Mick Jagger (25 page)

On January 19, 1965, the Stones set out on their first tour of Australia and the Far East, flying—still economy class—from Los Angeles via Hawaii and Fiji. At Sydney Airport, the scenes of mob hysteria and chaos put even New York’s JFK into the shade. Before the Stones’ plane even landed there was a mini-disaster when the combined force of several hundred shrieking girls caused a high-level metal barrier to collapse and, according to Bill Wyman, “the bodies piled up six deep.” One resourceful group of five managed to get through security onto the tarmac and were hiding behind a mobile staircase as the band disembarked. Three managed to reach Mick, Bill, and Charlie before being dragged away by police.

For Mick, it was a first visit to the country where his mother had spent her early childhood—and whose accent she had tried so hard to banish in suburban Kent. During the Stones’ time in Sydney, he was under strict orders to see Eva’s sister, who had returned to live there in the 1950s, and several cousins he had never met. Hearing that his aunt was to attend one of the Stones’ shows at the city’s Agricultural Hall, Eva wrote her, with a characteristic tone of faint put-down: “I solemnly advise you to take earplugs because after the last concert I saw, my doctor had to treat me for perforated eardrums.”

Australia was still a ragingly macho society with a huge inferiority complex toward Britain, its former colonial ruler. Much more to almost every reviewer’s taste on the tour was the Stones’ American co-headliner, Roy Orbison. And the effect of such “Pommie poofters” on the nation’s young womanhood—from whose eager throngs at every stop they could choose sexual partners like diners selecting live crustaceans from a tank at a seafood restaurant—inspired the most scandalized headlines yet. “SHOCKERS! UGLY LOOKS! UGLY SPEECH! UGLY MANNERS!” almost retched a Sydney Morning Herald banner.

In fact, the nearest to ugly speech or manners on the entire journey came when the Stones passed through Invercargill, New Zealand, and Mick forgot his usual press conference blandness to complain about their accommodations. “There are twenty-eight rooms in this hotel and only two baths,” the so-called dirty pop star marveled. “The last meal ends at 7 P.M.” Forty years later, the discovery of a scrawled “MICK JAGGER” on a backstage wall at the Civic Theatre indicated that he hadn’t spent his whole time there in an unwashed, unfed strop.

Back in Britain, a second Stones album, The Rolling Stones No. 2, was already in the shops. Once again, the intention seemed to be to reassure their purist following with a menu of almost unadulterated R&B, reusing several tracks from the 12 x 5 album released in America the previous October, and with the same David Bailey cover shot. The only wobble toward pop was Jagger-Richard’s “Off the Hook,” already heard as the B-side of “Little Red Rooster,” another dispatch from Mick’s bedside, this time in the sarcastic-comic vein at which he was proving rather good.

All in all, the album had seemed rather secondhand and lackluster until Andrew Oldham found a way to juice it up a little. Oldham’s favorite book was A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess’s vision of a near-future Britain (all too accurate, as it would prove) terrorized by gangs of boys committing random, unprovoked acts of violence and rape. The narrator, Alex, leads a group of four known as “droogs” on a thrill-seeking rampage until caught by the police, imprisoned, and subjected to an aversion-therapy technique that scares the devilment out of him. First published in 1962, the novel seemed a parable of young males’ growing empowerment and arrogance as the decade progressed—though to most of Swinging London’s carefree rude boys the idea of being persecuted by officialdom and thrown in jail still belonged to the realm of science fiction.

For Oldham, the parallel was irresistible: the band of rampaging droogs were the Stones, with his Trilby morphed into the amoral, sexually rapacious (and rather well-spoken) Alex. On The Rolling Stones No. 2, David Bailey’s moody front cover shot gave them a markedly drooglike air, even if Brian, with the blue dagger points of his shirt collar, looked more a ringleader than last-in-line, head-craning Mick. On the back cover were liner notes by Oldham, pastiching Alex’s “Nadsat” jargon and commending his promiscuous ultraviolence to British record buyers: “It is the summer of the night London’s eyes be shut tight all but six hip malchicks who prance the street. Newspaper-strewn and grey which waits another day to hide its dingy countenance the six have been sound ball journey made to another sphere which pays royalties in eight months or a year … This is the Stones’ new disc within. Cast deep in your pocket for loot to buy this disc of groovies and fancy words. If you don’t have the bread, see that blind man, knock him on the head, steal his wallet and lo and behold, you have the loot. If you put in the boot, good. Another one sold.”

