Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, July 4
The first show after the mid-tour break
generates the most newspaper coverage since the extended Chicago stop, with
even the venerable Times of London chiming in with an on-scene
dispatch. Washington also marks the beginning
of Greenfield’s tour hiatus and a change in the nature of the STP
narrative. Yes, our latter-day Virgil
was kicked off this careening rock inferno, leaving much of his delicious book
a second-hand reconstruction rather than a genuine eyewitness account.
Careful readers of STP will
recall the New Orleans scene at the beginning of chapter seven, when Greenfield
notes that Terry Southern, Ethan Russell, and “this writer” will be asked to
leave the tour in the wake of “the Texas debacle.” Although there are no subsequent confirming passages in the
original text, and the narrative itself appears to flow like a seamless, “all
access” inside job, Greenfield’s expulsion really happened. Indeed, he acknowledges this turning point
at length in his preface to the 1997 paperback edition of STP. Truman Capote, he reveals, “was the reason I
found myself leaving the tour in Nashville at five in the morning”:
Having
been assigned to cover the entire tour for Rolling Stone
magazine, I had been
informed
over the phone that after I filed one last story, my services would no longer
be
needed.
“Truman, baby” (as Stones insiders on the tour called Capote) would be taking
over
for me. My
job was to make my last article an utter masterpiece, one suitable for framing,
no doubt on
the front cover of the magazine. Accepting the challenge, I flew home and got
to work.
Continuing the tale
of exile, he writes:
Perhaps
the strongest memory I have of the tour is how I felt when I finally saw what
the editors
at the magazine had done to all the copy I’d filed from my home in LA. Without
informing
me, they’d edited my masterpiece down into no more than elaborate captions for
some
terrific photographs by Annie. Having already been unceremoniously yanked off
the
tour, I now
felt twice betrayed. From a payphone at the back of some pseudo-French café
on Melrose
Avenue in LA, I told the man in charge what he could do with his magazine and
resigned.
So much for my burgeoning career in rock journalism. Stuck in Topanga Canyon,
I watched
helplessly as the Stones played cities I never got to see.
But then, rescued by
a book deal and a hefty publisher’s advance, he flew to New York to rejoin the
tour for its Madison Square Garden finales:
Thankfully,
I still had my plastic laminate identifying me as a full fledged member
of the
Stones’ touring party...Amazingly, I had not missed all that many shows. What I
hadn’t seen
personally, I was able to reconstruct from interviews I did later on.
So there you have it
– the making of STP revealed by the author himself.
To recap, Greenfield was missing in action
from Washington through Pittsburgh, and perhaps even from Nashville through
Pittsburgh, since he does not specify whether his “five in the morning” departure
came before or after the Music City show.
In any case, he missed at least 13 cities and 19 shows, which hardly
qualifies as “not all that many.” And
with this lengthy late-tour exile in mind, let us ponder how it actually
explains certain aspects of the “Book Two” relation in STP. For example, have you ever wondered why
there is no reporting at all from Nashville?
Or why the Norfolk, Charlotte, and Knoxville concerts are tossed off
with a couple of sentences? Or why the
Washington and Akron sections are laden with perspectives from Chip Monck? Or why the five gigs in St. Louis,
Indianapolis, and Detroit receive no concert descriptions at all? Or why the three shows in Toronto and
Montreal zoom by with almost no onstage substance, as do the four performances
in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh? Well,
these “fly-by” characteristics of the late STP text derive from
the fact that Greenfield was not around to witness the shows and had to
reconstruct events as best he could from post-tour interviews with Monck and
other principals. (Try re-reading
chapters eight through eleven with this absence in mind and you can often
deduce Greenfield’s actual informants, who provide more offstage tales than
in-concert details.)
The Washington set is fully documented by
a 15-song audience recording, so we can disregard the lone references to Sweet
Black Angel and Sympathy For The Devil here. The contributing reviewer was clearly
mistaken.
