TEN: Sex, Drugs and Motel Mayhem in the Midwest

The STP tour has hit the midway point, and the Stones & Co struggle to stave off boredom and madness as a result of the destabilizing daily grind. Some blow off steam by deconstructing their hotel rooms, while others get lost in gratuitous sex. Drugs are a frequent refuge, which wreaks havoc on the physical and mental health of many. The tour starts to seem like a cult, with members feeling increasingly isolated from the world outside and everyday reality in general. With tempers shortened by exhaustion, tedium and drug use, tour mates feud with fellow rock star road warriors — and also each other. Ultimately, a savage beating requires an impromptu trial (with Mick Jagger as the judge!) to affirm law and order within this wild roving pirate nation. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Norfolk or is it Charlotte? Could also be Knoxville.
The prefab hotel suites make it impossible to tell Holiday inns,
Ramada inns, Sheridan Motor inns. They all blur into one
great antiseptic room with a carpet worn by the door
and someone's scarf thrown over the bedlamb in a desperate

(00:30):
attempt to create an atmosphere. Wherever you go, it's basically
the same place. It's June nineteen seventy two, or maybe not.
The dim recollection of fireworks would indicate that it must
be July, but determining a more specific dates impossible, at
least until you figure out where you are, and that's

(00:51):
not worth the hassle. There's a party in someone's room,
mostly the same faces, but also a few new ones.
They'll be gone by tomorrow. There's music, booze, and smoke,
but not that kind of smoke. In some circles, it's
still considered in poor taste to whip out joints and

(01:13):
spark up in mixed company. If you want that, you'll
have to retire to the bathroom. A series of suggestive
eye contact and subtle gestures will tell you. When the
Rolling Stones and their extensive forty person entourage are in
the middle of their North American tour, they're also in
the middle of the United States, and the boredom is everywhere.

(01:36):
It greets you in the morning when you awake, and
yet another strange town, and it tucks you in at
night when you try to come down from being wired
and get some sleep. It's impossible to maintain your sanity
or your basal metabolism on the road, and the changes
that come down are invariably harder on the supporting personnel
than on the band. At least the musicians know why

(01:58):
they're there. They climb up on stage and have thousands
of people shout their names and tell them that for
one moment they are God and all that is important
in the world. Everyone else has to work a little
harder to find a reason to get out of bed.

(02:27):
The tour has eliminated the need for ordinary tasks, the
ones that provide shape to each day. Consequently, time starts
to lose its meaning. The drug taking also doesn't help.
In nineteen seventy two America, the style is to mix
your poisons completely. This means various drugs and large amounts
of whiskey. It was though there weren't enough chemicals in

(02:50):
all the world to blot out the pain of just
being alive. The doping on the STP tour intensified to
the point where people's faces began to change shape. The
skin tightens around their mouths and eyes, and the flesh
disappears from under their cheekbones, giving them that gone wasted
look that's so favored in high fashioned circles. Some people

(03:11):
do no more than drink a lot of beer, smoke
too many cigarettes, and take an occasional upper to stay awake.
Others use the tor as an excuse to plumb the
limits of inner space. In general, this means that things
are happening in a dreamlike haze at all times. Actions
are occurring, and you know you're involved in them, but
it's all shadow play. The signal comes and you make

(03:39):
your way to the bathroom, waiting your turn. While crouched
in the tub, you notice a lanky, mustachioed man casually
reach under the sink and pull out a drain pipe.
This is the single funniest thing that anyone in this
room has ever seen, and peals of laughter ricochet off
the tiles. Without a word, everyone knows what to do.

(04:00):
It's tor telepathy at its finest. Someone reaches up and
pulls the shower curtain off the bar. Another yank's the
toilet paper holder out of the wall. In rapid succession,
the toilet's taken apart. Then the flush cabinet, the shower rods,
the handles, the shower head, the towel rack. Everything that's
removable is removed. Everyone gets more hysterical with each volley.

(04:22):
Here and here take that top this than the poor
soul hosting this hotel room. Party enters the use the toilet,
only to discover that his bathroom is now a retail
plumbing supply outlet. The gleefully guilty party is asked to leave,
but there are other rooms to be sure, and other substances.

(04:43):
En route first class through America in another city, another day,
it was about to begin getting high seeing as good
a way to relate to it as any. That description
comes courtesy of Robert Greenfield, the legendary rock journalist who
served as the dedicated store owns correspondent for Rolling Stone
Magazine as a twenty something in the early seventies. He

(05:05):
was there for the high highs of the band's nineteen
seventy two tour, and he was also there for some
of the lows. Everyone knows that the road gets grueling,
but seldom has it been documented in such harrowing clarity.
The STP tour is a karmic demonstration of Newton's third
law of thermodynamics. For every action, there's an equal and

(05:28):
opposite reaction. So for every night thrilling a sold out
crowd with superhuman stage theatrics, there is a long, dark
night of the soul alone in a strange room with
enough drugs to leave you teetering on the brink of
sanity and madness and life and death. After the show,
in the empty three am hotel corridors of America, there's

(05:52):
nothing to do but take another pill, smoke another joint,
do another line, and try to find someone to spend
the night with. In addition to Greenfield and has never
before heard tapes of the Stones and their exile on
Main Street, Eric Glory will also be joined by his

(06:12):
friend and tour mate Gary Stromberg, a rock pr spremo
who's represented a whole jukebox of the twentieth century's greatest artists.
He also had a hand in the hotel bathroom destruction.
My name's Jordan Runtug and this is the Stones touring party.

(06:37):
One month into the tour. It's hard to pretend anymore.
The thrill is gone. All the things that were gonna
happen on the road have already happened. At least a
thousand times. The various celebrities have departed, not to return
until the final gig in New York City. The all
important four day break is over. No more. Afternoons spent

(06:57):
sipping rum punches on a beach in the Jed Islands,
what remains is a solid month of gigs. Young bands
would salivate at the opportunity, but for the Stones it's
a relatively mundane case of getting up on stage each
night and making the fifteen songs set sound fresh. It's
the basic showbiz proposition. Go out there and break a leg, kid,

(07:19):
make them laugh, make them cry, doesn't matter how many
times you've done it before. Sometimes they start to play
a song and drummer Charlie Watts would think, didn't we
do this one already? Oh wait, that was last night.
It could be hard to tell sometimes for Gary Stromberg,
there's no other way to put it. These days felt

(07:39):
like a slog.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
It was the dog days shows there you go, yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Like where like Indianapolis.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
Yeah, they couldn't get excited about it there.

Speaker 6 (07:50):
No, it was just it's like a baseball season was
they had dog days.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
There was a.

Speaker 6 (07:54):
Drudgery, The novelty of the start of a tour had
worn off. Now we just got to work, you know.
And when you go to Indianapolis, you know, what are
you going to do for diversions? There's not a lot
of excitement in some of those places. It was just
grinding and out repetition and just it's a groundhog day.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
You know.

