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  Here’s another take on that same tale:

  JOHN LENNON: The story on “I Wanna Be Your Man” was that they needed a record. They’d put out “Come On” by Chuck Berry and needed a quick follow-up. We met Andrew Oldham, who used to work for Epstein then had gone to the Stones and probably got them off Giorgio Gomelsky. He came to us and said, “Have you got a song for them?” And we said, “Sure,” because we didn’t really want it ourselves.

  We went in, and I remember teaching it to them. We played it roughly and they said, “Yeah, OK, that’s our style.” So Paul and I just went off in a corner of the room and finished the song while they were all still there, talking. We came back and that’s how Mick and Keith got inspired to write. “Jesus, look at that. They just went in the corner and wrote it and came back!” Right in front of their eyes we did it.

  You could easily make the case that the Beatles were more helpful to the Stones than vice versa. So let’s give this early round to the Fab Four, but the rivalry is far from over.

  CHAPTER 5

  STREET FIGHTING MAN

  FOUR MONTHS AFTER the Beatles’ triumphant arrival in America, the Stones took their own plunge, at which point another vast difference between their respective strategies revealed itself immediately. Paul McCartney swears that he (and his bandmates) had learned a valuable lesson from all of their fellow musician countrymen who had come here before them and failed.

  PAUL MCCARTNEY: The thing we did—which I always think new groups should take as a bit of advice—was that we were cheeky enough to say that we wouldn’t go to the States until we had a number one record there. We were offered tours, but we knew we’d be second to someone and we didn’t want that. There was a lot of careful thought behind it. There were a lot of artists who’d go over and vanish . . . We always looked at it logically and thought, “Well, that’s the mistake. You’ve got to go in as number one.”

  This was far from the way the Stones did it on their first visit. Of course America was just as much the big rock candy mountain for even these hardcore “anti-Beatles.” (Have we mentioned that one of Keith Richards’s childhood idols for both his music and his movies was the so-called King of the Cowboys—Roy Rogers? Asked about it during a press junket for one of his appearances in the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, Keith replied, “Oh, yeah, Roy was great. He could shoot, play the guitar, and ride a great horse. What more do you want?”)

  Keith’s excitement about coming here was palpable.

  KEITH RICHARDS: America was a real fantasyland. It was still Walt Disney and hamburger dates and kids going steady. We watched the presidential debates, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, and noticed that kids were more into what was going on [politically] . . . the girls were better looking, ha-ha! It was like throwing a load of demons into heaven.

  And Mick Jagger’s take on the same subject?

  MICK JAGGER: I was knocked out. Things seemed to be open all night and everything was so exciting and there was a lot of energy. Also a lot of things made us laugh. We were very unsuccessful at first but we still liked it. You see, we knew that we just had to make it in America. It took us two years to make it over there. There we were touring all over the place on our own and nobody seemed to know us. Touring on our own wasn’t too bad in a way, but there was this total apathy building up from just about everyone. Everything was all wrong. Nobody has ever done it all in one go . . . it takes time to “conquer” America.

  The Beatles might have begged to differ, but that was up to them. The Stones certainly got off on the wrong foot. They touched down in New York on June 1, and made the obligatory visit to the self-proclaimed “Fifth Beatle” disc jockey Murray the K’s broadcast on radio station WINS. Not yet on Ed Sullivan’s “must-book” list, the Stones soon after took off for Los Angeles, where they were scheduled to make their American network television debut on ABC’s weekly variety program The Hollywood Palace. Hosted by a rotating list of establishment celebrities, this generational mismatch created even stranger bedfellows than the Sullivan extravaganza. For example, comedian Milton Berle was completely flummoxed by Spanky and Our Gang (though Sammy Davis Jr. fared a little bit better when he hosted a return appearance by the group); singer Tony Martin brought on Buffalo Springfield with a few corny jokes about their name. But the most notorious debacle of them all had to be the Rolling Stones debut on a show hosted by Dean Martin.

  The post–Jerry Lewis Martin was enjoying all-media solo success with hit records, starring roles in major feature films, and a successful network television series of his own just a year away on NBC. And he was already established as a member in good standing of Frank Sinatra’s notorious “Rat Pack”—a contingent of Hollywood elite devoted to booze, broads, and buffoonery. If ever there was a cataclysmic confrontation between old guard show business and the onslaught of “take-no-prisoners” rock ’n’ rollers from the British Isles, it was best symbolized by The Hollywood Palace’s handling of the Rolling Stones.

  BOB BONIS: Dean Martin came in and had no idea what he was dealing with. The vibe, as we call it today, was just awful. Dean and I got into an argument at one point and Keith, my newfound friend, was about to pop him one with one of those solid-body guitars.

  ANTHONY DECURTIS: Dean was such an asshole. He read the writing on the wall, which was, “Goodbye, Dean Martin.” The Stones, I think, scared him.