|
Baltimore Sun |
Washington Post |
Washington Daily News |
Evening Star |
Moniebogue Press |
|
Brown Sugar |
Brown Sugar |
Brown Sugar |
Brown Sugar |
Brown Sugar |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rocks Off |
|
|
Gimme Shelter |
Gimme Shelter |
|
Gimme Shelter |
|
|
|
|
Happy |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tumbling Dice |
|
Love In Vain |
Love In Vain |
|
|
|
|
Sweet Virginia |
|
|
Sweet Virginia |
“Sweet Black Angel” = SV? |
|
|
YCAGWYW |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Midnight Rambler |
Midnight Rambler |
|
|
Bye Bye Johnny |
|
|
|
|
|
Rip This Joint |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
JJF |
JJF |
|
|
SFM |
SFM |
SFM |
|
|
Opening: Stevie Wonder |
“15 songs” “there wouldn’t be any encore” Opening: Dorothy Ellis Singers |
Jagger: “white silk skin-tight jumpsuit with
fringed chaps and a flowing red scarf” “no encore” Opening Dorothy Ellis gospel singers, Stevie
Wonder |
“15-song set” “didn’t come back for an encore” Opening: Stevie Wonder |
Jagger: “white satin pants with fringes below the
knees” [“Sympathy For The Devil” = ??] Opening: Stevie Wonder |
|
Evening Star:
“It was the 196th anniversary of American independence, but the
British Union Jack may have drawn the largest cheer in the Nation’s Capital
yesterday. The banner, borne to a concert stage at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium,
heralded the arrival of the Rolling Stones and sent more than 45,00 July 4th
celebrants into a frenzy.” Baltimore Sun:
“The stage was set up about where the pitcher’s mound would be. The center of
the crowd of about 45,000 – at least, that’s how many tickets were sold – was
at home plate and fanned out into the stands to about the first and
third-base lines. American and British flags, outlined by electric lights,
were placed at either side of the stage.” Evening Star:
“It was impossible to estimate accurately how filled the stadium was because
the entire infield area of the park was opened for the young people. By the
end of the evening, it appeared that as many as 10,000 gyrating youths were
crammed onto the grassy area. But the entire center field section of the
stadium, as well as large sections in right and left fields, were empty. The
concert stage was situated at second base, facing home plate.” Washington Post:
“While newsman David Brinkley, the Jackson Five and other celebrities watched
from sheltered mezzanine boxes, kids packed the infield so tightly they
couldn’t clap unless they raised their hands above their heads, which they,
goaded on by Jagger’s sinuous leaps, lunges, and pirouettes.” Evening Star:
“Promoters of the concert apparently had foreseen the possibility that some
of the crowd would attempt to share stage-center with the official
entertainers and had installed rows of tacks – business end up – along a
9-foot-high retaining fence. Many of the youths who managed to reach the
stage did so after throwing blankets or jackets over the tacks, then scaling
the wall.” Washington Daily News:
“The kids who tried to storm the stage, to touch or grab at Mick Jaggers,
were pushed – or shoved – back by private guards or police. Several girls
left the front of the stage crying from cuts on their hands from penny nails
that had been intentionally positioned in the wooden platform. There were
firecrackers tossed from time to time, but when a shower of cherry bombs
started down from the bleachers, the kids below booed, and the explosions
stopped.” Evening Star:
“The evening’s entertainment was marred by a series of impromptu fireworks
demonstrations in the stands. At one point, the concert announcer proclaimed
a 10-minute break in the music ‘so you people can go ahead and hurt each
other.’” Sounds:
“Fashion note: Mick wore a tricorn hat and a long red scarf.” Moniebogue Press:
“His red scarf flashing, Jagger never stopped moving, dancing constantly. He
looked very cocky, almost perverse with Keith Richard (without touching, they
were grinding for each other). Sax player Bobby Keys has his solo cut off by
Mick when he wanted to resume singing. Pocketbooks were being thrown on stage
like confetti at Jagger by mind-blown chicks.” Rolling Stone,
quoting Jagger: “The Washington concert was pretty frightenin’ and a bit
weird. It’s difficult for me to say what it was like for the people who were
there, but I guess it sounded alright to the people who were there, if you
were no further than halfway back. There was trouble in front, people sittin’
on the stage, grabbin’ at your legs, gettin’ tangled in the mike
cables...Just a few loons, really, among the 40,000, but still, I couldn’t do
my thing...I would have liked video blowups or somethin’ because there was no
way for me to reach all them people, it bein’ night and me unable to see
‘em...I wanted to go on earlier, before everyone got too tired and drunk and
nasty. As it was, we got on at nine and the papers said some very nice
things, but for us, you understan’, it was a pretty bad show.” STP: “By the time the
Stones come out, the front part of the white stage is blood red. The stadium
looks like a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. Kids are heaving bottles and
lobbing mattes of Japanese firecrackers and cherry bombs out of the
upper-deck onto the groundlings below. A girl has the side of her face blown
up. Chip gets hit with a bottle. Annie Leibovitz takes to ducking behind the
amps every time Jagger dances over to her side of the stage. It’s
frightening. All that energy, all those eyes, all those arms and voices and
minds focused on one tiny, jumping-jack figure in a white rhinestone outfit.
Because it’s dark, Jagger can’t see the house. He can’t make the people get
up and dance when he wants them to because most of them are too far away to
see him clearly. They’re also tired and drunk. Kids keep coming up onto the
stage and getting tangled in the cables, crashing into the amps and being
thrown off by the stage crew. It doesn’t have the raunchy rock and roll feel
it did in Chicago. It’s out of control and terrifying, and the band rushes
through the set with Jagger in a hurry to finish and get off.” |
||||
Selected
Press Clippings
Washington
Post1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 * 7