Speaker 6 (08:10):
You wake up every day and it's same thing you
did and when you look at the nightstand and know
where you are, what city that you're in for real,
not just playing around, you don't know where you are.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
The band's barometer is Keith Richards. He's more easily read
than anyone else, with his emotions always close to the surface.
Now he looks wasted, drawn and drained by the heat.
After a few destabilizing weeks. It's a struggle to keep
himself motivated, he reflected, on those down days. When talking
to Robert Greenfield shortly after the tour wrapped in nineteen

(08:44):
seventy two. Here he is courtesy of our friends at
the Northwestern University Archive.

Speaker 7 (08:50):
I'm refer into only on only a field the last
couple of days. So glad it's over. But I can
sustain interest in the two as long as it goes.
Oh yeah, I can always. I can keep it going.

(09:10):
That road thing going for a long time. And they
all came, Yeah, if you know you're going to be
on the road from Appunta in July whatever it is,
the twenty eighth and the twenty sixth, you make it.
You know, you pace yourself and you make it.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
But now they've hit the real America, loosely defined, there's
the space between the coastal media centers. There's plenty that's
good about it and plenty that's bad. But for the
Stones purposes, the bad tended to outweigh the good. One
bad element is the lack of suitable accommodations. It says
as much in the STP internal newsletter. Yes they have one.

(09:55):
We're about to hit the nature of the tour as
far as hotels are concerned. Upon hitting one, midwestern town
they had redacted to preserve civic pride. We really did try,
but due to circumstances, even holiday inns were unavailable, so
we're stuck. According to Mick Jagger, the group had made
a conscious effort to avoid, especially luxe hotels. They had

(10:18):
an entourage of some three dozen people, after all, and
the principal objective of the tour was to bank money.
But even so, these fleabags weren't exactly what Jagger had
in mind.

Speaker 8 (10:31):
And we didn't stand that cheap is fucking shitty horrible hotels,
but nevertheless that some of.

Speaker 9 (10:37):
Them were pretty shitty, cheap, cheat and horrible.

Speaker 10 (10:41):
Well, we based the thing on that they have to
be less than holiday and prices.

Speaker 8 (10:44):
You know, because the thing is that you can spend
all the money in hotels.

Speaker 11 (10:48):
That you come out with nothing, and then everyone says, okay,
you count nothing but that fifty grand that you might
have made, you know, and you can spend each twenty
grand by.

Speaker 9 (10:57):
Staying and good to to probably more.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I don't know the figures, you know, but I mean
I know.

Speaker 8 (11:01):
That if I say we should stay in holiday inns,
and then someone came up with the right ideas saying.

Speaker 9 (11:06):
Well, let's stay cheap for the holidays, and so we did.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
The after hours entertainment also left something to be desired.
One well meeting promoter through the STP entourage a backyard
tiki party at a ranch house in suburban Denver. You know,
flaming torches next to the basketball hoop, wiki wikiluall tables
alongside a sprinkler, plastic waiting pools crammed with cores, diet, pepsi,

(11:32):
and ice, the whole bit. It's like the Stones crashed
your grandparents fourth the July party. Robert Frank, the Stones
tour documentarian, had a similar observation. It's like a bar mitzvah.
He marveled, and they put us on the podium. Watching
the two cultures mix was a fascinating anthropological phenomenon. Koke

(11:53):
snorters clogged the hallway bathrooms with the good towels laid out.
The kitchens crammed with very high members of the STP
squad chipping away at frozen cartons of ice cream procured
from the freezer. The locals and attendance do their best
not to stare, but it's a challenge. Anybody seen Jagger

(12:13):
one very stoned guest asks, I gotta talk with him.
Standing right next to the kid, He's Mick Jagger, clad
in a feathery blue bow atop. There's no one else
this man could be tonight other than Mick Jagger. Oh
he just left, Jagger tells the guy, with a note
of sympathy in his voice. He's gone man. As off

(12:34):
stage life reaches its low point, the STP crew starts
making its own fun, anything to blow off steam. Usually
it was silly stuff like swapping limos at red lights.
One time, the road crew started a shaving cream fight
in a hotel drug store. Often they would entertain themselves
by throwing post show parties in their hotel rooms, the

(12:56):
only venue that guaranteed both safety and a hassle free environment.
These gatherings were rarely confined to just one room and
often could be somewhat noisy. One morning on the STP
private jet, the entourage exchanged gossip from the night before. Man,
I heard someone blasting soul records until seven am. Someone

(13:16):
observed Keith Richards turned around with a big smile. Yeah,
that was us. You should have stopped by. You were
on the eleventh floor. Two ninth came the reply, Oh,
Keith muttered, I guess we were a bit loud. He
doesn't speak again for the remainder of the flight. Keith aside,

(13:40):
the Stones were generally more quiet during their off hours.
Charlie Wattson dures is insomnia by making meticulous drawings of
each of his rooms on the tour, carefully recording all
the beds he sleeps in from multiple angles. By the
time the tour ends, there are one hundred and one
drawings in his sketchbook. Rs. Mick Taylor embarks on an

(14:01):
impressive self education process and begins to read avidly. If
someone mentions something that he hasn't read, he makes a
mental check mark to put it on his list. He
begins to write both poetry and prose, and learns how
to read music in order to begin playing piano. Mick
Jagger takes the staying hold up in his room for

(14:22):
long stretches, insulated from the pressure of well being. Mick
Jagger this becomes a fairly common response to road fatigue,
an almost monastic test of inner strength to see how
long you can take the confines of your own little
cubicle before you ultimately break down and make a phone
call to find out where the party is, which then
starts the merry go round all over again. Usually the

(14:45):
most unflappable of the group, even he was beginning to
buckle onto the strain.

Speaker 10 (14:51):
I mean he finds out getting crazy on until like that,
or I'm sure I was completely there. It's a total thing,
is that. I mean, it's just the craziest of accepting
anything that happens to me.

Speaker 8 (15:00):
Yeah, anything, anything goes and tours such as small conclave
and people, and it has.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
To be like that.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Anything did go in that small conclave of people, and
it made for some strange bedfellows. After all, people alone
in the rooms were rarely just alone in their rooms.
Bedswapping was common in ways that seemed to defy basic
social decorum. But then again, the Stone's dating history reads

(15:29):
like the first draft of a telenovella. Here's just a
quick primer. In the mid sixties, Keith Richards was approached
by the beautiful chantus Maryanne Faithful, but upon learning that
Mick was smitten, Keith set them up instead, and they
dated for the rest of the decade. Keith then stole
the heart of benmate Brian Jones's girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, who

(15:51):
then began rather blatantly having an affair with Mick Jagger
during sessions for Exile on Main Street. When she became
pregnant a year before the STP tour kicked off, she
couldn't be sure who the father was. Needless to say,
the Glimmer Twins' emotional entanglements ran deep. Only their exceptional
ability to compartmentalize kept them able to function without killing

(16:14):
each other.

