Latest / GARAGE TO STADIUMS Music History Podcast / Part 1 The Story of The Rolling Stones: The world's greatest rock & roll survivors
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- Garage to Stadiums The Story of The Rolling Stones Part 1 Host Dave Anthony Guest: Christopher Standford Unknown Speaker 0:01 Dave, Hi there. I'm Dave Anthony, and this is the garage to stadiums podcast Unknown Speaker 0:06 rated as one of the top 5% of podcasts globally. On each episode, we tell you the story of how one of our music legends rose from obscurity to fame and play some of the songs that marked that journey. Unknown Speaker 0:22 Welcome to garage to stadiums. Today's episode is the story of the Rolling Stones. Their incredible story begins not in a garage or a studio or on a stage, but on a gray train platform in Dartford, 20 miles east of London. Mick Jagger, 18 arms full of American blues records crossed paths with Keith Richards 17. The two had first met at seven year olds in primary school, but this reunion, bonded by Chuck Berry and muddy waters albums, would strike a partnership that changed music forever. From that moment, the stones roared out of London clubs to conquer the world, they sold over 250 million albums, terrified parents everywhere, and somehow, through addictions, arrests, deaths and near collapse kept rolling along the way, they made era defining albums, staged some of the most infamous concerts in history, and in their later years, even reinvented the business of touring itself. This isn't just the tale of a band, it's the saga of survival, reinvention and rebellion, and at its core, it's the story of two seven year old kids from Dartford, Nick and Keith, who became undisputed icons of rock and roll. Unknown Speaker 1:37 Here to tell their 60 year story is the author of The Rolling Stones 60 years Christopher Sanford, he's written acclaimed biographies of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Sting and Kurt Cobain, as well as books on John F Kennedy and Roman Polanski. For more than two decades, he's written about music and film for major media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. Rolling Stone magazine has called him the preeminent author in his field. Today, he splits his time between London and Seattle and joins us now from Seattle. Welcome to garage, to stadiums. Chris, all right. Thanks, Dave, nice to be here Unknown Speaker 2:16 the book that you've written and updated, Rolling Stones, 50 years, 60 years, et cetera. How did you get to know the stones for some of the research? Well, I'm an old time fan. Unknown Speaker 2:29 I don't quite go back to day one, but I go back to the kind of 6768 Unknown Speaker 2:34 era when I was a kid. And largely it was because I was downstairs at my house in England as a child, and I think it was a dark Thursday night, and there was a venerable British music show, Top of the Pops, that came on every Thursday night. And somehow, my father, who was a very great guy, but a reputable, upright member of the British community, you know, establishment naval officer was upstairs somehow watching Top of the Pops. And I can only imagine it was because he happened to be channel hopping, rather than because he had an affinity for the pop music of the 60s. But I was downstairs, and I remember him screaming in a sort of outrage is I was quite worried. At first. I thought he might have had an accident or something, and I ran upstairs to see what the problem was. And the problem was, he was so offended by The Rolling Stones performing, probably, let's spend the night together, or maybe Jumping Jack Flash. I think it was probably, let's spend the night together. He was he was just paralyzed with indignation. These five young sort of thugs could be on his television screen in the middle of the evening and singing these lascivious lyrics. And I think at that point, I thought, these guys are good. Unknown Speaker 3:58 They've offended my father, which, of course, is very attractive, right that age. And they sort of got into my bloodstream. So I began a long, eventually juvenile event, originally juvenile, and then I guess, grown up fascination with them, and over the years, I met them a couple of times. I don't, I can't really claim to be intimate friends, or I've been backstage in various rooms in which they've been circulating. The one I would claim to know is dear old Bill Wyman, who I had some dealings with recently, who's, who's, of course, as we all know, no longer in the band, but a really interesting guy with great stories to tell. So I've come to know Bill quite well, which has been fun over the recent years. Can we talk a little bit about Jagger, Richards, Jones, watts, Wyman, just sort of briefly on, you know, where they grew up, what their family life was like? Sure. Well, I mean, there's a misconception among certain people. Steve. Unknown Speaker 5:00 All the stones are all impeccably working class, kind of downtrodden in Britain's, you know, very stratified class structure. And not quite true. I mean, Brian Jones came from Cheltenham, which is about as refined a town as it's hard to think of a North American equivalent, but somewhere in the sort of maybe Long Island Massachusetts, you know, Cape Cod, sort of ambience to it, very Genteel. Unknown Speaker 5:30 Admittedly, he was sort of run out of town eventually, but nonetheless, he grew up in some comfort as did as did Mick and I went to Dartford Grammar School Unknown Speaker 5:41 as part of my penance for writing about Mick a long time ago, I went to the school he was educated at, and they extracted from the file an old fashioned filing cabinet. They brought out his leaving report, confidential report, written when he was 18, as a reference for either a college admission or even a job. And what was striking about it was, I think I was probably the only stones archivist to have got that particular document. What's striking about it is how true to life it is today. It says things like Unknown Speaker 6:21 this, boy has mildly bohemian tendencies, but he has a fine mind. He's very self centered, very focused, not self centered. So very self focused. When he decides to achieve something, he undoubtedly achieves it. And you know, he has he compensates for lack of sheer intellectual willpower with with deep determination and ambition. And I mean that strikes 60 years later, you could say that's pretty much the mick blueprint across town. Meanwhile, was Keith in Dartford, literally on the other side of the tracks, because there is a railroad dividing the two the two parts of the town. And he grew up in a slightly more bleak, Unknown Speaker 7:10 say, working class culture. Hardly saw his dad, who worked such long hours. And I think he had quite a permissive mother, Doris, who, who? You know, he was an only kid. I think he