FLASHBACKS TO THE STONES TOUR: ON THE ROAD TO BUFFALO

“There’s a lot of difference between being in the studio, or sitting around your hotel room and sweating it out onstage every night for two hours,” Keith said. “The band plays every night and the musicians trim off all excess flab...all the bullshit. And you end up with the basic fundamentals glowing brightly. ”

“I don’t consider myself the best rock star and I never have,” said Mick Jagger. “There are a lot of people who are good, and since I’m not really interested in white rock and roll I never go and see ’em.” But you do, you’ve seen Clapton, and Zeppelin, and Bowie. “Well, to be honest, I’m checking out the sound systems,” Jagger laughed. “I’m sure there are people who are better than I am, there must be, because I’m not very good. But I don’t really care. The Rolling Stones have never said they were the best rock and roll band or the greatest, ever. If you can find me a quote where we said we were...”

May 15, 1975: Peter Rudge’s office: Discussing what to do to open the outdoor shows, Jagger said, “Those kids are all on downs, aren’t they? They take some quaaludes and then some more downs and smoke pot and then they take heroin and then some cocaine and then some Ripple wine, right? Maybe we should all get together in here and take all of that stuff and see what we would feel like and what would entertain us...”

Someone mentions Altamont and Mick looks weary. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, “People tell me all the time that they had a good time there. Kids arrivin’ the day before...campin’ out and all that. Sometimes I think the only two people who didn’t have a good time there was me and the guy that got killed.”

“You know, I tried to explain this to someone the other day,” Mick said, “and he couldn’t understand. I said that rock and roll exists on all these different levels of music, and music exists on different levels. I’ve been playin’ rock and roll and blues, and I started playin’ blues when I was very young. 14.. .and that was mature music compared to 'Venus in Blue Jeans’ which was the hit at the time I started. The band I was in at the time was playin’ music written by 40 year old men. So this guy says to me the other day, ‘You’re over thirty, how can you write rock and roll songs?’ But I started off by singing sonos written by 40, 50, 60 year old men You Gotta Move’ was written by a 70 year old man, I mean what does it matter. The thing about rock and roll is — I never wanted to be a rock and roll star. I’ve never been into singing teenage lyrics, and when 1 started I did these songs written by old people. Perhaps that’s why people were sometimes shocked by my lyrics.. .well, not shocked, but interested, at a point where there was no real interest in lyrics...”

Baton Rouge, June 1: The assembled journalists spend a lot of time sitting around discussing whether the Stones are still relevant while they wait to talk to Mick. Jagger is shown an article that claims he doesn’t want “Cocksucker Blues” to be shown. “I’d like to reply to that actually,” he said, “I would like to get it out. But there’s no way we can get releases from some

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‘Idon’t consider myself the best rock star...I’m not very good.”

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of the people in it.” San Antonio: The Alamo — “I didn’t even know what the fuck it was,” Jagger said. Alice Cooper backstage: “Is it cool for Alice to wear cutoffs backstage?” asked Dave Libert on the phone, “Rudge said trousers must be worn at all times...?”

Kansas City: The first outdoor show, the Eagles and Joe Walsh hang out with Keith and Ronnie all night, Eagles manager Irv Azoff provides comic relief as he follows people around the hotel, wanting to know everything going on. In his room alone, watching Elvis on TV, Jagger makes a face. “Owwwh, he’s awful,” Mick says, “No, he’s not a parody of himself, that’s what he is.” At three a.m. the band rehearses in a basement ballroom. Jagger leans back in a chair at the very end of the room, watching the others. “This is when this band sounds the best,” Ian Stewart says, nodding his head in appreciation.

On the plane to Milwaukee: Keith dashes on, grabs the New York Times out of Jagger’s hands. “Aha!” Keith “the reviews...” Mick cracks up then, in his very best Monty Python high shriek says, ‘“He wrapped his mystique around him like a Gothic cloak’...not bad, actually.”

Then, “Uh...do you feel that you are a member of this group as much as... uh... you felt when you woke up or do you feel that your rebellion is less than when you...uh...formed the group last night?”

