TWELVE: The End of the Road in New York City

After a wild two-month tear through North America, the Stones play the last gig of the STP tour at NYC's Madison Square Garden. Their entourage work overtime to ensure that it's the craziest rock show to ever hit the Big Apple. After their final bows, the band is exhausted. What's more, they're disheartened by the overly glitzy showbiz crowd that turns up at their tour wrap party, which doubles as Jagger's 29th birthday. As they come to grips with aging, they also grapple with their gradual drift towards the mainstream. The STP trek birthed the modern rock tour, but it also hastened the Stones' transformation from a rock band to a business venture. The bonds that kept the motley 40-person crew together evaporate and everyone goes their separate ways. Reintegration into everyday life is lonely and confusing, and everyone copes in different ways as they struggle to make sense of the life-altering experience they'd just shared — one that could never be duplicated. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio Welcome to
New York City. It's July twenty sixth, in nineteen seventy two.
This is it the last show the Rolling Stones North
American Tour. Mick Jaggers also turning twenty nine today, and God,

(00:23):
in his infinite wisdom has arranged an eclipse of the
moon as a light show. As promoter Bill Graham would say,
new York is New York is New York Till you
do it there, it hasn't happened. The city's been waiting
for months in Madison Square gardens, now under a state
of siege. They've come from all over, from Nutley to Paramus,

(00:46):
from white Lake to Swan Lake, from white Stone to Rockaway,
over the Thronc's Neck Bridge, and through the Midtown Tunnel
by subway and bus. The crowds walking, pushing and shoving
in the streets. The blocks between thirty first and thirty
fourth Street and between seventh and eighth Avenue have been
transformed into a bustling marketplace with buyers and sellers hackling

(01:08):
ticket ticket, Who wants a ticket? Seventy five? Hey man,
it was fifty a minute ago. Check around seventy five.
I'll make the price. You gotta pay what it costs.
A blue Pontiac with jersey plates rounds the corner, inching
his way through the crowd of t shirt vendors and
souvenir peddlers. One hundred and fifty for a pair of tickets,

(01:29):
The driver calls, but next time he comes around the block,
it's two hundred dollars for a pair of tickets. Two hundred,
two hundred dollars. Inside stage, manager Chipmunk is beside himself
with excitement. This is the night he's been waiting for

(01:52):
since the tour began two months earlier. The airant genius
behind the innovative stage and lighting rig plus some of
the most innovative telroom demolitions in rock history. He can't
wait to put his twisted mind to the ultimate test.
Chip is supervised the Monterey Pop Festival, George Harrison's concert
for Bangladesh, and Woodstock. They're all nothing compared to this.

(02:15):
This is the night that it will all peak. On
stage at Madison Square Garden, total chaos must reign. His
plan has gone through several incarnations. First he wanted to
rent an elephant. Then he looked into releasing chickens from
the rafters high above the crowd, confetti, rose petals. All
of this pales to the scheme he's about to unleash

(02:37):
on the Rolling Stones and their unsuspecting public. Shockingly, the
tour's resident hell raiser, Keith Richards, has nothing to do
with this. He's been keeping to himself. He hides out
in his room, brought down and depressed. The energy he's
been husbiting to get himself through the tour is gone.

(02:59):
He's making it to the show, and then he crashes
for twelve or fourteen hours, spending most of his time asleep.
New York was so awful, one tour insider says, after
all that time, all of a sudden, you were by yourself.
You were nothing. That description comes courtesy of Robert Greenfield,

(03:25):
the legendary rock journalist chronicled the band's US trek and
his landmark book stp A Journey through America with the
Rolling Stones. He was there in southern France when the
band recorded Exile on Main Street, the album the tour
sought to promote. He was there during rehearsals in Hollywood,
and he was there for opening night in Vancouver when

(03:47):
hordes of angry kids tried to invade the venue, and
he was also there during the final night in New
York City. As the bonds that kept the Motley Crew
together began to evaporate, everyone went their separate ways after that,
forced to make sense of the life changing experience they
just shared all on their own. In addition to Greenfield

(04:08):
and has never before heard tape archive of the Stones
in their seventies exile, Eric Glory will also be joined
by Gary Stromberg, a rock pr soprimo who's represented a
whole jukebox of the twentieth century's greatest artists. My name
is Jordan Runtugg and this is the Stones Touring Party.

(04:34):
The last week in July is the most desperate time
of the year in New York City. As Robert Greenfield
indebibly put it in stp It's a low point when
the summer seems to stretch away like a great expanse
of burning desert waste. The cool days of September are
light years away, and a sort of mad dog spirit
is everywhere. The great buildings drip sweat from blinding air conditioners,

(04:59):
the asphalt, and most people seek a hole to die.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
In I want to say now for the record that
New York, in the heat of the summer in nineteen
seventy two was the Ninth Circle of Hell. I grew
up in New York, I lived in Manhattan. I'm from Brooklyn.
I have never seen anything like this, just one short

(05:23):
iconic scene. We stayed in the worst hotel in the
history of show business, the Statler Hilton. The room was
a closet. Basically, you wanted to hang yourself up from
the I mean, that's how small the rooms were. It
was there you go. That was so awful. But on
my way to the Garden for the first show, I

(05:43):
saw two cabbys, one behind another. Two taxi drivers come
to a stop at the red light. As though synchronized,
both driver doors flew open. The cabbys jumped out, They
punched one another repeatedly. The light changed, and then they
drove away. I've never seen anything like this.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
The insanity is intensified by the craze clamor for tickets.
New York's been waiting for months and supply and demand
that's done its thing. Whatever the price was, now New
York would pay it. A lucky few could try their
luck with a phone call. The New York imperative governs
everything like incessant children. Their strident voices demand attention right now.

(06:28):
I need tickets. I gotta have press passes. Do you
understand this is essential, a matter of highest priority. Robbie
Robertson of the band needs four tickets and Columbia and
Paramount called earlier. Today the phones are ringing all the time,
and demand is escalated into screaming hysterics. Listen, you bastard,
You know who I am. Those without friends in high

(06:50):
places try their best on the ground, and those who
strike out there are forced to get creative. Some showed
up at the stage door with fake st badges. Others
posed as camera crews. These folks got the boot immediately rookies.
But one group got a little more daring.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
God loved New York. You couldn't touch a ticket. It
was sold out. There were guys who presented themselves in
full gear as New York City firefighters who had to
come backstage in order to inspect. You know, the fire
extinguishers rush through them out. They weren't real fire guys.

