BOOKS

BOOKS

UPTIGHT WITH THE STONES

By Richard Elman

(Scribners)

Do you care if you never read another word about the goddamned Rolling Stones? Or at least, about that stupid uneventful tour they took last summer where nobody even got killed? I don’t; I’ve read Richard Elman in Oui and Craig Karpel’s technical treatise in Penthouse and Robert Greenfield’s toadyings in Rolling Stone and Truman Capote’s Warhol-cassette burble reminiscences also in Stone and my own solemn Exile re-review and sociological analysis of a concert I didn’t even see in CREEM and Terry Southern’s pathetic zonkogroovywowsville comicstrip pressrelease in Saturday Review and probably a whole lot of other stupid crap I can’t even remember now and you, know what? None of ’em was worth a damn. Because not a one really told me anything worth .knowing about the Stones or their tour. Which maybe suggests that it was a boring non-event not worth knowing about. Or perhaps it’s just that the Stones are boring people in the first place, and we really shouldn’t expect them to be anything more than the dumb blueslickers and effete social climbers they always were.

But here I sit again, reading another sniggery inside account of The Rolling Stones 1972 America Tour, a book this time, and not only that, but a book I’d already read half of between the boxes in Oui. Why? I ask myself. What in the hell is the matter*with me? And you too, you know you’d do the saipe, even though you’re as sick of the whole subject as 1 am. But on some level we can never get enough, because we always think we’re going to glean some little spackle of dirt we can leer and chuckle over. It’s the same thing with people like Lou Reed: nobody reads about rock V roll because they’re interested in music, all of us peruse this trash because we wanna know what lurid snivelers all our heroes are so we can gloat over them. We’re just like all them broads with the movie mags, and what rock writing needs right now is not another Greil Marcus but a really good Rona Barrett.

Until we get one, though, Richard Elman’s book will have to fill the bill. Because it’s as nasty as it knows how to be, which is why I am bothering you with it in the first place. All the other reports from that dumb tour’s dressing rooms have been sycophantic (except Truman Capote’s, and he was just sour graping because the Stones wouldn’t kiss his pink bazonga) — Elman’s is The Book About What Lousy Creeps The Stones Are. And about time, too. I don’t even care if it’s true or not; I just wanted to see somebody treat ’em for a change like they was just petty schmucks instead of Celestial Metaphors or evil tyros manipulating everybody within a five mile radius.

Elman does a good job at drawing off all the demonology. You can tell he doesn’t like the Stones very much, even though you can’t really blame him any more than you can blame them for not liking him. Through the narrative you get the distinct impression that his feelings were hurt because they did not take more time out during the tour to relate to him personally, alternating with coy insinuations of personal intimacy that make you wonder just who the real groupies are: “We were holding hands in the dressing room together. [Keith] squeezed my hand and I squeezed his, and we saw each other briefly, then. We were just two different styles of scaredy-cat. He’d gone one way and I another, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be together for a little while... He was a professional in pain, yes, but he meant me no harm. He hurt too much himself.”

What is this guy talking about? Pain? Of course Keith Richard was in pain, he was probably in the pain of being deadassed tired both of traveling constantly and feeling obliged to understand every creep he came across so they wouldn’t go away with .hurt feelings. It’s interesting that every time Elman records an encounter between a Stone and himself which is friendly, it turns out that they are confessing their deepest fears and regrets to him. Charlie Watts admits that he thinks the Stones are bad musicians, and Mick Taylor fastens on him and confesses his loneliness at Jagger’s birthday party. Otherwise, if i they’re not making him their confidant, they’re vicious jerks. Jagger he contemplates with* endless fascination, and often fascinating conclusions, but when he finally sits down to talk to him he wonders aloud if Mick is a “timid person,” and comes off slightly miffed when the object of his question stares into space. Elman simultaneously chafes at his own lack of preferential treatment, and has a scalding eye for others, like Truman Capote, who are more upfront about demanding it. Meanwhile, the Stones manipulate all this sort of crap with their own little games: “The Stones reserve the right to come on to anybody they take a fancy to, anybody equally trendy, or hot, and also to be unfriendlier than thou... They were pissed at Capote for making such a nuisance of himself, and they let it be known that Southern had misbehaved with drugs.TM tisk tisk! ”

But Elman is a terrific writer, and in between his pouts and sob stories (get this: “To see Charlie brooding oyer his set of traps made me sad. I have sometimes experienced a sort of fulfillment through activities such as writing.”), you catch sharp angles which have the ring of real insight: “The only tender moments I observed were between members of the band. Their wives and girlfriends were mommies and they treated them all accordingly, with distance and contempt, like kids in a schoolyard angry when they are being called home to supper.”

Or: “Europeans really get turned on by American violence in that condescending manner in which some parents of 4-H farm children are aroused by the couplings of their children’s livestock. The get-off is to go tisk-tisk for shame, and then copy the style, as if to parody it. But this sort of parody has its source in a deeply-felt identification from which one reels with self-loathing... The American South is a great well of authenticity into which English musicians like the Stones feel they must occasionally dip their bejewelled fingers to come away aware and refreshed.”