In the hypersensitive twenty-first century, such comments would touch off an instant media hurricane. But back in 1965, the taking-offense industry was still in its infancy. The “disc of groovies and fancy words” had been on sale a full month before the first protesting voice was heard, from the estimable but scarcely high-profile Bournemouth Blind Association. “They [the Stones] are horrible,” said spokesperson Gwen Matthews. “It’s simply putting ideas into people’s heads. I’m writing to Decca to ask them to change it.” With that, Fleet Street finally creaked into sanctimonious life. Bowing to the headlines, if not Matthews, Decca called back several thousand copies of the album and reshipped them in new covers with the offending passage deleted. In the House of Lords, a former Conservative minister demanded that the director of public prosecutions be asked to investigate “what seems a deliberate incitement to criminal actions.” All of which was promotion that money couldn’t buy: The Rolling Stones No. 2 contradicted its title by reaching No. 1 on the UK album charts, staying in the Top 20 for twelve weeks.

By the time the Stones left Australia, they had four tracks on the national singles chart, including Mick’s rather wobbly version of the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk.” Stopping off in Singapore for two final shows, they received an official welcome very different from in the previous outpost of empire: the British deputy high commissioner invited them to lunch and gave them a guided tour of his garden. After the sellout performances at Badminton Stadium, the local promoter threw them a drinks party and, by way of a bonus, offered them a choice of twelve ravishing hookers of various ethnic origins, to be enjoyed in adjacent bedrooms. Unused to sex with paid companions, even though someone else might be paying, they were initially paralyzed with shyness; then, as Bill Wyman recalls, “Andrew got the ball rolling, followed by Mick and me …”

The tour was bookended by sessions at RCA Studios, Hollywood, with another gifted engineer, Dave Hassinger, which brought many nights of brain cudgeling by Mick and Keith at their chalet-style London flat to a final resolution. Although the pair had had considerable success in writing songs for other people—notably “As Tears Go By” for Marianne Faithfull—they somehow could not come up with a hit track for their own band. An answer finally emerged with a gospel song, originally recorded by the Staple Singers, called “This May Be the Last Time,” later adapted by James Brown into “Maybe the Last Time.” Mick changed the gospel message to sneery heartbreak in a few simple, slipshod couplets (“mind” and “time”; “please me” and “easy”) though still echoing Pop Staple’s original vocal with its dying fall of “May be the last time … Ah don’ kna-a-o-ow …” The killer new element was a seesaw guitar riff, played by Brian Jones, not just an intro but tolling through the whole song like a malevolent metronome.

Released as “The Last Time” on February 26, 1965, it became the Stones’ third UK No. 1 single and their first to penetrate the American Top 10, reaching No. 9. Because it had no listed composer, but was categorized as “traditional,” Jagger and Richard were free to claim it as an original composition. If not quite that, it was the first recognizable Rolling Stones track in a formula that, with a few deviations, quickly rectified, would see them through the next half century.

IN LONDON, MICK’S domestic circumstances had changed yet again without becoming much more stable. It had taken the fans only a few weeks to locate his and Keith’s Hampstead hideaway and to make any normal life there impossible. And now that Keith’s relationship with Linda Keith had settled into the same apparent permanence as Mick’s with Chrissie Shrimpton, they could hardly continue being roommates in the sloppy, studenty fashion of the past two years. So writing (or rewriting) “The Last Time” at 10a Holly Hill had been prophetic in more ways than one.

While Linda and Keith easily found a flat in nearby St. John’s Wood, Mick was not so easily pleased. For a time he shared Keith’s temporary base at the London Hilton hotel, then moved in with his friend David Bailey, enjoying the succession of stunning models who paraded through Bailey’s studio. At that point, an unlikely Good Samaritan stepped forward in Lionel Bart, creator of Oliver! and putative composer of Marianne Faithfull’s record debut. Though Bart’s offering had been rejected in favor of “As Tears Go By,” he bore the song’s co-composer no ill will and, on hearing that Mick was temporarily homeless, offered sanctuary in his flat in Bryanston Mews, Marylebone. Abandoning all remaining pretense of a separate address, Chrissie took up residence there, too.