(07:32):
If they were wearing those coats, it was blazing summer.
They had the gear they must cost it. Where did
you get the unis trying to talk their way back?
I mean it's New York Man.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Garden security was equally over the top, some would say
alarmingly so. Members of the STP managerial squad tangle with
local rent a cops who get a little too harsh
with over zealous fans, one blackjacks Ki opening his head
by a spray of blood, leading to an all out battle.
Royale backstage guards were so tight they forced Stevie Wonder

(08:10):
the Stones opening Act to use the front entrance on
thirty fourth Street rather than be driven directly into the
backstage through a passageway, despite the fact that he's you
know blind. Even the Stones themselves weren't immune. While being
shuttled to the venue in a camper van before one
of their four gigs, a New York City policeman orders

(08:31):
the vehicle to a halt. For whatever reason. The very
tired driver refuses. The cop responds by pulling his gun,
pointing it at both the driver and Mick Jagger, who's
standing directly behind him. The aggressive gate crashing was just
one reason to stay of vigilant. Another was the fact

(08:52):
that they were back in Hell's Angels territory. The Motorcycle
Gang had promised revenge after taking the fall for the
deadly the Outcome at the Stones nineteen sixty nine concert
at the Altamont Speedway. If they were going to make
their move, this was their last chance.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
They were so nervous about New York because the Hell's
Angels clubhouse was on Second Street down by the film Wore,
and they were pretty vibrant New York. They had a
real chapter there, and they were serious. They certainly didn't
get into the garden wearing their collars.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Tour manager Peter Rudge is vowed to keep the band
and their crews safe on this two month tour. So far,
he's been true to his word, but bomb and assassination
threats have amplified in recent days, so he's forced to
take additional precautions, like the Royal family flying on separate
planes in case of catastrophe. The band members are all

(09:44):
put in different hotels. The code names they've been using
thus far on the trip are changed to Wrongfoot the Wrongdoers.
Keith Richards becomes Count Zigginpuss Bill Wyman and his girlfriend
Astrid become Lord and Lady getting Mick Jagger and his
wife Bianka are mister and Missus Shelley. The Shelleys are

(10:05):
booked into the suite where Richard Nixon usually stays when
he comes to New York. The room next door is
being used to screen all arriving packages and birthday gifts
from Mick. As sax player Bobby Keys told Robert Greenfield
at the time, it was all starting to get a
little heavy. Here they are courtesy of our friends at
the Northwestern University Archives.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
And then we then we got New York to go,
where it's it's really turning into sort of Cloak and
Dagger rock and roll, you know, because everybody's changing their names.
No one's staying in the Saint the groups. Well, I
mean it was Peter's Security Club security thing, because I mean,

(10:47):
like we've made it through practically the whole tour was
nothing serious going down yet, and we still have New
York to go, which if anything's going to get it crazy, man,
it can get crazy there. We've got four concerts to
do in New York, which gives it's not like just
their own concerts, all the publicities surrounding the tour building

(11:10):
up to the building up to the New York thing, man,
you don't know what's going.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Bassist Bill Wyman was told not to order any room
service for fears that the food might be poisoned. Needless
to say, he was distressed by this request.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
I did pay attention to that. Everybody's saying any the food,
you know, And I said to the promoter, have you
tasted the food? So I said, yes, I've tasted everything.
It's all right. But this kind of a half joke
and a kind of a wary thing as well.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Even the usually placid Nick Taylor was getting annoyed with it.

Speaker 5 (11:45):
All security arrangers in New York were so rigorous, you know,
so well organized that whoever was all I ever.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Saw was the inside of my hotel room. And he
was said on the concert hall, I mean.

Speaker 5 (11:59):
I told I couldn't even go out shopping, and that
I couldn't I couldn't order food from room service because
somebody might slippings of the kitchen.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
And put the poison in my curry.

Speaker 5 (12:12):
You know, really this is absolutely serious, you know, I
mean when you're told things like that, but what can
you do?

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Personally?

Speaker 5 (12:18):
I find all those security of it it's very restricting,
and I think they make you much more paranoid than
what you really.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Have reason to be. Someone else are insulted, you know,
because they're making you a chuse.

Speaker 5 (12:28):
They are, and of course they are, but I mean
I ignored them anyway.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Every other time I've been to New York.

Speaker 5 (12:34):
I've just gone out the same as anybody else would've
gone about my business.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
That's exactly what I did for the Stones themselves. The
revelry was kept to a minimum. The Inner Circle has
been scattered across Manhattan, and although some people check out
of their hotels and into Keith's to keep the party going,
it's not the same as being loose and looking for
craziness on the road. Keith himself seems lost. There are

(13:01):
dark shadows beneath his eyes. His skin is the color
of cheesecloth and strong, tight against the mask of his face.
Aside from the show, he's mostly alone. At long last,
his superhuman energy reserves have run dry.

Speaker 6 (13:17):
I didn't feel it until I actually got into New York,
where you New York had a really good time, you know,
New York. Last few gigs and an actual effect. Everybody
just sort of puddled.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
In their rooms.

Speaker 6 (13:29):
And when he did the gig and except a brief appearance.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
It's a bizarre part of Yeah.

Speaker 6 (13:35):
I mean, everybody just ran away from and couldn't take it,
and we just hold out. You know, that's when the
sort of spirit low to just drifted away.

Speaker 4 (13:47):
In New York, you.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Keith manages to drag himself to a press reception held
at the Four Seasons Hotel after one of the gigs.
He's there in body only, and even then only barely.
New York is media turf, and an invitation is a
hot commodity. Anything that gets you within shouting distance of
the stones is worth money. The chosen Ones retired to

(14:12):
the quiet corners of the room doing blow off the
tips of buck knives while they wait for the guests
of honor to arrive. Where are they? It's Mick coming.
Conversations are had, but no one maintains eye contact. Everyone
watches the door to ensure the stones won't slip in unnoticed.
They titter like teenagers. Where does Mick get his rings?

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Man?

Speaker 1 (14:36):
What about those scarves? How should I say hello to him?
Do you think you'll remember me from the last one
of these? Do I offer a stream of unbroken praise?
Or do I share a well chosen criticism of his
latest song, You know the show him. I'm a fan,
but not some sickophan who's too afraid to give it
to him straight. The rock scribes needn't have worried, because

(14:57):
Mick's entrance was difficult to miss. A low, grumbling roar
starts to swell, and then a circle of people fall
into the room backwards, all of them facing Mick Jagger
and his wife Bianca. Flashbulbs strove the room. It's the
kind of hysteria usually associated with silver screen era movie
stars like Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. After a great

(15:20):
deal of persuasion, the STP tactical squad have convinced Mick
to put in an appearance and will follow that edict
to the letter. Upon entering the room, he just keeps walking,
moving steadily, until he's out a side door and riding
back downstairs in an elevator before anyone knows what's happened.
A real pro move. Keith's entrance is more understated. He

(15:44):
collapses in a chair next to Greenfield, one of the
only people he knows. For him, this is all wearing
on him, but then again, that's the game.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
I mean that is the music business. You know, that
is where it is at.

Speaker 7 (16:04):
And that's when you really are the product the merchantary
and that's when you realize it. But you know, which
was That's one of the reasons.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
That makes New.

Speaker 7 (16:13):
York a very depressing town for the Stones to be
in to be working.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
It was increasingly rare that the Stones would trouble themselves
to visit journalists. More often than not, the Mountain would
come to them. The most obvious example of this is
Dick Cavit, the late night hosts, had offered to dedicate
his entire ninety minute showed it was sit Down with Mick.
In an era of three television networks, this was a

(16:43):
major coup. Heck, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had made
a similar appearance the previous year, but, staying true to
his beloved showbiz maxim always leaveing one and more Mick
Well technically, Gary Stromberg refused. He was far too busy
for that kind of thing, and besides, it was unthinkable
for a star of his magnitude to wander so far

(17:06):
outside his own frame of reference. Mick via Gary invited
Dick to company the Band on the road all about
Truman Capoti and Co. But Dick is also a star.
It doesn't have time to go trapesing across the nation
with a rock and roll band, regardless of how famous.
It became, like negotiating a state visit. Finally, he was

(17:27):
decided that the New York based talk show host would
come downtown and drop by the Stones dressing room at
Madison Square Garden. The conversation got weird. This was largely
due to the drugs they flaunted fairly openly. Bill Wyman
smoked a joint on air, transparently disguised as a cigarette,

(17:48):
and when Cavot commented on a plate of pills going around,
Mick joked that they were vitamins and salt tablets. He
wasn't fooling anyone.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Dick Caviot was a late night talk show host, very liberal,
very progressive. You know. He had Crosby, Stills and Nash
and Young on right after Woodstock with Joni. He was hip,
you know, he was a New York kid. And they
let him in backstage at the Garden to talk and
he conducted an interview with Jagger which I think you
can probably see somewhere on YouTube. It is a paradigm

(18:24):
of madness because Mick is so jacked up, and Cabot
knows how coked out Mick is. And I remembered Cavot says,
Mick was skin and bone. By the end of the tour,
he was translucent. You could look through him. You know.
He had been working and sweating, you know, that's physical

(18:46):
on stage two and a half hours a night. Those
arenas may have been air conditioned, but with eighteen thousand
people there, it didn't matter. It was hot, and he
was working and he was doing a lot of blow.
And I remember Cavot saying to him, well, you know,
and what do you weigh now? And make said seventy
eight pounds, And they both knew what they were talking about.