Attempting to talk seriously about the press, Mick said, “I don’t read any of the analytical stuff, those are the ones that I skip. I only look at the front pages or the pictures, actually. Someone asked me if I minded bad reviews, and I said no. As long as my picture is on the front page, I don’t care what they say about me on page 96.”

(My two favorite press statements culled from volumes written about the 1975 Stones tour: Wall Street Journal: “If you haven’t been to a Rolling Stones concert it’s a little tricky explaining what it’s like. The Rolling Stones came to New York City Sunday night and they showed what it was like, but if you weren’t there, it’s still hard to explain what it is.” And from San Francisco: “The great thing about Mick Jagger is that he knows the audience knows that he knows that they know he’s great.”)

Are you conscious of people watching you, analyzing you all the time? “No,” Mick replied. “Well, I’m not aware of it except when I’m onstage. Of course if people watch me, I see ’em watchin’ me...” What about people needing things from you, especially people on the tour? “Well, I don’t have that many problems, so if others do, then I don’t mind dealing with them. Maybe I just ignore my problems...I mean, of course I have problems, but not really day to day ones because I have people to look after me, y’know? I’m very lucky, I don’t have to pack my bags, I don’t have to worry about my airplane, I don’t have to worry about my cars. But then you have a lot of people who have emotional problems, and I don’t.” No tragic lost love? “No.. .it just doesn’t exist...you know what I mean, I’m very happy.” No loneliness? “Lonely... no, not lonely at all. Why should 1 be? I have my dearest friends with me, Keith, Charlie...most of the band are my friends, and a lot of other people who have been my friends for years... It’s not like I’m on tour and I’m the Lonely Rock Star. I mean forget it, doesn’t apply to me.”

Boston: Jagger is^ in his room, preparing to go to the gig atound five in the afternoon. Clutching a copy of CREEM and laughing, he says, “Look at what she did to this poor boy from Aerosmith,” he gasps to Annie Leibovitz. Well...he thinks he’s doing you, I venture. “She is dear, she is.” In a (rare appearance ,on this tour Marshall Chess is practically onstage at the Boston Gardens.. .halfway between an amp and...right in the spotlight; grinning, bobbing in time to, the music. (“Didja see Marshall oft drums?,” Rudge said later.) Racing out of the Boston Gardens Rudge turns and yells to some music business types, “COME ON../.you gotta keep up wif us...this ain’t fuckin’ Slade, y’know...” and then, “Oh!...There’s someone from Yes. Run him over, they beat us in the CREEM Poll...”

“I can tell you that all toursx are crucial, or none are crucial, arid both would be true,” Jagger asserted. “Yeah, I mean if we’d bombed out and no one would’ve shown up theft it would have been crucial, it would have been the end. But it wasn’t any more crucial than the last one. To me it wasn’t anyway. It was important, but crucial means more than important, it means make or break.”

“I didn’t think I was going to like this tour at all,” he continued, “I thought it was going to be just so repetitious of what we’d done before and I would be so bored...Well, bored isn’t the word, really. Just that I’d feel I’d done it all before. And happily I don’t feel that because the band is a slightly different band, enough different to make me interested in it. And I get off on the stage, especially the moving one. /

“When you’re on a big tour, and people expect a lot from you, there’s a lot of pressure. You have to learn to relax certain periods of the day. The more you bring yourself to relax, whatever method you use to do that, the better it is. Because when you’re trying to make it, all your energy is put into trying to make it. Then you realize you have to spend a lot of time cooling out. You have to be calm and effective and all your judgments are balanced because after awhile the pressure gets so much that a lot of bands just freak out on the road. Which has always been a thing of humor with us...if you can keep the humor it’s all right. People have a lot of different ways of letting out their inhibitions. Sex...like they fuck a lot, or destroy rooms...all this frustration. One takes it out on things — on people. I don’t honestly think that those are the ^best ways of doing it. I think sex is quite-important, sex does, give you a lot of release from tension. I get a lot of release of tension just physically anyway...onstage, so I don’t have a physical problem like that. If I was standing still like Bill I think I’d go mad.”

