Stones Roll Again

By the time this magazine reaches your hands, the Rolling Stones will be well into their 1972 tour, which covers 30 cities in a seven week period. The tour, set by Peter Rudge of Sound Image Inc., contains “innovations in booking, consumer protection, security and staging never before used for rock concerts”.

The Stones had hoped to play in smaller, more intimate halls this time around, but complications arose when, they attempted to book locations which seated less than 5000. “City fathers and mothers seemed concerned by the possible damage the five Stones could do to their sons and daughters in close quarters”, reported Rudge. To alleviate some of the tension which surrounded the last tour, the band has arranged for more than one date in many of the larger markets.

Ticket prices will be held to a $6.50 maximum and, in order to thwart scalpers and forgers, no more than four tickets will be sold to any one customer. All outlets will begin offering tickets simultaneously a full 30 days prior to the date of performance, supplemented by an extensive ad and information campaign in each city.

All production and staging methods were designed by Chipmonk Industries. Towers to hold most all the sound and light equipment will be constructed so as to afford the audience an unobstructed view of the stage and performers. In addition, the 14 man technical crew will all be members of the IATSE union, making this the first all-union rock and roll tour.

In addition to their five, the Stones will be augmented by Nicky Hopkins on," piano and at least two horn players.^ Supporting acts will be Stevie Wonder and Martha Reeves, and it is possible that local gospel acts will be added whenever the opportunity arises.

There has been some talk abput selected dates being recorded for purposes i of a live album, but no confirmation has thus far been given.

Further developments arising from the tour will be given extensive coverage in forthcoming issues of CREEM, so stay plugged in.

Rolling Stones American Tour — 1972

June

3 Sat Vancouver, B.C. - Pacific Coliseum

4 Sun Seattle - Coliseum

5 Mon Off

6 Tues San Francisco - Winterland

7 Wed Off

8 Thurs San Francisco - Winterland

9 Fri Los Angeles - Palladium

10 Sat Long Beach - Pacific Terrace Center

11 Sun Los Angeles - Forum

12 Mon Off

13 Tues San Diego - International Sports Arena

14 Wed Tucson - Civic Arena

15 Thurs Albuquerque - Univ, of New Mexico

16 Fri Denver - Coliseum

17 Sat Off

18 Sun Minneapolis-St. Paul - Sports Arena

19 Mon Chicago - Amphitheater International

20 Tues Chicago - Amphitheater International

21 Wed Off

22 Thurs Kansas City - Municipal Auditorium

23 Fri Off

24 Sat Ft. Worth - Tarrant County

25 Sun Houston - Hoffeinz Pavillion

26 Mon Off

27 Tues Mobile - Auditorium

28 Wed Tuscaloosa - University of Alabama

29 Thurs Nashville - Municipal Auditorium

30 Fri Off

July

1 Sat Off

2 Sun Off

3 Mon Off

4 Tues Washington D.C. - R.F.K. Stadium

5 Wed Norfolk, Va. - Scope

6 Thurs Charlotte, N.C. - Coliseum

7 Fri Knoxville - Civic Arena

8 Sat Off

9 Sun St. Louis - Kiel Auditorium

10 Mon Off

11 Tues Akron, Ohio - Rubber Bowl

12 Wed Indianapolis - Convention Center

TTThuriTbetroit - Cobo Hali

14 Fri. Detroit - Cobo Hall

TSSat Toronto - Maple Leaf Gardens

16 Sun Off

17 Mon Montreal - Forum

18 Tues Boston Garden

19 Wed Boston Garden

20 Thurs Philadelphia - The Spectrum

21 Fri Philadelphia - The Spectrum

22 Sat Pittsburgh - Civic Arena

23 Sun Off

24 Mon New York - Madison Square Garden

25 Tues New York - Madison Square Garden

26 Wed New York - Madison Square Garden

Cloaks, But Mostly Daggers, In LA

Tony Stratton-Smith, manager of the British quintet Lindisfarne, called a press conference in Los Angeles last month to delineate charges of “gangsterism” leveled at Doug Weston arising from the band’s gig at the Troubador. Weston is the owner-manager of that popular Hollywood bar/nitespot.