(19:08):
And the subtext of it if you watch it now,
it's all about drugs, you know, without them ever mentioning
that it was about drugs.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Truman Capoti, not one of the Stones' favorite people, has
returned by this point, dressed in a buff jacket and
a jungle hat. It's clearly his attempt at rock and
roll chic, but in truth he looks like a sheriff.
He's this backstage with Jackie O's sister, the Princess Lee Razowill,
and also Andy Warhol. Even Mick Jagger, the most upwardly

(19:41):
mobile of the band, who seems to openly court the
jet set, is thrown by their presence.

Speaker 7 (19:48):
All that living within New York society is like living
in a fucking spider's web.

Speaker 8 (19:54):
So it's really unbearable.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Have this incredibly distinct memory of Truman, Campodi and Andy
Warhol sitting next to one another backstage and somebody said, oh,
look it's the Elder Vampires and that's what they look like.
So I you know the reason we're doing this today

(20:21):
if you need to, you know, raison detra is you're
not going to see these people on a road anymore.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Rolling Stone stage manager Chipmunk is hell bent on making
the final show of the STP Tour the craziest on
stage moment in rock and roll history, and he will
stop at nothing to achieve this goal. Initially, he rented
an elephant for seven hundred bucks. That might sound steep,
but this isn't just any elephant. No, this elephant is

(21:05):
trained to walk up steps. Chip has it all worked
out perfectly. At the end of the band set, the
elephant will come out on stage surprise, jagger, then bow
and present him with one perfect long stemmed rose. Then
everyone will sing Happy Birthday, and the elephant will pat
nick on the head and leave beautiful makes the seven

(21:27):
sea notes see moorph it. Then the Madison Square garden
authorities get wind of it. No elephant. Elephants are for
the circus. What happens if the beast gets enraged by
the unruly crowd and runs wild and horribly mangles a
brace of teeny bombers? Did you think of that? Okay? Fine,
Chip conceits no elephant. What about dropping stuff on the

(21:49):
crowd from the ports and the ceiling. This is a
favorite Chip pastime. There is nothing he loves more than
dumping assorted goodies from the roof. Beach balls, confetti, maybe
even flour. The garden authorities don't like the seiler. No
beach balls or balloons, they say, the kids will start
throwing them at one another and we'll have a riot

(22:09):
on our hands. Maybe confetti maybe, but their lack of
enthusiasm is infectious, and Chip goes off confetti. This is when,
according to Gary Stromberg, Chip has another brain wave.

Speaker 8 (22:25):
The conclusion of the tour was at New York in
Madison Square Garden. So we're planning a big event in
celebration of Jagger's birthday, and Chip comes up with the
idea of releasing live chickens from the ceiling of Madison
Square Garden. The idea being that chickens don't fly, they flutter, Yes,

(22:45):
they flutter down, and if you release them from the thing,
it's not going to kill the chickens, but the chickens
are gonna all flutter down upon the audience. And let's
see what happens when an audience is presented. And I'd
forgot how many he ordered, but they ordered hundreds of
live chickens from New Jersey, which were sent in trucks
to the garden. Chip had this all worked out. He'd

(23:06):
hired guys to place them in the rafters. He had
a way of going to he was going to release
them on queue, and they were going to float down
on this audience and we were going to watch this
audience totally freak out. Well, he got caught doing this,
getting it in the preparation of it, and got stopped
from doing it. It was to his great disappointment, But
in my mind, this was going to be the great

(23:27):
offense of the entire tour.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Chip has tried to convince the MSG big wigs to
let him have his chicken storm by promising the dip
eaching every one of their claws into wax, thus preventing
them from clawing anyone's eyes out. The garden authorities aren't moved,
and they respond by sealing off access to the roof entirely.
Chip is outraged. For him, this is the quintessential conflict

(23:57):
between free spirits and the man to the garden. Rock
and Roll is just another set of gate receipts, but
this is supposed to be something more, much more, something wilder, freer, looser,
and the straits are getting in his way. He's despondent
New York. Supposedly, the crown jewel in the tiara is

(24:18):
turning out to be a rhinestone, a cheap, gaudy rhinestone
between the elephant and his chickens. Chip is spent nearly
thirteen hundred dollars or ten thousand dollars in today's money
on miscellaneous animals that would ultimately go unused for stp purposes.

(24:39):
People like tour manager Peter Rudge are concerned, but not
unduly so. See the tourists succeeded in its original purpose
of making the Rolling Stones a great deal of money,
enough to take a bite out of their gargantuan back
tax bill. According to Robert Greenfield, the STP tour grosses
around three million dollars, with a million going towards expenses.

(25:03):
When all the appropriate folks are paid and the tax
is levied, this leaves the Stones with a quarter million
dollar profit each, not bad for sixty days of work.
The math comes out the twenty eight thousand dollars a week.
This might not sound like much today, but it's twice
the annual salary of most middle class families back in
nineteen seventy two. But still Mix starts to grumble when

(25:27):
he gets word that led Zeppelin, those relative new kids
on the rock and roll block are getting ninety percent
of their gate receipts. The Stones only get seventy. Oh well,
next tour, but now they got to finish this one.

(25:48):
Jagger's twenty nine today, the age at which Nadjinski performed
for the last time in public. Backstage at Madison Square Garden,
there's a massive cake which doubles as an end of
tour cake. It shaped like the United states and has
little flags marking each tour stop. All of the STP
regulars are wearing purple t shirts tonight with their names

(26:11):
and jobs listed on the back. They mass outside the
dressing room for a graduation photo of unparalleled weirdness. Here
they are thirty eight people from various levels and various
places who will almost certainly never be in the same
physical space again.

Speaker 8 (26:28):
There was nothing like the finelle.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Because they were done. They're smelling the barn. They were
going home.

Speaker 8 (26:33):
Man, I'm out homestress.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Homestress and his birthday.

Speaker 8 (26:36):
It was his birthday, so it was a big celebration.
And the pie fight afterwards.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Was we didn't talk about the pie fight.

Speaker 8 (26:43):
Pie fight was great.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Ship didn't get his chicken, didn't get his chicken.

Speaker 8 (26:45):
Where he got the pie?

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Where did the pies come? That?

Speaker 8 (26:47):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Chip is not given up on operation on stage outrage.
After being denied roof access, he toyed with ways to
create chaos on the ground. An early scheme involved tossing
as many able nitrate capsules as he could find along
the front of the stage and then running them over
with a steamroller. With a little luck, he get the

(27:13):
band and the first few rows high, but this wouldn't
consume quite enough people, so he switched to something a
little more down and dirty, a pie fight. It's old fashioned, yes,
and someone even say crude, But on the other hand,
it's a classic. Chip obtains one hundred and fifty four pies,
which he leaves around the backstage area in advance of showtime.

