaker 5 (33:32):
But I was a bit worried about.
Speaker 10 (33:33):
It, you know, because of what had happened before. But
I think the security arrangements the organization was so bad on.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
The sixty sixty nine tour was dark, like criminal renne
cars that were abandoned and everybody ripped off, and chaos
and anarchy in an amateur manner and arrogant. They resulted
in ultimont you know. And Bill Graham called it the
Pearl Harbor Rock. There was no accident. The karma of
(34:04):
the sixty nine tour was truly dark, not so in
seventy two. It was a joyous occasion for many people
on a multiple levels.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
From the earliest planning stages, the STP tour aimed to
correct the mistakes of their previous track. As Mick Jagger says,
the difference was night and day.
Speaker 11 (34:23):
On the fact that Interesting nine there was no transportation,
no logistics probably arranged, there was no proper accommodation, and
the band was genuinely interested in doing another tour and
doing a good one, you know, and like going to
like picking out all these towns because like we had
never been there since X and what the.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
Interesting dif from the public is just very gratifying.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And Bill Wyman agreed.
Speaker 8 (34:52):
It was definitely because it's so incredibly well organized, which
us never are.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
You always you always.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
Getting up always.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
According to Mick Taylor, the size was the crucial difference.
Speaker 10 (35:07):
We played in the same kind of places really to
the same kind of audience. The really real difference was
the scale.
Speaker 7 (35:16):
Of the two was a much more sai.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
No k and roll tours are never saying I know
that not.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Thus the metaphorical stage was set for nineteen seventy two's
STP tour. That stands for the Stones Touring Party, but
the fact that SDP is also the street name for
a psychedelic amphetamines probably not complete coincidence. The tour had
multiple objectives. On the surface, it was designed to promote
the Stones' new album Exile on Main Street, but it
would also provide the Stones with a chance to mend
(35:51):
fences after the deadly disaster at Altamont, and finally, there
was a slightly less altruistic goal make a lot of money.
SDP marks the first tour of the modern rock era.
Planned for maximum efficiency, the forty eight date run would
be staged on a scale previously unseen in popular music,
with the largest entourage and rock history up to that point.
(36:12):
They had their own security team, their own film crew,
their own doctor, and a press corps that rivaled most
political campaigns. When all the laminits were printed up for
the more than forty person organization, it was clear that
this wasn't just a tour, but a grand event, an
all encompassing, hedonistic binge across the country.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
This is the next step up for the business of
rock and roll. On tour they hadn't been there for
three years. Man, So when you have that much time,
that led to a lot of the planning. The headquarters
of the tour with the Beverly Rodeo Hotel Beverly Hills
was not then what it has become. The bar at
the Beverly Rodeo was all hookers. I'm not judging, you
(36:56):
know whatever, but it was kind of funky. Was a
funky little hotel. And they were in this room or
a suite of rooms, and it was Alan Dunn and
Joe Bergman and Peter Rudge and they were doing everything.
They were on four phones and they were eating breakfast
room service and talking and doing everything.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
To mouth of tour on this scale, you needed someone
with an unparalleled logistical mind fueled by a mix of
ambition and insanity. As Keith Richards notes, such figures were
in short supply.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
If you're going to do a big tour, you have
to have it playing down to the last detail, you know.
Peter r Yeah, I mean somebody that's done it and
as good at it and takes pride in doing it
properly and gets really screwed up if it.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
Doesn't go right.
Speaker 9 (37:43):
I mean it's got to be like that.
Speaker 6 (37:45):
He's going to be somebo who's as interested in his
end of it as musicians are in there, which it's hard.
Speaker 7 (37:52):
To find people like that, you know, people like Raji, very.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Rare, Peter rug who was the manager of this too.
It was probably the most intense guy that I've ever
worked with.
Speaker 5 (38:03):
Went to Cambridge. Brilliant human being, you know, mad driven,
you know, no sleep. He could do it. He could
do it.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
His focus and determination to get things done, his way
was unmatched and unrivaled, and thanks to him, it kept going.
But he just was a bull in a china shell. Yes,
he just bowled over anything in his way.
Speaker 5 (38:27):
Oh my god. And he could talk fast.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
He would sweat and his hair was he had long
hair that would stick to his head because he was
always always sweating, and just in a frenzy. He'd wake
up in the morning, he'd come down from the hotel,
he was already in a frenzy. And this is like
eight o'clock in the morning and Peter's already into you know,
a nine on a tense scale of frenziness. So and
(38:50):
that was the level that he operated on constantly. And
but you know, I think that largely. This thing got
done because Peter was that intense.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
But Regie's intensity he quickly went over Bill Wyman and
the rest of the band.
Speaker 8 (39:02):
I found that right. He's incredible because no only did
he get the whole thing together before we even wait
said it out, well, he got the right people and
he arranged every detail right down to the tiniest little
things that were always left to somebody else and never
(39:23):
always got done all the time.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
You know, he has planned this tour security wise, Like
he's got measurements on drain pipes that lead to the area.
What if they come through the drain pipe. I was
in meetings with them and they like, the officials are
looking at each other, there's a drain pipe there, Like,
we don't need where he got the map, We have
no clue. He was obsessed with security and Jagger's personal safety.