got away with quite a lot as an adolescent and a teenager. And you could argue that some of those characteristics are still clearly the case today. You know, the self disciplined, focused Mick and the more laissez faire, not so detail orientated, Keith, and finally, Charlie was Unknown Speaker 7:43 very impeccably working class, but I think in the sense that he was also extremely house proud and very fastidious about things like his appearance and being punctual and being being, you know, efficient. And you could say that those were qualities that he displayed throughout the rest of his life as well, and just happened to have this miraculous gift for rhythm. So they were, they were a disparate bunch of people. They came from both sides of the British social system, and I think you can see the ingredients for what they still are today, in their early days. It's, it's an interesting but for a train ride together, we could not, you know, maybe not have the Rolling Stones that that Dartford platform story is iconic in the history of rock and roll. Do you want to tell it a little bit about it? Well, yeah, I mean, Mick and Keith had met as kids. And there's a there's a photo in one of the books I've written, showing them age nine or 10 together in a school group. And ironically, it's at Wembley Stadium. Ironic in that, you know, 25 years later, they returned in somewhat greater style, but they were at a school outing of some kind to go to England's soccer stadium together. And so there you see the spindly legged Keith, age 10, with his rather prominent ears, and in the middle of the group behind him, there's Mick, who is staring intently at the camera lens and holding a cat that had walked past, apparently, the group, and he'd clutched it to himself. And I can't help but think that there is a way there that Mick was, even at that age, ready to project himself in front of a camera. You know, he had a prop. There's a cat. He's the only kid who picked the cat up, and he's got that kind of intense Mick look, you know, staring right down the camera lens, whereas Keith has got that, I don't care, you know, look. So, I mean, they, they were buddies as kids, then they fell apart. They they moved apart because Mick went to a different school to Keith, and they. Unknown Speaker 10:00 Reunited in 61 Unknown Speaker 10:02 October of 61 when they both happened to Yes, get on a train at Dartford station, which is not, God knows, particularly distinguished by anything else, but it is distinguished by this big bang moment where Mick was going up diligently to study London School of Economics. Keith was only going a couple of stops down the line to what was then Sidcup Art College, which was not a very academically pronounced place. He was basically killing time looking for some way out of it, and spent a lot of his time practicing the guitar. So he had a guitar Mick had albums. Chuck Berry, Unknown Speaker 10:50 you're nutty waters. Unknown Speaker 11:02 And you know, you don't see those too often at Dartford in 61 so they made a connection, and by the time Keith got off the train two stops later, they'd exchanged numbers. And yeah, the rest is history. Interestingly, I did find a guy at the London School of Economics, he's since passed away, who was mixed tutor, mixed professor at that time, Walter Stern was his name, and he kept really interesting notes of every time he met his students, he wrote not only what they did academically, but anything else he thought was interesting, and he actually wrote a note Unknown Speaker 11:43 that particular evening about the day that Mick and Keith met. And this is Walter stern, and he said something like, Mr. Jagger informed me that he'd met an old acquaintance, and he intended to be doing some blowing. I think he referred to it was presumably artwork. And stern went on to say, two days later, Mr. Jagger appeared in my office wearing a pair of blue Winkle picker shoes. Unknown Speaker 12:13 The next couple of weeks, he noticed this slow change in mix whole attitude. One day he came in and he said, Mr. Jagger, conducted our meeting today. I noticed he put his feet up on my desk throughout the entire meeting, and he saw this wonderful change from this rather Unknown Speaker 12:33 middle class, impeccably well behaved young Mike Jagger, as he was called to the Mick Jagger, we kind of know today, and this was all to do with Keith's influence, first couple of weeks, months that they reunited. So it was a wonderful sort of living image of how Mick, Mike transformed into Mick as seen through the eyes of his university tutor. Wow, that's, that's a interesting research there. Did, did do you think that there was an effect? The other way? Did Mick influence Keith? Unknown Speaker 13:11 Well, I think Mick was much more organized, even in those days. I mean, the fact that he had these mail order albums, Unknown Speaker 13:19 I think that impressed Keith. And if you read Keith's book, I'm sure you have, he talks about how Mick was together, and he, you know, he, he knew all the catalog numbers, even of the albums he could remember, you know, these long digits that attached to muddy Waters's second or third album. I think Keith was impressed by that. Whether Keith became more organized and more efficient as a result of me is a moot point. I don't see any great evidence of that. I think he was smart enough to see that Mick was another part of the equation, and a very important one. So there, you know, as has been said many times, they were two halves of the picture. And it was It was miraculous. They came together when they did so. How did this cast of characters from varying backgrounds, as Chris described, come together as a band? A key figure was guitarist Brian Jones, a charismatic, complicated character. By 21 he'd already bust overseas, fathered three children with three different women, and developed a deep love for the R B of Chuck Berry and muddy waters. In 1962 Unknown Speaker 14:30 Brian was guesting at the Ealing jazz club in West London with British blues pioneer Alex corner and his widely admired band Blues incorporated Brian guested on guitar under the stage name Elmo Lewis in tribute to his slide guitar hero, Elmore James. When he tore into Elmore James song, dust my broom, two young men in the crowd, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, were electrified. Unknown Speaker 14:59 You. Unknown Speaker 15:00 Yeah, Unknown Speaker 15:05 they introduced themselves after the show and learned Brian was starting a band. Jones had also placed an ad in jazz news, which brought in pianist Ian Stewart, and soon Jagger and Richards joined too, rehearsing with Jones and bassist Dick Taylor, that lineup Jones, Richards on guitars, Jagger on vocals, and Stewart on piano and Taylor on bass, was the seed that would grow into the Rolling