Hey there, if you're listening to this and you support us on Patreon, you can hear it via the Patreon page ad-free. So now, ladies and gentlemen, it is start time. Are you ready for start time? You're listening to Sound Opinions, and this week we're bidding farewell to the late President Jimmy Carter. I'm Jim DeRogatis. And I'm Greg Cott. We'll also say goodbye to music journalist Stanley Booth, the most profound chronicler of the Rolling Stones. But first, Jimmy Carter.
President Jimmy Carter died on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100. And to celebrate and reflect on his life, we wanted to re-air a conversation we had about his love for music. and musicians we're going to talk now to mary wharton the director of this fantastic documentary, Jimmy Carter Rock and Roll President. Mary, welcome to Sound Opinions. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Well, thank you for making this film. Both Greg and I, when we thought, you know, Jimmy Carter, rock and roll president, we know Dylan, yeah. But to dive deep... for a really well-made film into the connections that Carter had with music in the rock and roll world and also jazz. Music was in this guy's soul. Yeah, totally. And, you know, we were really surprised. In fact,
Going into this, we had heard about the Dylan stories and the Willie Nelson stories and the Greg Allman and the Allman Brothers stories. I didn't know about it until the producer, Chris Farrell, came to me with this idea for a film. but that was pretty much the basis is of what we decided like oh this seems like an interesting story let's make a film about that and then we started digging into the research and finding all this other stuff just
Even, for example, when we spoke to Jimmy Buffett, he came to the film because he's friendly with our writer, Bill Flanagan. And Bill said, oh, you know, I think Jimmy Buffett might have some Jimmy Carter stories. And we were like, OK, great. You know, Jimmy Buffett's awesome. Bring him on. And then he had amazing. stories and then we went and dug into it more and we found film of the two of them together jimmy buffett performing at a carter campaign rally and it just the more we dug the more
kind of layers of the onion got peeled back. And the thing that was most exciting to me was one of the first things that I wrote with Chris in the original treatment. was this idea that we hoped that by kind of looking at Jimmy Carter through this music lens that we would get at.
a sort of... interesting portrait of who he was and and it turned out that that really did come to pass well and it's about so much more than music mary because uh you know carter makes the point that his love of gospel and black... blues musicians and the Capricorn recordings, you know, and bands like the Ullman Brothers from the South, that he never had the racism that ran through the veins of so many people and still does, sadly.
It really just comes back to a sort of moral courage that he had to stand up for what was right. And guess what? What was right in 1976 or 1978 is still what is right. today. We all can see it, right? I mean, be a human, you know, and that's what Jimmy Carter was so good at, being a great human. Yeah, and the rarity of that I think was, you know, striking.
Mary you know the the movie puts it in context you know the idea of like Elvis coming to the White House to visit Nixon it was just such a awkward encounter you know these two worlds never should meet Politically, it may not have been the smartest move, but for Carter, it certainly worked out well. Why do you think he ventured there to make that more overt so that the public knew, hey, I love these guys?
Right. I think it just speaks to his bravery. I mean, I think that Carter is very misunderstood as somehow being soft and being a peacenik. You know, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. for gosh sakes, you know, and he has spent his life waging peace. But he was a Navy man. You know, he increased military spending every single year of his administration. He believed in the
of the American military and the might, and he knew better than anyone. Anyone who served in the Army or the U.S. Armed Forces understands the power that that... organization holds better than someone who hasn't. Right. And and I think that he was just he was just extraordinarily brave when he's, you know, at a campaign rally in 1980. And this was kind of shocking. me to look back at something from 1980 and see that the KKK were, you know,
protesting outside a Carter rally. Yeah, they hated him. I say that these people in white sheets do not understand our region and what it's been through. They do not understand what our country stands for. They do not understand that the South... and all of America must move forward. Our past is a rich source of inspiration. We've had lessons that we learned with a great deal of pain, but the past is not a place to live. We must go forward in the south.