“I’m an introverted person,” Bill Wyman said when asked about his lack of movement, “I don’t really move because I don’t feel natural movin’. If I did move it would look wrong...very false. But there’s no tension, really. I just get right sort of into whatever’s happenin’ in the audience.. .things that happen between people in the audience, ' reactions to what Mick does...I think that’s really interestin’, it’s a_ lot of fun. Especially if the audience is aware of me watchin’ them, then some funny things happen. But none of the rest of the band is aware of that either, y’know. They think I just stand there as well, and don’t sweat all over . I present myself to the audience performin’, but not in a jump-around way. I get off on a few things, I dig it, I really do. But Mick isn’t aware of that... or Keith, or Charlie, and

" “Those kids ail take quaaludes, downs, pot, and then heroin, cocaine, some Ripple?...Maybe we should take all that stuff...” "

probably eighty per cent of the audience isn’t. But the:people around my area are.”

In the Milwaukee hotel Keith and Ronnie are being “interviewed” by some Chicago journalists in Keith’s room. Huge, red carpet-covered speakers, tape recorder and stereo take up halfthe room. The atmosphere is smoky; red scarves cover the lamps and dim the lights. The smell of incense as well as a pungent French perfume fills the air. “I’m going to put some of the new Stones tapes on and see if any of ’em pick up on it,” Keith mumbles, aside, and of course the reporters, having to practically lean into Keith’s face to hear what he’s saying, don’t. Somepne asks him why so many other groups give more access to the pre^s and Keith smiles arid -says, “Less people want to write about ’em...”

Keith Richards protects his privacy with music. Even though when he’s awake (usually after the shows) his hotel room doors may be open to all, the music blaring forth from the “heavy artillery” speaker's is loud enough to keep an entire hotel awake until long after the sun comes up. Way after the amateurs who can’t keep vampire hours have left the room. Leaving usually Keith, Ronnie, Mick, and often Billy Preston alone with each other to share a common language.

Keith would arrive in his room and create instant theater. Meticulously arranging the atmosphere...just so. A certain number of scarves tossed over lamps; the incense in holders, reggae tapes on, photos of Anita on the mirror, the drawers neatly arranged, all as he’d wait for his baggage to arrive. The scarf with the red mantras was turning gray...worn every day either around his neck or to tie up his hair like some mad gypsy. Someone said Keith put lemon in his hair, “To bring out the highlights?” Annie Leibovitz laughed.

In 1963 a “bio” penned by Brian Jones and sent to Stones fan club head Doreen Pettifer described his eyes as “Red (and bloodshot).” One inquired as to Keith’s health: “I couldn’t possibly do what I do onstage if I didn’t care.” he said. “People worry about you; they should worry about themselves. I haven’t heard too much of that on this trip, however.” Well...perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you and Ronnie smile at each other onstage so much. “Yes, but does a smile mean you’re healthy? I mdan you could be dying of cancer and still raise a smile occasionally. Fuck...yeah, I’m very grateful for people that worry about me and all, but it’s really a waste of time. I’ve got it under control as best I can, as well as anyone else. Probably better, if I can exercise the ego for a minute...and anybody that worries about me really shouldn’t.” Are you. ever scared onstage? “Scared? No, what is there to be scared of? It’s the best part of the day.”

Washington, D.C.: Talking in the dressing room to the Russian cultural attache, Mick tells of when they first tried to set up a Russian tour and he was asked what he would do to improve cultural standards of Russian youth. “I said that I thought they could improve their oum cultural standards without any help from me,” Jagger said. “Oh, that’s too philosophical for 'me,” the Soviet diplomat replied. “Got out of that one, didn’t he?,” Jagger said later.

Discussing what had been a particularly sedate audience Mick said, “I’d rather play to 2000 little kids than 18,000 adults. They should check ’em out at the door. ..throw all the bald headed ones out.”

