Part V: Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones And The Yobbo Revolution

Mick Jagger The Rolling Stones

And The Yobbo Revolution

Part V

by

R.E. Prindle

Rolling Stones- Brian Up Front

 

…they’re just war babies with the bell bottom blues.

==Robert Christgau

Along about 1968 Jagger among the Stones, at least, became disenchanted with his and their new manager Allen B. Klein of notorious fame.

By 1968, counting 1963 as the beginning of their labors the Stones had been working hard.  Jagger and Richards had emerged as successful songwriters giving them a financial advantage over fellow stones, Jones, Wyman and Watts.  By that time the band was said to have earned millions  but had virtually nothing to show for it except for a heroin habit and several cases of VD.  When one says heroin habit one reduces disposable income considerably.

The Stones last effort Their Satanic Majesties Request seemed to indicate a loss of direction.  Their initial impetus had been expended.  The impetus that began in 1963 had then played out.  The good part of the Sixties was over and the bad part had begun with the ’66 release of the Doors first album containing the appropriately named song The End.  The Rock scene had turned dark while turning the volume up.

The Stones knew dark so they quickly reinvented themselves as a Dark band turning out Beggar’s Banquet in 1968.  Out there on the buying end of rock and roll I groaned.  The new Stones were born as the Hounds of Hell emerging from a drug fueled Freudian unconscious.  Just what the world didn’t need.

Rolling Stones- Brian Odd Man Out

 

While Jagger and Richards engaged the world with their follies the other three members had to suffer enduring the ignominy in silence.  Richards would go on to astound the world with his drug offenses.  While Jagger himself descended into darkness as a Satanist carrying his inamorata Marianne Faithfull along with him.

While both deny other than a titillating passing interest in Satanism the facts imply a more serious involvement.

These years that should have been bright were the beginning of dark times, darker than the Communo-Nazi era for the world.  Deny it if he can, Jagger was a leader on the downward path.

Undeniably the Fifties and Sixties were a trying period but which decade of the century hadn’t been?  Fear of both Communism and the A-Bomb, not to mention the Neutron Bomb, kept people tense.  There was a disturbing lack of balance in which TV, newspapers, and magazines presented developments.  Nevertheless the beginning of the post-war period was one of astounding advances in knowledge both in Science and the Liberal Arts.  Huge layers of ignorance were sheared away.  For instance the knowledge of geological tectonic plates that demonstrated how the planet evolved was, shall I say, earth shaking.

In 1950 the highest an object had been was measured in feet; the atmosphere hadn’t been penetrated.  Seven years later the Soviets put the Sputnik in orbit.  Telstar went up in July 1962 to tremendous astonishment and acclaim opening the way to the future and the fabulous prosperity of the late Sixties and the Seventies.

Medicine cured syphilis and all venereal diseases, killing and disabling diseases were gone and even TB and polio were ended.  At the beginning of the Fifties a child had to ponder being debilitated by both as a probable occurrence.  The diet was improved immensely and made more varied.  But, as life improved the psyche grew darker, dissatisfaction with virtual perfection was endemic.  Murder and crime increased dramatically.  Charlie Whiteman in his UT tower, Richard Speck’s ritual murder of the Chicago nurses.  While the good genie let many good things out the bottle at the same time a cloud of darkness followed.  The country chose to embrace the darkness rather than the light.

During the Sixties Satanism was on the rise.  We all know there is no existing entity called Satan but Satanism is a fact of the psyche.  First truly released by Freud in 1900 Satanism had been emerging as a social force.  A 1966 cover of Time Magazine asked the question Is God Dead?  This sparked a fair controversy at the time.  That same year, less conspicuously and metaphorically saw the birth of the Son of Satan, Andy, in the book Rosemary’s Baby by the Jew Ira Levin followed by the movie of the same name directed by the Jew Roman Polanski.  Rosemary’s Baby was followed by a spate of Satanic novels and movies.  The shift from God’s Son, Jesus, to Andy was quite noticeable but we were slow to comprehend.

Andrew- Two Fingers, Middle Finger and Lifted Eye Brow?

 

The Satanic movement had been building since the middle of the nineteenth century when the Frenchman, Eliphas Levy, reorganized the occult along modern lines.  The Golden Dawn brought Satanism into prominence in the English speaking world.  The Golden Dawn was captured by the pervert Aleister Crowley who guided Satanism through the first half of the century.  He died in 1946.  A druggie and sex fiend, his sex magic in the Sixties was joined by that of the Jewish sex madman, Wilhelm Reich, also a notable Freudian.  Reich had even had his books burned by the US government but like a phoenix his sexual ideas rose from the flames during the Sixties.  ( See the movie WR, The Mysteries Of The Organism, read organism as Orgasm.  This movie is not for the weak of mind.)

The magical crowd had coalesced in the beginning of the Sixties.  In England it was led by the Satanic Process Church that emigrated to the US, LA based, and back to England.  In the US the chief Satanist was the San Francisco based Anton Lavey with his acolyte in Los Angeles, Kenneth Anger.  It is to be noted that the sex magician Charles Manson was associated with all these people in one form or another.

Jagger and his consort Marianne Faithfull were drawn into the flames through their friend in London, Groovy Bob Fraser who seemed to be the clearing house for all strange in London.  He introduced Mick and Marianne to Kenneth Anger while they found their own way to the Process Church. Mick was recruited by the Crowleyian Satanist and filmmaker Donald Cammell.  Cammell’s father had been a Crowleyian having writing a biography of him.  Cammell’s mind thus had been corrupted from childhood.

Cammell starred Jagger and Keith’s girlfriend Anita Pallenberg in his ’68 movie Performance.  Pallenberg was a long gone cutie deeper into Satanism than probably anyone in the crew. 

Mick had become acquainted with the fashion photographer David Bailey in late ’62 or early ’63.  Anthony Burgess published his Satanic novel A Clockwork Orang in 1962.

In ’62 and ’63 Jagger was a nobody, a student at the London School of Economics while doubling as frontman for the unknown Rolling Stones, or Rollin’ for the purists.  The two apparently bonded on sight as the two bought the movie rights to A Clockwork Orange.  This strange situation has never been explored.  As far as we know Mick had no money or anything really to recommend him to Bailey who was a very successful photographer and the model for Fellini’s movie Blowup.  Yet while a student and singer for a grungy R&B band Bailey took him under his wing, or perhaps Andrew Loog Oldham that inveterate man about town introduced himself to Bailey, then introduced Bailey to Mick with whom he was palling.  It would seem that Andrew first discovered A Clockwork Orange in mid-62 talking it up with Bailey and Mick.  Andrew and Bailey saw Mick as the hero of the book, Alex, leader of his band called The Droogs.  The idea of the Droogs exerted a fascination over the minds of Andrew, Bailey and Mick and through Bailey and Mick the Warhol crowd of NYC.  As a photog for English Vogue Bailey would have had an intro to New York and the American Vogue.

For those who aren’t aware, Vogue Magazine is a huge global presence.  There are many ‘local’ editions of the magazine published for Germany, France, Russia, Italy and even Japan.  It is really extraordinary.  I subscribe to the English edition and buy Italian, Parisian, German and the occasional Japanese copy from a news dealer in my own city.  Globalism takes on a real meaning.