Speaker 5 (16:21):
The relationship between these two guys and the women in
both of their lives, that's another twelve hour podcasts. You're
not going to cover that in any succinct way, and
it's not understandable. I mean, I'll say this as a
general statement, the level of I don't know what to
call it, sexual freedom within the inner circle of the

(16:42):
Stones tour in terms of who was with who on
any given night. I couldn't believe what was going on,
you know, like finding out that somebody who'd been somebody's
girlfriend for out the tour, well she was with Keith
and then with Mick, and they didn't seem to mind.
I can't explain it. It was a another universe, you know,
alternate universe, different rules, no rules.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
You tell me, Garrett, No, I think you're correct. I
don't understand that either.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Did people get hurt by doing that?

Speaker 4 (17:11):
I mean, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
I don't think so either. It was I don't think
it was just under.

Speaker 5 (17:15):
I mean again, in terms of context, the women were
as sexually free as the men, which was not common
at that time, even in rock and roll. These women
with them were not victims or groupies.

Speaker 4 (17:28):
They had so much power.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
These brief encounters weren't limited to just members of the
SDP entourage. No, there were others. You saw them rather
the meth them gathered in the hallways outside the Stones
hotel room, beautiful ladies with expensive clothes, false eyelashes, burnt
sienna hair, and glittering three inch fingernails. They seemed tough,

(17:52):
at least into a door popped open and outstrolled Mick Jagger.
This usually sent the ladies frantically reaching for their cigarettes.
Stand up for when you're trying to play it cool
and pretend you don't know who Mick Jagger is. It's
only a cosmic coincidence that you're standing within whispering distance
of his hotel room in the early morning hours. Mick
was often past handwritten letters, complete with full of dresses

(18:14):
and phone numbers, and sometimes an obscene limerick for good measure.
What the favorite was Keith a potent mix of renegade
pirate and soft spoken, vulnerable gentleman. His sexual appetite was
as prodigious as his appetite for drugs, and largely fueled
by the same desire to escape. Both appetites seem to
be dangerously close to addiction.

Speaker 10 (18:37):
He did that thing, you know, I mean somebody. I
can feel driven to be with somebody, whether you're going
to be with them, particularly.

Speaker 7 (18:43):
On that Yeah, you end up with it.

Speaker 9 (18:47):
Just because they're the.

Speaker 7 (18:50):
Tying that the show in itself isn't the released, that
it isn't everything.

Speaker 9 (18:54):
You realize after the show that I hang up.

Speaker 7 (18:57):
So you've got to take care of too, you know,
I mean somebody that you wouldn't normally.

Speaker 9 (19:02):
Some got out of your way. That's shit.

Speaker 12 (19:07):
Some incredible rooms.

Speaker 10 (19:08):
Don't know if I should checked.

Speaker 6 (19:09):
Underview or not.

Speaker 9 (19:09):
I've heard seventeen checks. Someone did me. It's in the text.
I don't know who tell that's nice not physically possible?

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yes to me, As one STP crew member ungallantly but
realistically observed there might be thirty five women desperate to
sleep at the Stones and only five stones. The math
wasn't hard to work out. Gary Stromberg was a beneficiary
of this equation.

Speaker 6 (19:45):
I was a gatekeeper in some respects, you know, so
I could provide you access. And it was very apparent
that there were a lot of women in the periphery
that wanted access, and you know, I could do it
when it was easy, and that's what I did. There
were a lot of women that I knew from Los
Angeles that would fly in just to get close to
the Stones, and I could provide easy access to that.
So I took advantage of those opportunities, and largely under

(20:09):
the influence that you know, but I just had a
wild time.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
For the Rolling Stones on tour. Their nightly concerts were
a built in pressure release valve, one that gave some
sense of order and meaning to their existence. The rest
of the STP crew didn't have this luxury. Keith Richards
was sympathetic to the fact that for most of his
roommates there was nowhere for this excess energy and insanity
to go. He discussed the matter with Robert Greenfield back

(21:00):
in nineteen seventy two. Here he is courtesy of our
friends at the Northwestern University Archives.

Speaker 7 (21:06):
You see, for people that are going up on that
stage every and sweating it out, and.

Speaker 9 (21:11):
You can take a lot more on that shit, first
of all, because.

Speaker 7 (21:16):
They're getting that constant exercise every night in sweating it
out and releasing it, and they're pushing themselves to that limit,
and their expections are pushing themselves to that limit. But
for people that aren't doing that and just hanging around
and getting stoned and just everyone just you know, watching
the show getting stoned, that's another thing because you haven't
got any real point of release for all that, you know,

(21:43):
it just seems to go on and on, you know,
without there being a highlight, a high point of the day.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
You know, this goes a long way and explaining why
the birth of the modern rock tour in the early
seventies coincided with pioneering experiments in the art of hotel roomuction.
These rooms were a killer. No matter how high you get,
it was still like being inside a bottle of mouthwash.

(22:09):
With plain green and clean white plastic coated wood finished
walls and ceilings or furniture with no sharp edges or
two bright colors. The very space you occupy, with its
institutional blandness, makes you desperate for any kind of rush.
Horn player Bobby Keys was a fan of flushing firecrackers
down the toilet. You get yourself one with them waterproof

(22:31):
fuses and light it and boomed, you blow up the
crapper and some salesman's room three floors down. A favorite
story that makes the rounds concerns a roadie who walked
into a hotel room and asked its occupants if they
wanted to see a psychedelic light show. The response was immediate,
Hell yes, so the road He takes his pants down

(22:51):
and peas all over the back of the TV set,
sending sparks shooting out of the picture to hilarious. Hotel
rooms are viewed as disposable. One time, the SEP tax
squad thoughtfully disconnected all the phones in everyone's rooms to
ensure that everyone got an undisturbed night's sleep. Bobby Keys

(23:12):
forgot this when he woke up the next morning unable
to get a dial tone. He smashes his phone to
bits until all that's left is the dial, and then,
to prove a point, he goes downstairs and orders one
of everything off the room service menu. Soon after check
in one day, or possibly that same day, tour production
manager Chipmunk decides that the lamp in his room is

(23:34):
a little tacky, so he unplugs it and drops it
out the window five stories down into a courtyard. The
manager comes running. He's trembling on the brink of fury.
Did you throw your lamp out the window? He demands.
Chip neither confirms or denies. I want a lamp in
this room, he says, simply immediately. Anyone else would have

(23:55):
been thrown out immediately. But Chip is in possession of
that voice, the one familiar to Woodstock attendees is the
MC for those magical three days. It's a voice so
respectable that it would cause waiters at White Glove Upper
Eastside establishments to jump. The manager doesn't know what to do.
I uh, look here, sir, we saw a lamp, Chip

(24:17):
holds up his hand. Do you expect me to stand
here and listen to your problems? There is no lamp
in this room. I require a lamp in order to
be able to do the great quantity of work that
faces me. Because you are the manager of this hotel.
I'm requiring your assistance by asking you to send me
a lamp to my room. Is that clear? It is, sir, Yes, sir.
And although it's perfectly clear that Chipmunk has thrown the

(24:39):
lamp out of the window in the first place, there's
something about him that makes it a crime not to
do what he says. He's clearly one of those people
who's above or beyond, or just playing outside the law.
No more than five minutes later, the bellhop comes trundling
upstairs with a new lamp. Chip the technical genius who
designed and built the Stone, owns elaborate stage and innovative

(25:02):
lighting rig Vius Hotels as his own personal playground. When
a dose of boredom and a few uppers hit his
brilliant brain, the result was gleeful chaos and destruction that
was far too creative to be considered offensive. Gary Stromberg
often got roped in as accomplice.