(27:37):
When the garden authorities discover this, they freak out remove
them immediately off the stage. Chip off. Shame on you,
you naughty boy. Chip pleads his case before giving up,
angry and crestfallen. He's playing his part perfectly. The pies
that are confiscated are the ones the garden officials are
supposed to find. Chip as a whole other load and

(28:00):
then boxes behind the amps. It's on. He rounds up
his crew just before showtime to instruct them on proper
pie throwing form. Okay, you're paired off. Each pair is
assigned an artist. The first person approaches the artist and
whoop woop, got it. The face is out of bounds,
with the head, neck, and chest of permissible targets. Only

(28:21):
Chipmunk would have an elaborate procedure for throwing a pie.
In fact, He's so preoccupied with his tutorial that he
very nearly misses the opportunity to make his trademark introduction
one final time.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Ladies and Gentlemen, the lolling to start.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Right from the start, Mick is leading it. Keith shouts,
come on, let's get it. As Bobby Keys jumps up
and down on the side of the stage, the decibel
count rises six above the pain level he's according to
the New York Times report. The following day, the pure
white light bathes the band for the final time as
they finish up Street Fighting Man. Then they walk off

(29:07):
with the garden shaking like a building in flames after
a direct buzz bomb hit. An encore with Stevie Wonder
dueting on a raucous medley of uptight and satisfaction takes
everything to a whole new level. Backstage, the crew are
drinking their farewell case of Don Perion. Tour manager Peter

(29:29):
Rudge steers the garden heavies into a dressing room for
a victory drink. As soon as they're out of the way,
Chipmunk gets down the business. There have been memos within
the SDP community as late as this afternoon to suggest
that there'd be no pie throwing on stage tonight. What
would the threats on Mixed life and all but Chip
will have as fun. It starts innocently at first, he

(29:53):
wheels a tray with a birthday cake and champagne onto
the stage. Make's wife Biaka, comes forward and give Make
a birthday kiss. Then the crowd of twenty thousand begins
to sing Happy Birthday. It's all going according to plan.
Then walk Chip hits him with a pie. The boxes
come open backstage and all hell breaks loose. Jagger gets

(30:16):
one on the arm and then throws one at drummer
Charlie Watts, who ducks. Soon the stage is covered with
a quarter inch of cream. It's everywhere, oozing and sticking.
Charlie sits behind the drum kit, somehow unscathed. Then a
roadie so covered with pie that he looks like Frosty
the Snowman plants one large pie on either side of

(30:38):
Charlie's head. They hang there for a second like pastry
ear muffs, then slowly slide off, leaving great mouths of
fluffy white behind. Charlie takes it in stride, but Keith
Richards is not amused breaking the rule has never bothered him,
but something about this messy sophomorec act bothers him. He

(31:00):
said as much the Robert Greenfield back in nineteen seventy two.
Here he is courtesy of the Northwestern University Archives.

Speaker 4 (31:07):
I mean the pies. I didn't dig the idea of
the piates at all.

Speaker 7 (31:10):
I mean, I thought it was very inconsiderate, you know,
especially to people in Steve's Bend that got their instruments covered.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
In banana cream.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
You know.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
I mean, there's no joke to have to clean a
saxophone that's been covered in banana cream. You know, it
really is a tucking drag. And I don't think anybody
who was really considerate enough.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Of that, you know, you're American phone.

Speaker 4 (31:34):
Yeah, I did because of that attitude, and nobody was great,
you know, No, I tried to make it obvious.

Speaker 7 (31:41):
When I saw what was going on, I knew that
I didn't really approve of it, you know, and I
thought that the musicians were very extremely good nature to
put up with it.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
You know. The madness continues into the backstage corridors. A
pie smeared, hysterical Gary Stromberg busts in the celebrity field
dressing room. Fires went across the room, but his target
ducks and he winds up hitting Jackie O's sister, the
Princess Lee Raswill, and also Andy warhol meringue and cream

(32:11):
streaking his beard and hair. Gary's now sightless, his glasses
having been broken and lost somewhere. He's also barefoot, his
boots having become so filled with pie slot that they
were unwearable. Smelling like a bakery, He runs outside and
hails a cab back to his hotel. Then the driver
turns around and gets a good look at him. Ah, right,

(32:34):
the driver says, calmly, get the hell out. The official
STP after party at the Saint Regis Hotel wasn't the
kind of shin dig where you could show up covered
in cream pie residue, which, to be honest, was the
first sign that this wasn't the right kind of party

(32:55):
for the Rolling Stones. It was organized by Ahmat Erdigan,
the legend music kingmaker, founder of Atlantic Records, and overseer
of the Stones label. He was the man who helped
popularize some of the biggest R and B names of
all time. Ray Charles, the Coasters, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha,

(33:16):
take your pick. He also threw the Stones a rip
and party when he visited the tour in New Orleans,
hosting authentic Delta blues men for the band's immense pleasure.
But now he was back on his home turf in
New York, where he moved in a different sort of
social circle, namely high society high rollers and jet setting

(33:38):
beautiful people. These folks had little to do with the Stones.
This was the kind of do where music freaks felt
compelled to put on a tie. It was both the
most fitting and least fitting end to the first tour
of the modern rock era, an event that went a
long way towards bringing the counterculture into the mainstream.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Puts on the party to celebrate Mixed twenty ninth birthday,
starlight roof of the Saint Regis Hotel. Can I read
the guest list? I have to, because there's no other
way to reconstruct this. So here's the guest list. Right.
No one knows who Jaja Gobor is anymore, which is great.
She was an early version of Kim Kardashian with her

(34:20):
sister Ava, all right, So she had a picture taken
with Bob Dylan and she said Doling Kevin, you're hot,
You're hot. She also had an accent anyway. So here's
here's Ahmed and Mika Erdigan. Here's their guest list. Lord
Heskeith of Easton Naston Castle, Isabelle and Freddie eberstart making

(34:44):
their first New York appearance in years. Gianni Bolgari, the
famous jeweler. I believe Andrea de Portigo with nothing on
underneath her white satin pants and open to the waist
satin jacket. Oscar and Francois de la Reenta, theat fashion designer.
Great friends of the Irdigans, Garazzie La Lobo. We all

(35:04):
know her. Count Vega del Renn, Missus Walter, Maria Salas,
c z and Winston Guests, socialites Katine Millinaire, fashion Nista,
Lady Slim Keith, Nita Gerini, Maldini, Clyde and Maggie Neudehouse Newhouse, Sorry,

(35:25):
Clyde and Maggie Newhouse, and many many others. As a
gossip columnist named Susie said, quote, We're too straight to
mention Woody Allen, Carly Simon, Sylvia, Miles, Dick Cavitt, Andy Warhol,
Peter Beard, Truman, Capodi Candy Darling, one of Warhol's superstars.

(35:46):
Pat asked another of them, Huntington Hartford, of the A
and P fortune. Guys don't know what A and P is.
It was a supermarket. He had a museum named after him,
Huntington Hartford. It's out here, George Plimpton, Tennessee. Williams, Oh
my god, if I could say this now, like I
didn't know that this combination of people, which was an

(36:09):
armored special because he knew everybody on every level of society,
the high low, in the middle. It was the coronation,
and then of course a topless woman dropped out, jumped
out of the cake that they gave Mick becase it
was a fake cake, obviously, and the party went on.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
The Stones were overwhelmed by the crush of people, few
of whom they'd ever met before. For Mick Taylor, it
didn't make a lot of sense.