By Stratt on-Smith’s allegation, Weston attempted to negotiate a new. contract with the band at open knifepoint. This contract, demanded mid-week in their engagement, would have called for a series of successive options requiring Lindisfarne to appear at the Troubador for future dates. Also, Srratton-Smith contended, an employee of Weston attempted to force this contract upon the band in their dressing room before the Friday evening performance. When the band referred the employee to Stratton-Smith, they were told that they would not be allowed to go on.

Following this exchange, the engagement was immediately transferred to the Ash Grove, another Hollywood-based club, where it apparently concluded tis run without incident.

Stratton-Smith also charged that Weston, accompanied by two guncarrying lackeys, invaded the Beverly Hills home of Jerry Heller, an agent for the Mark-Almond band, where they terrorized Heller’s guests and lined them up against a living-room wall. This gun-brandishing incident was again purported to be related to a contractual dispute.

In closing the press conference, Stratton-Smith stated that “if this is what the music business in Los Angeles is all about, then we don’t need it!” Well, at least Bill Graham never had to resort to anything more menacing than his fists.

Alice: You Drive Me Nervous

We were thoroughly amused to note the following exchange in our daily newspaper one recent morning:

DEAR ANN LANDERS: I’ve never written to you before but I’ve got to check with somebody to make sure I’m sane. If I’m in my right mind, a lot of people in tfyis world are crazy.

Recently, I attended a rock concert. I didn’t know such madness existed until that night. A guy gets up in girl’s clothes, eye makeup galore and a ton of jewelry. He does a number where he chops off a doll’s head and sings a song called Dead Babies”. At the end of his act he hangs himself.

That creepy show was a sellout. Twenty-thousand people screamed their heads off and applauded till their hands were raw. I left after the fifth encore and I don’t mind telling you I whoopsed my cookies. What is there in people that makes them enjoy such sick stuff? — Square Peg In A Round Hole.

DEAR PEG: When I was a teen-ager there were a few horror films around, such as Frankenstein and Dracula. But we didn’t have the steady diet of violence the kids get today in movies and on TV — not to mention a live war in living color, every night on the six o’clock news.

Would you believe our sick society has produced a market for torture toys? One of the best selling items is a doll that screams when placed on a torture rack by a monster in a blood-spattered white coat. The customer has a choice of victims — a man, woman or child. For $5.00 you can buy a Vietnam battleground. Dead and dying soldiers are all over the place in grotesque positions, with horrible expressions on their faces, gaping wounds and missing limbs. For $1.99 you can own a doll named Vampirella. She comes equipped with a beaker 'of blood. If all this isn’t symptomatic of a warped society, I’d like to know what is.

To answer Miss Landers’ last question, we can only suggest that she be at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium when Alice unleashes his new show, some time in mid-June. See you, as they say, in the funny papers ....

Bruce Johnston Leaves Beach Boys

Bruce Johnston, bassist-pianist-singer and sometimes composer with the Beach Boys, has left the group — apparently by mutual consent — after a tenure which had stretched over the past seven years. Reasons for his departure remain sketchy but it is believed to have something to do with divergent life-styles and the extent of the role Johnston had carved out for himself within the band.

Johnston began his career in 1962 with the Bruce Johnston Surfing Band, a fraternity party crew that had a small hit (“The Surfer Stomp”) and consequent album (Surfers’ Pajama Party) on a small Los Angeles label. A solo album called Surfin’ ’Round The World was recorded for Columbia in 1963, and he stayed with that label as a staff producer, doing the honors on the first Paul Revere & The Raiders album. Then, teaming with producer Terry Melcher as Bruce and Terry, a succession of singles were relased on Columbia, the most successful of which was “Summer Means Fun”.