In reading Stone’s histories there is no mention of Jagger being absent from London in 1963 but Bailey scooped him up and took him to New York, presumably at his own expense or perhaps that of Vogue to shop for a movie maker for their book.   Bailey who was very up on things may have thought that Andy Warhol would be interested; in fact Warhol did make a movie that purports to be based on Clockwork Orange but you couldn’t prove it by me.  But, in 1963 Warhol was not yet that famous or his vacuous movies.  Bailey must have had his nose to the ground with the sensitivity of a bloodhound.  Where Mick got the money for his share of the rights and trip to what is now known as The Big Bagel isn’t clear.

In New York Mick met the Dark, if not Satanist, Andy Warhol with whom he banded as quickly and tightly as he had Bailey.  Because of this the Stones would always be big in the Village.

Interestingly Mick’s girlfriend during this period was Bailey’s top model Jean  Shrimpton’s sister, Chrissie Shrimpton.

Things fell out, Mick gravitated to the adultress, Marianne Faithfull.  The two were arrested at the famous drug bust at Keith’s Redlands in 1967.

Apparently Mick et al. thought they were immune to the laws and mores of the time concerning drugs so that Mick took the arrest and subsequent conviction as a grievous insult.  It confirmed and hardened his devotion to Satan while solidifying his revolutionary aims.  He thought the ‘kids’ would be able to bring down the State.

Thus in 1967 they recorded and released the record album titled Their Satanic Majesties Request.  Smarting horribly- for all practical purposes Marianne’s life was ruined.  In combination with a succession of injurious events that would follow, Marianne’s psyche would never recover.  She had been holding the burning match to see how close to her fingers it got before she was burned, she now knew. 

Still in reaction to the arrest, following Satanic Majesties, Mick decided to make a film.  This became the long lost Rock And Roll Circus.  The movie only has historical significance as it was never released at the time.  Rights were held by Allen Klein so after his death in 2009, under his son Jody’s direction ABKCO released it for the first time.  Psychologically it places where Mick was in 1968.

The American Satanist Kenneth Anger had a huge shoulder to shoulder tattoo of the name L-U-C-I-F-E-R on his chest to show his dedication to the Commander In Chief.  At the end of Rock And Roll Circus as the band plays Sympathy For The Devil we see Mick groveling on the stage as though to the Master.  He wiggles out of his shirt rising to his knees to display a Lucifer tattoo on his bare chest.  Whether real or a transfer isn’t clear.  I hope the latter.

In 1968, at least, Jagger had dedicated himself to Satan.  While Marianne has since repudiated Satanism claiming the fascination was a passing fancy it seems clearly to have been more than that.

That aside, to be borne in mind as we move along.  Mick, who is no dummy, had been quickly learning the ropes of the record business since his introduction in 1963.  As he wasn’t getting enough money to indulge his fantasies, finances became his chief concern.

The Stones were first managed and promoted by the nineteen year old Andrew Loog Oldham.  Oldham was the right man to put the Stones on the road.  Unfortunately for himself Andrew was at the flighty if not to say flaky stage of life so that he found it expedient to sign the Stones to the American desperado or operator, Allen Klein.  Klein was the big talking type so endemic to the industry who promised the moon while actually being able to pry money from the labels not that much ever got back to the artists.  While first being pleased with Klein’s services getting money out of him was a problem so that Jagger quickly became disaffected with him.  In 1968 he began the search for a money man who would work in the Stones’ interests.

This was a critical period for Jagger and the band.  Their first rush of creativity ended about 1966 as the songwriters went dry and the band quit touring.  The transition from the sixties to the seventies actively took place between ’66 and ’67.  In fact that was the Sixties, the rest of the decade was a long slow fade. The artists most identified with the sixties didn’t make the transition to the seventies and beyond.  The Stones before ’68’s Beggar’s Banquet were a quintessential 60s’ band.  Beggar’s Banquet eased them toward the seventies.

So at this transitional period that must have been cause for great anxiety the band had little to show for their sixties output other than a certain notoriety that was however global and second only to the Beatles.

In his search for a money man Jagger asked his friend Chrissie Gibbs for his help.  Gibbs was a central figure in the Groovy Bob Fraser circle.  Fraser’s place was a central gathering place for the crowd including the American Satanist Kenneth Anger and the Warhol crowd.

Fraser himself was an art dealer who associated himself with the upcoming Pop Art Movement.  Thus he was the center of all that was hip and modern.

Gibbs knew of an investment banker by the name of Prince Rupert Loewenstein.  Rupert was an actual hereditary Prince who prefaced his name with that title.  According to Rupert’s memoirs, A Prince Among Stones, Rupert knew Gibbs in only the most casual manner, Gibbs was not exactly a member of the aristocracy as he is presented.

Rupert is a bit of an enigma.  He says, in his memoir, that he had never heard of the Stones when Gibbs mentioned them.  In the context of the times the Stones were rock musicians who are as a class not welcome in polite society and even some not so polite society, yet Rupert said to this very casual acquaintance that he would look into it.  Then, as he tells it, he learned who or what the Rolling Stones were and that all three principals of the group had been arrested on drug charges a year earlier along with Robert Fraser the art dealer and a true member of the aristocracy although now declasse.  Rupert even says that he agreed wholeheartedly with the judge.

Just as a point of reference, when I opened my record shop in 1967 the insurance agents would not even sell me insurance while the AAA agent cancelled my auto insurance.  I could obtain no amenities and only grudgingly services.  So, it is extremely strange that Rupert knowing the actual unsavory history of the Stones jeopardized his standing in respectable circles in the City and society to associate himself with them.  And I mean associate, he actually toured with the band.  If he didn’t know the kind of people he was with he certainly learned then.

Now, no one associated with rock and roll had any social standing especially the Stones as the bad boys of rock.  Then all the creeps and drug dealers who being around the record scene especially attached themselves to the Stones and believe me that crowd was well beyond unsavory.  Robert Greenfield’s book S.T.P. will give you some examples but the flavor of these people doesn’t come through in print.

As I read Rupert’s autobiography, he died a year or so ago, I find a distaste for Stones from beginning to end.  Even the title of his memoir, A Prince Among Stones, is a put down of the Stones.  Rupert obviously disdained the Stones.  So, one asks why he would choose to represent them?  And that’s only the beginning of the mystery.

Having accepted the assignment as they used to say on Mission Impossible he had to familiarize himself with bushels of documents and assorted records.  Before he could even confront Klein he had to spend a year trying to understand the documentation.  Klein was a tough cookie who didn’t play by any rules.  You grappled with him.  I’m not sure that the Stones to this day know what Rupert did for them.

Here’s the point:  The Stones are said to have no money with which to pay him, we are told that they were stone broke.  Didn’t mean that they didn’t have a great stash but, you know, they were broke.  This was a serious time for the band.  Get this:  Rupert worked three years gratis with no guarantee of ever making a dime.  That any of us should have luck of that kind.  Further he learned that there was no way the Stones were going to get any money out of Klein without very expensive litigation.  But, there were exceptions as we shall see.  The Stones entire career from 1963 to the end of the contract in 1971 that Andrew had saddled them with belonged to Klein.  Never fire your manager when he holds your life in his hands.