  In fairness to Dean Martin, he was true to the beloved caricature of himself that he cultivated for his nightclub, movie, and television fans: the sloshed hipster who was as likely to make fun of himself as he was of anyone or anything else within striking distance, whether it be Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., or, yes, even the Rolling Stones: “Now . . . something for the youngsters . . . five singing boys from England who sold a lot of albums. They’re called the Rolling Stones. I’ve been rolled while I was stoned myself. I don’t know what they’re singing about . . . but here they are.”

  The Stones came on and did a blistering performance of “I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” following which Dino looks a little bewildered and says: “Rolling Stones . . . aren’t they great?” (Rolls his eyes.) “They’re going to leave right after the show for London. They’re challenging the Beatles to a hair-pulling contest. I could swear Jackie Coogan and Skippy were in that group.” (A really ancient old-show-business reference.) “Well I’m going to let you in on something. You know these singing groups today? You’re under the impression they have long hair. Not true at all. It’s an optical illusion. They just have low foreheads and high eyebrows.”

  Charlie Watts

  And then: “So as we leave you right now, we’ll have a short intermission. And we’ll be back at The Hollywood Palace in about a minute. Now don’t go away. You, you wouldn’t leave me here alone with the Rolling Stones now would you?”

  But the worst was yet to come. After a comical trampoline act, Dean is back on camera and says: “Larry Griswold! Isn’t he wonderful? He’s the father of the Rolling Stones. And ever since he heard them sing, he’s been trying to kill himself.”

  The Stones managed to do two more songs—their cover of “Not Fade Away” as well as the Jagger/Richards composition “Tell Me.” They were furious, but not as furious as they would be when the program aired on June 13, and they realized that their appearance had been whittled down to just an excerpt of “I Just Wanna Make Love to You”!

  The seeming insults did not go unnoticed. In the self-composed liner notes for his album Another Side of Bob Dylan released in August of 1964, Bob drops in this non sequitur:

  an dean martin should apologize

  t the rolling stones. [sic]

  (Back then, anyone sensitive to the battle between the mainstream and the underground cultural revolution that was under way could not misunderstand the source of that reference. But I wonder if readers today, without any direct knowledge of The Hollywood Palace fiasco, would be scratching their heads over a negative Bob Dylan quote about Dean Martin? Especially in light of t
he fact that Bob covered one of Dean’s biggest solo hits, “Return to Me,” on the second anthology of music released from the HBO hit series The Sopranos!)

  So much for the television debut. How did that first tour of the States turn out? A mixed bag, for sure. On June 5, the Stones did their first concert in America in San Bernardino, California, just about an hour outside of LA. They were part of a touring lineup that included at various points the Chiffons, Bobby Comstock, Bobby Vee (playing with a saxophonist named Bobby Keys), and Bobby Goldsboro! (The original Bobfest?) The show attracted 4,500 young fans.

  KEITH RICHARDS: It was a straight gas, man. They all knew the songs, and they were all bopping. It was like being back home. “Ah, love these American gigs” and “Route 66” mentioned San Bernardino, so everybody was into it.

  Bobby Goldsboro traveled with the Stones that week.

  BOBBY GOLDSBORO: I knew about the Stones. And when it was finally announced that they were coming over to do their first tour, and I got the call and they asked if I would open for the Stones, I thought, “Man, I’d love to do that.” . . . I couldn’t wait for it. We toured together on a bus for a week and ended up playing Carnegie Hall. It was just me and the Stones and a backup band on this big bus. They got the reputation of the bad boys of rock ’n’ roll but all of them were really nice guys to me. They were doing just good rock ’n’ roll music from the word “go.”

  The Stones play the State Fair of Texas; chimpanzees and elephants were among the acts on the ticket

  Soon the reality of the tour set in. The next gig was in Texas for the San Antonio Teen Fair, where the group endured non-stop misguided homophobic insults and slurs from a population of crew-cutted rednecks and uptight all-American girls openly hostile to the long hair and ambiguous sexuality of this sullen British quintet.

  Then it was off to Chicago for, perhaps, the highlight of the whole trip—recording a bevy of tracks at the fabled Chess Studios in the company of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Buddy Guy (see chapter 2). It was a very productive two-day session including their next single, their second EP, and a number of possible tracks for the next album. One of the songs recorded on that first day was a cover of Irma Thomas’s “Time Is on My Side.” Years later, Ms. Thomas recalled her initial reaction to the Stones version:

  IRMA THOMAS: At the time they did it, I was about twenty-three years old, very naïve, and I was a bit miffed. My career was just starting to show some promise, and then came along the British Invasion, and at that time, it didn’t necessarily have to be good, as long as it was British. We as American artists were darn good performers, and I felt my version of “Time Is on My Side” was far better than theirs, but I wasn’t British, and I was black, so there were two strikes against me. Of course, over the years I’ve reconsidered, and I’m not so upset anymore.

  A HUMAN RIFF IS BORN

  In his memoir, Life, Keith credits Bobby Goldsboro with teaching him the Jimmy Reed lick that has been the basis for much of his repertoire since.

