Video of the Day: Rolling Stones, ‘Waiting on a Friend’

Tattoo You was the last Rolling Stones LP to impress me, and perhaps no song on it so much as "Waiting on a Friend." Mick Jagger’s seeming goodbye to his randy days (“Making love and breaking hearts, it is a game for youth”) proved ephemeral, but not the subtle musicianship of this tune: Nicky Hopkins’ beautiful running piano, Keith Richards’ restrained strumming guitar, 
"saxophone colossus "Sonny Rollins closing out in plaintive fashion--and, because it had been originally recorded for the Goats Head Soup sessions back in 1973, an uncredited Mick Taylor on guitar as well.

It wasn’t till near the end of the Eighties that I watched MTV, so I missed this marvelous video when it premiered in 1981. The cable station, just starting out, was delighted to have a group of the Stones’ caliber offering them a video. 

Other directors before and after would pull out every pyrotechnic stop in the coming music video era, but Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s visual style matches the Stones’ aural one in its simplicity. It’s not just a song about friendship, but “friendships in the band,” Jagger would say later. Sure enough, it tracks the Glimmer Twins, with Jagger hanging out on a stoop on New York's St. Mark's Place as a smiling Richards wends his way through the street scene, before the two head over to a bar, where they are joined by the rest of the band.

“Waiting on a Friend” captures a moment of uneasy peace in the group’s dynamics. Richards was battling heroin addiction at the time. When he emerged two years later, for the Undercover album, the tensions between him and Jagger—asserting control to keep the band going in the interim—burst into the open. The songwriting partnership between the two has not been the same since.

But “Waiting on a Friend” allows us to revel in them at their peak. “A smile relieves a heart that grieves, remember what I said.” We do, Mick.

Quote of the Day (Mick Jagger, on Prince, ‘Revolutionary Artist’)

“I am deeply shocked to hear of Prince’s passing. Prince was a revolutionary artist, a great musician, composer, a wonderful lyricist, a startling guitar player, but most importantly, authentic in every way. Prince’s talent was limitless. He was one of the most unique and talented artists of the last 30 years.”—Rolling Stone frontman Mick Jagger, in a series of tweets on Prince (1958-2016), quoted in Dana Getz, “Mick Jagger Pays Tribute to Prince: His 'Talent Was Limitless,'” www.ew.com, Apr. 21 2016

Flashback, July 1969: Rolling Stones Score With ‘Honky Tonk Women’

“Honky Tonk Women,” released as a single in the U.S. 45 years ago this week, was a triumph wedged between two tragedies that shadowed the Rolling Stones in 1969: the mysterious “death by misadventure” of founding member Brian Jones, on the day of the song’s release in the U.K., and the free December concert at Altamont, Calif., that ended disastrously with one fan murdered and three dead by accident.

Reading Keith Richards’ 2010 memoir, Life, I’ve come to the conclusion that, aside from consuming mind-altering substances, the Stones’ lead guitarist enjoys nothing more in life than talking about the technical aspects of music. So it is, certainly, with “Honky Tonk Women.” He remembered his experimentation with open five-string tuning in late 1968 and early 1969 as the event that “transformed my life.”

It transformed the band’s sound, too, inspiring the riffs  that would become instantly recognizable over the years in "Brown Sugar," "Tumbling Dice," "Happy," "All Down the Line," and "Start Me Up." It also marked the seamless integration into the band of Jones’ replacement, Mick Taylor.

Listening to the radio this past week, I heard a DJ observe that, of all the singers associated with the British Invasion of the Sixties, the one who sounded most recognizably English was Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits. The one who most certainly did not was Mick Jagger. Part of the reason why "Honky Tonk Women” is such a central part of the Stones’ half-century-long discography is because of the total immersion by the Stones' lead singer in Muddy Waters, John Lee Hookers, and other blues belters.

The title of the Stones’ chart-topper indicates where the song began—as a Hank Williams-style country tune, concocted when the group’s songwriting partners were on vacation in Brazil with girlfriends Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg, absorbing the gaucho life. Other Jagger-Richards songs would emerge as more identifiably country over the years (especially “Wild Horses” and “Far Away Eyes”). But, after Richards’ open tuning, the song morphed into something different: “a funky track and dirty too….It's got all that blues and black music from Dartford onwards in it, and [drummer] Charlie [Watts] is unbelievable on that track,” as Richards fondly recalled it.

The Stones’ mid-summer single sounds like a master class in raunchy insinuation (“The lady then she covered me with roses/She blew my nose and then she blew my mind”). So much of it also lends itself to feminist complaints about the Stones’ misogyny, starting with the title characters (dancing girls in a Western bar who may work as prostitutes); continuing with Jagger’s use the song as an opening for an affair with African-American model Marsha Hunt (he sounded her out on posing for a cover for the single, dressed as a prostitute); and gaining even greater ballast during the 1989 “Steel Wheels” tour, which featured giant inflatable women during performances.