Any career they would have to make money would begin in 1971.  The intellectual properties Jagger and Richards’ had created would provide them with an income apart from the band although the publishing was sold to Klein by Andrew.  But the full intellectual properties would begin only with Exile On Main Street.    And of course by then the big boom in record sales was underway.  Even at the end of the sixties the record business was small potatoes.  The stadium era was on the horizon.

From Rupert’s point of view the only real potential for money for him would come from the Stones’ touring.  The Stones would do some non-stop touring beginning in 1971.  The ’69 US tour was Rupert’s introductory tour during which he learned how inefficient and criminal touring was..

Until Rupert reorganized touring, the road had not been profitable for the Stones.  No money at all.   So Rupert began his management career on the off chance that the Stones would stay together, actually a fairly long shot, and he could mount some extravaganzas and monitor expense to make the road profitable.  Little he knew that he was catching the really big one.

If you sit and think about this a little it will blow your mind the chances that Rupert was taking especially with a heroin addict of the status as Keith.  I mean we’re talking the Master of Flake with Keith- no offense intended.  The man blew millions that Rupert was setting up in recording contracts when Keith was arrested with a jug of heroin in Toronto.  Keith was not in this alone, there were three other Stones plus Mick as well as Rupert who had bet his life on the Stones.  Can you imagine how crushed Rupert was when he had to call all the bidders and advise them of Keith’s gaffe.  Keith cost Rupert a couple million too.

This is amazing, the pre-’68 money had been so badly managed that the Stones owed more tax money that it appeared that the band could ever pay off; especially when every new dollar would be taxed at ninety percent.  What were the Brits thinking?  As I understand it the Stones have never paid the debt off, or tried.  So Rupert compelled them to leave England for a more tax friendly climate.  As we are repeatedly told they were broke one wonders how they expected to finance their life in France.  Mick and Keith were OK because as Robert Greenfield tells us in his book Ain’t It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones On The Road To Exile just before the Stones left England Klein sent Mick and Keith each a check for 800 and some odd thousand dollars.  That is nearly a million each.  I don’t know whether BMI paid royalties quarterly or half yearly but Mick and Keith should have gotten a check of comparable size quarterly, semi-annually or annually.  For the next decade or two probably double that.  No sympathy here.

Wyman and Watts both bought handsome residences on the Riviera so one wonders where that money came from while Exile was being recorded.  They settled on the Riviera where they spent a fortune recording Exile On Main Street.  Over half a million dollars.  And while Exile sold well still only over seven hundred and some thousand copies on its first release; not enough copies to surpass recording costs so they received nothing for the LP initially.  Still Rupert hung in there, drug stories or no.

As the only hope for the Stones to make money, apart from intellectual right for Mick and Keith, was touring and thereby justify Rupert’s decision to throw in his lot with them Rupert set about to make touring as profitable as possible.  He was in for some surprises as he had to come into contact with the Underworld, Mafia to you and me.  I don’t see how he or they ever thought that there would be the truly big money of the last tours especially in North America but luck and the times were with him and them.

The Stones, about whom hung an air of vulgarity, were never a top selling recording band, mediocre at best but Jagger was a top performance artist while Keith was and is revered as a guitarist and personality.  The nature of the tour also evolved so that under the guidance of Rupert major companies such as Chrysler sponsored tours contributing up front money while toward the end promoters  ponied up a couple hundred million to manage the tours.  The expense of putting on the show was the Stones but the mechanics of lining up venues and retailing the tickets was off their hands.

If you can stay together the intellectual property or ‘brand’ can become extremely valuable providing a payoff as time goes on.  The Stones may be unique in the size of the payoff but many performers have been on the road for decades and are still out there, viz. Bob Dylan.

Still given all the imponderables, one is astonished that a respectable investment banker would take such a huge risk on his future.  Not only had the principals been arrested and convicted, actually sent to jail, on a drug charge but they were involved with the revolutionary movement, indeed, other revolutionaries considered them one of them.  Jagger wrote revolutionary and agitprop songs.  As the seventies were characterized by revolutionary upheavals throughout the Western world including European outfits like the Baader-Meinhoff Gang and the Italian Red Guards and the infamous Carlos as well as the criminal and destructive American group, The Weathermen it would have been desirable to have some inconspicuous means of communication.  Historically a means has been itinerants who had a reason to travel about such as the entertainers like the Stones and Bob Dylan.  Cultural exchanges in governmental usage.

I think it quite possible, although I have no hard evidence that when Rupert was investigating the Stones at Chrissie Gibbs request he may have contacted the security agencies of England who seeing an opportunity to put an operative above suspicion in the Stones organization recruited Rupert.

As an intelligence agent in the Stones’ organization Rupert could maintain contact through his Europe wide aristocratic friends while dealing through the Stones with the revolutionaries who, at the very least, hung around the Stones.  I suspect that Mick and Keith were more than sympathetic to them.

Eric Burdon of The Animals as a solo artist was arrested by the German police on suspicion of aiding the revolutionaries.  Eric pleads innocence of course but the rock crowd as a group was sympathetic to the revolutionaries while the lyrics themselves were frequently openly revolutionary.  Police suspicion would not have been misplaced.

In Eugene Oregon where I had my record store at the time, revolutionary zanies functioned quite openly, at least as far as I was concerned, infesting the foothills of the Cascades where they had built bunkers to store weapons, ammunition and food against the Day which was thought imminent. As a record store owner they assumed that naturally I too was a revolutionary.  The Black Panthers for instance extorted money from me.  I was caught in the middle as the authorities assumed naturally that I was too.  It was tricky as I was then walking a tightrope between two hostile sides.

Thus Rupert otherwise inexplicably declassed himself while undertaking to represent a bankrupt band that was hopelessly in debt to the Inland Revenue.  A debt he knew could never be paid off and never has been.  In fact his first act regarding the ones was to advise them to leave England for more tax friendly shores.

When Rupert moved the band from England they ceased being a specifically English band becoming a band without a country or a true global band.  As a global band it is probable that Allen Klein even though Jewish was strictly of a US geographic mentality whereas Rupert being Europe based with friends in each country was better able to deal with different tax laws, mores, etc.  As a businessman he was better prepared to set up the business organization that the Stones needed.

It must be borne in mind that when the band left England on the cusp of the big boom of the seventies they became a multi-million dollar corporations with rather intricate financial problems.  Klein had the reputation of a buccaneer; he could squeeze the pips but he couldn’t command respect, Rupert could.

So, the success of the Stones after ’68 depended in a great part on the superb financial management of Rupert, as well as his ability to deal with a lunatic like Keith.  Rupert had no sooner got the band established in France than Keith got them thrown out of the country for, let’s not put a gloss on it, criminal behavior.  Keith was handling large amounts of heroin while providing, as it were a safe haven for the Marseilles criminal drug element.  Finally Keith and Anita turned a young girl, possible with violence, which resulted in the Stones having to flee France.  That made two countries they could no longer perform in, at least for a while, France and England.