Speaker 5 (36:39):
There were so many interesting people at that party, and
I never got a chance to talk.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
To any or expect anybody else. Judging or work.

Speaker 5 (36:45):
You probably know more about it than I do, because
I'm not American, and that kind of thing happens in
New York quite frequently. Doesn't know I've never well USLI Society,
but no New York High.

Speaker 4 (36:58):
So I suppose we must.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
Be respect.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
I mean it was kind of sad. That's what I
want to say. I want to know you have to
have a memory of this.

Speaker 8 (37:08):
A vague memory of this.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
What you're saying now is bringing because all these people
had nothing to do with the Titter, and they would
have gone to any gig that had invited them to.
But that was the beginning of who the Stones are now.

Speaker 8 (37:21):
And the Stones were certainly unimpressed by all of this.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Oh they could have cared less, man, I mean, Chris
O'Dell was sitting with Mick and Bianca. I mean it
was still if they knew you, they knew you. If
they don't know you, man, it doesn't matter who you are.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
No, the only folks who turn the Stones on were
the evening's entertainment big band icon, Count Basie and Muddy Waters.
Muddy was enough to make them cry. After all, it
was his song Rolling Stone Blues that provided a name
for these five Englishmen being honored tonight ten long years ago.

(37:55):
Count Bassie's orchestra was a little further from the Stones'
musical sensibilities, but according to Keith Richards, frequent tor Co
conspirator Bobby Keys. He fit right in with the rock
and roll lifestyle.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
I stayed there quite a bit of ties, snorted up
at least a half a house coke with all the
Bassi's band, did you Yeah, I went. I went backstage
behind the set on base was there and the sky
that was laying all the coke ons, and I think,
pure pharmacistic, but really good. I went back and started
out with just a drummer before I know everybody in

(38:28):
the band, and Bill Bassie has the biggest nose of all.
And it was so beautiful, man, anything I felt. I mean,
sitting there listening to Count Basie playing for a party
in honor of the groups that you're playing with, it

(38:49):
makes you feel sort of funny that way, you know,
because I mean to me, there is really a legend.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
The musicians have hit it off. But overall it was
a funny crowd, a few of whom actually stopped to
listen to the likes of Muddy Waters or Basy. By
and large, they were not music people. One Society columnist
described the scene as a clockwork orange meets the Manson family.
That's a rather unflattering depiction of both sides, but even

(39:22):
Bobby Keys agreed that the vibes were definitely off that night.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
I appreciate the trouble and all that shit that all
it went to for mixed birthday party, but it would
have been so much nicer to have had a party
for the people that really worked their ass off on
that tour man to show them some appreciation instead of
catering to the in crowd finger popping, lip syncing society. Really,

(39:51):
you know, because I mean, what the hell, they were
just there just to say they were there at Nick
Jagger's birthday party. And there were a lot of people
on that tour man that worked their ass off man
day and night, and they should have been given a
little bit more consideration. Like there are people on that
tour that I didn't that I don't even know to

(40:13):
this day, their names, people I never even saw sure
that I would like to have personally met and express
my gratitude now for you know, the work they did
that helped make it a lot easier on all of
us and everyone. But instead, man, there was just you know,
Andy Warhol and Dick Cabot and all the people that

(40:35):
didn't really have a fucking thing to do with the tour.
You know, they were all okay, so they could have
that party. But I thought we should have had another party.
And I know Keith felt the same way.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Man Robert Greenfield had a chance to verify this with Keith.

Speaker 6 (40:51):
I thought it was the wrong kind of party, you know,
as it was, you know, right, it's a you know,
a typical New York society bash for a rock and
roll then, I guess for the Rolling Stones, it's got
to be expected. But I wish that another one was
just people been on the tours to say goodbye to

(41:11):
each other with dignancy instead of.

Speaker 4 (41:15):
An amazing collection of people. However, I don't think you
see about doing and Joshica Ball and.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
The same tison to speak to dying and.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
Briefly in sixty six.

Speaker 6 (41:25):
Yeah, I spoke to him quite well.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
I quite her in conversation.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Was Yeah, Bob Dylan is somehow neglected to get a
mention as a party guest so far. A New York
Times reporter asks him what he thinks of the gathering.
In a straw hat, flannel shirt and dark shades, the
poet prophet of the sixties smiles and says, it's encompassing.

(41:49):
It's the beginning of cosmic consciousness. He's more right than
even he knows. It was precisely that a coming together
of people from all levels, with no mixing or interaction
at all. A thousand separate parties are going on at
the same time. Everyone's there to see and be seen

(42:10):
and honor of their own egos. This party is not
for the Rolling Stones, nor the black musicians they love.
It's not for the people who wait hours in the
street to see them, or the crew who work tirelessly
in the shadows to make it all happen. It's a
party for people who go to parties, for whom the
world of music is nothing but an amusing, temporary, and

(42:32):
bizarre source a pleasant conversation. For the SCP crew, there's
nothing to do but get high and drink as much
as possible. One regular is so pissed off by the
whole thing that he cuts eight phones into shreds, marking
a tour record. Who are all these people, he wonders,

(42:52):
and what do they have to do with rock and roll?
Why is our assistant electricians sitting next to Jajac Gabor
As Robert Greenfield rites, This isn't a rock and roll party,
it's ten thousand dollars a plate campaign dinner.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
I was expressing some kind of dismay at the party
that ended the tour, like we have been here, we
have suffered, we have had joy. Who are all these people?
That's yeah, Gary understands what I mean, Like Coos and Nostra,
this was our thing. Who are all these strangers with

(43:29):
money who are now in our house?

Speaker 8 (43:32):
You know, let's throw a pie at him?

Speaker 1 (43:38):
At five am on a hot July morning in New
York City and in something that crowd waits in the
street outside the Saint Reaches. They're looking for a glimpse,
a glance, or a touch, maybe Mick, maybe Keith, maybe Bill,
maybe Charlie or Mick Taylor. Michael Jagger was now twenty nine.

(44:00):
The next day, the newspapers would carry accounts of his
birthday party, and people who weren't there would ask those
who were was it good, what happened? What was it like?
But what they always left out was the way it
felt desperate and futile, with people going around in circles
and getting nowhere except more confused. It was empty and directionless,

(44:24):
like a circus with no center ring. And above all,
it's very very sad, like a wake where the mask
of false gayety hides the real grief. It felt like
something had died. All that remain now was find someone
who could identify the corpse. Three days after the tour ended,

(44:58):
stand the Man More, the Stone's chief of security, was
back in San Francisco, waking up at six point thirty
in the morning in order to get to his government
job by six. On the road, this is when he'd
be going to sleep, but before long he was solidly
back in the rhythm of his quiet suburban life. When
he talked about the tour, he had to get out

(45:20):
the pictures of himself with Truman, Capodi and Lee Raziwill
in order to confirm that it had all really happened.
He handled the dstpification process better than most, so did
the tour's extraordinarily indulgent physician, known for our purposes as
Doctor l. He was soon back on his regular rounds,

(45:42):
where he refrained from speaking about what he saw and
did on the road, which is probably for the best.
He began to scheme about establishing some sort of practice
that was exclusively for rock and rollers, now there's a thought.
For some the tour didn't end. Bobby Keys flew directly

(46:04):
to London, and the next morning he was acting in
a movie featuring Ringo Starr. He began working sessions and
then flew to Detroit to go on the Joe Cocker
tour with Jim Price. On the other hand, for SDP
Tax squad member Joe Bergman, this was the end of
the line, after spending five years of her life with
the band. She walked out of the dressing room in

(46:26):
New York City in tears, only able to mutter, it's
been terribly strange. There was relief on the part of
Rolling Stone's records chief Marshall Chess, specifically that they'd made
it through without getting murdered. When the last show was over,
Marshall walked to the East River and tossed the handgun

(46:46):
he cared for protection. The end of tours are sad.
Picture the last day of an especially magical summer camp
and magnify it by a thousand, and you still won't
even come close. There were folks for whom it was

(47:06):
the experience of a lifetime, and then it was over,
just like that. Those steeped in the rock biz had
people to talk to and share the experience with afterwards,
but for many they had no one, and they found
reintegration into everyday life lonely and confusing.

