50 Licks Page 2

  The Stones took the stage, and opened up with an internationally known rock ’n’ roll hit written in 1952 by the seminal songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Originally called “K.C. Loving” by Little Willie Littlefield, the title was changed seven years later to “Kansas City,” and a new version by Wilbert Harrison made it all the way to number one on the popularity charts. The Stones (and for that matter the Beatles) probably became aware of it from a cover version by Little Richard that became a hit in the United Kingdom in 1959. Mr. Penniman performed it in a medley with his own song “Hey, Hey, Hey,” which is exactly how the Fab Four recorded it on their Beatles for Sale album at the end of 1964.

  Not surprisingly, the Stones also covered selections from the sacred blues canon, by Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and no fewer than six songs (fully one third of their entire set) by Jimmy Reed: “Honey What’s Wrong,” “Bright Lights, Big City,” “Hush, Hush,” “Ride ’Em on Down,” “Kind of Lonesome,” and “Big Boss Man.” Also not surprisingly, they did the Chuck Berry hit “Back in the USA.” But very surprisingly, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones covered a song called “Tell Me That You Love Me” that was written by Canadian teen heartthrob Paul Anka. (As he proved once again on a recent PBS tribute to the late Buddy Holly, Anka earned his street cred in the formative days of rock ’n’ roll music. The Stones’ decision to cover him in their debut is a testament to it.)

  In summation, a quartet of musicians that music historians regard as four sixths of the original Rolling Stones came together under that name on that sweaty July night in 1962.

  We began this chapter with a question, so let’s end it with two more:

  Was this the night that changed the music world forever?

  No.

  Was this the night that would be worth celebrating as the fiftieth anniversary of the Rolling Stones in 2012?

  Absolutely.

  CHAPTER 2

  2120 SOUTH MICHIGAN AVENUE

  ONE OF THE MOST famous addresses in rock ’n’ roll history, 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, was the home of Chess Records from about 1956 to 1965. The label was run by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, who knew how to find, record, distribute, and promote the finest American practitioners of Delta blues, one of the earliest styles of blues music in the United States. Thanks to recording and broadcasting technology, the sounds created by these unique individuals reverberated all over the globe, finding a particularly receptive audience in post–World War II England in the ’50s and ’60s.

  JOHN MAYALL: It was a very special time, obviously. And there was a great feeling of enthusiasm for the music. It all happened very, very quickly. One minute all the clubs were featuring traditional New Orleans jazz, and then all of a sudden Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies kicked this new thing off, which was an offshoot of the folk clubs I guess. It was a Chicago blues thing, with amplifiers.

  I’d been playing blues for myself, without an audience, for many years before that, but this was the opportunity I needed to come down to London and join in. And I think that was the case with a lot of people from the north. The Animals came down from Newcastle, and the Spencer Davis Group with Steve Winwood came down from Birmingham, and the whole thing mushroomed very quickly. The Flamingo Club and the Marquee Club, those were the mainstays. They were really booming. I had started record collecting ten or fifteen years before. There’s lots of talk about how suddenly this stuff was available, but there had been access on seventy-eights and various other forms, a lot of access to blues before that. But for the younger guard, it was new stuff for them.

  RON WOOD: England is so small. [It was] the hub of what was going on when the Stones were first born. My elder brother Art, he used to be in a band with Charlie, Cyril Davies. Through my elder brothers they used to take me along to the little clubs to see these bands playing Chuck Berry songs at the time when there was nothing going in England other than Petula Clark and things, and we used to go down to these little clubs and I was still very young and I used to think, wow, this music’s really quite amazing. It used to blow me away. I was at art school trying to make a thing of being an artist at the time.

  Why was Chess Records so special?

  MARSHALL CHESS: It was the artists. We had Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart on the same label. That’s Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Howlin’ Wolf. But it was also down to the feel for music that my father and uncle had. It goes back to their roots in this small village in Poland where one man had a wind-up Victrola. When he wound that thing up the whole fucking village would stand under the window to hear some music. When they moved to Chicago, their father (my grandfather) ran a scrap metal yard in the black neighborhood. There was a black gospel church across the street, the kind with an upright piano, tambourine, and drum. My grandfather used to take a strap to the boys because they were always late from listening to the music coming from the church. That would have been their first experience of black music. During the war my father wanted his own business and the cheapest rent was in black neighborhoods. So he opened a liquor store. There was a huge influx of black workers who came up from the South where they were earning next to nothing. Suddenly they were making good money in the Chicago factories and wanted to party on the weekend, so they bought plenty of alcohol. Then my daddy had a tavern with a jukebox. They kept feeding that jukebox with nickels and my dad had the first inkling of what made a hit record.

  One thing that made American R&B so attractive to that generation of Brits was probably the very fact that it was American. A majority of these young Brits were “war babies” who were fascinated by their newly significant allies. It made an impression on everyone, including Keef himself.

  KEITH RICHARDS: We lived with the war, and in the ruins of it. We were still on rationing until well into the ’50s. Especially with cane sugar—that was the last thing to come off rationing, which is probably why a lot of us are still skinny.