I’m sure Rupert smacked his forehead, wrung his hands and asked the universe, what the hell is going on?  Keith and Mick must have been born under good signs as Rupert stayed on.

Having established a basis for prosperity Rupert then set about dealing with the first key problem, Allen Klein. Although broke the Stones initiated an expensive , read multi-million lawsuit against the wily Klein.  Americans operate on the principle that possession is nine tenths of the law so getting anything out of Klein would be a small miracle.  Without numbers to go on any accurate notion of what happened is impossible but as both sides were into the lawsuit for millions over eighteen years it would seem the results when they finally signed off were profitable for each.

So, having serendipitously acquired a supremely competent money man in Prince Rupert Loewenstein the financial future of the Stones was secured.  They would become perhaps the richest band in history.

A Review:

The Rock And Roll Circus Movie

Of The Rolling Stones

by

R.E. Prindle

In December 1968 Mick Jagger decided to make a film, or rather, he shot the film having decided earlier. Perhaps he was inspired by The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour of the previous year. These years from 1966 to 1968-69 were a tumultuous time for Jagger and his sidekick Keith Richards. Not least significant was that Mick had taken up with the songstress Marianne Faithfull. Then in 1967 there was perhaps the most famous drug bust in history at Keith’s Redlands house.

The boys had been pushing the drug envelope hard more or less inviting a crackdown and it came in 1967 involving Mick, Keith and Marianne with devastating results for all three characters in the drama.

As the authorities wished to make an example of the baddest boys of rock and roll Mick and Keith received prison sentences of which however they only served two or three days. Nevertheless their psyches had been criminalized, changed their views on their role in society.

While the arrest and jail time were merited in society’s eyes, Mick and Keith who were among the legions marching to Altruria on the wings of pot convinced that their elders had irrevocably messed the world up while they were going to set it right under the influence of marijuana, LSD, amphetamines and whatever else was handy, saw the bust and conviction as unjustified interference in their dreams of perfection.

The revolution was on as far as they were concerned hence they began a string of songs along the lines of Street Fighting Man and Sympathy For The Devil, unintended consequences of the bust.

Oh yeah, Mick and Marianne, Keith and his main squeeze Anita Pallenberg had become involved in Satanism which was going around like the flu. Not necessarily dilettantish either like, say, I just read a great book by Satan, but the real kind as fostered by the Great Beast 666 Aleister Crowley himself as interpreted by his epigoni Kenneth Anger and Anton LaVey, not to mention the Process Church Of The Final Judgment. Mick and Marianne disavow any serious interest in Satanism but the Rock and Roll Circus contradicts that.

Combined with these irritants in their lives Mick had just starred in a Satanic movie, Performance, and Marianne had had the misfortune of a miscarriage. To say that they weren’t suffering at the time they made their movie would be a understatement.

In this hazy mental state, compounded by too many drugs, Mick cobbled together his Circus.

What is the meaning of the title Circus? Ostensibly it meant literally a circus, after all it had a fire eater and trapeze artists. However it could also be a double entendre. Just as the title of their 1967 album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, parodied the Queens request on passports so the word Circus also parodied the name the British intelligence agency gave to their gig. The title can be construed as a challenge to the establishment. It would seem clear then that Mick was still seething inside because of Redlands.

His film is negligible as a movie but a good concert film. The symbolism is non stop as the guest audience in dressed in some sort of Munchkin costumes. The cast was bizarre to say the least. While little more than a musical oddity Jethro Tull led by Ian Anderson in his disgusting dirty old man persona opens the show while he was followed by the Who caught in pre-Tommy persona. Never one of my favorite bands, others thought they were a good performance while we are treated to a young Pete Townshend doing a series of his trademark windmills.

The couple circus acts are entertaining enough; the fire eater is pretty spectacular.

John Lennon performing separately from the Beatles was probably the musical highlight of the show for me. While obviously in the throes of a serious depression personally, as a performer once on stage Lennon is charisma spilling out all over the place. The depression does show up in the name he chose for his ad hoc group- The Dirty Mac. The name characterizes the general depression and malaise of the whole show. Lennon’s group brought together some stellar lights of the time. Besides himself he had Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums, Eric Clapton on lead guitar and Keith on rhythm. They are joined a by fiddler, I presume Ivry Gitlis, and the irrepressible Yoko Ono.

Yoko was in her Bagism phase. While the movie is loosely shot during Lennon’s gig, if you watch the lower right corner of the film you can see a black object sort of pulsing. That’s the bag Yoko is in. I suppose as she was a performance artist the bag was Yoko’s joke- that’s the bag I’m in, get it?

After a noisy rendition of Yer Blues Yoko wiggles out of the bag bouncing up with her arms outstretched as in Here I am, aren’t I wonderful? Well, she certainly shocked Ivry when she began to squeal. Yoko is very tiny so Ivry kind of looks down at Yoko with raised eyebrows, looks over at John, backs up a couple steps, stops playing momentarily and has this incredulous am I believing what I’m seeing and hearing look on his face. One might say Yoko stole the show. Really, I had to start laughing.

The real show stopper comes next when the camera shifts to Marianne Faithfull. She was decorously posed in a stunning black designer gown. At her most beautiful with a fine folky voice that entrancingly recalled her As Tears Go By but strong and more focused. I missed the words but caught the mood of this enchanting chanteuse. Marianne definitely trumped Yoko as a showstopper.

Taj Mahal was a special case. Believe it or not Taj is still out there challenging the Interminable Tourist Dylan himself. Taj works, or did, about 170 days a year, every year. While he is not well known he began as a duo with Ry Cooder called the Rising Sons then added a string of records on his own. The guitarist is Jesse Ed Davis, a failed guitar god, who had a couple solo Lps of his own. Taj’s first two records are superb blues Lps, two of my favorites of the period. The third LP, a two record set is also quite good but begins his political period that obviated his musical career. He goes rapidly down hill after that.

For some reason he chose a rather lame piece from his repertoire. If he was making an appeal for a girl or girls to join him backstage his salacious version of Hey, Little School Girl might have served him better.

The Stones rounded out the show at the end. While the Who were supposed to have buried the Stones I didn’t find it so. The tension had been well maintained throughout the show with the comic interlude of Yoko and the Stones maintained it through to the end with a climax of sorts.

It was obvious that Mick, Keith and Marianne were in a world of hurt….and Brian Jones. That tragedy would play out over the next year when Brian drowned and Marianne almost drowned in her own tears and Mick spawned a real live Satan at Altamont.

The movie ended in hurt and Satanism- homage to the Devil.

Mick and Marianne had gone to see Jimi Hendrix a few months earlier. After performing Hendrix had sat at Marianne and Mick’s table where he put the make on Marianne telling her to dump the White dude and go with him. Marianne hesitated a moment too long giving Mick offense so that he commemorated the evening in his song, You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Suddenly I realized the meaning of the line, you and your friend Jimi as Mick shouted it to someone off stage to the right. OK, not my problem.

So Jagger was still wearing his hair as he did in the movie Performance. That soul corrupting film was obviously still influencing him. As Marianne said, it changed his personality.

