In 1978, Bill German, then a 16-year-old kid in Brooklyn, started a fan ‘zine about the Rolling Stones called “Beggars Banquet.” The band was so impressed by it, they let the teen hang around – and even advertised his ‘zine inside their album sleeve. For more than 17 years, German trailed the Stones, chronicling their battles and triumphs and their wild, drug- filled nights on the road. In this excerpt from the new memoir, “Under Their Thumb: How a Nice Boy from Brooklyn Got Mixed Up with the Rolling Stones (and Lived to Tell About It)” (Random House, 2009), he describes the scene in 1985, as Mick Jagger’s solo career threatened to break up the band.
TO complete their “Dirty Work” album, the Stones booked themselves into RPM Studio on 12th Street in Manhattan as the “Runny Noses.” On most nights, Keith Richards and Ron Wood would get to RPM after midnight and leave past sunrise. They told me to stop by whenever I felt like it, as long as Brenda wasn’t there. “Brenda” was their code name for Mick Jagger, and it wasn’t a term of endearment. It was Keith who came up with it, after stumbling onto a book by an author named Brenda Jagger. By the summer of ’85, Keith had had enough of Mick and his solo aspirations, and was ready to stab him in the eyeballs. So referring to his prima donna lead singer as “Brenda” was a healthier way to vent.
Keith and Woody showered me with so much hospitality that summer, I began to feel they were the brothers I never had. But as for the mercurial Mick, I was never quite sure where I stood. One time at Mick’s house, I spilled orange juice on his Persian rug, and he couldn’t have been nicer about it. But other times, he’d shoot me an evil eye just for standing in his general vicinity.
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Mick’s moodiness was a frequent topic of discussion. “He has his moments,” Woody told me one night. “The thing that me and Keith always say is that Mick Jagger is a nice bunch of guys. It all depends which one you get. He changes his accent every time you speak to him, and he can turn you on or turn you off on any given day. You never know which Mick you’re going to get.”
FOR much of the summer, the 800-pound gorilla in the room was Live Aid. When the Stones left Paris at the end of June, they agreed they wouldn’t go near it. If their recording sessions told them anything, it was that they were not functioning as a unit. Why go in front of the world – a billion TV viewers – and pretend otherwise?
Enter Bill Graham, the concert promoter behind Live Aid. He began telling the press the Stones were going to be there. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and CSN&Y were reuniting for it, so why not the Stones?
The media ran with the speculation: “Stones to Perform at Live Aid.” Now, if none of them showed up, it’d look like they backed out. The Stones would be the one group that didn’t care about the starving Ethiopian kids with flies in their eyes.
Mick was the first Stone to cave. “All right,” he basically told Graham, “I’ll do it, but not with the Stones. And only if you give me the 9 p.m. slot.” Nine o’clock meant Mick would be the headliner and that his performance would be seen on network television (ABC), instead of cable (MTV). In the process, he could promote his new album, “She’s the Boss.”
He enlisted Hall and Oates as his backup band and rehearsed with them at SIR Studio in New York. One of the songs they attempted was “Beast of Burden.” And I want you to know, if they’d actually performed it at Live Aid, we would’ve witnessed a murder on live television. Keith would’ve lunged from behind the curtain to strangle Mick on the spot.
“Beast of Burden,” you see, is one of those Jagger-Richards songs that’s more Richards than Jagger. Keith feels very possessive over it. So when he heard that Mick was rehearsing “Beast” without the Stones, he blew a gasket. If you’re gonna go solo, why do any Stones songs, let alone that one?
Keith was annoyed, but he tried to focus on his work at RPM. Ron Wood, however, had other plans. He learned that Bill Graham had asked Bob Dylan to participate and to go on after Mick. So how great would it be, thought Woody, if he and Keith could back up Bob?
To make it a reality, Woody pulled a move straight out of a Hayley Mills film. First he went to Keith: “Bob wants us to back him up at that Live Aid show.” And then he went to Dylan: “Me and Keith’ll do that show with ya’ if you want.”
In all likelihood, you were one of the 1.6 billion people who caught the concert on TV, so I’ll merely refresh your memory. Mick, in prime time, performed five songs, including two duets with Tina Turner. During “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll,” he ripped Tina’s skirt off, exposing her million-dollar gams. It was a premeditated move, not a “wardrobe malfunction,” but it made for great TV and was a hard act to follow.
Next up was Dylan, with his ragtag team of elves. There were no Stones songs in their repertoire and no backup band. Just Dylan, Keith and Woody on acoustic guitars. They were clearly under-rehearsed and weren’t helped when Dylan popped a string or when their onstage monitors went dead. Also, they performed two Dylan numbers that most people had never heard of – “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “When the Ship Comes In.”
To the viewing public, Mick stole the show. Many fans considered his performance the rock ‘n’ roll highlight of the decade. But Keith couldn’t give a f- – -. As far as Keith was concerned, he’d trumped Mick at his own game by going on last and by staying on message.
