Mick Jagger. Philip Norman

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СКАЧАТЬ no-go area for unaccompanied whites, so they had to ask Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes – on whom Keith still had a huge crush – to be their guide. Because of the difficulty of getting cabs back to Midtown late at night, which, anyway, they couldn’t afford, they had to sleep on the floor at Ronnie’s mother’s apartment in Spanish Harlem. In the morning, she would cook them bacon and eggs, and they would thank her with punctilious good manners.

      To add to the thrill, it happened to be James Brown Week at the Apollo. Known as ‘the Godfather of Soul’, Brown had a mesmerising stage act that combined R&B and soul with Barnum-esque showmanship: backed by his vocal group the Famous Flames, he never stopped moving for a second, boogieing as if on an invisible Travelator (two decades before Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk), hurling himself onto his knees or into the splits, finally suffering a make-believe seizure, when two minders would rush from the wings, wrap him in a cloak and half carry him away. Four or five of these operatic cardiac arrests would be simulated before the curtain finally fell.

      Such was Mick’s awe of the Godfather that he never had covered any of Brown’s great showstoppers: not ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’, or ‘Please Please Please’ or even ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s World’, much as he might applaud the sentiment. Now, in the Apollo’s marijuana-scented dark, he took careful note of every dance move Brown made, to be practised later in front of a full-length mirror. When Ronnie sneaked him and Keith into Brown’s dressing room, he beheld an almost monarchical figure, surrounded by servants and sycophants, who took care of business as assiduously as he did music, watched every penny and imposed strict discipline on his musicians, fining anyone who was late or went onstage with dirty shoes. Here, too, were important lessons for the future.

      From New York, the Stones flew to Los Angeles to make their one nationwide TV appearance. This was not on a prestigious show like Ed Sullivan’s, but Hollywood Palace, a mixed-bag variety programme emceed that week by Dean Martin. When they turned up at the studio, the producer was aghast that they weren’t in matching suits and, unavailingly, offered them money to go out and buy some. They did not meet the great ‘Dino’ himself during rehearsals, when a stand-in was used; only during transmission did they realise they had been set up as stooges to their host’s boozy humour. ‘Now here’s something for the youngsters,’ Martin announced with an air of intense long-suffering. ‘Five young musicians from England . . . the Rolling Stones. I’ve been rolled a few times when I was stoned myself. I dunno what they’re singin’ about, but here they are . . .’ A few moments of Mick singing ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’, and their tuxedo-clad host was sniping at them again. ‘The Rolling Stones! Aren’t they great? [Exaggerated eye roll] People talk about these long-haired groups but it’s really an optical illusion. They just have smaller foreheads and higher eyebrows.’

      The tour that followed had been planned by the American agency GAC, seemingly with some of the same malevolence. There was a good opening show in San Bernardino, California, where a capacity crowd roared enthusiastic response to the name check their home town received in Mick’s version of ‘Route 66’. After that, a series of economy-class internal flights took the band on a transcontinental wander far off Route 66: San Antonio, Minneapolis, Omaha, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. Their support was the American balladeer Bobby Vee, whose backing musicians wore matching mohair suits, collars and ties just like the ones they themselves had lately escaped. At some stops, they found themselves appearing at state fairs in company with carnival midways, rodeos and circus acts, including a baby elephant and a troupe of seals. Thanks to wildly uneven advance publicity, audience sizes varied between a rapturous two or three thousand and an apathetic few dozen among whom the dominant element were homophobic red-necked cowboys.

      The Stones’ heyday as arrogant kings of the American road were still far in the future. Surrounded by gun-toting, crop-headed and resentful police, they all did their utmost not to step out of line. In one cheerless, raw-brick dressing room, Mick and Brian were drinking rum and Coca-Cola while Keith, atypically, made do with plain Coke. A policeman walked up and screamed at them to empty their glasses down the toilet. When Keith protested, the cop drew his gun. Also in contrast with later trans-American journeys, Keith would recall, ‘it was almost impossible to have sex . . . In New York or LA you can always find something, but when you’re in Omaha in 1964 and you suddenly feel horny, you’ve had it.’

      The itinerary, however, included something of importance far outweighing these petty – and short-lived – setbacks. In Chicago, Oldham had booked the Stones to lay down some tracks (hopefully including their next British single) at Chess Records, the mythic label on which Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and just about every other major R&B and blues giant had transfigured Mick’s prim boyhood. Other than counselling him, against all his instincts, to become wicked, it was probably the greatest service his Svengali ever did him.

      This nonpareil black music label had in fact been started by two white men, Polish immigrants named Leonard and Phil Chess, who had changed their surname from Czyz. Leonard’s twenty-two-year-old son, Marshall, had worked for the company since the age of thirteen and, during a spell in the postroom, used to send off albums to an unknown blues fanatic in England named Mike Jagger. Normally, Chess did not allow outsiders to record in its studio – especially young, white, British ones – but Marshall knew about the blues scene in London, so he persuaded his father and uncle to make an exception for them.

      The band spent two days in Chess’s studios at 2120 South Michigan Avenue, working with the label’s most-sought-after engineer, Ron Malo. (Having delivered them there, Oldham had the good sense not to put on airs as their producer, but stayed discreetly in the background.) Malo treated the awestruck young Britons like musicians as legitimate as any others; their response was to work hard and harmoniously, finishing fourteen tracks during the two day-long sessions.

      Top of the list was that gift from Murray the K, ‘It’s All Over Now’. The Valentinos’ version had hovered on the edge of burlesque, with a hermaphrodite lead vocal and a tempo lifted from Chuck Berry’s ‘Memphis, Tennessee’. Ron Malo turned it into a guitar-jangly pop track with a growling bass riff that was instant jukebox fodder, yet preserved the Stones’ essential roughness and hinted at the myriad influences of the blues mecca around them. While all the band sounded better than they ever had, the main advance was in Mick’s voice, now refined to a punk-Dixie snarl and hovering between self-pity (‘Well, I used to wake ’n mawnin’, git ma brekfusst in ba-a-id . . .’) and yah-boo triumph (‘Yes, I used to looeerve her, bu-u-rd it’s awl over now . . .’). Bobby Womack’s original lyric spoke of the errant girlfriend’s having ‘spent all my money . . . played the high-class game’, which Mick amended to ‘half-assed game’.

      Marshall Chess was amused to see Mick, Brian and Keith behave in the studio as they thought their blues masters did, ‘swigging Jack Daniel’s from the bottle, where our guys would’ve poured it into a glass and sipped it’. Partly, this was nerves; they expected real Chicago bluesmen to tear them to pieces for their presumption. But in fact they were met with nothing but friendliness. During the first day’s session two of their greatest heroes, Willie Dixon and Buddy Guy, both dropped by Malo’s studio to listen and bestow compliments and encouragement. On their second morning they found themselves walking in through Chess’s front lobby beside an immaculately dressed man with the face of a merry black Toby Jug – none other than Muddy Waters, without whose catalogue (not least ‘Rollin’ Stone’) they would never have got started. Muddy carried himself as regally as a king but, on seeing roadie Ian Stewart struggling with the Stones’ equipment, picked up an amp and carried it into the studio for them.

      At the end of their second day, the great Chuck Berry himself drove in from his country-estate-cum-hotel, Berry Park, to take a look. Though never noted for philanthropy to young musicians, he could not but be softened by the Stones’ devotion – and the number of his songs they were covering that would pay him royalties. ‘Swing on, gentlemen,’ he told them in flawless Berry-ese. ‘You are sounding most well, if I may say so.’

      Keith СКАЧАТЬ