And we will. And they hated him. They hated him because he was anti-racist. He had promoted civil rights and women's rights and just human rights in general. And he... you know, wasn't afraid to stand up to them. He was pointing his finger in their faces and calling them cowards for hiding behind masks. There's a great anecdote in the film. The Secret Service had to pull him away because he was getting in their faces.
right back at them. We kind of had to walk through this gauntlet of all these guys. And, you know, Carter being Jimmy Carter would stop and jeer back at him every once in a while about what cowards they were. This good man... who wanted to try to reverse the tide of history, not only in the South and in America, but within his own party. The guys with the white hoods and the burning crosses did not like that. He could have been.
physically harmed as well as politically harmed. He makes the point, talks proudly, of there was not a single bomb dropped or a gunshot in his campaign, which comes off as... as strength. We were strong not to take the bait. And, you know, it was a twist of history, right? If the attempt to rescue the hostages had succeeded, as the Israeli raid on Antebi did. he would have been one of the great military geniuses of all time. You know, a sandstorm derailed that. You know, but he never...
expresses sadness. He's proud of what he accomplished. And also he's not superficial. The film opens with him quoting accurately Dylan lyrics. And he knew this stuff. It wasn't about posing. He lived with it. He knew it. He loved it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, people have asked me a number of times about what is it that made Jimmy Carter connect with music?
Conversely, what is it about Jimmy Carter that made artists and songwriters connect with him? And I think it boils down to the fact that Jimmy Carter was a truth teller. He was always truthful. One of his campaign promises was, I'll never tell a lie to the American people. If you ever find me telling you a lie, then don't vote for me. That's what he told people when he was running.
for president. And he told America the truth even when they didn't want to hear it. You know, sometimes they didn't want to hear the truth because they want to just hear, oh, let's go bomb Iran. And he was telling them, yeah, we need to do something about this energy crisis.
And, you know, and they didn't like that. You know, there's that great quote about songwriting by I think it's Harlan Howard. The only thing you need to write a song is three chords in the truth. You know, I think that that Jimmy. Carter appreciated the fact finding and the truthfulness that he saw in these great songs of the great songwriters of America. He loved Paul Simon. He loved Bob Dylan. You know, he loved that music.
because it showed him a picture of America. He said that as a young man growing up on a farm, he never quite had a good understanding of the place. of the farm worker, the farm laborers, until he heard Maggie's Farm by Bob Dylan. If you're having a good time And he finds you every time you slam the door So he appreciated that this art form brought him closer to a true understanding of the world. And I think that...
Conversely, the artists appreciated that he saw their truth and that he was speaking the truth back to them. Well, I think that's a great point. I think the whole idea of the arts consistently being sort of put on the back burner. it comes to our discussions about political figures or leaders in this country. It's like, oh, that's kind of like kid stuff. It's not really that important. And Carter sort of moved it front and center. And I'm thinking, like, presidents...
before or since, who has really been that aligned or that conversant with popular culture and the music of the times as he was? I mean, you could say Barack Obama. You know, certainly, you know, the playlists were very important part of like humanizing him. No, he knew his own Cadela. And he knew Jamila Woods and people like that. And Clinton had the... It was kind of baby boomer. Bill Clinton playing sax with Arsenio Hall and Love and Fleetwood Mac. At least it was an attempt.
I don't think Clinton was being phony about it. I think his love of music, such as it was, was genuine. But Carter, you know, he fully embraced it, and he was so conversant with it. And I think what a valuable lesson to all future leaders. leaders you would think but it really hasn't it hasn't really sunk in you know we got a lot of people who just do they even listen to music do they even care or read poetry or really books movies all that stuff theater
That seems to be like, and Carter seems like a sort of a Renaissance man, you know? He is a total Renaissance man. You know, he is a poet himself. I think that you're absolutely right that the arts have gotten the short shift in American culture for a lot of years. And, you know, in spite of the fact that studies show that kids do better in math when they learn music, you know, they're also kind of learning about logic. And it just helps people to become more well-rounded people.
when we appreciate the arts. And, you know, I think that... We definitely wanted to make sure that we had a very well-rounded kind of musical palette to work from. But we used the rock and roll title as kind of shorthand. for the rock and roll attitude, you know, that we really believe that Jimmy Carter was kind of badass and pretty cool. And a lot of people don't know that about him, you know. How did you get Dylan?