Oh, the Stones are bad boys, to be sure! (Especially Mick—still positively priapic in his seventies.) But the song is irresistible, as Greil Marcus pointed out in a Rolling Stone review at the time of the record’s release. His judgment, that "Honky Tonk Women" contains “the strongest three minutes of rock and roll yet released in 1969,” is not that far off the mark. Three years ago, it placed #116 on Rolling Stone’s list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”

This Day in Rock History (Stones Score 1st US Hit With Holly’s ‘Not Fade Away’)

February 21, 1964—In a particularly auspicious day for the post-Beatle phase of the British Invasion, three singles destined to be classics were released. The first was Billy J. Kramer’s “Little Children”; the second, the Hollies’ “Just One Look.” The last, a cover version of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” did more than just provide the Rolling Stones with their first single to hit the U.S. pop charts; it also served as a seque into the songwriting that would make them pop forces in their own right in the next half century.

Like their contemporaries and competitors, the Beatles, the Stones began their careers by, in effect, reflecting back to American audiences rock ‘n’ roll songs seemingly familiar for the last dozen years, but now revivified. What the Beatles did for the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout,” for instance, the Stones did for the B side of Holly’s “Oh Boy!”—i.e., they made it fresh in their own interpretation.

Actually, they took it a step further: they unlocked potential that had been somewhat muted, substituting Mick Jagger’s growling, rougher vocals for Holly’s trademark hiccup (while stripping away the doo-wop harmonies), accentuating the Bo Diddley bomp, bomp-ba-bomp, bomp-bomp beat of the guitar, along with Brian Jones’ bluesy harmonica. The new take on the song was different enough from the original that manager Andrew Loog Oldman even termed it “the first song that Mick and Keith [Richards] wrote. The way they arranged it was the beginning of their shaping of them as songwriters.”

The idea that the longhaired British youths, with no real songwriting credits of their own, just signed to Decca Records, could have so reinvented a song by the brilliant, blazingly prolificTexas artist might have seemed laughable on the surface. It becomes even more astonishing when one recalls how green they were in the studio, and how unprepossessing that particular environment itself was. 

As Keith Richards recalled in his bestselling 2010 memoir, Life, Regent Sounds Studio in London was "just a little room full of egg boxes and it had a Grundig tape recorder, and to make it look like a studio, the recorder was hung on the wall instead of put on the table.” The space was cramped, allowing little definition between instruments, and so, by necessity, the sound approximated the band’s raw feel in concert at the time. The boys loved their primitive environment—especially the Stones’ guitarist, co-songwriter and ultimate pirate spirit, who learned the art of overdubbing there on a basic two-track tape recorder.

The Rolling Stones did for “Not Fade Away” what Frank Sinatra did for Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”: refocus attention on a relatively neglected portion of a major song catalog to such a point that it became a standard. Clearly, Holly’s record company didn’t see it as a major commercial hit, but the British band took their version to #3 on the charts in their own country and #48 in the U.S. (Not quite “She Loves You” territory, perhaps, but the ground overseas was becoming prepared for bigger things soon.)

Over the years, other artists have followed the lead of the scruffy U.K. upstarts.  Florence and the Machine recorded a four-minute take on the song three years ago, and that only begins to scratch the surface of what others have done with it. The Grateful Dead jammed for an epic 10 minutes in their version. But, as longtime readers of this blog might guess, my favorite version was done by Bruce Springsteen, who made it the first half of a melody with his own, equally fiery “She’s the One” in a Madison Square Garden concert I attended back in August 1978. (Hear for yourself in these two YouTube clips—“Not Fade Away” and “She’s the One”—that are, admittedly, far better in sound than visual quality.)

Today, “Not Fade Away” is the second most-covered song by Holly, exceeded only by “Peggy Sue.” Rolling Stone has even listed it among its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” What accounts for the awesome power that the Rolling Stones sensed? Joe Ely, who’s been playing the song in concert for years, told an interviewer several years ago: “The easiest thing to do is get it started. The hardest thing to do is find a place to stop. It’s infectious. It’s like a freight train you can’t stop.”

This Day in Rock History (Jagger, Richards Set Up in Drug Bust)

February 12, 1967—When he answered the door at his Sussex, England estate that evening, Keith Richards, somewhat the worse for wear after using LSD at his party, disregarded the urging of Marianne Faithfull, girlfriend of Rolling Stones bandmate Mick Jagger, that if he ignored the visitors outside, they would just go away.

What could possibly be wrong? the rock-‘n’-roll guitarist thought. There was simply a “little old lady” out there, along with more than a dozen uniformed dwarves.

Despite the highly improbable appearance of so many diminutive creatures in matching clothing together at one time, Richards greeted the unknown visitors with open arms. They promptly presented him with a warrant to “search the premises and the persons in them, under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965.” The law found what it expected to find and arrested those inside.

Well, some of those inside. While Richards, Jagger, and art dealer Robert Fraser were hauled off to the pokey, the drug dealer who had supplied most of the mind-altering substances that night, David Schneiderman—a.k.a. “The Acid King” —was not only left mysteriously untouched by the police, but was not pursued in connection with the case when he almost immediately disappeared.