Stones. So how did the stones get their name? Picture This Brian Jones phoned to his ear talking to a club owner, trying to convince him to let the group have their first gig. The club owner asked Ryan, so what's the band called? Panic. Brian glances down on the floor. Is the album The Best of muddy waters. Track five. Side one is called Rolling Stone blues. Ah, where the Rolling Stones, he blurts. Later, they tack on the G to the end of Roland, and on July 12, 1962 at the marquee club in London's Soho neighborhood, was their first gig. The Myth of Bill Wyman being recruited by this band they were. Was it true that, you know, Wyman had a amplifier or some sort of, you know, equipment. That's what got him in. Yeah, he went to a pub in, appropriately enough, a place called World's End in the in the wrong part of London, which is where they were then squatting, Mick, Bryan and Keith. And I think what really impressed him was, first of all, he did have a large amp. And secondly, he had a certain amount of money in his pocket because he had a job, and he used that to buy them drinks and hand round cigarettes. And I mean, they were, they were stone broke. And I think the very fact that he could, he could offer around beer and cigarettes and had his own equipment, was as much a calling card as his music, and he was also significantly older. I mean, when you're 19, someone who's 2526 Unknown Speaker 17:10 is a sort of different thing. It's not so pronounced 50 years later, but at that time, they were still, Mick was at college, and the other two were dropouts, and they were really, you know, young kids, basically, whereas Bill had a family. I mean, he had a child at that stage, and he was into pop music. He was into the sort of top 20 hits of the day. He had Brylcreem, he had oily hair, and I don't think he pressed the right buttons for the stones, except the material one, and that was enough. And I don't think they were also inundated with other candidates. I mean, it's a pretty unpromising gig at that time, Unknown Speaker 17:51 bass player for these unknown, you know, scruffy guys living in their little room. So he got the gig based on that in need of a steady drummer, the stones began pursuing Charlie Watts, already well known on the London blues circuit for his refined jazz train style. At the time, like Brian Jones, he too was spending time drumming with blues incorporated that group led by Alexis corner, widely regarded as the father of British blues. As we just mentioned, the stones aggressively courted Charlie, though he was reluctant to give up steady gigs and reliable paychecks for an unproven blues group to sweeten the offer, the others even cut back on cigarettes and food, pooling what little money they had to guarantee him a steady weekly wage. Still, the decision weighed on Charlie remain in the safe embrace of Britain's blues Godfather Alexis corner, or take a gamble on a scrappy young band still fighting to prove itself. Watts finally joined in early 63 bringing the swing timing, steadiness and professionalism the stones needed from then on, he was revered by peers and fans alike as the band's unshakable, universally respected backbone. Educated in graphic design, he later applied his artistic eye to stage sets and tour logos, helping shape the stone's iconic visual identity. Alongside Mick Jagger in 1963 the Rolling Stones hit the road across the UK, finding their stride with raw, high energy takes on R, B, classics by Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and other black American pioneers, fronted by three striking figures, Brian Jones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, the band quickly drew a legion of fans. Within months, they weren't just climbing the charts. They were even outscoring the Beatles in some early polls of England's most popular bands, a young man named Andrew Luke Oldham appeared on the scene just 19 years old. Andrew had been an assistant to Brian Epstein, The Beatles mastermind learning the art of publicity. Unknown Speaker 19:58 Thanks for listening to. Unknown Speaker 20:00 Garage to stadiums need more. Visit us on all social platforms and garage to stadiums.com. For bonus content. Unknown Speaker 20:09 In April 63 the editor of a London based pop music weekly newspaper recommended to Andrew Oldham go see this blues band in Richmond, which was about 45 minutes west of London. Oldham walks in the air, thick with cigarette smoke, and watches the stones tear through their set. He's hooked within days, he's their manager. At first, he tries the Brian Epstein Beatles playbook, matching suits, tidy hair, clean cut charm, but then Oldham has a marketing positioning revelation. The stone shouldn't be like the Beatles. They should be their opposite. Out go, the suits. In come, the mismatched clothes, the long hair that don't give a damn attitude. He wants them raunchy, unpredictable, in his own words. Quote, threatening, uncouth, animalistic, unquote. He hammers it home with a headline that will haunt parents everywhere. The headline says, Would you let your daughter go with a rolling stone? And Chris, you could say that Oldham wasn't shy about tough calls either, as in the case of the eliminated Rolling Stone. Ian Stewart, Unknown Speaker 21:15 yeah. I mean, he was very unlucky in that he was, he was one of the first in, maybe the first in, yeah, and he was auditioning for Brian. And I think he was obviously talented. He had that boogie woogie piano down, like very few other British piano players at that time, but he didn't look the part. And when, when, I think when Andrew Oldham came in in early 63 as the manager. And of course, it's extraordinary to think that Oldham was actually younger than Mick and Keith. I mean, he was 19 at the time, and they were just turning 20. Well, Mick was turning 20, and I very image conscious, and he didn't want anything that looked old or decrepit or smacked of the previous generation. And I think poor old Ian had a rather prominent chin, Unknown Speaker 22:08 but more importantly, he was just cheerfully old fashioned. I mean, he liked to put a propped his pint mug up on the top of the piano when he played. And he had a slightly even then, he had a slightly prominent belly, and he didn't care. So Unknown Speaker 22:26 he was out basically on the image. And I think Bill Wyman was quite lucky to survive as well, because he was, as we just said, he was the wrong side of, you know, respectable. He was 26 I think when he joined. And I think Oldham had doubts about Bill, but there was no compelling alternative to Bill, so he stayed. And of course, Ian Stewart stayed in, in the roadie capacity, and he was, I think, really heroic to do this incredible. I mean, stick around and play on these albums and move the equipment. Yeah, I never complained. And I think the one