Speaker 5 (25:21):
Here's another cocaine inspired story that I only know from heresay.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
I'm not trying to absolve myself.

Speaker 5 (25:26):
I'm guilty, but I think it was Atlanta Chip in
the Hyatt House three am. Can't sleep, won't sleep, not
gone to sleep? And so the atrium that went up
floors and floors, and every floor was lined with my story.

Speaker 6 (25:44):
That was in Chicago. The Regency Hiatt House was brand new.
It was in his first year. It was a beautiful
hotel near the airport. And in the atrium it was
I don't know how to describe it, but there was
a central a trim in the hotel that went and
it went up like ten stories the hotel, but the

(26:05):
center of the the lobby was open and you could
look straight up for those ten floors. Along the exterior. Uh,
all the way around were aisles in front of all
the rooms with a potted plants on the railing. There
were potted plants all the way around, and in these
potted plants were these little feeding tubes that were automatically

(26:29):
fed water.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
It was on a timer.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
So Chip, this is Chip.

Speaker 6 (26:36):
I did it with Chip because he came and got
me and come on, we're going. Chip always spent all
of his free time trying to devise ways to create havoc.
So we went around this exterior on the top floor
of the hotel and took every little feeding tube out
from every plant and hung it over the railings so

(26:57):
that when they put turned the water onto feed the thing,
it would rain in the interior of the hotel, and
he caused it to rain, and not just a drizzle,
It rained in the lobby of the hotel, and they
went crazy. I mean, you know, can you imagine what
it's like, all of a sudden it starts raining and
the inside of a hotel, That same hotel, by the way,

(27:18):
Chip on another inspired evening, decided that he wanted to
remove everything that you could remove from the bathroom. So
he took out, literally he took out all of the plumbing,
the toilet, all of the piping that went into the toilet,
the shower. He took everything that the plumber could possibly
remove from the thing, and he had it piled up in.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
His room just for it. Was like as a child
working up jigsaw puzzle.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Being on the road with the rolling stones gave ordinary
people licensed to behave in a way that they normally
never would never could. Financial woes, legal concerns, or just
plain old common decency would prohibit it. Sometimes this brought
out the best in people and yielded spectacular results, but
often being swept up in the climate controlled world of

(28:08):
the elite, had a corrosive effect on the human psyche.
Chipmunk is a perfect case study. On one hand, considers
remarkable stage set up achieved to be a limitless resources
courtesy of the Stones. On the other hand, consider as
hotel destructo act achieved via unlimited hutzpah and drugs, also

(28:28):
courtesy of the Stones. Comparing the SEP tour to a
cult may sound ill advised, but consider for a moment,
the charismatic and eccentric leaders who demanded loyalty, the copious
drug use and exhaustion that wears down a person's individuality
and ability to think rationally, plus the ever increasing isolation
from friends and family outside the tour, not to mention

(28:51):
everyday reality in general. In such a situation, every STP
badge wearer becomes a fellow soldier in the cause. Allegiance
to the tour supersedes all human and ethnic ties. What
does that sound like to you?

Speaker 8 (29:06):
I mean, when you're on the road, your fears have
any special sort of states? I mean, you're I mean,
you know what it say is that you know whoever's
in the cruit it's on tour. You're not connected to
the real worlder too, and so everything has a different
kind of value and a different meaning.

Speaker 5 (29:23):
You you don't know where you are, you lose contact.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
We were so insular.

Speaker 5 (29:29):
You have to be all in, and Gary was and
so was I. You don't do anything else? But where
are we going? How are you?

Speaker 4 (29:36):
What's happening now?

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Hey? Great?

Speaker 5 (29:37):
What's going? There's no other reality. You're also constantly in
a moment. You've got nothing else. It's whatever you're doing.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
For those not in the band, the STP tour was
a day pass into another world, and the rapid adjustment
to this accelerated lifestyle was damaging to the body, mind
and soul. Tour manager Peter Rudge, widely hailed as the
resident response ball Dalton the Room, while on the road,
was one of the few to escape the tour relatively unscathed,

(30:06):
Dubbed the field Marshal among the anarchists by no less
an authority than Keith Richards, Rudge would share a telling
observation the Robert Greenfield. So many people with the stones
get emotionally involved, he said, they want to hang out
and be with them. I found out right away about
the power they have to completely eat people up. Because

(30:26):
this business is a drug. I saw what it did
to people on the tour. He may have been thinking
about Gary Stromberg.

Speaker 6 (30:33):
I tried to party with them, so I'd stay up
all night and then I'd have to work the during
the day, so I didn't get any sleep.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
I mean it cost me a lot. I mean I
had enough. I think weighed one hundred and twenty pounds
when I finished.

Speaker 6 (30:44):
I lost a lot of weight because I didn't you know,
wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping. I was a mess.

Speaker 5 (30:50):
It's been a moment of insight for me for Gary
to say that, you know, he became a rolling Stone
on the tour. See, that was Gary's first time around,
first hit. So I had been on that English tour.
I really saw that if you got too close, you
caught fire. You could not be keith, you could not

(31:10):
be med. So I never I'm alive today in talking
because I never tried to be one of the boys
or girls or boys and girls.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
I was always working.

Speaker 5 (31:20):
I was there to write a series of articles for
Rolling Stone, and so I don't know, they respected me.
They never forced me to get high. And I got
high with Gary because he was my friend on the tour,
and Gary and I and Chris O'Dell were very close
on the tour. We hung together, so I didn't have
to protect my image and what's left of my reputation.

(31:42):
I did not have an active social life on that tour.
I wasn't engaged with anybody. I didn't have any relationships
with a woman. And Gary understands this is like the
craziness was so prevalent, constant, and involving, and I was
outside reporting because there was street action going on. So
you know, I didn't come off the tour needing to

(32:04):
go into rehab at all, because I was always more
moderate than they were.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
And moderate wasn't a word that you'd used to describe me. Unfortunately,
I wish it was.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Robert Greenfield confronted Keith Richards about the health of his
friends Gary Stromberg and Chris O'Dell, both of whom had
gotten caught in the crossfire hurricane of the STP chaos. Keith,
for his part, generally seemed oblivious this way of living.
It always worked for him.

Speaker 10 (32:31):
Still, you must have seen a lot of people, I mean,
get into too us and get crazy from it. I mean,
people you know, get really involved.

Speaker 7 (32:39):
Yeah, I mean it deserves to get crazy for people
you know, I didn't see any home in Shruman completely getting.

Speaker 9 (32:46):
Crazy for a week or two after hectics. So what
I mean I think destroyed?

Speaker 10 (32:54):
Well, I mean well, I mean more somebody like Gary
Stromberg or Chris you know who. I think Chris certainly
almost good destruction.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
Showtime often came as a relief, both a desperate break
from the tedium and a form of psychic anchor. For
guitarist Mick Taylor. It kept the whole tour venture from
drifting into complete insanity.