The show closed with Sympathy For The Devil. There was a little stage extension on which Mick prostrated himself as though doing obeisance as the song played. It looked like he was groveling, then he looked up making a couple goofy grimaces at the camera beginning to pull off his shirt. Not necessary, Mick, not necessary. Then with the shirt off he straightened to a kneeling position to reveal Satanic tattoos a la Kenneth Anger.

Anger had a large LUCIFER tattooed across his chest. Here Mick seemed to be imitating him apparently trying to tell us that the Great Satan had arrived. I hope they were transfers. Interesting, especially as the movie Rosemary’s Baby appeared in 1968 in which Rosemary gives birth to the Son of Satan. Even more interestingly in the 1990’s book sequel Son Of Rosemary Satan’s little lad was named Andy. After Andy Warhol, I presume.

I suppose then that Mick conceived the film as a coming out party for himself as The Great Beast. Apparently he took his Satanism very seriously. It make one wonder, was Altamont a projection of the Great Satan?

Part I: Mick Jagger The Rolling Stones And The Sixties

　

Part I, Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones And The Sixties

Andrew Look Oldham Learning The Ropes

by

R.E. Prindle

Andrew Loog Oldham 

I’m in the James Dean suite, better known as two shoe boxes at the back of the Hotel Iroquois on West 44^th Street in Manhattan and life has definitely lost its color.

You try for a few things to forget that he who is not busy being born is busy dying, to block out the thought of yourself as a wingless, hurt, spineless bird of the 60s.

Another grey-line- they’re not even white anymore- another grappa or Southern-anything-without-Comfort can bring you back for a few minutes but it’s not a given. Occasionally you get up from the couch and have to check yourself out in the mirror above the fireplace to make sure you are still there, and that’s an effort.

One could say that when life becomes too painful, the body sickens and withers and the soul departs.

--Andrew Loog Oldham, Stoned, 1995

Mick

            Andrew Loog Oldham was the promoter, the guiding light, who led the five lads comprising the Rolling Stones from a squalid existence to the top of revolutionary society. As he wrote the above quote from Vol. 1 of his excellent two volume autobiography, Stoned, he viewed his past from the perspective of drug induced oblivion. It hadn’t always been that way.

Andrew had been present at the creation of that part of the Revolution known as the British Invasion in the history of Rock and Roll. He had in fact been one of its principal guides.

But, as even the most obscure molecule has its origins in a more distant past a background of the macro cosmos leading to the micro-cosmos Andrew Oldham might provide some insights.

The actual starting point of what became Andrew Loog Oldham is, oh, say, 1789 and the French Revolution of which, of course the future molecule of Andrew had no part. Let us skip lightly over the intervening hundred years or so to the defining moment of our own existence, the years after 1900.

Of supreme importance is the career of that master demolition artist, Sigmund Freud, but we’re just going to be dealing with conclusions not origins or development. Nevertheless Freud began his assault on Western consciousness in 1900 with his Interpretation Of Dreams- the excavations of the unconscious and demolition of the conscious. We will bear this is mind because Freud’s vision of psychology is important.

The stately self-confidence of the Victorian Age was destroyed by the horrors of what at that time was known as The Great War, the term WWI evolving only after twenty-five years or so later. WWII gave that previous war its modern nomenclature.

Thus 1914 commenced a hundred years war in which WWII, the Korean War, The Viet Nam War and the Communist subversion of US institutions was done reaching a culmination under a world wide Communist government led by China with Barack Obama as its king, emperor or dictator.

The First World War destroyed the flower of Western manhood, compounded by the destruction of European manhoodof the succeeding WWII the loss was not reparable up to our time. While the ‘Pacifists’, the physically weak and mental imbeciles remained at home with the elderly and women the best and bravest were sent on an unproductive suicide mission. As the undrafted at least were the patriotic and nationalists that also left the international Communists at home to assume positions of real power- the directors of the war, that is, the beneficiaries of the slaughter.

After the War the Third International interfered in the internal affairs of the nations nourished by the West’s absurd notion of democracy setting up power points in Western capitols that resulted in Popular Front qua Communist governments in all Western States with the exception of the Axis powers who nevertheless adopted socialist administrations.

In the meantime the soldiers returned after the war in various stages of shell shock or mental discomfort of some kind to try to put their lives in order without any assistance from the State that put them in harm’s way in the charnel house. They were greeted on their return by enormous social disorganization caused by the Communists who for instance led the general strike of 1929 in Great Britain and in general caused a conflict between two different economic or essentially religious approaches.

The General Strike was followed by the world wide economic depression that lasted until the religious war of 1939-45 between Communism and Rationality. The former was led by the USSR and Stalin while the latter was led by Hitler, his Germany and the Axis. The result was a forgone conclusion as both the US and USSR were united against a pitifully weak German and Axis Powers.

In this second major incident of the Hundred Years War Britain was all but demolished. She was the big loser. As the incident ended in 1945 London was all put a pile of rubble. From the rubble came the second phase of the Rock and Roll generations.

Since the discussion is centered around the Rolling Stones , Bill Wyman the eldest of the group was born in 1935 thereby having definite memories of the bombing. Charlie Watts, Jagger, Richards and Jones came along in ‘42 and ‘43. The genius who promoted the group, Andrew Loog Oldham, was born in 1944 a couple years earlier than the baby boomers, remaining a part of the war babies.

London from the end of the incident to 1960 and even beyond retained evidence of the bombing. The devastation was nearly terminal.

Replacing English manhood on the front during the war years were millions of US soldiers, sailors and airmen. Thus the women were not necessarily without men. Most such relations did not lead to stable commitments resulting in many illegitimate children. Yet many American men wed their English girlfriends returning them to the US. In my boyhood I knew or knew of several English war brides, so there must have thousands or tens of thousands of them. This may to some extent have relieved the disparity between the abundance of women and the paucity of men, balancing society somewhat.

As it turned out the fulcrum of the Stones, Andrew Loog Oldham, was one of those unfortunate bastards. Even though his mother took his father’s name his status affected the development of his character.

Rationing of essentials continued until 1953 so that Wyman fully experienced the deprivation while the others endured some of it, Oldham the least. Let’s say that they all had less than cheery childhoods while those of us of the same age cohort in the US while having reduced comforts, which were scarcely noticeable to me if at all, knew little deprivation saving that there were few men around. Richards’ felt the rationing of candy rather intensely while I, in the US, could spend whatever little money I had on candy and you can bet I did. Loved candy and ice cream then and love them now.

II.

We’ll begin then with Andrew Loog Oldham as he knew how to take some self-absorbed nearly amateur musicians with a group identity and market them not only to England but the US and ultimately, the world. The Stones were among the first global bands.

Coming from a world scarred by war and a son of an unwed mother who next formed a long standing relationship with a married man who did treat Andrew well the boy still developed a psychosis. Caught up in the glamour he tried to make his way from age seventeen. He was part of the first generation that had difficulties separating movies from real life. Andrew saw a lot of them taking them as education developing his persona from them. Two influential movies and characters around which he formed the core of his persona he mentions frequently. Expresso Bongo, a not bad rock and roll vehicle for Cliff Richards, contributed the character Johnny Jackson very convincingly played by Laurence Harvey. Jackson was essentially a street hustler who overplayed his hand as Andrew himself would do.