great thing he brought to the table, and Bill was telling me about this just the other day, was that he was the one guy. Stewart was the one guy They all listened to. And he would tell them, you know you were crap tonight, Unknown Speaker 23:19 or you know you you know, you didn't that song didn't work. Or, you know, there's too many Chinese chords, which is what he would call anything in a minor key, you know, anything pretentious that's straight, too far from the blues, he would say, That's Chinese shit. Let's move forward to, you know, the stones, of course, covering all the RnB, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, all those kind of bands and, you know, the Muddy Waters and all that kind of stuff. In 64 like the Beatles are already writing their own songs. The stones are still doing covers for the most part. What was the turning point? How did you know someone convinced them, hey, it's you got to bear down here, and how did they choose? Well, you tell us who they chose and why? Well, it was, again, it was Andrew Oldham's initiative. He was smart enough. He'd had some dealings with the Beatles. He was a sort of under publicist, under under Epstein, and he saw how much money could be made writing your own songs. And, you know, obviously the your career is going to be longer. Ideally, if you have your own material, you can only produce, you can only, you know, do a sort of human jukebox thing of other people's material for so long. So he was smart enough to see that was the future. And he, he, he sort of latched on to Mick and Keith as the two people who who could do that. Now there's still a debate to this day about whether Brian was elbowed out by Oldham, or whether Brian self destructed, or whether he was this wonderful songwriter who who was never given. Unknown Speaker 25:00 The opportunity to fulfill that. I think the reality is that Mick and Keith had the determination, and they may not have had the natural talent at first, but they had the focus, particularly Jagger, and they were the ones who were prepared to, you know, trial and error didn't happen overnight, go away and try and come up with songs, some of which are pretty awful to begin with. And, you know, it didn't happen in a flash of inspiration, but they they were prepared to do it. And I don't think Brian was the kind of guy who would lock himself in a room with a guitar and a piano for hours or days on end in the sort of monastic self discipline way. He just wasn't that kind of guy he would live for the moment, hedonistic. You know, what's the pop star lifestyle, if you will? That's what attracted him early on. So they had the they had the application. Unknown Speaker 26:01 It's arguable whether they had the natural talent that Brian did, but they had the application those two, what probably happened was Oldham said to them, listen, the Beatles are making a fortune. McCartney and Lennon are making a fortune writing these songs. Why don't you try? You know, come up with something because of stones manager Andrew Oldham's Beatles connections with Brian Epstein. 1963 Unknown Speaker 26:27 brought an unexpected gift. John Lennon and Paul McCartney offered the Rolling Stones a song they had written called I Want To Be Your Man. It became a hit, but more importantly, it lit a fire. The stones realized they couldn't just play other people's songs. They did need to heed Oldham's advice and start writing their own tunes. Mick has long had a Unknown Speaker 26:50 reputation, I'm going to call it, for borrowing Unknown Speaker 26:55 imagery, musical styles, whatever, through his career, there's a seminal moment Unknown Speaker 27:02 on the Tammy set of gigs in the US where he watches the famous James Brown perform. I mean, talk about high energy performer. James Brown may have been the guy. What do you think Mick took away from that series of concerts? Yeah, well, he learned a lot. He was a quick study. I did talk to the late Mary Wilson of The Supremes. She was on that bill the Tammy show, and she she remembered James Brown being furious that the stones were closing the show. Not he, not James Brown himself. And he threw around certain, you know, racially insensitive comments about, you know, these boys from England, you know, and I'm a star, and what the hell's going on here. But I think they took away a lot from each other, the stones and James Brown. I mean, he was also smart enough to see that they had an ear for a pop tune, a pop hook. And Mick was very He was fast to learn. Not only did he learn from James Brown at that show and other shows, but even on their first visit to the states in June of 64 Unknown Speaker 28:13 whenever he had a spare moment, he wasn't going off to, you know, get high, or even necessarily women or any of those things. He was sitting in the balcony anonymously at the Apollo Theater, for instance, in Harlem, listening to whatever review was on that night and watching and he would absorb all of this information, how people moved on stage, how they got an audience up on their feet, how you keep an audience from losing interest halfway through the set all these things, he was smart enough to realize he had things he could learn, and he did learn them. So he was always on a quick a quick study by 1964 Brian Jones was still living it up off stage, and ended up fathering three more children by various women, while Mick and Keith, under Andrew Oldham's orders, locked themselves away to write their first big ballad that they wrote was as tears go by, lyrics by Mick, Melody by Keith, given to a 17 year old Mary Ann faithful, a former folk singer turned pop star, but no Unknown Speaker 29:20 I can see Unknown Speaker 29:33 Jagger later admitted it was a very melancholy song for a 21 year old to write Unknown Speaker 29:39 Their first number one hit wouldn't come until February 65 with their own the last time. Unknown Speaker 29:53 But as the band rolled into 1965 Brian kept chasing the party and started dating model. Unknown Speaker 30:00 Anita pallenberg, a glamorous mix of German and Italian heritage, and as you will hear, Anita would soon become one of the most fateful figures in the stones history. If the stones had a true turning point, perhaps it would be in 1965 with their new song satisfaction, that July, the song didn't just top the charts, it blew apart the charts with Keith's buzzsaw guitar riff, Unknown Speaker 30:34 the mix sneering rebellious lyrics, complete with the gloriously ungrammatical can't get now. Unknown Speaker 30:49 It became an anthem for restless youth everywhere, sealing the Jagger Richards partnership as Rock's next great songwriting force and true to their now bad boy image, the lyrics and satisfaction with the phrase quote, trying to make some girl unquote, had the song banned by the BBC the story of satisfaction being conceived