Speaker 13 (33:15):
Well, it is a bit unnatural, really acceptable, once you
get up on stage and stop playing a conversation.

Speaker 9 (33:21):
There that you want, so that's why you're doing it.
Who leads up to that moment when you're actually.

Speaker 13 (33:26):
Going stage to play for an audience.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Some nights it was as though they brought Keith to
the hall in a cage and his hour and a
half on stage was the only freedom he was going
to get. He was dangerous and unpredictable, which made him
exciting to watch. Unlike Jagger, who had a never ending
bag of stage tricks that could get a crowd on
its feet, Keith was right there all the time, playing

(33:54):
for his life. He possessed none of Jagger's aesthetic distance.
It was never a performance for him. Keith was always
putting out all he was worth doing the best he knew.
How at that moment, one bit of Jagger's stage business
provided a target for the pre eminent prankster of the tour, Chipmunk.
He'd begun hiding little surprises in the bowl of rose

(34:16):
petals mixed scatters on the audience at the end of
the band's Street Fighting Man finale, and had started relatively
small with a chicken leg in Detroit. Then it escalated
to a great hunk of raw liver a few days later,
which Mick unknowingly hurled into the audience. A kid on
the receiving end returned the favor by hurling it back.

(34:37):
For the next gig, Chip graduated to a full pigs foot,
complete with hoof and knuckle. Mercifully, Jagger had gotten wise
to his tricks and combed through the bowl before showtime,
thus preventing some kid from going home with a welt
on his forehead and being forced to tell his mother,
I'm telling you, Mick Jagger hit me in the head
with a pig's foot. The SCV tour got crazy, but

(35:01):
thankfully not that crazy. A major rock star sits in
a car in the parking lot outside the Stones Hotel,

(35:22):
compulsively fondling his hunting knife as he works himself into
an angry lather. There's a cat in this hotel who's
going to get himself a blade, he rasped in a
voice Horse from Cocaine and mat cat is Keith Richards.
This serious rock dude is being deathly serious. In some circles,
his penchant for knife play rivaled his reputation as one

(35:45):
of the better singer songwriters of his time. But too
much time on the road, too much time in the studio,
way too much coke, and generally too much time wallowing
in rock and roll madness had led him deeper and
deeper into his own special hole. Carry's an expensive hunting
knife around with him, one that's been pulled so often
and flashed so many times that the blade comes out

(36:07):
with a snap of his wrist like a cheap switchblade.
He also owned a sword that he liked to swing
back and forth across hotel rooms in samurai fashion, getting
it nearer and nearer to someone's head, watching for their
reaction as they silently prayed that he wasn't too wasted
and wouldn't slip. Despite his fame, the rock Star become
an object of pity among those in the scene. Music

(36:30):
biz figures would greet each other with reports of his condition,
and always it was the same sad story. Not much longer, Man,
he's really gone. This time I hear he's strung out.
The rock Star was a tightrope walker, balanced on a
high wire, with the crowd below watching, breathless, waiting for
the fall. And it's a damn shame. They tutted itself righteously.

(36:53):
Though his name is being withheld to protect the guilty,
rest assured that the rock Star is a brilliant musician,
a singer of beauty harmonies, composer of cherished generation defining hits,
and the guiding light between two foundational bands, one of
which bears his name. All what the hell it's Stephen
Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young Stills has

(37:20):
just been asked to leave Keith Richard's room, an impressive
feet considering the company Keith kept. Despite the security arrangements,
Keith's room was party headquarters. Occasionally, people no one had
ever seen before could be found sitting on his bed,
trying on his boots once or twice they walked away
in them, but Stills had found the hospitality lacking. He

(37:42):
walked in with his hat over his eyes and his
nostrils flaring, expecting them to be filled. Keith took offense
to this sense of entuttement, and after some harsh words,
Stills was told to get out, which is how he
came to be sitting in a parking lot, hunched over
and mumbling and fantasying about stabbing him. Keith explaining the

(38:04):
altercation soon after to Robert Greenfield. Here he is courtesy
of our friends at the Northwestern University Archives.

Speaker 14 (38:12):
He came on as usual, He became on his usual act,
you know, but I just wasn't up to sort of
accommodating it that particular moment, and I just.

Speaker 7 (38:23):
Thought he'd been rather greedy and rude and selfishness.

Speaker 9 (38:27):
I must say, it's the first time I've had occasion
to be rude.

Speaker 7 (38:31):
To another musician for a long time, you know. And
when I was in that mood, I didn't think I
was being rude to another musician. I was just been
rude to somebody who's been rude to me, though, you know,
I just took it for granted that.

Speaker 9 (38:43):
You could walk in my room with.

Speaker 7 (38:44):
His nostrils flaring and his hat over his eyes and
wait for me to philly his nostrils up, you know.
And so I just told him that, You know.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Rock and roll is an easy business to lose your
mind in or lose your life in. If you had
a lot of luck and a little talent, there were
people who'd see to it that you got whatever you
needed to keep working. Often this was drugs. It's been
established that drugs was the rate of exchange in rock
Circles Circle nineteen seventy two. Any place you found music

(39:15):
being made, you'd find people getting high. On tour, whatever
you want is available. The stones private physician saw of
that five bottles of dematol and a bottle of five
hundred quelus are run through rapidly, So it was a
quart sized jar of cocaine. This is a little concern
because more is easily obtainable. Plus most on the tour

(39:37):
brought their own. Gary Stromberg is a rather novel storage device.

Speaker 5 (39:42):
Tell me if you remember you kept your coke in
a prophylactic in a rubber and I'm sure that you
would swing it back and you'd have like a half
ounce of coke, you know, and I'm smart.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Cocaine was the gold standard of drugs in the s community.
There were nights when they laid out five hundred dollars
worth on a mirror in one long four foot line.
Out At restaurants, people brazenly began passing butterplates filled with
white powder, the theory being that if you do it
with enough style and flare, it's possible to snort anything

(40:17):
without anyone taking undue notice. It's easy to feel invincible
on tour with the stones, especially after the cocaine. According
to Bobby Keys, even the cops were indulging them.

Speaker 9 (40:31):
There was this one instance.

Speaker 12 (40:32):
Man, we're a cat through a joint up on stage
and hit me and bound off down, rolled off down
towards through the stage.

Speaker 9 (40:44):
Racked by this cop.

Speaker 12 (40:47):
The cop looks at the joint, picks it up, looks
at me, pulls it up and goes, you know, like
you make emotion. Do you want it?

Speaker 9 (40:55):
And I go, you know. They tossed it up to me.

Speaker 12 (41:00):
And I thought, well, I'll kind o do I take it?

Speaker 9 (41:05):
Is he trying to set me up for a fight? Right.
I mean he gave it to me. But who's gonna
believe that that's beautiful?

Speaker 2 (41:13):
But I took it. That's Basicallyarene. Has he sent me up?

Speaker 9 (41:17):
What's he doing with you?

