True Adventures of the Rolling Stones Read Free Page B

now, but the Rolling Stones are not a cool sort of thing, it’s a much more old-fashioned thing we do, it’s not as if the Rolling Stones were, y’know, five
dedicated musicians
—I mean, I’d much rather go on stage in a gold Cadillac or wearing a gold suit or summink like that—”
    Suddenly but gently, calmly, Chip put his hands on Mick’s shoulders and said, in the mellow baritone that soothed the dope-freaked, mud-soaked thousands two months ago at the Woodstock Pop Festival, “I just want you to know how pleased I am to be working with you guys.”
    Mick laughed. When Chip had touched him, Mick’s hands had come up to hold Chip at arm’s length by the collarbone. Not certain whether Mick was laughing at him, Chip also laughed. They stood, knees slightly bent, in the classic starting position of wrestlers, grinning at each other.
    Inside, someone was playing the piano. I looked, saw that it was Keith, joined him on the bench and asked, “What about this book?” I trusted Keith, at least to tell the truth; a bluegum man don’t have to lie.
    â€œWhat about it?” he asked, playing no recognizable melody.
    â€œI need a letter.”
    â€œI thought Jo sent you a letter.”
    â€œMany letters, but not what I need. She says I need Allen Klein’s approval.”
    â€œYou don’t need anybody’s approval. All you need is us. Jo! Hey, Jo!”
    From the depths of this serpentine house Georgia Bergman emerged. She was the Stones’ secretary, an Anglo-American girl in her middletwenties, with black kinky hair done in the current electric fashion, sticking out all around like a fright wig.
    â€œWhat about this letter?” Keith asked. He was still playing, nothing you could recognize.
    â€œWe sent it,” Jo said, “but it wasn’t right, it didn’t work, it umm—”
    â€œI’ll talk to Mick about it,” Keith said, no certain comfort to me, but I said “Fine,” and Jo took me for a walk on the grounds of this place, rented at great expense from some of the Du Ponts. We strolled out the back, toward the far corner of the property, where there were a child’s playhouse, slide, and swings. I walked with my head down, groping toward thought.
    Just over a year earlier, in September 1968, thinking that with one more story I could publish a collection of pieces about music, I went to England to visit the Rolling Stones. For almost three years, since Mick, Keith, and Brian had been arrested for possession of drugs, the Stones had stayed out of sight, performing in public only once. I saw the Stones, attended Brian Jones’ trial, and wrote a story, but I had only glimpsed—in Brian’s eyes as he glanced up from the dock—the mystery of the Rolling Stones. In the spring, after the story was published, I asked the Stones’ cooperation in writing a book about them. It was June, and I was still waiting for an answer, when Brian, who had started the band, left it because, he said, of “musical differences” with the other Stones. Less than a month later, Jo Bergman called me in the middle of the night to say that Brian had been found dead, drowned in his swimming pool.
    After some weeks Jo sent me a letter for the Stones, offering their cooperation subject to agreements between the Stones, the publishers, and me, but you can’t do good work that way. You have to write the best you can and share control of nothing, neither the manuscript nor the money. Any other arrangement produces not writing but publicity. Finally Jo turned the book matter over to Ronnie Schneider for Allen Klein, widely considered the most powerful agent in show business. In self-defense, I hired an agent, Klein’s literary equivalent. He sent Schneider a letter to sign for the Stones. But Keith said I didn’t need Klein. Then why did Jo tell Klein, or his nephew Schneider, about my book?
    Jo sat in a