D.J. Allison Steele is interviewing Mick: “Mick, I wanted to ask you how you feel on this tour with all of the fevered pitch..?’ “THE FEVERED

PITCH?” Mick laughs, and then, “Allison, I’m ashamed of you, look at your handbag, it’s disgustin’...like a groupie’s handbag with the nightgown and the hairbrush stickin’ out...” “Well Mick, I came right from the airport...”

After the show Ahmet Ertegun gives one of his parties for the band in a massive room of the Washington hotel. Bianca dagger walks around apparently looking for something she must have dropped on the floor. What’s she looking ior? asks someone. “Happiness,” Answers another.

“I don’t think Bianca cared whether I went to the White House or not,” Mick would say later. “She was quite happy to go on her own. And I was quite happy for her to go on her own. I mean I guess I could have been invited, but I wasn’t actually sent an invitation card, so I wasn’t bein’ rude. Anyway, I never woke up. But Bianca enjoys all that, because after all, she’s not doin’ anythin’ on the, tour apart from that, and she was in Washington...so she should go...I mean we’re a team, y’know, so she does that and I do what I do.”

Peter Rudge has an idea to use elephants in Memphis, as security, perhaps. Someone suggests that Mick ride one onstage. “This is beginnin’ to sound an awful lot like Chip Monck,” one of the stage crew mumbles under his breath. “But what would the elephant be wearin’?” Rudge asks slyly. “Better ring up Giorgio and get a bit o’ chiffon...” Determined to get the elephants in somehow when the day finally arrives, Rudge asks, “There’s no way we can get ’em walking around through the crowd? No? Well can one elephant stand on top of another one?”

The flight from Washington, D.C. to Memphis was nightmarish; lightning all around, altitude drops, even the brave ones are not smiling. Mick’s not on the plane, having chosen to drive... maybe he knew something. Arriving at the Memphis Hilton there is a fuckup with room reservations and — as if this all wasn’t enough Gimme Shelter is on the TV. I note that my notes that night read, “Bad vibes:..something is going to happen this July 4th...” The following day Keith and Ronnie,are detained in Fordyce, Arkansas, thus putting the place on the map. It’s the worst thing that happened all tour, thankfully.

Los Angeles, the L.A. Forum: Photographer Christopher Sykes crashes into Bill Wyman coming out of his dressing room. “Ah!,” Wyman shouts, “spoiling my solitude before the show!!” In Brian Jones’ 1963 “bio”

Wyman is listed as: “Bass, works during the day as storekeeper or something equally horrible. Only member of band married, only one who’ll ever be married.” Wyman, described in the Boston Globe as “his onstage demeanor akin to that of your friendly undertaker” is actually one of the wittiest on tour. Surveying himself in the mirror in a skintight lizard and leather outfit he said, “If I wear pants like this for the whole tour I’ll never be able to produce another child.” From his New Musical Express “Fingerprint File” questionnaire, done this summer: “Favorite rodent — Keith Moon; Pet hate — Allen Klein; Most hated pet — Ditto; Where can I get my jeans fixed — See pet hate; What would you like to be if you weren’t what you are? —Pierre Laroche.”

Chrissie Wood and Ronnie lie by the Beverly Wilshire Hotel pool and get some sun. Stephen Wyman, an amazing boy who knows the sizes of the largest radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes in the world, falls in love. Peter Rudge has the Bellevue Suite from where he conducts meeting?, receives nonstop phopecalls, and in

" “I think sex is quitq important, sex does give you a release from tension. I get a lot of release onstage.” "

general thrives on a perhaps necessary (in order to do thi? particular gig) aura of hysteria. Mary Beth Medley seems stunned by the backstage pass requests. Ryan O’Neal is insulted that he has to pay for his tickets, so he returns them. Lorna Luft seems bedazzled by Bianca Jagger. She follows Madame around for several days like a puppydog until Bianca is compelled to remark to a friend, “I do think it a bit strange that all we ever talk about is me.”

In the dressing room one night I hear the strains of “Happy.” Ah, Keith’s song I say, jumping up. “Are you kidding?,’’ laughs a friend, “they’re all Keith’s songs.”