Speaker 2 (41:19):
I took. The most promising new substance being abused was
able nitrate, or amy's to the initiated. Initially used to
treat severe pain caused by heart attacks, they'd since been
embraced for happier purposes, specifically pleasure enhancement during sexual encounters
and also general amusement. Known as snappers on the East

(41:42):
coast and paupers in the West, Their characteristic burnt odor
surges up the nasal cavities like a flash fire and
a wheat silo, setting the heart pounding and the brain rushing.
Amy's are so noxious, carbolic, and obviously chemical that no
one had thought to use them in any great quantity
until the stp Tour, that is, when they were embraced

(42:04):
with an evangelical fervor.

Speaker 5 (42:07):
Well talk about Steve Adeo here, that's great human beings.
You know who that ismore?

Speaker 6 (42:12):
It was the trumpet player for Stevie. So Steve ingratiated
himself with Jim Price and bobby keys, especially as air
horn players, and so he hung out with the guys
on the stones. So we were in a limo going
from the airport to in some city I don't even remember,
but Steve loved amal nitrates and what he would do

(42:35):
was he would pop it and drop it into a
cigarette packet and then you could just sniff it in
the cigarette package without the the fumes escaping. And so
we were sitting in the back of the limo and
Amo nitrates, as you know, it's a very powerful, uh hallucinogen.
And so he popped this amy in the back of
the seat and passed it among those three or four

(42:57):
of us in there, and then he leaned over the
front of the over the front seat and he said
to the driver, smell this. I think there's something wrong
with my cigarettes. And the driver sniffed the able nitrate.
And we're in like downtown New York and he's sniffing
an amal nitrate and now it hits him and he's going.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
Whoa, whoa.

Speaker 6 (43:18):
He's screaming whoa, and he's swerving back and forth because
he's lost control of himself. In there in the backseat,
laughing their asses off. We could have easily got killed.
But Dale thought this was so funny and he would
do that to That was his thing was he would
pop an amy in a cigarette thing and then ask
you to smell it, and then just watch how you
reacted to it.

Speaker 4 (43:38):
This is worth discussing.

Speaker 6 (43:40):
It's called a felony, by the way, if you're getting
arrested for that.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Even Keith Richers was taken aback by the prevalence of
Amy's and the relish with which they were consumed.

Speaker 7 (43:52):
I didn't really there's a sudden rebath the interest in nightrate.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
The sun would leave.

Speaker 9 (44:00):
There were so many of those. These people didn't know
what to do, you know. I mean dropping him has
always been, you know, and it's a matter of dough
everybody feeling you've got to use it, cracking and bucks
and bucks.

Speaker 5 (44:13):
I mean they were doing Amy's on stage, there were songs,
breaking them on stage, handing them to people on the
side of this must have been through the doctor.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
How they got them, Yeah, because no one I had.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
Never heard of it, you know, I was in the culture.
Nobody was doing amal nitrate at that point.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
By the way.

Speaker 6 (44:30):
That's how we got away with this stuff too, because
the doctor would hold the drugs and doctors were not
searched at them, so they wouldn't search the doctors.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
He has a little like bag medicine bag.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Though we didn't have a medical degree, Keith Richards could
draw on knowledge that you can't get from books. He
quickly became the STP. Creuse unofficial pharmacist. It's a great
delight pawing through the doctor's little black bag.

Speaker 5 (44:55):
He knew the PDR pharmaceutical director. He knew Keith knew everything,
and he was looking for what the special was that night.
You know, what do I feel like having? You know,
so casually taking all the time in the world. You're
very interested taking out, you know, syringes and packets and ampuols.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Keith was an indulgent pharmacist. It's not unusual for some
member of the STP homourage, or even just some Stone
local got the invite to mosey up to Keith at
one of his hotel room parties. Listen, man, I'm dying.
I gotta sign his congestion. You got any APC APC.
What's that advil? Man? My head's killing me. It's throbbing

(45:38):
like hell. Keith plunges into the doctor's bag and produces
a quaylude. Take one of these and come see me tomorrow.
He says. This may sound irresponsible, but it beats the alternative.
Some revelers who commenteered the doctor's bag were less likely
to select pills for their function, and more because the
color matched their shirt or brought out their eyes. For

(46:00):
Keith Richards, every drug was medicinal. Each provided the crucial
function of relieving the boredom.

Speaker 5 (46:08):
The drug use is not an accident. It's a way
to keep moving and the way to keep functioning, and
a way to cope with the boredom. If that makes
any sense. It makes it harder. I mean what Keith
said to me once in that interview. You know, the
first time you do something, it's always good. It works,
and then it stops working. Didn't keep him from doing
it over and over. But what used to be vices

(46:33):
our habits, it becomes a habit, you.

Speaker 4 (46:35):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 5 (46:36):
It's just maintenance. They're just doing it on a level
that keeps them in the groove and not thinking about
anything else.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
That's what it is.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
This was the way generations of musicians had coped with
the road getting as high as possible and just going
for it. Whatever the consequences, you accept them. Just focus
on the music. As long as that's where your energy is,
you're safe. This has been the unspoken credo of so
many road warriors since the very recent birth of rock
and roll. It marked its adherence as junkie outlaws scum

(47:12):
in the eyes of many. Of all the Stones, Keith
had best accepted that particular role. No matter how often
the Stones were hosted by Hugh Hefner or courted by
Truman Capoti, the fundamental outlaw in his personality remained. But
even he felt the need to take certain precautions when
using no sense, making life more difficult. After all, this

(47:36):
innate sense of self preservation was shared by all the Stones,
no matter how space they got.

Speaker 5 (47:43):
In order to know what they were doing, you had
to be in the room using with them. And that's
the way it always was. They had lived on the
road for so long and this is part of their
persona that even in the public eye, knew how to
protect themselves and keep thinking secret on the tour, which

(48:04):
is such a small, insidious village. Yeah, they were geniuses.
To Mick and Keith both they had been on the
road already so long at that point that they knew
how to live among other people without those people ever
going past a certain point. Jagger not he didn't share
as his living quarters with anybody but the woman he
was with. Keith always had a circus, but he still

(48:28):
had a place where you didn't go unless you were
in the center ring with him.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
Yeah, that's who he was.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
A side effect of this built in insulation is that
it inadvertently split the band into separate social groups loosely
defined as those who used and those who didn't, or
more approperly, those who used and those who used. Less.
Separate power centers and clicks began to emerge. There's the

(48:55):
tour management squad, the documentary film crew, the musicians and
to her second tier Stones, and of course the inner
circle ruled by dual regions Mick and Keith. Slowly Developing
since their earliest days of the tour, these groups have
codified into their own distinct duchies and diplomatic relations weren't
always maintained. As the STP caravan moves through the dog

(49:19):
days of July with nothing very exciting going on, the
tension within the traveling company begins to build. An internal
storm is brewing. Last time The Stones toured America in
nineteen sixty nine, all the chaos came from outside the organization,
creating an US versus them dynamic that ultimately brought everyone together.