  Slenderness aside, what wasn’t there to like about America? The cars, the bars, the stars—all of it! Just ask another rock superstar:

  ERIC CLAPTON: The first books I bought were about America. The first records were American. I was just devoted to the American way of life without ever having been there. I was ready for it all. I wanted to learn about red Indians and the blues and everything. I was really an American fan.

  And what about those boys from Dartford, Kent, England? Where and how do they enter into the equation? That’s the story Alan Clayson referred to in the previous chapter, a story of a chance meeting on a train. Mick and Keith had known each other since grammar school as classmates and neighbors, but didn’t really travel in the same circles—until a fateful encounter at the Dartford train station in October of 1960.

  KEITH RICHARDS: So I get on the train one morning and there’s Jagger, and under his arm he has four or five albums . . . We recognized each other straight off. “Hi man,” I say. “Where ya going?” he says. And under his arm he’s got Chuck Berry (Rockin’ at the Hops) and Little Walter, Muddy Waters (The Best of Muddy Waters). I say, “You’re into Chuck Berry, man, really? That’s a coincidence. I can play that shit. I didn’t know you were into that.” He says, “Yeah, I’ve even got a little band. And I got a few more albums. Been writin’ away to this, uh, Chess Records in Chicago and got a mailing list thing and got it together, ya know?”

  Chess Records. Of course. And how’s this for delicious happenstance? The person who most likely fulfilled Mick Jagger’s mail order request for those albums was Leonard Chess’s eighteen-year-old son, Marshall, who helped out his dad in the Chess stockroom in Chicago.

  The musical scene in Britain was stagnant in those days; the time was ripe for anyone peddling a new sound. Rhythm and blues became a dominant subculture, out of which rose that core group of English musicians and bands spearheading the Great Blues Revival of the early ’60s, at the forefront of which were the Rolling Stones.

  More than any other band (the Beatles included), the Stone
s were the bridge from the narrower “Isle of Blues” to the much broader “Mainland of Rock ’n’ Roll”—a transition that began on that stage in 1962. The Rolling Stones were and are the bedrock of the movement by the best and brightest Brits who reintroduced American rhythm and blues to the whole wide world on a grand scale in the 1960s.

  Blues guitar legend (and Chess recording artist) Hubert Sumlin was grateful for the attention his music attracted from overseas.

  HUBERT SUMLIN: They did a good job. They put us on the map. We were already, but now were around the world. I saw them play and I liked them all, the Rolling Stones, all of them. Nineteen sixty-four I think it was in England and we was playing this club, Wolf and I, and we met the Rolling Stones and they said, “Mr. Wolf, you didn’t mind us recording ‘Little Red Rooster’”? And he said, “No, no. I didn’t mind.” And one of them asked me, “Are you Hubert Sumlin?” And I said yes. And he said, “We heard your playing with Wolf and we like it very much.”

  MARSHALL CHESS: Well, to our surprise, by osmosis somehow that great early Chess stuff got into the UK. And so, very early on, we found a couple of scruffy Englishmen knocking at the Chess Records’ door in Chicago saying, “We’re the Chess Records Appreciation Society from England”! . . . I mean we didn’t even know what they were TALKING about! But anyway, I took them and I showed them the Chess Master Book, which was like a big black book with everything written in script—this was before the days of typewriters and computers in the office—and they put their hands on that book like it was the Holy Grail! . . . And that was our first inkling of what was happening in England! But then, as you know, shortly after that groups like the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and the Kinks all started doing Chess material and talking about Chess artists. The Stones were pushing Bo Diddley and Howlin’ Wolf; the Yardbirds were pushing Sonny Boy Williamson . . . Plus there were shows like Ready Steady Go! who’d bring the Chess artists over and put them on television in England . . . So yeah, I definitely credit the English with really helping break the legacy of Chess to a whole new audience.

  The Stones record at legendary Chess Studios in Chicago in June of 1964

  Flash forward to the Stones’ first tour of America, when they got a chance to visit Chess Studios. They were in need of a boost. Their tour wasn’t going exceptionally well (more on that in chapter 5). They recorded fourteen tracks in two days, including “It’s All Over Now.”

  BUDDY GUY: I was in Chess Studios when they came to Chess to record. I was at the studio doing a cut called “My Time After Awhile” and I had never saw a white man with their hair that long before. And Leonard Chess brought them in the studio and lined them up against the wall while I was doing the session. And I didn’t know who the hell they was. I was saying, “Is these women or men?”

  Mick and Brian onstage during their first English tour in October of 1963

  Famously, Keith Richards insists he saw none other than Muddy Waters himself up on a ladder painting the ceiling!

  MARSHALL CHESS: I’ve laughed in [Keith’s] face many times as he’s insisted he saw Muddy up a ladder with a paint brush in hand. I guess people want to believe that it’s true.

  KEITH RICHARDS: Marshall was a boy then; he was working in the basement. And also Bill Wyman told me he actually remembers Muddy Waters taking our amplifiers from the car into the studio . . . I know what the Chess brothers were bloody well like—if you want to stay on the payroll, get to work.