It took four more decades to confirm, but the suspicions of The Rolling Stones and the rest of the counterculture—that the partiers at Richards’ Redlands home had been set up by police and press acting together—turned out to be true. The ensuing case not only proved a major legal battle of the British Establishment vs. the rising youth culture, but also an early indicator of what has been much in the news recently: that the News of the World was collaborating with police to violate the privacy of celebrities.

The Stones’ manager-producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, promoted them as the nasty, surly, evil counterpart to the Beatles’ nice boys. This was largely hype (it was Jagger who attended the London School of Economics, and Lennon who beat early bandmate and friend Stu Sutcliffe to such a pulp that he believed he had caused the latter’s early death). For all the wonders it might have created for the group’s sales, it also sparked a backlash among people who believed them tools of the devil.

One incident after a Stones gig, when the musicians, refused a much-needed bathroom break at a gas station, relieved themselves nonetheless, made some of the newly-suspicious anxious to induce some humility in them. Among this circle were the brass at The News of the World (NOTW).

Given a seeming scoop—i.e, that one of the group was using narcotics—News of the World reported that the one in question was Mick Jagger. The Stones’ lead singer sued and won because—perhaps on the theory that all druggy rock ‘n’ rollers look alike, anyway—the scandal rag guessed wrong as to the identity of the drugged-out musician: It was Brian Jones.

Now the Fleet Street rag was doubly anxious to get Jagger because he had made them all look like fools. Soon, they found themselves in cahoots with the police.

NOTW had first attempted to work through Scotland Yard, but that agency had thrown cold water on the idea, noting that any arrest would just make martyrs of Jagger and Richards. The Chichester police were more open to the publication’s advances.

The police didn’t have much time to plan this operation, but they didn’t need much. In a preview of the black ops that have gotten Rupert Murdoch’s enterprise in trouble since then, the phones at Richards’ estate were being bugged. A motley crew of law-enforcement officials were gathered together on the spur of the moment.

What happened after Richards opened the door to them has now passed into legend. Blasting from the speakers was Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”—you know, the one that goes, “Everybody must get stoned.” The 21-year-old Faithfull, grabbing a fur rug to cover herself, was so surprised at what she called “the coppers” making free with the house that she dropped her impromptu covering.

(Perhaps the police avenged themselves for their sexual frustration at this moment by spreading a cruel—and, Faithfull insists, false—rumor involving Jagger, his woman and a Mars bar.)

Jagger and Richards received the support you might expect from other members of the British Invasion--notably, The Beatles and The Who--but unanticipated aid from an influential member of the British Establishment helped to turn public opinion in favor.

William Rees-Mogg, in an editorial titled "Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel?” for the paper he edited, the London Times, blasted their unduly harsh sentences after they were found guilty at the subsequent trial. (Jagger was sentenced to three months in prison for possession of four amphetamine pills, and Richards to 12 months for allowing his home to be used for smoking cannabis.)

The musicians were being made examples because of their fame, Rees-Mogg contended. (Jagger, for instance, was a first offender who was caught with a French seasickness pill in his pocket. The medication was sold over the counter in France but required a prescription in England.)

There was a real question whether the slight Jagger would have survived a lengthy prison spell. The Times editor, however, changed the climate of opinion enough that the public did not squawk when the two Stones’ sentences were drastically reduced (to less than two days) on appeal.

When I saw the NOTW connection to the case, I immediately wondered about any involvement of Rupert Murdoch. As it happens, the Australian press baron didn’t take over this paper for another year. This particular incident demonstrates that the wiretapping of celebrities had been going on even before his arrival (though, to be sure, he could have changed the environment of the newspapers he bought, if he had been so inclined).

As for The Acid King and his disappearance: According to a 2010 article in London’s Daily Mail, David Schneiderman changed his name to David Jove, then moved to Hollywood, where he became a small-time producer and filmmaker. Eighteen years after the incident, a female friend introduced him to dinner companion, Marianne Faithfull.

The bust had had a deleterious impact on the former sweet-voiced singer, who, tired of her bad-girl image, decided to embrace it. A decade of drug abuse had followed.

In this 1980s dinner, Faithfull abruptly announced to her friend that the male to which he’d been introduced was none other than the Acid King, and he should be avoided like the plague. Her friend took her advice. (Later, Schneiderman admitted to his daughter--herself a rock musician--that he had helped set everything up at the behest of federal officials in the U.S. and U.K. who wanted to discredit the band and cause them legal problems.)

Schneiderman died in 2004, shunned by Hollywood for drug use so rampant that even it couldn't abide it.

Quote of the Day (Paul McGuinness, on Who Looks Young and Old to Today’s Teens)

“People used to think that rock and roll was music for teenagers. But we’ve just come from Madison Square Garden where Sir Mick [Jagger] was performing aged 66. I’m always delighted when Mick makes a record or does a tour because he makes U2 look so much younger.”—U2 manager Paul McGuinness, quoted in Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, “Rock and Roll Tsar: Lunch With the FT,” The Financial Times, December 5-6, 2009

British jazz singer George Melly once reportedly asked the Rolling Stones’ frontman about the increasing prominence of those wrinkles you can see on the accompanying image. Those were “laugh lines,” Jagger responded.

“Nothing’s that funny,” Melly answered.