As a bolt-hole from intrusive fans, it was not ideal: Ringo Starr of the Beatles had a flat a couple of doors away which was under round-the-clock siege more intense than either of Mick and Keith’s previous addresses. When news of Mick’s presence leaked out, Stones fans poured into the narrow mews to join the Beatles fans, and there were frequent clashes between the two factions. Soon after Chrissie’s arrival, she was leaving the house, a step behind her lord and master as usual, when one of Ringo’s female pickets jumped her. Mick came to the rescue, prising the assailant off Chrissie’s back and dismissing her with a kick up the rear. “I was only wearing plimsolls, so I didn’t hurt her much,” he said afterward. “In fact I got the worst of it because she gave me a few clouts.” In 1965, the episode rated only a few newspaper paragraphs; today, giant headlines would shriek of assault charges and claims for damages.

Mick and Chrissie were now engaged, and expected by both their families to be married in the next few months. Eva Jagger had taught Chrissie to make pastry—for Eva, one of the first essentials of good-wifeliness—while Chrissie’s father, the builder-turned-farmer, kept an eye out for properties close to the Shrimptons’ Buckinghamshire home where the newlyweds could live. On the one hand, it impressed Ted Shrimpton hugely that Mick could buy a substantial house outright; on the other, as someone who’d worked long and hard for his own money, he felt that wealth acquired with such apparent ease was not quite legitimate.

Chrissie still wanted nothing but to be Mick’s wife, even though her one glimpse of pop-star matrimony had not been encouraging. The two had recently been houseguests at John Lennon’s mock-Tudor mansion in the Surrey Stockbroker Belt, where Lennon’s wife, Cynthia, lived in child-rearing purdah while he practiced multiple infidelities out and about with the Beatles. During the visit, Mick and Chrissie watched the film Citizen Kane in Lennon’s private cinema, then he insisted they should all play Risk, the board game in which each player has a different-colored army and competes to conquer the world. “Cynthia was winning, and John started getting so nasty that she just gave up the game and went to bed,” Chrissie says. “I remember thinking, ‘She’s so much under his thumb that she doesn’t even dare to win a silly game.’ ”

Though the Beatles had seemed to penetrate every part of the British press, there was one sector—the society pages—that never printed a word about them. Of these, the most assiduously read was the Daily Express’s William Hickey column, whose past editors had included Tom Driberg, the homosexual MP (and godfather of Mick’s old flame Cleo Sylvestre). As the sixties reached their halfway point, hostesses drawing up guest lists for the coming season received a surprising new tip on etiquette. “It’s no disgrace these days to know a Rolling Stone,” announced William Hickey, “[and] some of their best friends are fledglings from the upper classes.”

“Fledglings from the upper classes,” in fact, had always been an essential component of Swinging London. Rebels that they were in embracing “trade” to become boutique owners or restaurateurs, they usually preferred the rebellious Stones to the bourgeois-appealing Beatles. And there was no doubt which particular Stone headed this new inverted social register. A few months previously, Mick had merely been part of the cabaret at London debutante balls; now engraved invitations arrived for “Mr. Michael Jagger and Miss Christine Shrimpton” to attend a gala dance for Jane Ormsby-Gore, given by her father, the fifth Lord Harlech, a direct descendant of William the Conqueror and Mary Tudor.

Chrissie, who at that stage still had her token bedsit in Olympia, spent hours there trying to put together an outfit grand enough for the occasion. When Mick arrived to collect her, he agreed sympathetically that it didn’t really work and told her to wear the catsuit she usually did around the clubs. At the gala, they found themselves seated at the table next to the Queen’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, and her friend comedian Peter Sellers. And this time at least, Mick showed that Chrissie meant more to him than social mountaineering. “Princess Margaret asked for Mick to be brought over, and I was just left, sitting there on my own,” she remembers. “So I went up to him while he was chatting to Princess Margaret, and I just said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I started to walk out and Mick stood up so suddenly that it shook the whole table and made everything rattle. He came after me and we ran out into the street, laughing. That was one of the happiest times.”

Chrissie was more worried by other new friends whom Mick was attracting. Lionel Bart, whose roof they now shared, was ostentatiously gay and, despite the draconian antihomosexuality laws, made no secret of a buccaneering sex life. Prominently displayed throughout the flat were tubes of K-Y lubricating jelly, which Chrissie in her innocence mistook for hair gel. One of Bart’s closest cronies was Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, who had spent a year in jail for homosexual offenses in 1954 (following a famous police raid). “He was always trying to persuade Mick to go and stay at his country house. I objected to all these people being after my boyfriend, but I wasn’t really aware why.”