Keith has received a letter from a girl who says she’s a great guitar player and a great fuck. She has stopped by to see him and will hopefully get to play for him. While he’s still asleep in the other room she sits on an amp and plays some Chuck Berry styled guitar. It soon becomes apparent that her desire i? to play...onstage — with the Stones. At the Forum. “Are you kidding? They’d never do that,” says

a friend. “A chick?? Onstage? With the Stones?” he goes off chuckling. “I just want to strut,” she says. “I know if I played with them they’d dig it...I could take them into a whole other thing, the thing of a girl onstage with them. Listen, I’ve jammed with a lot of people... Fanny... Isis asked me to be their guitar player. I’m not a groupie, and I’m not impressed. I’m a player, I was asked here, I thought I was going to play. At least jam with them...” Later Keith is leaving for the gig and leans out the car door to say to her, “Look, come around, or call me later, but about joining the Stones — I mean forget it, it’s done.

“You know with Ronnie we seem to be able to get back to the original' idea of the Stones, when Brian was with us in 1962, ’63,” Keith tells me. “Two guitars has always been my particular love because I think there’s more that can be done with that combination than almost any other instrument. But what screws most of that up, and this is the bag I fell into with Mick Taylor — whom I love dearly and I think is one of the most incredible guitar players in that kind of music you’ll ever get a chance to hqar — is that there’s this phony division between lead and rhythm guitar. It does not exist. Either you’re a guitar player or you’re not. And if you are & guitar player playing with another guitar? player, there’s no point In designating one thing to one... there’s no freedom there.

“This way with Ronnie is more like what it was with Brian, because we had basically the same ideas about guitar when Brian was still very interested in guitar. It’s two guitar players and one sound. At times you may not be able to tell who’s doing what because the sound is focused and it is one sound created by two people. Two guitars can be a disaster, often the easy way round is to have one be lead and one be rhythm, and split it up like that. .But if you want the two of them to produce one sound, the guys playing them have to be together. They’ve got to know ‘what they’re doing. With Ronnie it worked out. I knew it would because we’d already done an album together. It was also the fact that Ronnie was so obvious. I mean when Mick Taylor left the band everyone said Ronnie Wood must join the band. it was so obvious because we had all worked with him and everybody knew him and after we tried various others it just became So obvious there was no escaping it. We just had to own up that we were an English rock and roll band, and not just English but London. And’ that’s why Ronnie and I burst into gales of laughter at a certain word that nobody else...all those little things on the road that become such a big advantage.”

TURN TO PAGE 72.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 38.

Peter Rudge: Elton wants to give us a party after the show in Denver, okay? Keith: Only if he gives us a Rembrandt each.

Watching a videotape of the TAMI Show Rudge asks, “D’you think we could rent that crowd??”'

“I always love how sometimes you say, ‘So glad to be here in...ummmm ...errrr...and then you clear^your throat,” Annie Leibovitz laughs with Mick, “when you forget where the hell you are...” It always gets such a hugeresponse, I say. “I know,” Mick cracks up, “they’re all so proud of their grotty old towns...”

Bloomington, Indiana: “The audience is all going to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Mick tonight,” Paul Wasserman said, “but this is Indiana, we’ll probably have to pass out a sheet with the words.” “Bloomington,” said Mick, “Christ.. .Bloomington.. .1 thought it was a department store.” One night Atlantic Records’ Danny Markus is peeling oranges, and tossing the peels on the floor. Don’t do that... “Listen,” he says, “this is Detroit, the whole placq is the floor.” Peter Rudge turns to Woody, “About all your backstage guests Ronnie; this isn’t like the Faces where you have to fill up the auditorium to make it look sold out...” Watching a Black Sabbath videotape Qllie Brown laughs and says, “Man, I could never play in a band like that... too loud.” “Too nothing,” adds Newman Jones! “That’s why I like the Stones,” Ollie says, “they got class, and a little bit of soul.”

