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The Rolling Stones: An Eye Witness to the Madness Posted on: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 Category: Music Journalism

In-flight orgies and TV sets from hotel windows? It's mostly a myth but thereality was no less strange. An interview with Robert Greenfield, author of thebook Stones Touring Party; this appeared in The Word, June 2010.

The Rolling Stones American tour of 1969 is held up as the symbolic end of theSixties dream, capped as it was by a disastrously nasty show at the AltamontFree Festival. But their next US romp, in 1972, was in a way the Shape of Rock toCome. It sealed the bands reputation as a live act but also as the louche godsof Seventies decadence, swaggering across the land in an orgiastic riot ofgroupies, drugs and stadium-sized delusions of Divine Right.

One document of the tour is Robert Franks film Cocksucker Blues, withheldfrom public viewing at the Stones command. Thankfully, for a thrilling account1972s shenanigans, we do have a classic book called Stones Touring Party,written by a then-26-year-old journalist, Robert Greenfield, and now re-issued forall to see (Aurum Press, 9.99).

I stayed in the hotels with them, says Greenfield today, recalling the enviableaccess he was allowed. If you were on the tour they treated you as though youwere working with the band. In terms of access, though, there were rooms withinrooms. There were rooms into which I didnt go because people were usingheroin and I wasnt part of that inner circle. But there were no other pre-conditions. I still have my notebooks. But there was no reason to keep anythingout.

Hed come to know the band through working for Rolling Stone, at that time animportant conduit for Jagger and co: They were still playing to the counter-culture. Rolling Stone was the counter-culture magazine so they wouldcommunicate to their audience through that. I understood that we were living inthe same world. Life magazine was quote-unquote the straight media, andwould be held slightly at arms length.

With a discreet manner and a keen observers eye, Greenfield used his vantagepoint to masterly effect. He confirms, however, that a few of the tours legendaryevents were not quite real. In Denver a TV set was indeed thrown from a hotelwindow by Keith Richards and sax-player Bobby Keys, but it was all staged forthe camera of Robert Frank. Similarly set up for Cocksucker Blues was an orgyaboard the Stones private DC-10: It was complete fiction, there was never sexon the plane. There were never groupies on that plane. The only people on thatplane were the ones who were on the road with us. So those segments arecompletely well, you can say they were false. But they may be artistic Itspeaks to Jaggers taste, because Frank is recognized as one of the greatestphotographers who ever lived.

Jagger, like some Roman emperor, surveys the debauches of the tour withcynical amusement, but also carries the bands responsibilities in a way thatGreenfield came to respect: Based on what happened to Keith and how out of ithe was, the reason that band survived is not only because of the music, itsbecause Mick became the businessman, because he ran everything. TheStones had such terrible business experiences, theyd made such awfulmistakes, that Jagger had to learn how to do this. He saw to it that the Stonesdidnt go down.

The book is packed with great character sketches. Bill Wyman and Charlie Wattsare impressively self-contained, each with their own strategies for surviving themadness around them. Mick Taylor, the young guitarist drafted in to replaceBrian Jones, is clearly not a Rolling Stone at heart: Really a lovely guy and abrilliant blues player, but I think he realised he did not want to get caught up inthat maelstrom. The proof of the pudding is the way that Ronnie Wood [hissuccessor] does fit in. Its a difference in sensibility.

The 1972 tour ends with a huge, high society party in New York that somehowspells the end of the counter-culture, and the triumph of show business. Amidthe dead-eyed revellers, you sense a Great Gatsby-like absence rocknrollitself, still paid lip-service but by now subservient to the unimaginable wealth ithas learned how to generate.

Greenfield at least emerged with his sanity intact. The worst thing that can

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happen to you, he reflects, is having to leave the world of the Stones. Thewithdrawal was like having the bends; your life was so bad compared to the wayyoud been living with them. But I didnt want them to change my life, becausewhat I wanted to do was write. I survived because I was working; you cant be atthe centre of the action and write about it, you have to be outside watching. I hada hell of a great time but I didnt get crazy. I wasnt there to get rich, get famous,get high, which so many people were.

It rarely improved your life. Its not like people came into the Stones world andleft it in better shape. Most of them left on their knees, theyd got so fucked upAt that time, all rocknroll credentials were personal. If you didnt hang out, youwerent going to be around for long. And why I was allowed to hang out, I have noidea. I was just kid from Brooklyn. I was fortunate. I look back now and I was inthe right place at the right time.

Read my Mick Jagger interview here.

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