Life (48 page)
As I passed the line to Ronnie, I was ready to hit the ceiling, an enormous rush. Oh shit, what a sensation. Absolutely nothing I knew of could compare. As I offered Ronnie his line, those were the last words to come out of my mouth for the next six hours. We embarked on a journey to Woodstock.
Pure cocaine. Are you going to go for it or not? Then jump in the car and drive. We had no idea where we went. It was kind of like the drive I did with John Lennon, we just went. I’ve no idea how we got anywhere. Obviously I drove, and very responsibly, never got pulled over. We gassed up, we did everything, but in another head. I had sketchy reports that we stayed overnight in Bearsville with the Band, probably with Levon Helm. I don’t know if there was any aim in going there. Did we want to go and see somebody? I don’t think Bob Dylan was living up there at the time. We made it back to Dobbs Ferry eventually. I have a weird feeling that Billy Preston was there, but he didn’t come on the drive.
The 1975 tour on which we were about to embark was fueled by Merck cocaine. It was when we initiated the building of hideaways behind the speakers on the stage so that we could have lines between songs. One song, one bump was the rule between Ronnie and me. Even then, three years after the STP tour, it was an extraordinarily ramshackle affair by today’s standards. How was it done then? Listen to Mary Beth Medley. She was the tour coordinator, she put the dates together and did the deals with the promoters across the USA. She was twenty-seven, working under Peter Rudge. She had no staff.
Mary Beth Medley:
It was done on 3 × 5 index cards. I tell this to people and they look at me like I’m talking Swahili. A Rand McNally highway mileage guide, a map of the United States. No fax, no cell phone, no FedEx, no computer. A Rolodex, but nothing other than a regular phone line and telex to Europe to the office. As to the rock-and-roll lifestyle, you might have thought we’d have learned the lessons of caution after the incident in Fordyce. But there was another incident after that, at the end of the tour in August 1975, that’s never been related as far as I know. It involves Keith, but it involves everybody. We were in Jacksonville, Florida, and we were going to Hampton, Virginia, and Bill Carter had heard that the plane was going to be searched when we got there. He had these police connections all over the place. We had gone through this scare once in Louisville, Kentucky, where they just came on the plane. And so to avoid that, we collected everyone’s contraband. Everyone’s guns, knives, drugs, anything that could be considered illegal, and packed it in two suitcases, and I took a private plane from Jacksonville to Hampton, Virginia, with these two suitcases and drove to the hotel. The plane ride I wasn’t worried about. With private planes, you didn’t even have to fill out a manifest in those days. I think I went anonymously. The drive was nerve-racking. I was going fifty miles an hour. Just me. And then I got to the hotel, I went into a room, not mine, and put it all out on the bed. And as they came in a couple of hours later they all picked up their stuff. Annie Leibovitz has a picture somewhere of the treasure that was in those suitcases.
Annie Leibovitz
In which Marlon becomes my road companion. Our son Tara dies. We move in with John Phillips and family in Chelsea. I get busted in Toronto and charged with trafficking. I give up heroin with the help of a black box and Jack Daniel’s. The Stones record
Some Girls
in Paris. I meet Lil Wergilis, who helps me clean up. I am given probation in 1978, on condition I give a concert for the blind. Anita’s boyfriend shoots himself playing Russian roulette, and she and I finally part.
T
here had been so many close shaves. The bust at Fordyce during the 1975 tour was potentially the most lethal. I had used up all my cat lives. No use counting. Closer shaves were to come, busts and stray bullets and cars flying off the road. Some escapes had a measure of luck about them. But there was a darkness in the air—a storm coming. I saw Uschi again—she joined the tour in San Francisco for a week, and then disappeared for many years. The Rolling Stones spent some time that autumn in Switzerland, since that was my home, working more on the album
Black and Blue
—the album whose promotion featuring a half-naked, bruised and bound woman led to a call for a boycott of Warner Communications. We worked on songs such as “Cherry Oh Baby,” “Fool to Cry” and “Hot Stuff.” In Geneva in March of 1976, Anita gave birth to our third child, a boy we named Tara.
He was barely a month old when I left Anita to go on a long European tour that was to run from April until June. I took Marlon with me as my road buddy. He was seven years old. Anita and I had become two junkies living separate existences, except trying to bring up kids. Most of it was actually not that difficult for me because I was on the road so much, and now Marlon was usually with me. But it was not a pleasant atmosphere. It’s very difficult living with your old lady who’s also a junkie, in fact a bigger one than you are. The only thing Anita ever said to me then was “Has it arrived?” The only important thing in life was the stuff. And she had started to get really far out. A crash in the middle of the night and she’d have thrown a whole bottle of cranberry juice or wine down the wall of the rent-a-house we’d just moved into. “Oh, do you need some stuff, darling?” I understood, but it needn’t include redecorating the fucking house. By now she wasn’t touring with us or coming to recording sessions; she was more and more isolated.