is quite an interesting one that really launched the stones to the you know, top of the heap at some levels, that song was so devastatingly impactful on radio, as we know, it's still really the signature song. It came about in May of 65 Unknown Speaker 31:27 when they were on one of their frenetic kind of concert tours of the states. And in those days, you paid 30 minutes. You didn't even usually play that often, that long, because the thing would devolve into a riot after the second or third song. So they all went back to this little motel in Clearwater, Florida. The Gulf motel, which is in is still there, but it's changed hands and changed name. And somewhere in the middle of the night, Keith, Keith had this riff apparently going on in his head, and he he had a very early tape recorder, a primitive sort of cassette recorder by the bed, and he hummed, and I think, strummed with his acoustic guitar, a few notes of what was going on in his head. Yeah, he apparently had fallen asleep soon after recording the riff, and in the morning, Heath rewinds the tape, finds this gem of a riff at the beginning, and on the rest of the tape, all that he can hear is him snoring. He claims he had no recollection of the riff. So thankfully, at least taped it exactly. And I mean, and as with all almost every great song, I mean, it was there in this sort of, you know, in embryonic form, but it it needed working up. And I think what really did it was When Ian Stewart, who we were talking about a minute ago, the unsung hero, the stones, uh, Stu went off a couple of days later. They were in Hollywood, and they went to the RCA studios there. Stu went off and got a fuzz box at some local musical equipment store. And they were quite rare at that time. I mean, just coming into the market, I think Eric Clapton was maybe using one, but not too many others, and they put Keith's guitar through this fuzz box, and it changed the whole sound of the thing. Unknown Speaker 33:22 The Unknown Speaker 33:28 and it went from being what had originally been in Keith's mind, I think more of a Stax, like Soul sound. He envisioned horns, where we now hear that crunching guitar riff. He heard horns, for instance. So it was only in this the guitar sounded, I think, to him, thin when he played it without the box, when he plugged it into the fuzz box, it got that nice raspy sound that we all know and love. And I, you know, I think Mick added some lyrics. And in those days, they often just, he made the lyrics up more or less on the spot. You know that that riff probably changed rock and roll, just the direction of it, at some levels, the way that they got. I mean, hats off to Ian Stewart for grabbing that box. Yeah. I mean, Ian, someone should, I think they have written a book about Ian Stewart, but someone should really there should be a statue to him somewhere, or a memorial the things he contributed to the stones, not only as a friend and an advisor, but musically as well. I mean, it's incredible. He was definitely the guy who had the smarts to say, Try plugging this in Keith. And I think Keith always been reluctant. To this day, he said as much, to go for any effects or gimmicks, or he doesn't have pedals on stage or anything like that. He just has a guitar. But he was smart enough to go with Stuart's advice, and that's the result. I think there is some controversy as the. Unknown Speaker 35:00 Brits would say controversy, as North Americans would say, relative to Mick and Keith dominating the credits, when really others played key roles or claimed to what was your research telling him? Do you think that they just didn't want are the two, the alpha males of the group and the others don't push, or they're just modest? Or what's the reason? I think a bit of all of the above, and also management, and I think they were quite keen to keep it down to the duo and not not to expand it into anything more collective than that. Nick and Keith were smart enough to hear something that maybe the guy who actually came up with the germ of the idea didn't hear after the success of satisfaction. The next album was December's children in 1965 Unknown Speaker 35:47 producing, get off my cloud. Unknown Speaker 35:57 The 19th nervous breakdown. Next we will hear about another mysterious figure that enters the stones world in the form of an American accountant who would change the stone's future in many ways. Unknown Speaker 36:12 Want more garage to stadiums. Visit us on Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook and LinkedIn. You Unknown Speaker 36:23 in 1965 the pop music industry was abuzz about an audacious American accountant by the name of Alan Klein who offered to renegotiate the Rolling Stones record contract with Decca Records in one of the worst decisions in the history of music, Decca had passed on signing the Beatles and said to manager Brian Epstein that, quote, guitar groups are on the way out, unquote, because DECA was embarrassed by the loss of the top selling Beatles. Alan Klein sniffed an opportunity for leverage to stand up to Decca and renegotiate the stone's original contract. Unknown Speaker 37:01 KEITH RICHARDS recalls that Klein called a meeting with the stones and said, quote, we're going to nadeka today, and we're going to work on these motherfuckers. We're going to come out with their best record contract ever. He told the group, wear some shades. Just stand at the back of the room and look at these old doddering farts and don't talk. I'll do the talking. Unquote, inside the boardroom, Klein faced Sir Edward Lewis, the frail English Lord running Decca Records, according to Keith Richards, the elderly Lewis began drooling at Klein's preposterous demand to renegotiate an existing contract and an assistant would have to attend to his drool. The end result, Lord Lewis caved, and the stones walked out of the meeting with 1.2 5 million in advance royalties. Now that may not sound like much today, but it was unheard of at the time. It was even more than the Beatles had received from their label. EMI Alan Klein was now part of the Rolling Stones management team, which, as you will hear, would have lasting repercussions for the group down the road. But first back to the music on the 1966 album, aftermath, Brian Jones was continuing his drifting from his early prowess on guitar. He was chasing new sounds, marimbas, dulcimers, and most famously, the sitar that you can hear on painted black Come Unknown Speaker 38:22 on. And you can also hear him play the marimbas, wooden like blocks struck by mallets in under my thumb. And Unknown Speaker 38:56 remember that 17 year old Marianne faithful from 1964 who'd sung Heath and Mick's first ballad as tears go by. By 1966 she'd left her husband with her young son in tow to be with Jagger. They were actually introduced through Brian's girlfriend, Anita pallenberg, Mick and Marianne became one of swinging London's it couples, but Marianne brought more than beauty and scandal. Her father was a British intelligence officer, and her mother was a ballerina from an old, wealthy European family that had stood against the Nazis, which is how she met marianne's British intelligence officer father, Unknown Speaker 39:36 Marianne grew up in England in a home filled with books, theater, opera and poetry, Unknown Speaker 39:43 and this cultured upbringing seeped into Mick Jagger's world, which influenced the sophistication of his lyrics and Rolling Stones music in ways that would last for years. And speaking of Anita pallenberg, her stormy relationship with Brian Jones, raged on. Remember Brian was the band's. Unknown Speaker 40:00 Wonder, but the spotlight had shifted. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were now the songwriting duo and really the CO bosses of the band. Brian's drinking and drug use often even boiled over into violence, including toward Anita, one infamous trip to France and then Morocco was meant to be a bonding journey, a chance to patch things with Mick and Keith. Instead, according to Keith, Brian beat Anita, and Brian himself subsequently landed in the hospital with pneumonia. Unknown Speaker 40:31 Keith, disgusted by Brian's behavior, took Anita and left, and they became a couple, eventually having three children, and the divide with Brian Jones only deepened. Meanwhile, somehow, in this chaos, the music marched on the album between the buttons in 1967 gave us Let's spend the night together. When asked to perform on Ed Sullivan's family friendly Sunday night show, producers demanded a lyrical change. They said, You will sing. Let's spend some time together. Mick Jagger obliged, but the camera catches the eye. Roll rebellion barely contained right there on national TV. We'll include that clip at our website, garagestadiums.com the next issue I wanted to bounce off you was the fact that Unknown Speaker 41:20 the infamous drug bust in 67 at Keith Richards Redlands estate. That was a cultural shape shifting moment. Was it not in? Well, rock history, UK history, I mean that trial, that what happened next and and maybe you can tell us, you know, what you think of that incident, and what were the impact on British society was at the time, sure. Well, I mean, it took place on February the 12th, 1967 to be exact. And it was a Sunday night, and that the tranquil world of Redlands, Keith's house in the in the English countryside, was disturbed by this incredible Unknown Speaker 41:59 intrusion of police. There was something like 25 policemen. It was, though it was a sort of huge terrorist roundup almost descended on this otherwise quiet, idyllic cottage where Mick, Keith, Marianne, faithful and half a dozen of their friends were basically relaxing over various pharmaceuticals on a Sunday night, and Mick and Keith were arrested and hauled off and eventually were found guilty at trial and given these extraordinarily severe sentences, given the paucity of what the police actually came up with, I Think Unknown Speaker 42:40 Mick got six months, and Keith got a year inside for allowing his premises to be used for the purpose of drug taking. And it was, of course, another classic case is so many in history of the establishment overreaching itself, and, you know, completely counterproductive, because I think the Unknown Speaker 43:03 belief was, okay, we'll lock these two hoodlums up for six months or a year, Unknown Speaker 43:09 and they're impressionable young. Kids who listen to these idiots will lose interest, or they'll see them in a different light, will be irrevocably tarnished, and after they get out, they'll reform, you know, maybe they'll get a job and settle down and we'll hear no more of them exactly once it happened. It was this huge outcry that they'd been given they'd been unfairly treated, and it was led, ironically, by The Times newspaper, which was about as straight and establishment a paper as you could get in England in the 60s, and was not known for hitherto, for its, you know, espousal, the rock music. But the editor wrote a very interesting lead article, saying that basically, the two Mick and Keith had been treated unfairly, and that their sentence was not that which would have been given had they been two anonymous young men, and that this was a case where the police and the court system had overreacted to something. And it was, it was not British. I think they used the phrase, you know, if we're going to espouse qualities in this country that we think of as traditionally British, those qualities should include fairness and complete equal handedness in front of the law, and they don't in this case. So as a result of that and other initiatives, Mick and Keith got out a day later, never served any more jail time. But what it did was to polarize opinion, of course, and suddenly you had people like my dad, just as one example, but millions of people like him who thought the Rolling Stones were, you know, absolutely terror, subversive people that they were going to go. Unknown Speaker 45:00 Out and spike the water supply of the country with LSD and, God knows what else. What other horrors were going to ensue? And you had everyone else under the age of, I don't know, 21 maybe, arbitrarily speaking, it could have been a different age who thought they were wonderful and that they were scapegoats in this particular they'd be badly treated. So it had the opposite effect to the one that the straights the suits might have had in mind. And it became very much an us and them society as a result. And they polarized Britain. You were either pretty much for the stones or against the stones. No one was indifferent to them. Everyone had an opinion, and the law did much more for the Rolling Stones image than half a dozen hit singles or, you know, hell raising tours of the US, anything like that. I mean, it was the police at the court system who really launched the stones stratosphere. It's ironic, exactly perspective, yeah. So they, they helped the image along, yeah. And it's interesting because we had Bob Spitz on and he wrote Unknown Speaker 46:11 probably the best selling book on The Beatles that's ever been published. And Bob, Unknown Speaker 46:16 you know, walked us through the reality of the Beatles and, you know, heroin, LSD, all sorts of stuff that, like, you know, hard drugs and chaos that The Beatles had. But of course, it never got publicized, and they were almost protected by the establishment as the good guys, it seems, and the stones bore the brunt of the police activity in that case, at least, Unknown Speaker 46:36 yeah. I mean, it was completely counterproductive. And you know, if the if the police had not knocked on the door of Redlands that dark Sunday night and