Earlier in the film says, you know, Bob Dylan became one of my best friends. And then you have Dylan. A, Dylan has friends on this planet. And B, he's willing to talk about them. Yes. Well, I have to give full credit to your fellow rock journalist, Bill Flanagan, who was our writer on the film. And he is the one that got us Dylan. Full props to him. Dylan showed up.
And we weren't sure how it was going to go down. You know, we didn't know if it was going to just be, you know, him shooting something on his iPhone and phoning it in, which is, you know. definitely something that's happened in the past. That's the best Scorsese you got, right? He came to us and, you know, allowed us to shoot with him. And I was so impressed by the fact that he had kind of really put some thought.
into it and kind of prepared some things to say the thing that he says at the end of the film about you know he quotes a Lynyrd Skynyrd song which is like Mind-blowing. Amazing. Oh, it's impossible to define Jimmy. Think of him as a simple kind of man, like in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song. He takes his time, doesn't live too fast. Troubles come, but they will pass. Find a woman and find love. And don't forget there's always someone above. You know, Bob Dylan.
Knowing the words to a Leonard Skinner song. It's true. And then talking about Carter, like, you know, he sort of lists off all these things. Carter, he's a poet. He's a nuclear engineer. woodworking carpenter. He's also a poet. He's a dirt farmer. If you told me he was a race car driver, I wouldn't even be surprised. It felt to me like... Like Dylan had written a song about Jimmy Carter. It was like a poem in a way, an incantation.
And it was so wonderful to me that he had, you know, taken the time to do that and to come, you know, spend a couple hours with us in the middle of a tour, a concert tour. You know, it was a really special opportunity. and we're so grateful to have him in the film, and I think he's pretty cool in it, you know? I'll say. Yeah, he's a cool man, that's for sure. When we return, more from director Mary Wharton.
That's coming up on Sound Opinions. And we are back, and we are talking with Mary Wharton, the director of Jimmy Carter, Rock and Roll President. What struck me is, you know, you mentioned like badasses. It's like, all right, the Allman brothers, I've been around, I've hung around those guys, and it's like being in a biker gang, you know? It's like you're not, you don't mess with these guys. And there's Greg Allman.
you know, kicking back scotch with Jimmy Carter in the governor's mansion when Carter was governor for Georgia. I want to introduce to you my friends and your friends, the ones that are going to help me get elected along with you.
The great Allman Brothers. Or Willie Nelson. Talk about cool guys on the planet. You know, Mr. weed smoking willy and so he feels comfortable around this guy totally and especially the whole idea of like musicians mingling with politicians you know back then not necessarily a cool thing for the musicians to be doing but they saw something cool about this guy that they figured figured they could talk to him like a peer i guess yeah what was your sense of why like a greg allman or willie nelson
We're so willing to sort of open up to this one politician versus all the other ones, you know? Well, I think, I mean, you're... Absolutely right to, you know, mention that during this time, you know, you think about coming out of Watergate and, you know, you have the kind of there's the establishment world, you know, which Bob Dylan alluded to, like he didn't realize that his songs could pop.
possibly have reached into that world. And then there were the younger generation and, you know, never the twain shall meet in a way during that time period. But, you know, Jimmy Carter had a real sort of sense of authenticity that. He was totally real. And I think, you know, the Greg Allman story about the fact that it was right around the time of the Democratic National Convention when Greg Allman was facing charge.
on cocaine possession and being brought up on trial. And everyone in Carter's organization told him that he needed to distance himself from Greg, that this was... like kryptonite, you know, political suicide to be associated with this cocaine doing long haired rock star who, you know, comes from this band. of, like you said, like Florida biker gang type, you know, rowdy, raucous, you know, rock and roll band. And Carter was friends with Greg Allman and he refused.
to back away from him because he was his friend and he saw that his friend was going through a tough time and he probably needed help you know more than ever in that moment and I just again, that speaks to Carter's bravery and his sense of honor and moral courage, you know, that he stuck.
By Greg. And and in fact, on the very first day that he was in the White House, he invited Greg Allman and his then girlfriend, Cher, to dinner. And they had dinner with him the first night that he spent the night. the White House. And there's a very, very funny story. Not only did they have dinner in the White House dining room, but they were unfamiliar with the idea of finger washing bowls. And so Cher, I believe it was, sipped from her.