(39:49):
That's what it was really all about, okay, and the
safety of the concert.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Safety was the paramount concern for British bands. The United
States was always a hazardous gauntlet run. Violence was simply
part of the cultural psyche as American as apple Pie.
Weeks before the tour was due to kick off, Alabama's
segregationist governor turned presidential candidate George Wallace was gunned down
in a suburban shopping center outside Washington, d C. I'm
(40:16):
hard pressed to think of a sentence that better sums
up America. In nineteen seventy two, for Charlie Watts, the
country had a fearsome nage.
Speaker 9 (40:25):
America scares the shit out on me, in the sense
that if anyone wants to do anything.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Then they're going to try.
Speaker 9 (40:31):
You know, they either go to prison, or they get up,
or they get off it.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Keith Richards hope that the advanced planning would prevent deadly disasters,
but there's only so much that could be done.
Speaker 6 (40:42):
I found things like that only happened when there isn't
adequate secures. That's that's been taking to fill that extra
three years, you know, until they can get away with
that kind of you know, is a Kasi example new secures.
Speaker 7 (41:02):
Then they went crazy.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
These weren't abstract threats. The Hell's Angels felt that the
Stones had left them high and dry following the murder
at Altamont, thereby sowing the good name of their motorcycle
club and the pages of every American news outlet. Now
they wanted revenge. Rumors spread throughout the underground that the
Hell's Angels planned to kidnap Mick Jagger and hold them
for ransom or worse. Some said there was a bounty
(41:25):
on his head.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
It swirled around the entire tour. Is somebody going to
try to assassinate Mick Jagger? Not some random We're living
in a time of random assassinations everywhere. The Angels blamed
Jagger for taking the hit for what they had done
for five hundred dollars worth of beer.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Every precaution was taken private planes, limos, and higher stages
to prevent audience invasions. The bands were assigned a pair
of linebacker sized bodyguards, lovingly known as stand the Man
More and Big Leroy Leonard. They followed McK and keith everywhere,
including some say into their hotel suites. At night. The
band's entire floor would be blocked off to outsiders, but
(42:07):
several members of the Honorage were prepared to take the
law into their own hands. Rolling Stones's Record's chief Marshall
Chess carried loaded thirty eight caliber handgun. But, as Bill
Wyman says, when you're playing in front of ten thousand people,
there's only so much you can do to defend yourself.
Speaker 8 (42:21):
I mean, you're always open to being shot on stage.
You're always you think about You're always aware of that.
Speaker 6 (42:26):
I mean, you're so well home you don't think about it.
Speaker 8 (42:29):
But anybody with any sense of Toad's going to think
there's a possibility at some time or other, some cranks especially.
I mean we've been shut out the airgun before in stage,
and Charlie got a palette in his cheeks.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Ian Stewart, an original Rolling Stone Turns Roady by nineteen
seventy two, echoed the sentiment.
Speaker 6 (42:50):
The way I think about it is if anybody was
going to do do him with a rifle from the
back of the hall or something like that, if anybody
really set out to bloody kill him, they kill it.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
For Mick, every night on stage was two hours in
the crosshairs. The show would go on, though the cost
couldn't have been any higher. In truth, he didn't have
a choice. It was the only way he could keep
on being Mick Jagger.
Speaker 11 (43:16):
I mean, either I stopped he or I didn't, you know.
Speaker 7 (43:20):
I mean, it was as simple as that.
Speaker 11 (43:22):
And a few people would like to say, don call
the friends of mine.
Speaker 7 (43:26):
I said, you really got to be came from you
can't go I said, wait more, or this what I do?
So I'm going to do it in either I do
it or don't do it. If I don't do it,
what am I.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Going to do?
Speaker 3 (43:36):
You know?
Speaker 7 (43:37):
There was a few places that it did get scary,
and there was a lot of guns, comfy scows and
stuff like that.
Speaker 11 (43:46):
That I wasn't scared, you know, I was scared shitless.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
A hit on Mick was that the Stone's only problem
as they crossed the Flaming Continent. Their equipment van is
bombed in Montreal, they're jailed in Rhode Island, they're opening
night in Vancouver's derailed by rioters, and they nearly burned
down the Playboy Mansion in Chicago. Plus there's trouble in
the band's inner circle. Keith's descending the heroin addiction threatens
his bond with Mick and his life, drug dealing scammers
(44:26):
invade their ranks, and the Stones cope with the fact
that they're nearly broke. But it's too late to stop now,
so hop on, there's a show to do.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Stone's touring Party is written and hosted by Jordan runtaff
the co executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan Runtok,
Edited and sound designed by Noel Brown and Michael Older June.
Original music composed and performed by Michael Older June and
Noel Brown. The additional instruments performed by Chris Suarez, Nick
John's Cooper and Josh Thay. Vintage Rolling Stones audio courtesy
of the Robert Greenfield Archive at the Charles Deering McCormick
(44:58):
Library of Special collect in Northwestern University Libraries.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
Stone's Touring Party.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your favorite shows.
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