the subsequent events had happened as they did, we might have had a very different Rolling Stones. I'm sure they would have gone on to have a career, obviously, yeah, but I don't think they would have been as iconic as they became, or as polarizing. So, yeah, it was, yet again, a classic case. It's like, it's like, you know, if you ban a record, for instance, yeah, exactly becomes a success. And same sort of phenomenon here. I mean they by hauling them off in handcuffs eventually. I mean, there's a famous picture of Mick being dragged away from court in handcuffs, and the the the policeman he's handcuffed to his beaming with pleasure at this, at this incarceration. I mean, hugely counterproductive and totally the opposite of what they had in mind. Now free from drug trials in jail, the stones dove into 1967 Summer of Love, only to stumble. In December, they released their satanic Majesty's request album, an obvious nod to the Beatles Sergeant Pepper album, the result a kaleidoscopic LSD soaked detour critics called awkward and self indulgent. Yet amid the swirling sitars and layered sounds Sean one Jim the song, she's a rainbow, a vivid burst of color in an otherwise uneven experiment. Unknown Speaker 48:19 Some of the lyrical flourishes on the album likely reflected the cultured, worldly influence that Marianne faithful was now bringing into Mick's life. However, that 1967 psychedelic misstep didn't deter the stones determined Mick and meticulous musical craftsman Keith Richards vowed to return to form. They'd strip back the experimentation, refocus on R and B and guitar driven songs and launch what would become the stones Classic period, a sequence of four albums starting in 1968 that astonished fans and cemented their place in rocks upper pantheon. So how did the stones kick off their classic period in 68 after the humiliation of the psychedelia soaked their satanic Majesty's request, the turning point came with the arrival of new producer, Jimmy Miller, a former drummer who had produced bands fronted by Stevie Wynwood and Eric Clapton. Miller was known for his no nonsense, straight to the point style and the stones sought him out to help find the spinal column groove in their music. Their first collaboration was the single jumpin Jack Flash. Unknown Speaker 49:41 Jumpin Jack Flash was followed by the 1968 album, beggars, banquet everywhere Unknown Speaker 49:51 I Unknown Speaker 49:53 hear the sound of Unknown Speaker 49:59 March. Unknown Speaker 50:00 And under Miller's guidance, the band crafted some of their most enduring work. One standout song, Sympathy for the Devil, lists a litany of historical horrors, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the death of the Russian czar, the atrocities World War Two and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers. After Unknown Speaker 50:22 all, the all, it Unknown Speaker 50:32 was the song was inspired by Marianne faithful, who had given Mick Jagger a copy of the novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, a novel about the devil visiting 1930s Moscow Mick translated that dark literary vision into a song for the ages. Some believe that Anita pellenberg, who by now had left Brian Jones for Keith Richards, may have influenced the song, as according to her own memoirs, she was very interested in the occult and black magic, and even considered herself a witch and attempted to put spells on people. As Jimmy Miller has mentioned in interviews, Brian Jones barely appears on Beggar's Banquet due to continuing absences during recording due to his escalating drug addiction. Miller says when he did show up, Brian would have some new instrument and insist on playing it. According to interviews with producer Miller, he claims that Jagger and Richards advise Miller that. Quote, if Brian continues to do this, just tell him to piss off. Unquote, next, the volatile co founder of the stones, Brian Jones, the man who placed that fateful wanted ad that created the stones is confronted by the band for his deteriorating behavior. What followed would become one of the first tragedies in rock and roll, garage to stadiums ranked as one of the top 5% of podcasts globally on June 8, as the band was recording the aforementioned Beggars Banquet Jagger and Richards, along with Charlie Watts, confronted co founder Brian Jones. His drug use and growing disengagement had made collaboration impossible. Jones agreed to leave the band. He had barely played on recent recordings and had increasingly withdrawn, compounded by tensions over Keith Richards being together with Anita pallenberg, enter Mick Taylor, a 20 year old blues guitar prodigy who had replaced Eric Clapton in the highly respected band John May Hall and the blues breakers, Unknown Speaker 52:34 and he was already known for his skill at this young age, he stepped in to Replace Brian, bringing fresh energy to the stone's lineup, and then just three and a half weeks later, on July 3, 1968 Unknown Speaker 52:49 Brian Jones was found dead in a swimming pool. The coroner ruled it, quote, death by misadventure, unquote, an accidental drowning worsened by alcohol and drugs with an enlarged liver and heart noted in the report he was only 27 Joan's death marked one of rock's earliest and most infamous tragedies, and he would become member of the infamous so called 27 Club, which would later see Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and later Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all dead in their prime at age 27 Unknown Speaker 53:24 two days later, after Brian's death, the stones performed a massive Hyde Park concert in front of hundreds of 1000s in his memory, but neither Mick Jagger nor Keith Richards attended his funeral. Earlier we mentioned Alan Klein's representation of the stones would have lasting and devastating financial consequences on the group. Klein didn't just manage artists money. He inserted himself between them and their record labels through so called Buy Sell deals, where his own company controlled the rights, manufacturing and sales that meant bigger paydays for his clients and for Klein, sometimes without them even realizing it. In 1965 the Rolling Stones 1.2 5 million DECA advance landed in a Klein controlled bank account with the fine print letting him hold onto it for 20 years. Unknown Speaker 54:22 The band ultimately accused him of withholding royalties, stealing publishing rights, and failing to pay taxes. You know, a lot of chaos emerges in the in the late 60s, they start to see that Alan Klein is, you know, not exactly the agent that he proclaimed to be, and Jagger runs into quite a character, Prince Rupert Lowenstein, at a I won't even dare to say his real name, because there's about 14 or 15 names to it, which I'm sure people will get when they when they read your book. And I wondered