A second personality forming movie was the grim, even repulsive The Sweet Smell Of Success starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and based on the life of the reptile journalist Walter Winchell. Once again a couple characters who overplayed their hand ending in disaster.

Andrew took flings around the incipient glamour industries that would form Swinging England including Mary Quant and others before settling on the truly surface glamour of the recording industry.

He introduced himself to Brian Epstein becoming a publicist for the Beatles. There could have been no premonition of the phenomenal success of the Beatles leading to the British Invasion. The Beatles success itself remains a mystery to me. I can guess who engineered the situation but I can’t explain its success. Certainly when Andrew heard of the Rolling Stones in 1963 before the Beatles’ success in the US he could only have been thinking of conquering England.

At the time Andrew found them the Stones were building a reputation as a stage band, but small. Appearing in Rochester they performed before only thirty people, which swelled to sixty shortly, hardly enough to build an empire on, yet it worked. When he saw this very small situation he realized he had the chance of a lifetime; a seize it or lose it situation. Andrew was definitely a visionary of no mean farsightedness. His problem was that he was underage unable to legally act on his own. He was forced to include an old line manager to front for him named Eric Easton. Formed in a small time England Easton hadn’t the imagination to take the Stones global while Andrew did.

Andrew then had to bide his time until he was twenty-one and able to act in his own name. This was dangerous because artist management was and is basically dishonest and Easton was of the cloth, but we will get into that later when we discuss the concept of intellectual properties.

For the time being Andrew guided the Stones to Easton.

III.

The Rolling Stones

As I say, the Stones, with the exception of Bill Wyman, were of the second generation of rockers being War Babies. They, then, experienced the bombed over London of the forties along with food rationing that lasted until 1953-54. According to Richards the lifting of the candy ration was the battle cry of freedom for British youth. One wonders why some astute entrepreneur didn’t smuggle in some M & Ms or Mars Bars from the US. Lord knows we never suffered from sugar deprivation.

Nevertheless the older age cohorts brought Dixieland music called Trad Jazz in England to the fore in the post war years while the War Babies progressed to Negro R&B and straight Blues which the first rockers had already converted to rock and roll in the US mid-fifties. At the same time Jazz had a following so that the whole of British music after 1960 or so was derived from American Negro depression music. At the line goes: The Blues ain’t nothing’ but a good man feelin’ bad, that is to say, depressed.

So the trajectory was the first group of British musicians picked up on Dixieland or Trad which is pretty much the music of depressed people trying to convince themselves they are joyous, a sort of Singing In The Rain spirit, correlating with the spirit of the immediate post-war generation. Dixieland, originating in the old French colony of New Orleans then was Negro music that tried to lift depressed spirits. It was only natural, so to speak, that a totally depressed post-war English generation would find Trad so emotionally satisfying.

In the fifties, Rock and Roll music evolved in the US based on Country music, or White blues, and certain Negro Blues influences. However the White American experience with Negroes and Negro music had been integrated into White consciousness while Negritude was rejected. It should be remembered that the cowboy singer Gene Autry not infrequently sang blues based material.

The spirit of Blues is much different than the spirit of Dixieland. R&B livened the spirits of the War Babies while still being depressed but cheered and encouraged by increasing prosperity the moved up the evolution of US Negro music from Dixieland to R&B. Thus a crossing or melding of Aryan and Negro sentiments with a heavy reverence for African culture. ‘Drop down mama, and spread yo’ legs, I’s comin’ fo’ ya and I don’t begs…’ Wonderful Lenny Bruce style stuff, that.

The R&B strain began to emerge then about 1960. Jagger, Jones, Richards were all R&B crusaders from post-puberty. Wyman came from a pop R&R background while Watts came from a Jazz backdrop. Ian Stewart was a solid Boogie Woogie pianist. Although dropped from the line up he contributed significantly to the band musically.

Of the group, including Oldham, the only member with a political consciousness and agenda was Mick Jagger. The others were either yobbos or living close to the line. It would be Jagger who gave the political direction to the group. Mick obtained a scholarship to the Communist London School of Economics where he assumed a Communist stance that he carried over to his lyrics and posturing in the Stones. He tempered his enthusiasm after 1970 as he says for ‘pragmatic’ reasons. Richards while not appearing political aided and abetted Jagger’s approach because of resentment against the ‘system’, in other words, a rebel with cause enough.

Part IV

Going With The Flow

The music business was a fairly tight knit community fully under Jewish control. The financial engine that drove it was the body of intellectual property, songs, which was known as publishing. Publishing includes all royalties whether from sheet music, recording or media play. The money from media play, mainly radio and television is collected by ASCAP and BMI. Both publishing and media are firmly under Jewish control. Aryan artists then, like it or not, always work for Jews entirely, under contract they are essentially slaves with their earnings kept ‘in trust’ by their masters, doled out on an as need basis. The absurdity of these ‘legal’ contracts is shown by the clause in the Stones contract with Allen Klein in which he wasn’t required to even pay out recording advances for twenty years after receipt. How such a clause could be supported by the courts is beyond me. But, on that later.
 

Now, intellectual properties are the easiest property to steal. Quite frequently the artists don’t or didn’t even know what they were or how valuable they were. Jac Holzman of Elektra records just assigned the Doors rights to himself. Klein in some manner did the same with Jagger-Richards’ intellectual properties and he or his estate still owns them. And the law allows this.
 

Frequently a portion of the royalties are assigned to another entity with or without the knowledge of the writers. Then a situation arose as a result ot technology that was unforeseen and had immeasurable consequences.
 

Until the mid-fifties, that is from c. 1930 to 1954 radio had been a melange of programs with very few minutes a day devoted to music programming, especially of the popular sort which intellectuals have always despised. Then TV, introduced commercially after the war knocked the legs from under syndicated radio programs. For a moment it was believed that radio itself would go bankrupt. However, we teens of the era were clamoring for more popular music on the radio. It was believed that all music radio couldn’t succeed but this notion was speedily proven wrong.
 

We wanted to hear our records and wanted to hear the same songs and we wanted to hear them often. This led to the innovation of Top 40 radio that seldom was more than the Top Ten with new introductions. We demanded that smash hits like Lonnie Donnegan’s Rock Island Line be played once every quarter hour. This would go on for a week or two until a new hit came along. I once manipulated the dial to get seven consecutive plays of Rock Island Line before I lost my rhythm. Now, multiply 2 ½ cents a play by several tens of millions and you’ve got yourself some pocket change.

 

 

Of course a record had to be introduced or ‘broken’ as they said. The key break out markets were New York City and Los Angeles with Chicago a distant third. By the time you got those three markets behind a record every other station in the country fell in line. You had a hit. The process usually took about six months to penetrate all markets. So the top DJs in those three markets had to be serviced. You can imagine the competition for those DJ jobs. Produced some remarkable disc spinners. To listen to the radio back then was to participate in a non-stop party 24/7.
 