“Every night I go out there and say to myself, please God please, don’t let Jagger pull my wig off,” Preston laughed. Following an introduction at Madison Square Garden where Mick introduced Billy as “This is Bi//y Preston, he’s staying at the St. Moritz and he likes white boys!,” Jagger later laughed, “I can’t say anything at all about boys.. .blacks.. .faggots.. .white boys...onstage, or off.”

The Acts Mick Jagger Is Scared To Perform

“I am inhibited onstage,” Mick Jagger admitted. “To a certain extent, yeah...I mean there are certain things you wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t throw myself into th£ crowd.. .sometimes I feel like doin’ that though. When we played that really hot gig I just felt like takin’ all my clothes off.” Why didn’t you, then? “Well, I’m inhibited. Besides, I’d probably get arrested.”

“I can’t say that I feel like that every day, it’s just one thing I can think of. Physical limitations and ye%, I have inhibitions because I have to play within a musical reference. If you wander too far away from it^lhen the band gets lost and I mean if I just completely went off, which I can do at certain points, and lost control then it would be very exciting, but the band wouldn’t know what I was doing. And I mean you can’t warn v the band and say, ‘Well, I’m going to lose control here’, because you don’t know if you will or where.”

“I lose control, and then come back. Like if I hit you on the face and you went onto the floor, you would be slightly stunned and then you would come back and focus and return. If I hit you again you would go down and lose focus and then, come back.” But I’d hardly have a choice... “Well, I have no choice eitherfBut I come back...” Is it the best part of the show for you? “Yes,”

Jacksonville, following a dinner with some of Mick’s upperclass English friends. After Mick arrived late, and alone and asked if anyone had ordered for him someone at the table mumbled, “I can see a whole series of such evenings...Will he come, won’t he? Should we order for him, shouldn’t we? What do you think he would like...” Later Mick was talking about women: “People always give me this bit about us bein’ a macho band,” Mick said, “and I always ask them to give me examples...” “Under My Thumb”... “Yes, but they always say ‘Starfucker’, and that just happened to be about someone I knew.

“There’s really no reason to have women /on tour,” he continued, “unless they’ve got a job to do. The only other reason is to fuck. Otherwise they get bored...they just sit around and moan. It would be different if they did everything for you, like answer the phones, make the breakfast, look after your clothes and your packing, see if the car was ready, and fuck. Sort of a combination of what Alan Dunn does and a beautiful chick.”

Hampton Roads, Virginia: Ian Stewart sits at the grand piano in the lobby of the 1776 Inn. Amidst the Persian carpets and the fake restored colonial surroundings he plays “Blueberry Hill.” Inside the ballroom a farewell party goes on, and Mick and Charlie walk around distributing blue velour bathrobes with “Rolling Stones” in gold to the crew as gifts. The next night, Danny Markus says to Keith, “This is the last indoor show and I hope it’s going to be great.” “Tell that to the members of the band who are awake,” Keith answered.

I’tn drinking white wine in the dressing room and Bill Wym^n says menacingly, “Don’t drink that.” What? “No, seriously,” hesays, deadpan. “Y’know sometimes we can’t control ourselves. Once me and Brian and Keith wore in Germany and these cops outside the dressing room were hassling 'the kids and we got so annoyed with them that we poured out half a bottle of whiskey and pissed into if, and offered them the bottle. ‘Here,’ we said, ‘Have one on us’, and they said ‘Thanks man’...raised the bottle, and drank it.”

“Personally. I don’t like to do long solos,” Keith s&id, “Ronnie likes to do extended things occasionally, but I don’t like to meander on and on. I just like to do short and sweet if I can. No, it’s not lack of ego...everybody’s got an ego. In actual fact they don’t come into this band except where they’re supposed to. I mean just to put yourself up on that stage, you’ve got to have an enormous ego. It’s just what you do with it in your spare time. You can bloat it, or put it to sleep, forget about it, or just live with it. An ego is something that everybody has to deal with in their own way. Unfortunately with a lot of people it takes over.. .you can see it a thousand times, especially in this business. You can watch somebody who is a good guitar player, or'a good piano player or singer who will believe their own press clippings in six months. And that’s massaging the ego, feeding jit, stuffing it.”