Speaker 8 (47:27):
One of the things that I most remember about a
tour is when it ends and all of a sudden,
the shock of you don't have anywhere to go tomorrow morning,
or you wake up in the morning there's nobody there,
you know, to collect your luggage or do any of
that stuff. It stops. It just comes to a stop,
and that's shocking on your system. You're just not used

(47:47):
to it. We're eight weeks now, we're doing this every day,
getting up in the morning, you know, moving this show along,
trying to shake off the hangover from the night before,
you know, looking at your card on the desk, on
the bedside to see where where you are, see where
you are. You don't know where you are every city,
and it's a different city every day. You don't know

(48:07):
where you are, and then all of a sudden you
wake up and it's over. It's a shock.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
So it was a combination of not being on the
road with the most amazing, interesting people that you'd ever met,
and every day is fun and they're going to play again,
You're going to be on stage watching them. You get
into the routine on such a level that you're addicted
to the routine as well as everything and the excitement
and the power and the glory.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
This wasn't the only form addiction could take. Habits picked
up on the road accompanied many into their everyday life,
where they were less tolerated. For some, it was purely
a practical matter. It was tough for STP vets to
get back into the time schedule that the rest of
the world calls normal. They needed something to get them

(48:56):
up and then something to send them off at night,
a nightmarish push pool of pills that wrought havoc on
one's physiology and psychology. For others, the drugs were self medication,
a synthetic version of the rush. They fell while on
tour with the biggest band in the world. Isolated, disoriented,

(49:17):
and depressed, many retreated into substances for relief. The reasons
were varied, but according to Gary Stromberg, drug abuse and
addiction was an unexpected and all too common outcome of
the STP tour.

Speaker 8 (49:33):
Physically, it was there was a real price to pay
for it, which I mean I was not even remotely
aware of when I started, because it did. Like I said,
I lost a lot of weight. Psychically, I was in
bad shape, and I literally did get kidnapped at the
end of the tour from friends in New York who

(49:55):
tricked me into going on a boat to Fire Island,
on which they a and went ashore and left me there.
I was there for three days to detox, and they
had food on the boat, and it was a sailboat,
and I was just there to take care of myself,
and so it took me longer than three days to
recover from that physically. Emotionally, I was drained. It was exhausting.

(50:22):
It was really exhausting, And because you were in the
middle of it and never sensed it until it was over,
like I said, that drop off it when it was
over was really severe emotionally.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Within a week, he was back in his office answering
phones and planning publicity for the t Rex tour, secure
in the knowledge that he had engineered the rock pr
job of the year, if not the decade. He was
thinner than he'd ever been, and he coughed a lot.
Someone asked his business partner if he'd noticed the change
in Gary after the STP tour. Yeah, came the reply,

(51:11):
he doesn't laugh as much anymore. Even Keith Richards struggled
to acclimate to his decidedly more quiet life as a
tax exile in Switzerland. He also had the legal mess
of his drug problems in the French Riviera to iron out.
By the end of the year, official warrants were out
for Keith's arrest, though little came of it. He would

(51:33):
be busted the following June at his home in London's
Chelsea neighborhood. The real world was certainly less kind than
the cocoon of road life.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
Very strange thanks to.

Speaker 7 (51:46):
Circle Client, especially to Switzerland, orderly and respect to.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
This shop. A long time to come out, So yeah,
they just stop sleeping.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
I know what we're having by the end.

Speaker 7 (52:05):
Or yeah, now in New York I started, guys are
really long sleeps.

Speaker 4 (52:12):
After the last show Super fourteinos go up for eight
hours and then cut ups again.

Speaker 7 (52:20):
I mean it was tough because it was the longest
one I've ever done, you know, but it didn't affect
me any or noticeably anybody else in the band. It
seems that everybody knows how much energy they have to
kiss to keep themselves going, and everybody's got an amazing stamina.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Life went on for all concerned, or at least most,
but there was a distinct sense that a transformation was occurring.
The record breaking sales figures of the Stones nineteen seventy
two tour hipped many to the fact that rock and
roll was now serious business in every sense. The open
hearted aura that had characterized the music community in the

(53:06):
sixties had begun, the calcify and the something harder.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
So Chipmunk, who we cannot quote enough in my mind,
Chipmunk said to me at some point that here's when
he knew the sixties were over. He was sitting at
a big dinner table and he laid out the plate
to plate the cocaine man, you know, chopped it up
and he rolled up one hundred dollar bill, as one

(53:30):
did in the day, and he sent the plate around,
and the plate went around the table. When he came back,
all the cocaine was gone, and it was a one
dollar bill. It speaks volumes.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
There would be more rock tours, for sure, many staged
by The Stones themselves and their English rock brethren, But
as far as Robert Greenfield and Gary Stromberg are concerned
there would never be another track like it.

Speaker 8 (54:00):
There couldn't be. No, no, there's always going to be
a first and this you can't recreate the first.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
The reason this can't be replicated, if I could say
and just it's so back to context. This is the
next step up for the business of rock and roll
on tour, and that can't be You can't replicate the
first time. First time they take a place, they take
a country by storm and it's all positive.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Fortunately, the historic outing was preserved by legendary avant garde
filmmaker Robert Frank. Unfortunately, the resulting documentary, which for reasons
of decorum will temporarily rechristen Rock Sucker Blues, is almost
impossible to track down for viewing. It featured some less
than savory moments, including a woman shooting smack, Keith nodding off,

(54:53):
and mickding lines. Viewers were also treated to Keith and
Bobby keys shot putting a television out a hotel window
so and also a deeply unsettling scene depicting an orgy
on the Stones private jet. Most of this was done
at the behest of the director, whose film was decidedly
darker than most people's memories of the tour.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
It's certainly worth seeing. Much of it is not true.
I mean true, it happened, it was staged, okay, and
point of reference here for no reason, Mick and Bobby
Keys did not throw a television set out of the
riot house as other people have said. It was in Denver, correct,

(55:35):
before they were drinking tequila sunrises at eleven am in
the morning. Robert asked them to do this. Now, he's
an artist. He was making a movie about his artistic
vision of what Keith nodding out is real. That's real.
But the group he's on the plane, this was all staged.

Speaker 8 (55:53):
What I would object to was that he had this
vision of what this thing should be, and he filmed
it to fit that vision, as opposed to just experiencing
or witnessing what was going on.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
And he wasn't interested in the onstage performances.