Thought it was a fancy tea, I think, because there was a flower in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Mary, even though we get no sense in the film that Jimmy Carter himself ever inhaled, he was understanding of people who did try things and became... pray to abuse even, right? You know, I mean, his friendship for Greg was that this is a man who needs help right now. And, you know, it turns out Willie Nelson had talked about going up on the roof of the White House and smoking pot with a staffer.
Turns out to have been one of Carter's sons. Yeah. What I love about how Carter handles that in our interview is that he he talks about all that stuff. just so nonchalantly, like he's in on the joke. The kind of humor is definitely not lost on him, but he's also just so, it's no big deal to him. I think that the fact that He refused to judge people based on something that they might have done in the past or that might have been illegal at the time. And it goes back again to his...
sense of Christianity that like, you know, judge not lest ye be judged. And that level of empathy and selflessness is a rare trait in anyone. I think. These days in particular, but in a politician, particularly somebody who is, you know, the leader of the free world, it's refreshing to see.
a man who is fascinated with everyone, you know, the truck driver, the young African girl who is going to get her house built for the first time with his home building initiatives. And he'll talk to all of them, you know, the same. way he would talk to anybody right he's an every man every human being he has a deep love of humanity first of all and an insatiable curiosity he's a highly intelligent man He studied nuclear physics in the Naval Academy. He's written
like eight or 10 books, volumes of poetry that he's had published. I mean, he's a, as you say, a true Renaissance man, but that intrinsic love of. people is kind of, I feel like I've never been a believer of any real organized form of religion, but I feel like Jimmy Carter very much embodies. Christianity in the best sense of the word, that he just truly loves people. And that's a very rare trait.
I think, in this day and age. Yeah, it's interesting too, the anecdote in the movie about, you know, when Dylan meets Carter for the first time, Dylan pulled him aside and was quizzing him about his Christianity, you know, which was several years before. Dylan's so-called Christian phase, you know, in recording. So, you know, who knows? Carter may have had an influence on, you know.
We asked him about that, and Carter didn't want to take any credit for it. But, you know, he kind of characterized it as being perhaps a step. along the path that Dylan took in investigating his own spirituality and whether that led him to Christianity and has now led him to other places. You know, I just thought it was so incredible.
learned that, you know, here you have at the time Carter was the governor of Georgia, but, you know, governor and a rock star having deep philosophical conversations about. the meaning of Christianity in your life, that's an unusual situation right there. Yeah, yeah. We have been talking with director Mary Wharton, whose most recent project, Jimmy Carter, rock and roll president, has been our subject.
for today. Mary, that was very enlightening. Thank you for being our guest on Sound Opinions. Thank you so much for having me. I love you guys' show, and it's great to be on here. That wraps up our conversation about the late Jimmy Carter, dead at the age of 100. Now let's talk about another individual we want to bid farewell to, Stanley Booth. Booth was a music journalist who most notably...
covered the Rolling Stones when he toured with them during the height of their powers in 1969. He was there hiding behind the Marshall stack, Keith Richards' amp at Altamont. Whenever, Greg, and we are asked frequently for our short list of the best music books ever, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth is high atop. that list we talked to stanley in 2015 uh let's jump right in
Well, Stanley, you were a witness to some heavy events during that 69 tour, that first major arena tour of the States by the Stones. And it's still mind-boggling to us, the level of access you got to the band. I mean, I don't think it's something that would ever happen today.
No, couldn't possibly. And I'm wondering how you found your way in, so to speak. I mean, from your work as a music writer in Memphis, you did have this relationship with a lot of the bluesmen and soul singers that the Stones revered, people like B.B. King and Otis Redding. Was that the connection? Tell us how you first got to know the Stones. I went to London in 1968. I was working for this Hearst publication called i Magazine. It was kind of a...