It was hard for Keith not to feel morally superior. To his thinking, Mick went up there to promote his solo album and do his cutesy shtick with his poofy-haired backup band. But his own performance, with Dylan and Woody, was selfless and to the point. Additionally, Keith viewed himself as a reluctant warrior, pressed into action because Mick went back on his word.
In the next issue of Beggars Banquet, I reported the Live Aid situation like I saw it: “As a group, the Stones had agreed not to do it, but slowly, individually, they caved in to emotional blackmail.”
SEVERAL weeks later, I was at Woody’s house when the bell rang unexpectedly. In walked Mick with his bodyguard. Rowan was a dreadlocked muscle-bound guy, and it amused Woody to no end that Mick would require his services to walk three blocks in a well-to-do neighborhood. Woody lived on West 78th Street and Mick was on West 81st, but Mick would never take that walk alone.
At first, Mick made it seem like a casual visit. We chatted in the kitchen for 20 minutes about nothing in particular. But then Mick said he wanted to check out Woody’s new studio in the basement. “I’ve got this new song,” Mick told us. “And I wanna try it out. It’s called ‘Soul City.’ ” Rowan and Jo [Wood] remained in the kitchen while Mick, Woody, and I headed downstairs.
Woody got behind the drums, and Mick sat on an ottoman in the corner. He grabbed one of Woody’s guitars and plugged it into a tiny amp. Mick tossed me a tambourine and suggested I play along. Mick didn’t teach us the song – we merely had to keep the beat. The tapes were rolling on Woody’s Akai 12-track.
I tried the tambourine for a bit but was really f- – -ing it up. “I think I’ll pass,” I told Mick, but he encouraged me to stick with it. “You’ll get it eventually,” he said.
Mick and Woody recorded two takes of the song, without me on tambourine. This was a demo for Mick’s own reference, so he kept it pretty simple. Guitar, drums and a scratch vocal track. But he enlisted me and Woody to help thicken the chorus. “You’ll be my backup singers,” he said. “It goes, ‘Soul city, free and easy, soul city, the girls are pretty.’ So that’s all I need you to do.”
The three of us stood shoulder to shoulder and shared the microphone. I knew this was the perfect time to deliver my dead-on impersonation of Mick, so I gave it a whirl. Except that when I started singing, I sounded more like Dwight D. Eisenhower than Mick Jagger.
We laughed and drank for a couple hours straight. Mick wanted to hear the tape so Woody played it LOUD. (The song, by the way, did turn up on Mick’s next album, “Primitive Cool,” under the title “Peace for the Wicked.”)
At 3 a.m., Jo yelled down to us. Someone was at the front door, and Rowan was going to answer it. Woody ran upstairs to see who it was, leaving Mick and me in the basement alone. We were standing near the tape machine. I tried to make small talk about the song, but before I had the chance, Mick got in my face. And when I say “in my face,” I mean he got within 2 or 3 inches of my nose. And then he ripped into me: “I don’t like what you wrote! About Live Aid! It’s not true! I don’t like it!”
Yikes. I gulped and said, “Um, well, waddaya mean?”
“You know what you wrote! The bit about emotional blackmail! It’s not true! That’s not why I did it! Was no emotional blackmail!”
I began to stutter. “Um, well, th-that’s what I heard, so I-”
“Well, it’s not true! Was no emotional blackmail, not at all! How dare you!”
I physically couldn’t get away from him. The guy was coming in for the kill. I couldn’t believe how quickly the climate in the room had changed. One minute he was friendly, the next minute he was pouncing. Like something you see on National Geographic. The lion’s sitting there, yawning, and then rips apart a baby zebra.
Mick was so close to my face, I thought he was going to bite my cheek off. I guess he does that to intimidate people, but I’ve got to admit, it worked. I could only shrug and back away, but he wouldn’t let me. We went around in circles, literally and figuratively. Me: “Well, um, that’s what I heard.” Him: “Well, it’s not true! I don’t like it!”
My only hope was that it was “coke rap.” He and Woody had been dabbling in the powder all night. In fact, while Mick was up close, I could spot the white rings around his nostrils. It reminded me of that “SNL” skit where Belushi plays Steve Rubell, standing in front of Studio 54. He denies there’s drug use at the club, but there’s white stuff all over his nose. At the end of the skit, the camera pulls out and you see he’s eating a powdered donut.
In Mick’s case, there was no donut. Mick had had a lot to toot, so I hoped that’s why he was so pumped. (When he was done grilling me about Live Aid, he rambled on about the Jamaican soccer team being racist. I couldn’t understand a word.) When Woody came back – the doorbell was the cops, telling us to lower the music – I excused myself and went home. I was a bit shaken by Mick’s tirade.
Now to Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised when the florist brought me beautiful poinsettias. The card said they were from Mick. I realize he may have had 100 people on his list that year, but I was one of them. Mick Jagger, that nice bunch of guys, was my pal again.
Coming next week: Inside the Stones’ wacky entourage