When Brian Wilson made his decision to retire from touring in 1965, the Beach Boys called upon old friend Johnston — who may be observed playing volleyball with the guys on the Beach Boys Party cover — to fill the void. He was not recognized as a full band member until Wild Honey, and his first song (“The Nearest Faraway Place”) didn’t appear until 20/20. Since that time, he’d had a hand in creating some of their most exquisitely teenage lovesongs, among them “Diedre” and Disney Girls”, and had taken an expanded interest in the production of all Beach Boys’ Material.

Exactly what Johnston will do now remains uncertain. It is reported that Brother Records released him from his contract, and that several other labels are interested in his solo talents. A solo album has supposedly been in the works for the better part of the last year. Then again, rumors emanating from more than one source have him engaged in a project with — no kidding — Terry Melcher, Doris Day and Sly Stone. OO-ee-oo ...

The Festival That Never Should Have Been

“American Airlines reservations are temporarily busy. You will be placed on hold and your call will be taken by the first available operator. This is the last announcement you will hear.the last announcement you will hear.... the last announcement you will hear...”

If we’d been smart, that introduction would’ve been taken as a serious portent of things to come. Still, the perfumed bait was almost sure to provoke a bite: three days of fun and sun in Puerto Rico, some genuinely fine rock and roll set against a tropical seascape, and assurances that every basic necessity would be provided for in an orderly and responsible fashion. Setting aside the knowledge that the only festival which had succeeded — Monterey — was back when the term “festival” implied only Newport and an acoustic sensibility, we headed for Mar y Sol armed with the faint hope that this one might possibly be different. Fat chance.

It wasn’t so much that the festival was necessarily that bad; it would be better characterized as a ceaseless onslaught, of minor irritations which even the most inspired musical moments could never quite seem to overcome. For many, it boiled down to a toss-up between boredom and annoyance, neither of which are supposed to figure very prominently in anybody’s countercultural ethic.

Though the festival promoters — headed by Alex Cooley, who can claim credit for the respectable Atlanta and Dallas fests — claimed to have made preparations for 60,000 music junkies, the crowd at its most bloated point revealed only about 35,000 in actual attendence. A good 20,000 of these were native Puerto Ricans, many of whom could return home at night and thus helped to ease the living situation with those unfortunate enough to think that it was an adventure. (More than once during the three days, in fact, we were to feel like a yellowing photograph in Life Magazine; a living theatre re-enactment of hippiedom 1968 staged for the benefit of curious Puerto Ricans. God knows what horrors would have visited us had the anticipated 60,000 decided to show up ... )

Those who brought tents and other survival provisions generally lived to see the weekend through. Food was customarily expensive and nutritional suicide, water was non-existent, but both could eventually be procured if one could muster the right combination of diligence and every-man-for-himself cunning. Toilets were scarce and there was but one shower provided; more often than not, the Caribbean handled the functions of both. Quite ironically, the festival’s major drawing card — Old Sol — readily proved to be one of its most formidable villains. Even the most fanatical sun-worshipers soon found themselves crawling for cover after only a minimal exposure; the medical tent reported that a vast majority of cases handled related directly to this torturous sunblaze.

Considering all else, drug usage was a secondary factor. A last minute injunction against the festival which alleged that “mass narcotics traffic’? would ensue seemed to choke off the flow of bulkier drugs (i.e. grass) and pills seemed to be the order of the day. Windowpane acid was a favorite, but in the Year of The Downer there was little doubt as to what was King. The combination of sun and downs dropped people into sunbaked puddles of daylong sleep, but sleep was perhaps the wisest* choice anybody could’ve made during the daylight hours anyway.

Incidents of outright violence were minimal; the only direct festival casualty was 16 year old Christopher Gilligan of the Virgin Islands, who was hacked into hamburger in his beachside tent by an unidentified ghoul weilding a machete. (Three people drowned at the site, one the week before the festival and the other two on Sunday afternoon.) The most commonly committed crime at the festival was rape, and though it never really erupted, the dark eyes of violence were always staring over your shoulder. Gangs of Puerto Ricans roamed the grounds in varying shades of billigerence, many carrying knives and apparently itchy fingers. It was like an ugly slice of New York City against a postcard backdrop.