The more the shit hit the fan, the more I kept the boy with me. I’d never had a son before, so it was a great thing to watch him grow up, to say, I need your help, boy. So Marlon and I became a team. Angela in 1976 was still too young for the road.
We took ourselves to the gigs in this great car of mine. Marlon was my navigator. In those days there were countries; it wasn’t just borderless Europe. I gave him a position, a job to do. Here’s the map. Tell me when we get to the border. To get from Switzerland to Germany, we went through Austria. So you’re talking Swiss border, boom, into Austria, bang, fifteen miles through Austria, bang, into Germany. You’re talking a lot of borders just to get to Munich. So you had to be very precise, especially in the snow and ice. Marlon was on the case. He would say, “Fifteen clicks from the border, Dad.” That was when to pull over, have a shot and either dump it or re-sort your shit. Sometimes he’d give me a nudge and say, “Dad, time to pull over. You’re falling, you’re slipping.” He acted beyond his age. Necessary when we were being busted. “Er, Dad?” “Yeah?” (He’s waking me up, shaking me.) “The men in the blue suits are downstairs.”
It wasn’t that often that I was late for a show, and I never missed one—but when I was late I was spectacularly late. And it was usually a great show anyway. In my experience, crowds don’t mind waiting as long as you turn up, you deliver. It was that half-hippie fog, dope fog. In the ’70s, showtime was when I woke up. I might have been three hours late, but there was no such thing as curfews for shows. If you went to see a show, you would be there for the whole night. Nobody said it would start on time. If I was late, sorry, but it was just the right time for the show. Nobody left. But I didn’t push my luck. I kept these late shows to a minimum.
Usually if I was late it was because I was deeply asleep. I remember Marlon having to wake me up. It became a habit, actually. Jim Callaghan and the security knew I had a shooter under the pillow and they didn’t want to wake me up. Half an hour before we were due on stage they’d send Marlon, shove him into the room. “Dad…” Marlon got the hang of it real quick. He knew what to say. “Dad, it really is time.” Things like that. “That means two more hours, doesn’t it?” “Dad, I held ’em off.” He was a great minder.
I was a bit unpredictable in those days, or they thought I was. I never shot anybody, but there was always that fear that I might wake up in one of those moods and grab the gun, thinking I was being robbed. It’s not as if I haven’t nurtured that a bit; it comes in handy. I never meant to stick people up, but it was a rough schedule, I had a kid with me on the road and I was pretty fucked up.
Usually when I got on stage, I’d just got up. Getting out of bed is one thing, waking up is another. It takes me three or four hours. Then I’ve got to put the rig on. The shortest time between getting out of bed and getting on stage was probably one of those where I was supposed to be on stage an hour ago. “What am I wearing?” “Pajamas, Daddy.” “OK, quick, where’s me fucking pants?” Usually I had crashed out in what I was wearing to play anyway. Half an hour later, it’s “Ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.” It’s an interesting wake-up call.
Let Marlon tell it.
Marlon:
The ’76 tour was in Europe and that’s why I went on the tour with them for the whole summer and ended up at the Knebworth concert in August, when they played with Zeppelin. They’d ask me to wake Keith up, because he did have a bad temper; he didn’t like being woken up. So Mick or someone would come to me and say, we’ve got to leave in a few hours, why don’t you wake your dad up. I was the only one capable of doing it without getting my head bitten off. I’d say, Dad, get up, you’ve got to get on the road, you’ve got to leave, got to get on the plane, and he’d do it. He was very sweet. We’d go to gigs and then come back. I don’t really remember too much bacchanal, really. We shared a room with two beds. I’d wake him up and order breakfast from room service. Ice cream for breakfast or cake. And the waitresses would often be very condescending to me—oh, poor little boy—and I’d tell them to fuck off. I found that really annoying. And I got wise pretty quick to the hangers-on and people who’d try to get to Keith through me. I got very used to getting rid of them too, saying, look, I don’t want to see you here, go away. Keith would say, oh, I’ve got to put Marlon to bed, to get rid of people. And to some girls or dodgy types, I’d say, fuck off, Dad’s asleep, leave us alone. They wouldn’t say anything to a kid, so they would obey.
I do remember Mick on that tour was quite sweet. We were in Germany, Hamburg, and Keith was asleep and Mick invited me to his room. I’d never had a hamburger, and he ordered me one. “You’ve never had a hamburger, Marlon? You’ve got to have a hamburger in Hamburg.” So we sat there and had dinner. He was very friendly and charming at that time. He really got to Keith too. He was very nurturing; he took care of him. That stood out. And at that point Keith was in such a state.
Keith would always read me stories. We used to love Tintin and Asterix, but he couldn’t read French, and they were French editions, so he’d make the whole bloody thing up. It was only after years that I realized when I read a Tintin that he didn’t know what the hell the story was about; he’d bluffed his way through the whole thing. Given all the smack, nodding out and that sort of thing, that is quite remarkable. I do recall I only had one pair of shoes and one pair of trousers, and I just wore them to death for the whole tour.