“I try to be in control of my ego because I’ve seen myself go off the rails on tours,” said Jagger. “Just my ego,..I start ordering people around, I get really...difficult to deal with. I’m not moody on tours, I’d just like to be on my own, sometimes. Just like an hour a day, apart from the time I’m asleep. And when you’re asleep you’re not always on your own...” .

Jacksonville, Keith’s room: The sound is down on the TV set and . people (some members of the band and a few friends) listen to pew Stones and reggae tapes. Jim Dandy comes on* the screen and everyone watching cracks up at his facial grimaces. “Well... so far I like his face,” Mick camps. At -the ^nd of the song he mumbles, “It’s a living..,” Linda Ronstadt is on next, and Ronnie yells1 “HURRY UP!!!”

Buffalo, last stop on the Tour of the Americas: Again, Keith’s room, eight or nine in the morning. Billy,^ Keith*, Mick and Ronnie have listened to Rod Stewart’s new LP, made copies of tapes for each other to take home, talked for hours about music, ordered breakfast and now watch Frankie Valli being interviewed by Dinah Shore. “No wonder they didn’t put your picture on the Four Seasons album cover,” someone says. “LOOK AT HIS JEWELRY!!” Mick screams. “C’mon Frankie, show us your belly chain!!” Keith yells. Collapsing into giggles all around.

The doctors who came to check Mick’s throat, or give the occasional B12 shot, sound like they’ve stepped out of a Marx Brothers movie: Hyman Stockfish, R.F. Greathouse. Talking about headaches and pills, Mick said, “Codeine is so ridiculous in this country. They act like it’s such a big deal, codeine. Then, there are these little pills for c^iarrhea that have a touch of opiurrl in them...like if you took maybe 300 of them you might get a buzz. So, ju$t for two, if you want them and the doctor is out, you can’t get ’er)n. It’s easier to score heroin in this country...”

“They sell you guns here. My first experience with that was with Keith in Arizona and we wanted to buy a gun. Just to see if we could. So we got two guns, and then went into a bar for a drink, and they asLed us for I.D. And there we had these two .fuckin’ guns that we’d just bought wrapped up on the 6ar...We didn’t need any I.D. for the guns.”

Buffalo, last night of tour: Mick smiles sheepishly and asks, “How’s your memory? Do you remember what I wore the first time we were in Buffalo?” Eight year old Serafina Watts asks what I’m planning to do after the tour. Write about it, I suppose. “Be sure to mentiQn me,” she instructs briskly, “I’m very important.” Then, “Is Mickette ready?” Shirley Watts makes a face and says, “She’s terribly camp.” Talking about Charlie’s “press” on the tour, Shirley laughs, “All the things they say about him.. .looking like a mad monk, Rasputin, frightening... once they said, he was filled to the eyeballs with alcohol. Him, of all people...”

“I’ve had two showers and one bath since the start of the tour and I still smell sweeter than Jagger,” Keith laughed on the way to the final concert.

“There is a perpetual adolescent influence,” Jagger said during the tour, “because what I was doing when I was eighteen I’m doing now. I mean the room I had at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle is the same room I would have had in 1964.1 mean it wasn’t any grander, it was the same room. And I’m doing the same things, slightly different of course. Instead of traveling on commercial planes we’ve got our pwn, but it’s still the same thing. And the responsibilities I have are much less than someone who used to come to our concerts when they were 17 and now they’ve gotten married and have five children and two cars and three mortgages. I’m married and have children and all that, but I don’t sort of worry about it because I’m doing what I did before., when I was an adolescent. I only discovered this really by looking at other people in rock and roll...it perpetuates your adblescence, for''good or bad.

“I don’t know if it’s good or bad, because I can’t evaluate it. It feels real nice and I don’t give a shit...I don’t feel responsibilities other people feel. Obviously, bein’ in a rock band makes you*more adolescent than if you worked in an IBM company and really had to worry about your future. I don’t worry about the future, I’m living out my adolescent dreams perpetually.”