That may go a long way toward explaining why, at least according to Elman’s account, the Stones treat most of the people around them with such contempt — after all, they’re just a bunch of crude pistolwhipper exotic Americans, and they sho can dance.

So what’s left? A sharply written, just-bitchy-enough picture of a scene of total alienation where nobody likes anybody very much and everybody settles for mildly hostile toleration in an atmosphere qf, finally, total pointlessness. But isn’t that what we decided in the first place? And besides, isn’t this whole thing just Business, where most everybody’s a Bastard? Elman’s form of elegant, jaded despair is as cheap as the Stones’: the last lines of his book are, “I am thirty-eight. Some people really do believe Time is Love.” To which I say, Only somebody as alternately dopey and incisively observant as this poor old bald misfit could possibly have written the first halfway decent thing about the .Stones and their tour, and I hope nobody else tries.

Lester Bangs

OFF THE WALL

GUERILLA THEATRE: Scenarios for Revolution by John Weisman (Doubleday Anchor) A little late, in that guerrilla theatre seems to be a by-gone phenomenon in the ’70s, but still surprisingly relevant. Weisman, who has written for Coast, the Detroit Free Press and is currently a TV Guide editor, presents guerilla theatre in the best possible way: personal recollections, in the form of letters, and a series of * ’ ♦ > scripts from such creative troupes as A The Bodacious Buggerila (Los Angeles), Li' New York’s Soul and Latin Theatre andO Berkeley’s crazed East Bay Sharks {Q (some of whom were involved in the |/ notorious Masked Marauders scam) isjK well as the more well-known San Fran^ cisco Mime Troupe.

THE TARANTULA IN ME by Craig Karpel (KLONH Books, 1795 Chestnut, San Francisco, CA 94123; 59 cents.) “A Review of a Title,” written by the only person who conceivably has a more off-the-wall perspective on rock than R. Meltzer. Brilliant, naturally, but the Dylan book aside, how come he left out Spider-man and the kitchen sink?

TV MOVIES • Leonard Maltin (New American Library)

The covet says that this baby has everything you want to know about more than 8,000 movies now being shown on TV, but that might be stretching things a bit. It won’t tell you Shirley Booth’s 1953 bra size or the true sinister purpose behind Tom Poston, but it does nicely supplement the crummy pile of Shopping With Nancy ads that passes for a TV book in your Sunday paper. Besides providing useful info like director, cast and dates, Maltin, who likes to pretend he’s seen all these films at the ripe old age of 18, also rates the potential pleasure of each on a scale ranging from **** for the hot snot to a simple BOMB. It does seem that most of the really good ones like “Hot Rod Girl” or “^peed Crazy” get the BOMB, but what can you expect from a tinkletailed geezer like Maltin?

Even if you don’t give a damn about TV or movies, the book provides for some very tasty reading, especially for synopsis freaks and terminal stomach flu patients. One logical progression follows another, and new genres are created by alphabetical order. For instance, there’s the Doctor Genre (Dr. Cyclops, Dr. No, Dr. Rhythm, Dr. Strangelove, Dr. At Large, Dr. At Sea, Dr. Kildare’s Victory, Dr. Blood’s Coffin, Dr. Satan’s Robot, Dr. Christian Meets The Woman, Doctor Takes A Wife, Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet) the Mister Genre (Mr. Universe, Mr. Soft Touch, Mr. Wise Guy, Mr. Music — probably a patient of Dr. Rhythm — Mr. Peabody And The Mermaid, Mr. Muggs Rides Again, Mr. Moto Takes A Chance, Mr. Moto Takes A Vacation) and the ever popular Johnny Genre — Johnny Allegro, Johnny Angel, Johnny Apollo, Johnny Cool, Johnny Dark, Johnny Eager, Johnny Come Lately, Johnny Guitar, Johnny Tiger, Johnny Trouble, Johnny Stool Pigeon, and Johnny Nobody.

People lacking in identity can perk up with I Am A Thief, I Am The Law, I Am A Camera, I Bury The Living, I Cover The War, I Cover The Waterfront, I Dood It (with Red Skelton), I Like Money, I Love Melvin, I Love Trouble, I Was Monty’s Double, I Married A Communist, I Was A Communist For The FBI, I Was A Shoplifter, and I Walked With A Zombie. Violent types can get off with Murder At 45 R.P.M., Murder On Approval, Murder Is My Beat, Murder Is My Business, Murder, Inc., Murder Over New York, Blood Alley, Blood In the Streets, Blood On The Arrow, Blood On The Moon, Blood On The Sun, and for real morpos, Kiss The Blood Off My Hands; romantics should cream dream over Love Crazy, Love Happy, Love Before Breakfast, Love Before Honor, Love On The Dole, Love On The Run, Love Under Fire, Love Slaves Of The Amazon, Love That Brute, Love That Bob, Loves Of Edgar Allen Poe, and the sublime Love Is A Ball.

Not forgetting, of course, Love Laughs At Andy Hardy. Ha ha ha.

Dick Johnson