“I just love Festivals", enthused 17 year old Susan Ramsey. “Everything is so free and natural.... festivals are beautiful. I love them all." It was Susan's first festival.

And the music. Most of the advertised acts did eventually show, but rather than cluttering up this account we’ll relay instead the highlights of each day. Best receptions on the first day were accorded to Brownsville Station, B.B. King and the Allman Brothers, while ELP and Alice Cooper shone on the second. Introduced by a taped message from John & Yoko (which came off like an embarassing Spanish lesson, every othei phrase being “que passe”) David Peel proceeded to sing “The Pope Smokes Dope” to a largely Catholic audience on Easter Sunday. Favorites on the last day were the Mahavishnu Orchestra and, stealing the show from the mighty Faces with no less than four encores, the J.Geils Band.

The entire three days were recorded by Atlantic Records, who have finally gotten their crack at the festival sweepstakes. Undeniably, some exceptionally fine music went down during those three days, but the time has finally passed when music, whatever the quality, may be held as justification for these abortive “events.” The film crew never quite got there, but it was just as well: a movie camera can’t avoid realities which records, by their very nature, can plead ignorance of.

Just before Billy Joel was to launch into his fine Saturday afternoon set, it began to rain. Considering the ravages of sunstroke, it was perhaps the most welcome occurence of the three days.

This fact notwithstanding, 30,000 people spontaneously broke into the “no more rain" chant that they'd memorized during showings of Woodstock at their local drive-ins. It was almost sad.

An interesting sidelight was the story of Arthur Lisch and his “Family”. A Californian with a wife and two children, Arthur had come to Vega Baja to make preparations for the original festival some eight months previous. When the festival was postponed, Arthur stayed, and an impromtu community sprang up around him. They built a small network of lean-tos and huts which, although of mansion proportions besides the other festival accommodations, were “actually no different than those of many Puerto Ricans” according to Arthur himself. The Family plot was closely guarded when the festival finally pulled into town, but they did generously donate food they’d grown to help feed the staff and a lot of the kids.

And now they’re talking about staying. It seems that the eight months in waiting gave them time to straighten out their rationale for even being there, and they’d reached the conclusion that the festival’s ramifications could be nothing but bad. Out to protect the area from an ecological perspective, they’ve decided to homestead the land in. an effort to stop the projected construction of a jetport on the site. This action brought them into alignment with certain Puerto Rican nationalist groups, who circulated through the crowd shouting Marxist diatribes and slogans at deaf ears.

“How the hell can they possibly accuse me of ripping off Puerto Rican culture", whined a college sophomore from New Jersey. “Maybe it might be different if I was having a good time, but it's sure hard to feel guilty when you 're feeling this bad."

As the dust began to clear, Cooley and his cohorts — who had holed up in a motelroom and seldom came out — arrived just in time to proclaim the festival the traditional aesthetic success and a financial disaster. Although their projected losses were in the neighborhood of $250,000 (which they hoped to recoup on sales of the album (s)) the IRS was last seen hot in pursuit of Cooley, purportedly with a lot of questions which added up to a different answer. The aesthetic side of Cooley’s proclamation nobody took seriously. .

People had begun making the long trek back to San Juan and points beyond after the first day of the festival, but even this steady exodus didn’t avert the Tuesday tie-up at the airport. Many of the people who had purchased the $149 festival package found that their return plane tickets were good only for stand-by, thus effectively leaving them stranded until auxiliary flights could he arranged. To accomodate these prisoners, tents were set up just outside the main terminal, and extra festival vibes were offered up to those who could still stomach the taste. Elephant’s Memory came and played, but most of the people’s attention was directed toward their method of escape. It had been that kind of a festival.

“I've been to an awful lot of festivals', said 22 year old Brian Segal of White Plains N.Y., “and one thing's for damn sure after this one; I won't ever go again. It's always more trouble than it's worth. I can't even remember now why I came here, or why this festival even happened in the first place."