Speaker 8 (56:06):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
It's not a music dogs, Yeah, don't go for the music.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Robert Frank, whose most famous work up to this point
had been gritty, black and white photos depicting income inequality
in the United States, was well aware that his film
cut a little close to the bone. While talking to
Robert Greenfield back in nineteen seventy two, he shared his
doubts that Mick Jagger, one of the most image conscious

(56:31):
musicians of his generation, would want this out there. Here
he is courtesy of our friends at the Northwestern University Archives.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (56:40):
Well, the question would be whether they will accept it.
I mean, I'll put it together of.

Speaker 6 (56:46):
This engine, and that is their problem.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
They have a lot of legal problems.

Speaker 9 (56:50):
I mean, how would you feel being filmed? Well, just
let's take the lowest thing, like sniffing coke? How would
you appel? And who I was me and who I
am now?

Speaker 2 (57:03):
A fab ruby I'll say.

Speaker 9 (57:07):
Well, I wouldn't care, but they will be me that
I might have said ten years ago. Now I finally
totally unimportant. It doesn't matter, And I think Jagger will
be I think he will think that way. He will say, well,
I can't use the film now, but I'll use it
in five years from there.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
It would take make a lot more than five years
to accept Frank's incriminating cinema verite depiction of the STP Tour.
The gratuitous on screen substance abuse was not exactly helpful
given the looming drug convictions in southern France. Further legal
hassles would jeopardize their ability to travel to the United States,
which is where the Stones made their real money. No good.

(57:51):
Simply put, they didn't need this. They were fully aware
of the outcry that had greeted their nineteen sixty nine
tour documentary Give Me Alter, which captured the murder of
a fan while the Stones performed at the Ultamont Speedway.
The band ultimately filed an injunction against Frank, which allowed
him to show his film only four times a year

(58:12):
and only with Frank himself present, thus kneecapping any chance
at a wide release or commercial success.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Well, okay, so what's the point of this. Jagger invited
one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, a
guy who had made a movie called Me and My
Brother that's considered groundbreaking, and he allowed him complete access
and then it could only be shown with Jaggers permit
could be shown once a year. Yes, that's great, and

(58:40):
how long it was buried the genius of mic Jagger.
I bring in a great artist, I give him access
and then you can't see it.

Speaker 8 (58:48):
And it created a huge demand for it. That's huge.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
That said Greenfield would discover that there was not a
demand for a written account of the SDP tour, at
least not at first.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
The title of the book for me always was STP.
Folk callen a journey through America with the Rolling Stones
when I wrote the book, and I will advertisements for myself,
first full length book ever written about a rock tour.
You know, they weren't publishing books about rock and roll,
and even in nineteen seventy two, seventy three, Rolling Stone

(59:22):
was where you read about rock and roll, Crawdaddy Cream.
It was again rock and rolls for those you know, kid,
they don't buy books. I couldn't get a deal from
Straight Hour Press, Rolling Stone Magazine's publishing house. I pitched
the guy, Hey man, I'm going on this too. I
always wanted to write books. I could do a book.
I remember his name. I'm not going to mention now,

(59:45):
not really interested.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Greenfield's persistence paid off, and STP was published in nineteen
seventy four. He continues to be a touchstone for rock
fans and journalists across the generations. For Greenfield, or set
him on a course he's maintained to this day.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
You know, I didn't suffer physically like Gary did. But
if I look at it now, it enabled me to
start my adult life because I was able to move
somewhere and write a book, and you know, write a
chapter a week, and that's what I'd always wanted to do.
Got to write about Ahmet and Jerry Wexler and Jerry Garcia.

(01:00:23):
So I kept doing some journalism, but ever since then,
I've basically been able to write books, which is all
I ever wanted to do. And I couldn't have done
that without the Rolling Stones, you know. So I am
so grateful, you know that I was allowed access to
be on that tour.

Speaker 8 (01:00:38):
In Bob's book and stp that. My favorite picture of
me is the picture of me with pile over my
face marriage and I'm like this, I'm looking just in
my all of my.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Glory Darry Stromberg in Excelsius. Oh yes, yes, he's got
to towel his hair and so he's covered in whipped cream,
whipped cream and pie.

Speaker 8 (01:00:58):
And my big, my most my fun memories for my
when my children first looked at that and then looked
at me like you're my father, because they've only known
me as a dad, you know, not I'm sober. I
was never a drug addict. When they were born, I
was already sober. So they've never seen me in in Excelsius.

(01:01:21):
They've only seen me as a semi normal, you know,
human being, So it's hard to them to fathom. But
when they saw that picture of me, they my daughter,
I can remember just staking are looking? Or I was
just like, are you my dad?

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Gary's happiness at home was hard won. The early intervention
from his friends, who sequestered him on a boat to
dry out, didn't have the desired effect. By Gary's own admission,
he went from one hundred percent messed up to thirty
percent messed up, or words to that effect. That figure

(01:02:01):
would steadily rise throughout the decade, as it would for
many stp vets.

Speaker 8 (01:02:08):
My drug addiction just was overwhelming at one point and
it just and it did me in. I mean, I
lost my whole business because of my drug addiction. There
was a movie called Dancing as Fast as I Can.
That's really what I was doing in this business. That's
what the business was largely like. It was dancing as
fast as I could. And then because of the drug addiction,

(01:02:30):
you just run out of gas. I couldn't do it anymore,
and then all kinds of problems. You know, I wasn't
paying attention to my money. I wasn't paying attention to
the employees that worked for us and the company. I
blew the company up. My partner and I blew our
company up. You know, we lost a thriving business because
we were really dancing as fast as we could, not

(01:02:51):
paying attention. It took about a year for me to
lose a house, you know, all of the trappings of success.
It took about a year for it all to turn
to shit. There's no other way to describe it. My
life turned to shit. I danced for a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
How long have you been sober?

Speaker 8 (01:03:10):
I'm going to be forty years sober coming January, I'll
be forty years sober. I've lived half of my life
as a sober man.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
So I want to tell the world that Gary Stromberg
has written a really good book about celebrity recovering and
as a well known figure in AA, I have nothing
but love and respect for what he's done with your
life having seen him, because, as he pointed out to
me before we began this adventure, he looked at the
book and the way I described him in the book
is Gary Stromberg Comma wasted and that's who he was.

Speaker 8 (01:03:40):
Yeah, if I wrote my own life story, that's probably
what I would call it. It's a restaurant called Dantana's.
It's a very popular music business and literally you could
do drugs wherever you went back in the day, and
you go to Dantana's and the place would be filled
with people in the music business, formers as well. And

(01:04:01):
take a coffee saucer cup and turn it over and
just pour a cocaine into it and snort it in
front of everybody, didn't matter. And I remember one night
I was just so arrogant that I did thee hundred
dollar bill. That was a bus boy who was standing
watching while we were snorting, passing that played around with

(01:04:22):
the cocaine and I had one hundred dollar bill and
I was snorting and I was watching him watch me,
and I took a match and I lit the one
hundred dollars bill and just held it up while he watched,
just saying, here, how's this. How's an idiot? I have
no I mean, I didn't see anything coming. I never
saw any of this coming. I just thought it was

(01:04:42):
all going to be fun and games forever, and that
this dance would go on forever. I never knew that
I had no nobody. And that's the other thing I
guess about the music business. You don't go to school
to learn how to do this. You don't learn go
to school learn how to be a rock star. All
of this is brand new. You're inventing it as you're
going along. So I was aware that we were inventing
this as I went along. But I thought I was

(01:05:03):
smart enough to you know, that I could keep this
thing going. I did not, for a second understand that
the drugs that I was addicted to would turn on me.
Never understood that until it did.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
But having said that, and I'm here to talk about Gary,
he was on that tour. He was totally functional.