As a national break out center all at one time TV came along. Ed Sullivan could introduce the entire nation to such as Elvis Presley or the Beatles or Stones in one three minute segment. Bravo! Ed more or less led to American Bandstand fronted by the eternal teenager, now gone to his eternal rest, Dick Clark. Clark became the most powerful DJ in the history of the world. But…you had to get your record and artist on his show.
 

The men responsible for getting records played were called song pluggers. This was a time honored practice going back to before the electronic media to hard copy sheet music. No one had found fault with the practice of offering incentives to play records up to this point.
 

But now Dick Clark and American Bandstand. The incentive that would get you artist’s appearance and record played on Bandstand was a piece of the ‘action’ also called publishing. If Clark played your song, and it had to be a good one, presto! There were millions of plays on radio the very next day or sooner at 2 ½ cents a play and with luck a million sales of the 45. I think the moral is clear here. If Clark were allowed to go on collecting pieces of intellectual properties, or copyrights, within a decade or so he might be worth many times the value of Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building put together. Now, here’s the rub…Dick Clark wasn’t Jewish.
 

The word from the Alley was stop Dick Clark. But how?
 

Well, Clark wasn’t doing anything that hadn’t been kosher from time immemorial so the only thing to do was to make the ancient practice of song plugging sound immoral; hence the name of song plugging was changed to the morally reprehensible sounding label- PAYOLA. Well, so what? So pressure was put on Congress, this became a Federal case, to investigate Dick Clark and to make it ecumenical, certain important DJs like Allen Freed, who was Jewish but not of the synagogue, and make payola if not a crime at least something that certain people were prohibited from doing.
 

Alan Freed, the poor fish, was totally destroyed, his life ending shortly after his condemnation. Clark, so as not to seem unfair, especially as no known crime had been violated was offered the choice of keeping Bandstand or the publishing of the songs he had already accumulated. Dick chose Bandstand although he later said that was a mistake. Tin Pan Alley was safe for a time as its power was returned to it. Once again they could control what was played and who could and could not succeed.
 

Now, enter Andrew Loog Oldham and The Rolling Stones.
 

Bob Dylan in one of his fits of delusions of grandeur claims that he was the man who brought the giant Tin Pan Alley to earth. There is no denying he made his contribution but Oldham gives greater credit to the Beatles which is probably true. By 1964 the time of the following story of Andrew’s the demise of the Alley hadn’t yet happened. This is a great story.
 

This story involves two people with whom the reader may or may not be familiar. One is a DJ, powerful in the business, and the other was a very powerful member of both the Gay and Jewish mafias, capable of making or breaking any aspirant to recording fame and a fixture of the Tin Pan Alley/Brill Building who most likely had a hand, if not the guiding hand, in stripping Dick Clark of his looming power over the Alley. Murray Kaufman- Murray the K- was the former and Bob Crewe was the latter.
 

Both of these gentlemen were Jewish, as indeed most similar positions in the music business are, hence wishing to continue Jewish control over artists and repertoire - A&R in the business.
 

Clark’s assault on Alley dominance was just the opening volley. The years ’60- ’64 were quiescent perhaps giving false assurance of victory to the Alley. The next assault on the Alley was to begin, or was already in its birth throes about 1964 when the Beatles who wrote their own songs and published them dominated the airwaves hurt the Alley worse than Dick Clark. Remember at the Beatles’ peak four or five of the Top Ten were Beatles songs. Assuming those songs were played twice an hour at three minutes each 8 x 3 equals 24 minutes of non-Alley credits allowing for ads that means the Alley was virtually shut out of AM radio thus earning severely reduced royalties.
 

An assault requires a counter assault so any vulnerabilities in the Beatles armor had to be sought out. Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager was Jewish, indeed the Beatles would be surrounded by Jews siphoning off their riches, but I don’t think Epstein was a member of the synagogue while being quite protective of what was his. So, Epstein was in the way. He conveniently committed suicide, as… who knows: At this point the entire Beatles empire was up for grabs while the Beatles themselves had never been involved in the business aspects of their success and had no idea what to do. Who stepped in to turn their money green but two Jewish characters, Allen Klein and Leonard Epstein to divvy it up. Leonard Epstein went by the nom de guerre of Lee Eastman, Linda’s father. So, in the end the Jews got it back from the Beatles.
 

Another big factor in the demise of the Alley was the self-confessed assassin, Bob Dylan. Dylan claims full credit for the demise of the Alley but he exaggerates. His stuff which defies description as much as his hero’s, Little Richard, was certainly not acceptable to the Alley. His application being rejected, Bobby, one assumes, swore revenge. His major contribution was that his success encouraged the success of the singer-songwriters who were not of the Alley and a great many not of the Faith thus removing precious minutes of play time if not hours which obviated the need for roomsful of writers in the Alley putting them out of work. Carole King had to make her own records becoming a singer-songwriter.
 

By the time of Andrew’s story one imagines that the perceptive Bob Crewe was aware of the developing problem, at least from the incipient British Invasion. While I have always been familiar with the name of Bob Crewe it had little meaning to me. I thought he was just an arranger of orchestral versions of rock songs; in other words, cashing in. As Andrew explains he was a major songwriter of the fifties and sixties. Sixty to sixty-four are considered very fallow years in R&R and this period is when Crewe shown. Indeed, the music of the period so disgusted me that I refused to listen to Top 40 spending my time on the Country end of the dial. The period was the end of the Golden Age of Country. Well, what doesn’t die moves on.
 

It turns out that Crewe wrote all of that falsetto crap of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons with all its homosexual double entendres: Walk Like A Man, (Talk Like A Girl), my son.
 

Murray the K was one of the most important DJs in an age when DJs walked with the gods. He originally fastened himself on the Beatles like a barnacle on the bottom side of a ship, calling himself the Fifth Beatle. As Andrew says in this story he is attempting the same hoping to become the Sixth Rolling Stone. Murray went around in fifths and sixths.
 

Andrew’s description of Crewe’s digs at the Dakota Apartments in front of which John Lennon would be shot sixteen years later:

    

We grabbed some hasty victuals from the hot dog stand on the corner of Fifth, then cabbed west across the park and back into our own Holly Golightly world to attend a Bob Crewe party in our honor. The yellow stretch cab wheeled out of the park at 72^nd across Central park West and let us out at the austere and majestic granite entrance to the Dakota. Three short 60s-filled years later, the building would become famous for housing Roman Polansky’s Rosemary’s Baby. Sixteen years on, it would become the site of the killing of John Lennon. Keith and I asked for ‘Bob Crewe, please.’ The rest of the Stones were already there. Bob’s apartment was a film set, all ornate and Roman gay splendour over the park - marbled floors, bronzed Ma Bell’s, African motif zebra and leopard throw rugs, and enough brocade tassel and gilt to assure you that you weren’t visiting John Huston. The living room was sunk down to a waist-high setting with an aqua-Nero motif, complete with statues of nubile youth that gushed water. Bob Crewe was Doris Day, if Doris Day had been all man and stayed gorgeous. Leonard Bernstein chatted with actor/neighbor Robert Ryan who asked Mick if he knew Terence Stamp who he’d worked with two years before in Billy Budd. Mick didn’t or wouldn’t. Lenny B. and Ryan turned away from Jagger and resumed discussing elevator problems at the Dakota. Bob Crewe was above it all and flying.