  BOBBY GOLDSBORO: When I was in college, we were playing all the blues stuff. We learned the Jimmy Reed songs, but we couldn’t quite get the sound down that he was getting and I couldn’t figure why. It turned out we were playing the chord correctly—and that was the problem. When he would go up to a B chord, he left the bass note open. Actually, if you listen to that note, it’s incorrect—it doesn’t go with that chord. But it gives it a different sound. So I showed that to Keith on the bus. We were touring for about a week together. I was the opening act on their first tour over here. It was a simple little guitar lick. It was nice he gave me credit in his book about that. It’s a good feeling this many years later to have someone like Keith Richards acknowledge something like that. But I got far too much credit because all I did was learn it off Jimmy Reed’s record.

  Goldsboro is a big fan of Keith’s playing in general.

  BOBBY GOLDSBORO: There’s so many distinct riffs that he has put on some of the Stones’ records. A lot of them are very simple. That’s one of the things about his guitar playing. He didn’t do a lot of fancy stuff, but the things he does are so cool. That’s what makes him such a unique guitarist.

  And how about his development as a guitar player?

  BOBBY GOLDSBORO: He left guys like me in the wind. With Keith, he’s saying something every time he plays. What he’s doing has its own style. Every song he plays, he gets out of the guitar what he should get out of it.

  The tour resumed on June 12 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, then Omaha, Nebraska, on June 13, about which Keith remembers:

  KEITH RICHARDS: The next gig was Omaha, with the motorcycles and six hundred kids. Then you get deflated. That’s what stopped us from turning into pop stars then; we were always having those continual complete somebody hitting you in the face, “Don’t forget, boy.” Then we really had to work America, and it really got the band together. We’d fallen off in playing in England ’cause nobody was listening; we’d do four numbers and be gone. Don’t blink, you’ll miss us.

  Next up were Detroit on the fourteenth, Pittsburgh on the seventeenth, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on the nineteenth—each one with mixed audience reactions, and widely varying audience numbers. The last stop on this first barnstorming mission to the United States was none other than the legendary Carnegie Hall.

  ANTHONY DECURTIS: On the first tour, when they went out beyond New York, they had some problems because they were so controversial and edgy, but in New York, they were always embraced.

  Promoter Sid Bernstein booked the show at Carnegie, just as he had done for the Beatles in February.

  SID BERNSTEIN: Each Wednesday I would buy my British newspaper at [the international newsstand] Hotalings. I enjoyed reading the English newspapers; they reminded me of my time as a soldier in Great Britain. On one Wednesday, I happened to notice a small, one-column item of about five lines with a Liverpool dateline talking about a group called the Beatles. The use of the word “hysteria” caught my eye. The only time I could remember the word “hysteria” being used with regard to entertainment was in reference to Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

  But Sid wasn’t content with just bringing over one English group.

  SID BERNSTEIN: The Beatles breakthrough opened up the music scene for everybody in Britain. In the fall of 1963 the British music trade papers and popular daily newspapers that I was reading began reporting on a group called the Rolling Stones. They were playing to sold-out venues and creating a hysteria of their own. I decided I wanted to introduce the Rolling Stones to America too. I called information in London and got the phone number of their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, whose name I had seen in the trade papers. A moment later a charming, soft-spoken voice came on, “Sid, this is Andrew, I was hoping you were going to call me . . .”

  Murray the K was the MC and American hit makers Jay and the Americans were the opening act. Murray promoted the show heavily on his WINS radio program. The following is an actual transcript of one of his on-air pronouncements: “Hey, everybody, this is Murray the K and I’ve got big news for you. Now you know that we are very close to the Beatles and it’s nothing that’s gonna get you upset—all of you Beatle fans—but John Lennon, as a personal favor, asked me to bring over a group that is really turning England upside down. Now, you may not have heard of them. Their name is the Rolling Stones. They’ve got hair longer than the Beatles and we’re gonna present them in their very first US appearance at Carnegie Hall!”

  The date was Saturday, June 20, for two shows. The first show proceeded normally with a very professional and somewhat buttoned-down set by Jay and the Americans. Then all hell broke loose when the Stones took to the stage. Screaming teenage girls jumped out of their seats and ran to the front. It took a phalanx of cops to quiet things down and allow the group to continue their performance.

  Two interesting footnotes in rock ’n’ roll history took place during the intermission between shows. The first is that Jay and the Americans co-founder Kenny Vance was
sitting in his dressing room applying tanning cream to his face—a trick the group learned after they appeared on the black-and-white Clay Cole television show on WPIX in New York. Kenny told me the story on one of his visits to my radio show:

  KENNY VANCE: Brian Jones walked in on me and said, “What on earth are you doing, mate?” I replied, “Stage makeup. It looks a lot better under the lights.” Jones poured a gob into his hands and began applying some to his face. “Keith,” he called out, “come and take a look at this!” Richards walked in and became hysterical when he saw Jones working on his face. He then followed suit, and before I knew what was happening, the Rolling Stones had descended on the dressing room, taken my makeup, and began playing with their new toys.

  Based on this chance encounter, Kenny claims credit to this day for the barrels and barrels of cosmetics, creams, and makeup that the Stones would use over the course of their fifty-year career.