(49:39):
Now everything was going smoothly, too smoothly. It's like a
peaceful mountain lake that's so calm that it gets on
your nerves, so placid that it makes you want to
pick up the nearest, biggest rock and fling it as
hard as you can, just to make some waves. The
rock was finally thrown during the tour's stop in Indiana Apolis,

(50:00):
when STP security chief big Leroy Leonard beat up a
friend of Keith Richards, thus setting off the tour equivalent
of an international incident. The unfortunate man's name was Brad,
and you could argue that he had it coming. Even
the most debauched members of the tour. Coderi had recognized
that this pale and wasted figure, compulsively clad in a
black cape, was an influence that the tour didn't need.

(50:24):
They wanted him gone. He was a user, a hustler,
an unlikable sponge with no function. The request for his
removal would get passed up to Keith, who would veto
it immediately. I'm paying for him. He's my friend and
I need him, so he stand, so Brad stay. But
then Brad pushed his luck a little too far. The

(50:47):
stp crew gradually noticed a small group of dealers shadowing
them at each tour stop. They always registered in the
same hotel as the Stones and brazenly walked around as
though they were part of the entourage. It's not impossible
and know of the band's going next, but it is
difficult to catch the correct hotel in every city. Clearly,
someone on the inside is tipping them off with the

(51:08):
itinerary being fed to them. They're getting to the cities
early and dealing in the streets outside the venue. By
staying as close to the Stones as possible, they get
to share in whatever police protection had been laid out,
and they've already made thousands of dollars by selling incense
to kids by telling them it's opium. They openly brag
about the scam to Keith Richards, who briefly graces them

(51:30):
with his presence before recognizing them for what they were,
petty crooks who lack even the dignity of outlaws. If
you're going to deal deal, if you're going to rip
people off, you're on your own.

Speaker 10 (51:47):
You met those cats, well, tell me about that.

Speaker 9 (51:50):
I mean they're selling incense.

Speaker 7 (51:52):
Innocense, incenseanspium incense, and they were selling it.

Speaker 9 (51:58):
As opium and it brove you prices and they bragged
about it. Yeah foriguring that, you would say, prove right, fantastic,
you know what a beautiful ripoff?

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Who how many of them were a three year.

Speaker 7 (52:09):
There were four or five out in the road, and
there must have been somebody else in New Yorker somewhere
that was directing the whole thing, you know, supploying them
because they you know, close to us as possible sleep
to be a mistaken tron party. Yeah, so that they
could walk in an outloud and uh.

Speaker 10 (52:30):
So somebody was taking them where you were going and
so sure.

Speaker 7 (52:32):
If somebody had in my itinery and uh a complete mycenery.

Speaker 10 (52:36):
You know, how would you come to meet them?

Speaker 9 (52:38):
Did you?

Speaker 10 (52:38):
Did somebody take you to meet up?

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Or you knew about some inteligen.

Speaker 7 (52:42):
We noticed them around and like city is a long
way from where we'd seen them before, you know, I
mean they had to be there for some reason, and
then some roundabout where we found out they were dealing,
but we didn't. I mean, you thought they were dealing straight,
the straight dealers, you know.

Speaker 9 (53:00):
It so to see if.

Speaker 7 (53:01):
We can make a dealer out for some kind you know.
She says, they were taking our protection to do it,
you know, And then we found out what they were
really obviou we told them to go, you know, and
not to come back.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
It occurs to Brad that these young dealers are no
longer under anyone's protection. They're defenseless and stp land. Either
in a genuine effort to persuade them to move on
or merely an effort to line his own pockets, Brad
gets some of the larger men in the SDP crew together,
then he heads down to the dealer's room and starts
demanding money. It's an old fashioned New York City shakedown.

(53:40):
Word of it quickly spreads throughout the tour of Grapevine.
The story isn't flattering. Some guy in the caravan shaking
down dealers with a Stone's security as muscle. It's a
bad look. If these kids go to the authorities. Everyone's
in trouble, and for no reason. Since the Stones personally
have nothing to do with this. The tour has been compromised.

(54:02):
The Stones are now vulnerable, and it's Brad's fault. He's
gonna have to go now. The question is how to
do it. Throw a sheet over Brad's head comes one suggestion.
Tie him up and leave him in his room with
a do not disturb sign on the door. He'll die
in the room, he'll suffocate. Well, we'll call from Detroit

(54:24):
and tell him to let him go. That's no good,
but something must be done and fast. Keith will be
a problem. No one must to face him when he
finds out they've thrown a friend to his off the tour.
Maybe the dirty business can be done while he's on stage,
but it has to be done. It's imperative. Brad is
summoned to visit the room of security Chief Big Leroy Leonard.

(54:47):
Brad's now a security threat, and Big Leroy deals with
him accordingly. He rolls him onto the bed and presses
a pistol to his forehead. If you scream, I'll blow
your brains out, he growls. Then Leroy begins beating him,
pounding heavy punches into the bones of his torso so
the Black and blue marks begin welling up immediately. Each

(55:09):
blow lands with a sickening, wet squash of fist against tissue.
All the punches to the chest and ribs so that
it hurts to walk and breathe, but nothing shows headlonging
the one side, spittle dripping slowly out of one corner
of his mouth. Brad gags for breath and begs no more,

(55:30):
no more, Please you leave this tour. Comes the reply,
you leave it now, you hear me.

Speaker 15 (55:36):
You've been hanging on too long, and when you leave
you don't know my name, but you leave now, Brad does.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
It doesn't take long for Keith to discover that his
friend is missing. Predictably, he hits the roof. He eventually
tracks Brad down to an airport and urges him back.
Then he learns at his brutal beating. This sends Keith
into a full scale rage. He's sick of the STP

(56:08):
crew buying things, doing things, saying things, all supposedly in
his name.

Speaker 9 (56:13):
It's a weird feeling, you know. I mean. The classic
one is what Leroy did.

Speaker 10 (56:18):
To Brad, you know, perfect care of him, perfectly.

Speaker 9 (56:21):
Without asking me whether I needed taken care of you. Know,
and it's kind of.

Speaker 8 (56:27):
Hang out to be treated sort of like I mean,
bench Charles or something, you know what I mean, That
kind of.

Speaker 9 (56:33):
Assad is if they know better what's for me than
I do.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
You know, though Brad wasn't exactly popular in the STP
ranks and his shakedown of those poor, stupid drug scammeras
was reprehensible. No one wanted him to meet this kind
of faith and many in the organization were horrified. Brad
won't squeal on who rolled them, a rare display of character.

(56:57):
Many assume it was big Leroy Leonard, but he won't
cop to it either. All Keith wants is to know
who did it and why, But all he gets are
empty stairs and people saying they don't have time to
talk to him. He gets madder by the minute. Brad
may have made some poor choices, sure, but this was
pure savagery right.

Speaker 7 (57:17):
Well, absolutely misjudged the situation and he paid for it,
you know, he misjudged LeRoy's attitude to what.

Speaker 9 (57:27):
He was doing and he is and he paid for
it in a hard way, you know.

Speaker 7 (57:32):
I mean, Leo did a real professional job on it,
and he couldn't see a mark unless the guy took
his shirt up.

Speaker 9 (57:39):
I mean, it was just black and blue.