    

So you see what royalties and a few intellectual properties are worth. You could kill for them, at the very least, steal them. You can see what became available of the Beatles when Epstein committed ‘suicide’ and the value of the Jagger-Richards properties that Klein, Easton and Oldham- all Jews- stole. As mere artists the Stones are actually inconsequential, they are the mere raw material, the gold mine, to be exploited by the prospectors of pop. Thus Crewe’s confederate Murray the K cornered the key figure in the Stone’s organization, Andrew Loog Oldham, p. 16:

    

Sometime during the evening, Murray the K pulled me aside and put a 45 single between my hand and his. Murray stood out in these svelte surroundings, grey-blue straw titfer atop his hair replacement and ghastly tangerine skin. He was wearing a Cadillac upholstery colored Teflon sweater with winkle pickers that set off fuchsia flared trews that wouldn’t even pass for wallpaper in Slough. Murray had no shame but was master of his game…pop kingmaker.

He backed me against the wall, both of us still holding the 45, his free hand gripping my beige suede jacketed elbow. ‘Andy, I love the guys. I think they are fabulous. I know the Beatles love ‘em too- George told me so. I don’t go out of my way for many people y’know, but I’m promoting the hell out of them- you’re gonna sell tickets. The Stones are special. I really like them.’

This rotund puck of pop caught his breath and allowed me time to acknowledge this outpouring. ‘Murray they like you too’ was all I could muster.

‘They do?’ He came back at me smiling vices. ‘Great. I could feel it, especially Brian, real straight guy, sweetheart, really genuine, Mick too. Listen Andy, I don’t often do this and I promise you, forget whatever you’ve heard- I don’t want anything for it, I just love this business we’re in and that’s the truth of it. Don’t want no freebies, no B-sides.’

He paused and grinned- this was pure pop oxymoronic air we were breathing. ‘All I want,’ he continued, ‘is to know that whenever the guys play New york- and you will, often, I promise- you have ol’ Murray the K behind you, man you’re gonna be big…’ (The wonderful thing about America I somehow found time to think, is that you have nothing to do with getting there. Other people do it for you and you are merely beholding, beholding- left holding the bag.) Murray meanwhile droned on, ‘Anyway, all I want is that Murray here is the only disc jockey who MC’s your New York shows and-’ Murray pushed me further against the African motif’d wall- ‘and you and the guys remember Murray when those cocksuckers put me down…and they will, just you remember.’

America was turning into beads of sweat trickling from questionable hairlines and Paul Simon was still Tom of Tom and Jerry. I felt the vinyl, now it was all mine. ‘Feel what’s in your hand, Andy. It’s yours; it’s for you and the boys. Just take it and record it. I guarantee it. Murray guarantees it babe. I just gave you your very first American hit.’ He had, and God Bless America, land of a thousand dances. I’d just gone to the perfect party and got laid by the perfect partner, Murray the K. Bob Crewe beamed knowingly from the other side of the room and raised his glass in a welcome-to-the-good-ship-lollipop salute while musical guest Tiny Tim entertained guests with that and other ditties from another room.

     The 45 was It’s All Over Now. It went to 30 US, the lower reaches of success. Not much of a pottage to sell your birthright for but you should catch the threat. So, what’s going on here? Remember you’re in a Jewish milieu on Jewish turf.
 

You’re standing in a magnificent Dakota apartment of 3 or 4,000 square feet. The apartment is expensively and magnificently appointed in an occult mysterioso manner in what may have been the center of New York Saturnian Satanism, more on that in its place. Crewe is in the bucks and he got there in 2 ½ cent bits. The power of intellectual properties x tens or hundreds of millions.
 

Over in a smaller room of the apartment Crewe is supporting the once successful British songwriter, Lionel Bart, also Jewish who has apparently fallen on hard times, perhaps wiped clean by Crewe as Andrew will be by Allen Klein.
 

The impression of great power is clear. As Crewe watches from the other side of the room Murray the K acting as his agent or, perhaps, stooge, has pinned Andrew to the wall at the same time wrapping their hands around a mysterious object.

Bob Crewe

Murray the K then lays out the terms on which he as the most powerful DJ in the most powerful break out market in the US, save Dick Clark, will allow the Rolling Stones to market themselves in NYC and hence the United States. All Murray’s negotiations were positive from his side although expressed in negatives. These are the items Murray wants in exchange for the Stones’ soul. Remember this apartment might actually be the apartment replicated in Rosemary’s Baby in which Satan was cradled. The movie was released after this incident but Andrew has already mentioned it so that this incident to him seemed like a scene in Rosemary’s Baby. He is conflating the two.


Murray says: The Stones are special. I really like them. In other words you’ve got our attention and we can see our way to make a bundle off you.


Murray says: He doesn’t want any freebies, no B sides. In other words that is exactly what he is asking for. The A side of a 45 is the hit side; the B side whose royalties are the same as the A side can by a throw away. Indeed, Andrew would make crowd noise a side just for the royalties. At this point the Stones are merely a cover band- they re-record other people’s records hence the B side Murray wants for his own publishing account is worth potentially tens of thousands of dollars. Hence, as we can plainly see Congress effectively put an end to ‘payola.’


Then Murray threatens that if they don’t they will never play NYC again and if they do they won’t get any help from his hand.


In addition Murray does demand the prestige of MCing the Stones shows. So essentially at this point he’s got the farm. He would become the Sixth Stone.


Then as Crewe beams approvingly from across the room Murray tells Andrew that the thing they’re holding onto is the next song the Stones are going to record (was that a command?) - publishing obviously going to Crewe while Murray guarantees that he will play it on his show.

Murray The K

Murray looks to Crewe and Crewe blesses the transaction by raising his glass. Of course this was written well after Andrew had seen Rosemary’s Baby so maybe he just portrayed the scene in that context with Crewe as Satan.


Andrew had no trouble catching the drift. He buckled or perhaps wisely acceded. The 45 was It’s All Over Now and it was the Stones next release and not much of a hit, reaching only thirty but indicating Andrew has caught the ball and would play the game. Andrew had his own counter attack however.

Andrew perhaps compared the Beatles as songwriters to the Stones as a copy band and got that point. On returning home he demanded that Mick and Keith begin writing their own songs. That would more or less place them beyond the reach of Crewe and his ilk. But then whose smiling face showed up in England? Allen Klein and there went the publishing until the next Stones counter attack.

If Andrew had just stayed off all those drugs.

The Stones loved the attitude and energy of New York; we’d walk it and we’d talk it. Andrew loved New York, too. It was a movie come true for him- the Brill Building and 1650 Broadway, running around from office to office listening to that Jewish rock ‘n’ roll coming out of New York. It all had that sweet sound. The Carole King sound, the music of Bob Crewe. It wasn’t ‘I see a red door and I want to paint it black.’ It was more up; it was pop.

Roberta Goldstein, p.1, 2Stoned

You don’t really have to read between the lines to get that point but there is a lot between the lines too.

Next: Jagger, Bailey and the Yobbo Revolution