  NORMAN DAYRON: Marshall is right, Keith is wrong. And if Muddy Waters was helping carry anybody’s amplifiers, he was doing it out of courtesy.

  BUDDY GUY: Muddy Waters had helped them bring their instruments up the stairs and they were so ecstatic about that because they was saying, “We was supposed to be bringing Muddy’s stuff upstairs, not the other way round.”

  MARSHALL CHESS: It says something about how unfashionable the blues had become at that time. By ’64 nobody really wanted to know. White people had never bought blues records. The audience had always been black. A new generation of black people looked down on the blues. They saw it as slavery music. Instead they were listening to Motown and Stax. It was bands like the Stones and the Yardbirds who introduced the blues to a white market.

  BUDDY GUY: I was unaware how famous they was becoming but a lot of white audiences started listening to the blues. I didn’t have the slightest idea that the British was listening to the blues, but they had more information than we had on the blues players—the blues players before me—than I did. They knew when you recorded, where you recorded, and who you recorded with. We didn’t keep track of that. These guys came in and opened not only my eyes, but America’s eyes that the blues was being recognized by the British as a music that should be heard. I went to play in England, February 1965. There was nothing but white people and they was eating it up. I didn’t think nobody other than the south side of Chicago and the west side know who the hell I was. But the Stones guys helped open up the doors. Thank you guys.

  BILL GERMAN: The very first time I picked up Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, I was like, what are these names in the parentheses? The beauty of the Stones is that they lead you down this investigative path. They turn you on to Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, and Howlin’ Wolf . . .

  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves again. Before we leave 2120 South Michigan Ave., I’d like to offer one final piece of evidence for why the Stones sparked the American blues revival. When it came time to unleash The Rolling Stones, their first full-length long-playing album on the ears of the world in April of 1964, here is the song selection that they chose. (The American edition on London Records added the phrase “England’s Newest Hitmakers.”)

  “Route 66” written by Bobby Troup

  “I Just Want to Make Love to You” written by Willie Dixon

  “Honest I Do” written by Jimmy Reed

  “Mona (I Need You Baby)” written by Ellas McDaniel (Bo Diddley)

  “Now I’ve Got a Witness (Like Uncle Phil and Uncle Gene)” credited to Nanker Phelge (the pseudonym created when all group members participated in the composition)

  “Little by Little” credited to Nanker Phelge/Phil Spector

  “I’m a King Bee” written by Slim Harpo

  “Carol” written by Chuck Berry

  “Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)” written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

  “Can I Get a Witness” written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland

  “You Can Make It if You Try” written by Ted Jarrett

  “Walking the Dog” written by Rufus Thomas

  It was a full serving of nine R&B and blues covers, coupled with three fledgling attempts at original songwriting. And by April of 1964, it is quite apparent that the Rolling Stones mythmaking machinery was already in overdrive. Here is a quote from the original liner notes prepared for that debut album:

  The Rolling Stones are more than just a group—they are a way of life. A way of life that has captured the imagination of England’s teenagers, and made them one of the most sought after groups in Beatdom . . . They have emerged as five well rounded intelligent talents, who will journey successfully far beyond the realms of pop music. And in this album there are twelve good reasons why.

  You’ve already seen the twelve “reasons” above, but who lays claim to the powerful hyperbolic words written on the cover of that debut recording? None other than the man who would loom large in the formation, creation, and dissemination of all things Stones in the early days—and the subject of our next chapter—Andrew Loog Oldham.

  CHAPTER 3

  COME ON

  THERE PROBABLY WOULDN’T have been an Elvis Presley without Colonel Tom Parker. And there probably wouldn’t have been a Beatles without Brian Epstein. And we could say with some certainty that there wouldn’t be a Rolling Stones as we know them without Andrew Loog Oldham.

  Managers, producers, image makers, cheerleaders, and hand-holders all play a significant role in the rise of a pop phenomenon from o
bscurity to international acclaim. In the early days, Andrew Loog Oldham provided all five of those necessary services for the Rolling Stones. Less than a year after the group’s first gig, Oldham was made aware of them by journalist Peter Jones of the Record Mirror. He went to see and hear them at the Station Hotel in Richmond.

  ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM: I was a press agent in London doing the publicity for people from the Beatles, to Sam Cooke, to Gene Pitney, and a journalist told me to go and see this group in a pub and that group was the Rolling Stones. So I immediately became a manager and a producer. It was the Station Hotel, Richmond, just outside the center of London with these blues evenings run by Giorgio Gomelsky. They were playing all blues circuits, which I think was the Marquee, Station Hotel, Crawdaddy, Eel Pie Island, and that circuit, and there were six including Stu (Ian Stewart) the first time I saw them.

  I asked him how and why he became involved with the group, and, without hesitating, he offered four words and an explanation:

  ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM: I fell in love. We had a lot of things in common: age, ambition, lack of knowledge. In reality, how it progressed, how I became the producer was, number one, I wanted to be a producer; and number two, because of the type of music we all liked, especially them, they felt more protected by a situation in the studio I could give them. In England then, the A&R thing was rather like your Mitch Miller thing was here: twenty-five pounds a week, suits, nine to five.