Speaker 7 (57:43):
I went crazy because nobody would fucking admit to doing
it and saying it, even though there were a couple
of people that knew about it, you know. I mean,
if I have a friend of mine gets beaten up,
you know, next door to me, and the cat that
did it, I won't even say why he did it,
although even that he did it, you know, it's very frustrating,
you know, especially maybe my own temporism, particularly loan that

(58:07):
far into it for you know, I mean, I just
wanted to know who'd done it and why they done it.
And when I just came up across this sort of
blank look, you know, I've flipped out, you know, total
just fucking childish, you know, I mean, if he did it,
I wanted to know the reason for why I've done it,
instead of giving me some bullshit after the show that
he thought it might affect my performance too.

Speaker 9 (58:30):
God Dumn.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Yeah, the rest of the band don't know what to think.
They know the way that Keith lives and the people
who surround them at all times. With this in mind,
there's no way of knowing what really happened. Many approached
Leroy for an explanation, but he's playing it the only
way that someone who's come up from the streets can.
He stares straight ahead, not speaking, totally denying all charges

(58:54):
with his face and body as well as with his eyes.
For the first time, the STP party has to police itself.
A meeting is held to determine the precise nature of
the crime. The punishment was obvious tour banishment. The STP
management are all in attendance, as well as Mick, Keith,
Brad and Big Leroy Leonard. It is in essence a

(59:17):
hearing with Mick Jagger as both the grand inquisitor and
the presiding judge.

Speaker 9 (59:22):
Oh yeah, like a Colt case. It was. It was
a trial.

Speaker 13 (59:25):
It was like a trial and it got the truth
out because we said we're not leaving the room to
we know the truth, and if we don't know the truth,
then everybody that was concerned in Italy, Rose Brad, anybody
else was involved in whoever else would be fined irrespective.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Like a courtroom. Robert Frank's documentary crew is barred from filming,
but Frank attends anyway. I see has a vested interest
in the case. Brad's sole legitimate function on the tour
was to occasionally lend a hand on the documentary choot.
This technically placed him in the documentary clique, of which
Frank was the figurehead. The filmmaker was horrified that one

(01:00:04):
of his own was so mistreated.

Speaker 9 (01:00:06):
Jagger had to take command.

Speaker 11 (01:00:08):
I mean, now it was up to the to the
big man to make a decision.

Speaker 9 (01:00:12):
He handled it terrific. I mean, he was very good.

Speaker 13 (01:00:15):
But the guy that was really held us all in
his hand was Leroy sitting there, you know.

Speaker 9 (01:00:19):
Because he knew the truth, and he wouldn't wouldn't. Well,
he was just more powerful. He was He was more
powerful than Jagger.

Speaker 11 (01:00:25):
He was more powerful than anybody because everybody was scared
of him, scared physically and just there with this guy,
and he could do whatever he wanted to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
It's incredible that he.

Speaker 9 (01:00:40):
Wouldn't admit what he did. I mean through the whole plane, well,
the whole thing. The then sentence only on begging Leroy
just to.

Speaker 11 (01:00:47):
Say I did it. Yeah, So you've been a bad boy.
You know, you understand you've been a bad boy. Please,
and and then Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Then finally Leroy speaks. My job is to keep you
out of trouble. So I'll say it and make you happy.
I whipped the boy. I'm not proud of it, but
it had to be done. This man was shaking people
down in your name. You put it in my hands,
and I did what needed to be done there. It
was a confession without remorse or guilt. It stops everyone cold.

(01:01:24):
It's so outfront that people start to think, well, he
was only doing his job. And since no one much
liked Brad anyway, it's easy to forget that he'd been
beaten black and blue. Why punish a man for acting
on an impulse that was in a lot of people's heads.
Let Leroy stay. Even Keith, supposedly Brad's friend, had to
agree with the court's findings.

Speaker 7 (01:01:49):
I mean, nobody else really like brand and wanted him around,
and so everybody was sort of a Leroi's side, And
I didn't agree with what Leroy had actually done. Agree
that it's in any ordinary situation, it isn't unjust, But
it wasn't an ordinary situation. Well, everybody has to take
into account. Was that if we'd had just told Leroy

(01:02:11):
to go home becaz of us being suddenly had a
security countdown to just you know, uh in one minute.
If Leroy had gotten pissed off and mean about it,
he with his connections, you know.

Speaker 9 (01:02:30):
He could have maybe have made it difficult for us
in other places.

Speaker 10 (01:02:34):
You thought about that though.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Jagger orders Brad and Leroy to shake hands and the
meetings adjourned. But there are some dissenting notes. Robert Frank
and the rest of the film crew. Basically, the defense
in this courtroom drama are furious. They want Leroy thrown
off the tour in the wake of his confession. Was
Keith really going to allow his friend to get beaten
up without punishment? But then, while talking to Robert Greene

(01:03:00):
a short time later, Frank came to a crucial realization.
The Stones didn't have friends on the road. They had employees.
Your worth and the cults of STP was determined by
how well you did your job, not the kind of
person you were.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
Dealer, he's a dope dealer, but he's Key's friend because
he's a dope dealer.

Speaker 9 (01:03:22):
Well, well it comes down to that they have no friends.

Speaker 11 (01:03:27):
I mean they were in that sense, there were no
friends on the tour. Everybody had his position, and I
think he failed in his position as a dope dealer.

Speaker 9 (01:03:35):
He didn't do too well. He didn't do it right.

Speaker 11 (01:03:38):
He made a mistake, so he was justified getting the
ship beaten out of it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
For Mick, it was about whatever was best for the tour.
Firing they had a security midway through their cross country
track just wasn't going to happen, especially when they were
due to play New York, the northeast hub of the
Hell's Angels.

Speaker 10 (01:03:57):
So something were outraised. I mean, I did Robert Frank
particular or unjust think it happened.

Speaker 9 (01:04:02):
The decision that was made was made to keep.

Speaker 8 (01:04:05):
Them to a going you know, true, Well, it was
absolutely was, and I wasn't going to sacrifice anyone for that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
I'm sorry. I mean, I wanted to keep the tour going.

Speaker 12 (01:04:15):
I didn't want to you know, I mean, so it
wasn't interesting the justice of it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
This was justice stp style. It can be boiled down
to a single law, The show must go on. Road
rules are cruel. At the end of the day. The
only people the Stones were really loyal to for themselves.
As far as Bill Wyman was concerned, outsiders were nothing
but trouble.

Speaker 13 (01:04:44):
All the problems that ever arise with this band, always
arise from other people that shouldn't really be there. Always
We've always had those. We never had problems in the band.
We never thought amost ourselves. We I never have even
an argument, you know, And that's why we stay together.
So long's we're still together.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
The Stone's Touring Party is written and hosted by Jordan Runtalk,
a co executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk,
Edited and sound designed by Noel Brown and Michael Older June.
Original music composed and performed by Michael Older June and
Noel Brown, with additional instruments performed by Chris Suarez, Nick
Johns Cooper, and Josh Than. Vintage Rolling Stones audio courtesy

(01:05:49):
of the Robert Greenfield Archive at the Charles Deering McCormick
Library of Special Collections in Northwestern University Libraries.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
The Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeart Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your favorite shows.