what you thought. You know, what was the impact of Prince Rupert? Unknown Speaker 55:00 Coming on the scene. What did he finally do for these guys? I think he was very much on mix wavelength and vice versa in terms of branding the stones as a corporation, not just as a group. And you started to get not only better royalty rates and better deals with record companies and their own record label, but then you started to get things like merchandising and, you know, the $300 Unknown Speaker 55:27 bomber jackets and the B weeders T shirts. I mean, all that was part of Loewen Stein's initiative. He saw that they could be a corporation as much as just a band of five musicians. Yeah, and I think that chimed with how Mick was thinking about it, and the rest of them went along with it. I mean, Keith often said, I, you know, I didn't want to sell our music to commercials. I didn't really like merchandising ever. There's no evidence he's ever declined to cash a check when it came in. Unknown Speaker 56:01 He's, he's quite happy with the results of all of this. Oh, yeah. So it was, it was Mick and Rupert's initiative, but the rest of them were quite happy to go along with it. Fast forward to November 1969 Unknown Speaker 56:15 no one can accuse the Rolling Stones of ever giving up. Faced with another blow from Alan Klein's financial shenanigans, they continued to focus on the music with new guitarist, Mick Taylor in tow, and Jimmy Miller returning in the producer chair, first for a single entitled Honky Tonk Woman, which saw Miller, the former drummer, play the song's opening cowbell. You Unknown Speaker 56:40 the Unknown Speaker 56:58 subsequent album, 1969 let it bleed, also produced by Miller, had him also drumming on The song, you can't always get what you want. Unknown Speaker 57:13 And Unknown Speaker 57:20 Hey Unknown Speaker 57:22 and the dark songs continued, Gimme Shelter became almost a sequel to the earlier Sympathy for the Devil, but this time, the apocalyptic song discusses current dark news of late 60s, chaos that seemed daily in the news war, murder and even rape. You. Unknown Speaker 57:59 Another haunting cut was midnight Rambler, Unknown Speaker 58:16 which tripped with violent images of a killer on the loose, which was said to be about a murderer of the late 1960s Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler. Unknown Speaker 58:40 Chris some of the stones albums and songs as the 1960s progress. Get darker Sympathy for the Devil. Give me shelter. Midnight Rambler, mentions of murder, death, dark images of violence. I'd love your opinion on this. People often attribute this to the influence of Mary Ann faithful literary knowledge on Mick Jagger or Anita pallenberg is very strange fondness for the occult and dark imagery. Or was it just the cultural shift, the protest, the civil strife, the Vietnam War, what do you think kind of went into this? Or was it just a continuation of the, you know, the image of the anti Beatles, you know, the bad boys. I've always wondered, how did they come to this dark place in some of these tunes? I think it was probably all the above, the things you mentioned, and not not one in isolation, Unknown Speaker 59:27 what they were dark times in some ways. You know, Vietnam was the obvious shadow over everyone's life, or over artistic life, anyway, in the late 60s. And you know, Mick went on various demonstrations and marches. I've always remembered, just as a footnote, the late great Tom keelock, who worked for the stones in the 60s, and he was a sort of driver slash bodyguard. He did everything for them, Unknown Speaker 59:56 told me he dropped Mick off Unknown Speaker 59:59 in. Unknown Speaker 1:00:00 His Bentley mitten Jaggers, Bentley at the top of the march through London's Grosvenor Square that was demonstrating against the Vietnam War. And then Mick. Mick allowed his photograph to be taken several times and shouted the right slogans and linked arms with the marchers. And then he had Tom waiting around the corner 20 minutes later in the Bentley to take him off to some fast watch. And I always thought that was a sort of snapshot of Mick. Unknown Speaker 1:00:29 He's hip enough to see which way the zeitgeist is moving, and he may have been genuinely motivated to join that. I'm not saying he wasn't, but he was smart enough to know where the cameras were and what he had to do to appear, you know, street smarts. And yet, he had the Bentley waiting with his chauffeur, you know, to take him back to the Ritz for lunch or wherever he went. So, I mean, that's Mick for you, yeah, yeah. And Gimme Shelter is a, is a classic example of that, and it, I think Gimme Shelter reflects not only the larger landscape of the Vietnam War and, you know, Nixon era in the US, but I mean, there was specific things going on in the stones his life that it also reflects. I mean, you know, they were making this film performance in London. And of course, Mick, Mick was in there with Anita, and they had various, shall we say, erotic scenes together, some doubt to this day as to how far that play acting went and how much of it was real. And there's Keith brooding around the corner, you know, waiting for his girlfriend to come back from shooting these nude scenes with his best friend. It's an unusual situation, and he's in Robert Fraser's flat, their art dealer friend Robert Fraser one night waiting for Anita to come back from the set. And as luck would have it, there is literally an almighty storm blowing over London. Unknown Speaker 1:02:15 The windows were rattling, apparently, and that that was how the genesis of Gimme Shelter came apart. So again, you've got the larger picture of the times Unknown Speaker 1:02:26 and the disconnection of politics and society and the dark shadow of Vietnam. And then you've got the specifics of the stones and their dynamic. And they've always been quite clever at bringing the sort of specific into the general, you know, adapting their own problems or their own issues into something that sounds as though it's got a universal truth to it. And I think that's the story of gimme shoulder. And it's a combination of things, in short, that were going on in the late 60s, but I wouldn't rule out their own domestic issues as a big factor in those songs in part two of the story of the Rolling Stones, the end of the turbulent 1960s would come to a close for the band, but not before yet another dark shadow of misfortune and loss as the decade ends. Join us for part two as we uncover that tragedy and follow the stone's journey into the tumultuous 1970s and 80s. Unknown Speaker 1:03:28 Want more garage to stadiums. Check out. Garage to stadiums.com. For official playlists, concert footage and other interesting facts for each episode. Unknown Speaker 1:03:41 Garage to stadiums, another blast furnace, labs, production, you.