Speaker 8 (01:05:26):
Yeah, I was a high functioning drug addict, which a
lot of people are. But that's actually probably the worst
guy because I lasted a long time. I could dance
a long time before it. Yeah, it took over.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
The SCP tour would be Gary's last time entrenched with
the Stones on the road, but it wasn't the last
time that members of the Stromberg clan would party with
the Stones on tour. Next time he was Gary's parents.

Speaker 8 (01:06:04):
After the tour was over. This was two years later.
My father had never been on an airplane before, and
I had now was doing well in my business and
started to make some money, and I sent my parents
on a trip to Europe that I was so happy
to be able to pay for a tour of I
don't know how many countries, a few countries in Europe,
and it ended up in Amsterdam and they were at

(01:06:26):
an hotel in Amsterdam where the Stones were. Stones were like.
This must have been nineteen seventy four tour of Europe,
And just by coincidence, Keith saw my parents' name on
the hotel registry and he called up my parents' room
and my mother answered, and he said, are you related
to Gary Stromberg And they said yes, that's our son.

(01:06:49):
And he said, well, we're having you know, we're the Stones.
We're having a party after our show. You are welcome
to come. So my mother got all excited and they
went to the after party that the Stones through in
that hotel. Keith greeted him like, was really cordial to them,
And my mother called me from this hotel, said, we
went to this amazing I was stunned. We went to

(01:07:10):
this amazing party with the Rolling Stones. She said, bet,
they was so smoky and it smelled weird, and your
father got very dizzy, so we left.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
How old were they? What do you think?

Speaker 8 (01:07:21):
Sixties?

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
That is so sweet?

Speaker 8 (01:07:24):
It show the sweetest thing. And I couldn't believe Keith
did this. Just never said anything to me about that
he had done it, And just I mean, what a
kind thing to do. See my parents' name and he
calls their room.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
It's amazing.

Speaker 8 (01:07:36):
He also that's also who he was, by the way.
He had a real generous spirit and a sweetness about
him that was I don't think most people were aware of.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
For Greenfield, however, there were still a handful of Stones
encounters to come. We're working on his stp book. He
visited the band around Christmas nineteen seventy two in Jamaica,
the only place that would grant Keith a visa at
the time. There they recorded the follow up to Exile
on Main Street, Goats Head Soup. The sessions were tense,

(01:08:10):
Keith's addiction was taking hold, and Mick Taylor was beginning
to go a similar direction. He would depart the group
two years later, a choice he'd cite as critical to
his survival. If Exile was the peak of the stones
most fruitful period, this new record was the start of
the decline.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
It was just chaos and anarchy, and they functioned like
that for a long time. They kept going. I was
with them at Kingston because they couldn't come to America.
They were all under the indictments. They had to testify
his material witnesses in France. They didn't get much done
at Kingston. They recorded at Byron Lee's Dynamic Studios in

(01:08:52):
trench Town at a time when the killing and going
on there was terrifying, so that didn't work. It goes
on and Black and Blue is recorded in German. There's
this whole period after exile where they are basically lost
in searching, and then they're in New York. Mick and
Keith are living in New York together, separately, you know,

(01:09:14):
but they're both They're going downtown having they're not famous,
Suddenly they're not superstars. It's not like seventy two. It
keeps going up. Everybody misses the second act in the
Stones thing, and it was a long second act. They're
kind of like old nobody cares, Oh yeah, you know,

(01:09:36):
Punk comes in, makes fun of all those guys, you know,
Rod Stewart, they're all washed up, who cares? But they
don't stop. And because they don't stop, they re emerge
and I can't pin the tour. But then the tours
start getting bigger and bigger and much more profitable. And
they're in Europe and playing a fifty thousand people and

(01:09:59):
they're out as speak. And again I'll quote Bill Graham
forever because nobody was smarter, you know. But we were
talking about them and he said to me, it sounds
so simple, but it's so brilliant. He said, you know, Bob,
if they weren't any good live, nobody would want to
see them. So they've crossed generations, multiple generations, people bringing

(01:10:19):
their kids. But really it's because Mick is still able
to sing and dance on stage.

Speaker 8 (01:10:25):
People bring in their grandkids.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Greenfield's stp book ends with an unsettled line for Jagger
was a young man, just thirty, and congratulations were not
necessarily in order. It's a youthful sentiment. Pends before that
all important realization that aging isn't a sentence but a privilege,
one that many of their friends and tour mates were

(01:10:56):
never afforded. The line has a very different meeting to
green Field today.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
Well, I hope I die before I get old, man,
That's what that is. It's just like, was he thirty
twenty nine? Yeah, but by the time I wrote the
book at thirty thirty. But I don't even know if
I know what that line means anymore, you know, I mean,
I was twenty six, you know, twenty five. Actually I
turned twenty six in nineteen seventy two after the tour.

(01:11:22):
So the spirit of rock and roll, that's what I'm
talking about there, the fu level of the kicking the
door in taking the hinges off, that rebellious attitude. But
you got to grow up, you know what I mean,
you got to grow older. And this was transitional for

(01:11:42):
them in their own lives as well.

Speaker 8 (01:11:44):
But who'd have thought it would have gone as long
as it has.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Nobody By cosmic coincidence, The Stones announced their first collection
of original songs in eighteen years, shortly after the premiere
of this podcast. Aside from Mick and Keith, it also
features playing by Bill Wyman, who retired as the Stones
official bass player in nineteen ninety three, and also the

(01:12:07):
final performances of drummer Charlie Watts, who died in August
of twenty twenty one. The album called Hackney Diamonds was
released days before this taping to enormous acclaim. Another tour
is sure to come, but Robert Greenfield and Gary Stromberg
won't be there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
So July twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two, Micks twenty nine
final show in Madison Square Guard Books. I never saw
him again. I have never gone to a Rolling Stones concert, oh,
since nineteen seventy two. And my people say to me,
I've been invited, especially when I was working on Bill
Graham's book, Bob, Why would I want to go see?

Speaker 8 (01:12:49):
Yeah, that's what. Yeah, I saw him, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
When they were great and they're still great.

Speaker 8 (01:12:55):
Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know that you've never seen
him again. I haven't either, never the same thing. I
got invited and I didn't want to go.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
So we'll leave you where they left them. Outside Madison
Square Garden on July twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two, Seventh
Avenue is buzzing twenty thousand dazed and delighted fans of
just seen the Greatest rock and Roll show of their lives.
Try to recall the feeling. Your heart pounds, your head rushes,

(01:13:29):
and your body practically levitates. A New York cop watches
the mind blown crowd the part He shakes his head
and spits in the street before nudging his partner look
at him, he says, pointing out the best minds of
the next generation. Go on, take a look. It's eerie.

Speaker 10 (01:13:48):
I tell you, darren a a state a euphoria.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
Stone's Touring Party has written and hosted by Jordan Runton,
co Executive produced by Noel Brown.

Speaker 8 (01:14:50):
And Jordan Runton, Edited and sound designed by Noel Brown
and Michael Alder jun Original music composed and performed by
Michael Alder June and Noel Brown, with additional instruments performed
by Chris Suarez, Nick Johns Cooper, and Josh Thane.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
Vintage Rolling Stones audio courtesy of the Robert Greenfield Archive.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
At the Charles Derry McCormick Library of Special Collections in
Northwestern University Libraries. Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your favorite shows.