There were the bodyguards, Bob Bender and Bob Kowalski, the two Bobs. They were both six foot and they were huge guys, walls, mountains. One was blond and one was dark haired, and they were like bookends. I used to play chess with them in the hallway, because that’s what they’d do, sit out in the hallway and play chess to pass the time. It was really fun. That whole time it didn’t seem traumatic, it seemed like a laugh going to concerts every night in a different city. I’d be up until five in the morning sometimes, go to sleep till three in the afternoon. It was all on Keith’s routine.
I was never even curious about drugs. I found all those people bloody ridiculous; I just found it really silly what they were doing. Anita tells me I did smoke lots of spliffs when I was four or so in Jamaica, but I don’t believe that at all; that sounds like an Anita story. I found the drugs repulsive, but I did learn to clean it up and not to touch it and not to leave it lying around. If I saw it, I’d put it away. And there was always the occasion where I’d pick up a magazine or a book, and lines of blow would be on it and would go all over the place. Keith wouldn’t get too mad.
At the end of that tour we had a car crash, driving back from Knebworth. That’s the one when Keith was arrested. He fell asleep and plowed into a tree. Seven of us were in the car and no one was seriously hurt because, luckily again, that was the Bentley. That car’s actually felt quite a bit. Until five or six years ago there was still my bloody handprint on the backseat. And on the dashboard there was still the dent where my nose hit it. I was impressed having a dent in the dashboard and disappointed when it was repaired.
I’m a good driver. I mean, nobody’s perfect, right? Somewhere I lost it, fell asleep. I just passed out. We skidded off the road. All I hear is Freddie Sessler in the back going, “Jesus fucking Christ!” But I managed to get it off the road and into a field, which is after all the sensible thing to do. At least we didn’t hit anybody, we didn’t kill anybody, we didn’t even hurt ourselves. Then the cops found acid in my jacket. How did I get out of this one? We’d just finished a show. The jackets we were wearing were like band jackets, same shape but different colors. It could have been Mick Jagger’s one; it could have been Charlie’s that I picked up. It could have been anybody’s jacket. That was my defense.
I did make some speech along the lines of, this is my life, this is the way we live and shit happens. You don’t live like me. I do what I have to do. If I fuck up, I’m very sorry. I’m just living a peaceful life. Let me get to the next gig. In other words, “Hey, it’s only rock and roll.” But tell that to a bunch of Aylesbury plumbers. Maybe “he charmed the jurors” —so one report said. It’s hard to believe, because my attitude was, I need a jury that’s at least half full of rock-and-roll guitar players to have anybody know what the fuck I’m talking about. A jury of my peers would be Jimmy Page, a conglomeration of musicians, guys that have been on the road and know what’s what. My peers are not some lady doctor and a couple of plumbers. As far as that’s English law, I respect it very much. But do me a favor. And they basically got that. No one, it seems, this time, was trying to teach me a lesson, and they let me off with a fine and a slight slap on the wrist.
I was in Paris, with Marlon, on tour when I got the news that our little son Tara, aged just over two months, had been found dead in his cot. I got the phone call as I was getting ready to do the show. And it’s a “Sorry to tell you… ,” which hits you like a gunshot. And “No doubt you’re going to want to cancel the show.” And I thought about it for a few seconds and I said, of course we’re not canceling. It would be the worst possible thing because there was nowhere else to go. What am I going to do, drive back to Switzerland and find out what didn’t happen? It’s happened already. It’s done. Or sit there and mope and go bananas and get into, what? Why? I called Anita, of course, and she was in tears, and the details were all confusing. Anita had to stay there and take care of the cremation, and all of the argy-bargy from the Swiss coroners, before she could come to Paris, and all I could do then was to protect Marlon from it, try not to bounce everything onto him. The only thing that kept me going through that was Marlon and the day-to-day work of taking care of a seven-year-old on the road. I don’t have enough time to cry about this, I’ve got to make sure this kid is all right. Thank God he was there. He was too young to really get the drift on it. The only upside in this respect is at least Marlon and I were away from the immediate grief. I had to go on stage that night. After that it was plowing on through the tour with Marlon and keeping that separated. It made Marlon and me tighter, no matter what. I’ve lost my second son, I ain’t going to lose the first.
What happened? I know very little about the circumstances. All I knew about Tara was this beautiful little boy in the cradle. Hey, little bugger, I’ll see you when I get back off the road, right? He seemed perfectly robust. He looked like a miniature Marlon. Never knew the son of a bitch, or barely. I changed his nappy twice, I think. It was respiratory failure, cot death. Anita found him in the morning. I wasn’t about to ask questions at the time. Only Anita knows. As for me, I should never have left him. I don’t think it’s her fault; it was just a crib death. But leaving a newborn is something I can’t forgive myself for. It’s as if I deserted my post.