Kind of a ripoff of Rolling Stone, although it didn't look anything like Rolling Stone. And I met the Stones. Luckily, I met Ian Stewart first, and he called all the Stones and said, there's this guy from Memphis in town, and you need to meet him. They had B.B. King's records. I could introduce them to B.B. I did introduce them to B.B. I introduced them to Book of White. I turned them on to Furry Lewis, my dear brother. They never thought of me as a writer. They just thought of me.
is another blues freak, which God knows I was. And so as a result, you get this deal to write the book. The band signs off on it, more or less. Right, absolutely. And you come into this incredible period. of time in the band when all this change and turmoil was going on. Brian Jones was on the way out. Brian Jones dies during this period right before his big tour. July the 3rd, 1969. What's your take on that? My phone rang.
like four o'clock in the morning and i lay in bed and listen to it ring and it rang like 25 times and i thought well This may be serious. So I got up, I answered the phone. It was Joe Bergman, Georgia Bergman, the Stones' secretary. And she told me Brian had died. Brian and I were good friends. I didn't know Brian long enough for him to lie to me or steal from me or cheat me. And we got along beautifully. But, you know, I was just...
shocked beyond words. And then, of course, the Stones came back to America with little Mick Taylor, and I went to LA October the 19th, 1969. And I went to 1401 Oriole Drive, high above Sunset Boulevard in L.A., and Charlie and Shirley Watts were there, Bill Wyman and his girlfriend Astrid. And I was sitting there talking to them and the back door opened and in comes Mick and Keith and Graham Parsons. And I had reviewed Graham's.
Flying Burritos album, the first album for Rolling Stone. And he came in. I went up and introduced him. Graham and I were both from Waycross, Georgia. We went out, sat down. by the edge, looking out over L.A., and I had a joint in my pocket that my friend Lee Baker had grown, and so I lit the joint, and Graham and I were sitting there smoking this joint. Keith comes out, and I handed him the joint, and he starts smoking it and starts back inside, and I said, Keith, wait a minute, please.
I mean, I was crazy. You know, I was trying to get these bastards to let me write a book about them. And, you know, here I'm telling Keith, hey, don't bogart that joint, you know. But, you know. I was young and stupid, what can I tell you? But anyway, Keith very sweetly comes back, gives me the joint, and Graham and I sat there and absolutely bonded. Graham and I were such close friends, and I've been so lucky.
to have the friends I've had I've just been so very very lucky to have known the great spirits I've known but did you know you were getting into this you know what what eventually turned out to be quite a tumultuous band did you know the level I mean, the Brian Jones death must have been a little bit of a tip-off.
Not everything was ship shape in this group, that there was a lot of volatility in it and they were about to get bigger and therefore more under public scrutiny. And, you know, the level of drugs would continue that it was already. starting to be. Stu, Ian Stewart, came by my office in London. One afternoon, we're sitting there talking, and we're talking about Keith and his drug consumption. And Stu said to me,
You're as bad as he is, which I thought was a great compliment. But, yeah, you know, the Stones and I, we just, we met and we fell in love, but we're still in love. Our love was like the water. The splash is on. Since we mentioned Jones before we leave him and his death, I gather you spent a lot of time with his family, talking to his surviving family members. You said you were friends with him. What do people not understand about who that man was?
Brian was not an easy person to understand. He was very sweet, really, at heart, but he could be very difficult. Once he'd made up his mind to be difficult, he was extremely difficult. throwing food, I mean, just doing crazy stuff. Keith and I took a lot of dope, God knows, but Brian was, he was really out of control. What happened to him? I don't think anybody killed him. He was just taking all this Mandrax, which is English...
variety of quaaludes, methoqualon. I think he just fell asleep in the – he had this pool, and I think he just fell asleep in the pool. Yeah. The glimpses of some of the other stones, the image that has always stayed with me is the night before the Altamont concert, the stones walking through the seas and seas of... blotted out fans, and Charlie Watts being very careful in his loafers not to step on anyone. You call him in the book, the politest man in the world.
Well, I love Charlie. And people have asked me, who's your favorite Rolling Stone? And I always say, Shirley Watts. Because Charlie's wife, Shirley, she was like Charlie. Deadly, honest, and... You know, a no-nonsense person. They're just, they're the greatest people in the world. I love them both dearly. You know, Mick and Keith and I went out, everybody else was asleep, and Mick and Keith and I went out to Altamont to check it out.
And Keith stayed out there. Mick and I went back to the hotel and got a few hours sleep, not many, but a few. We'd been in muscle shows. They'd cut wild horses, brown sugar, and you got to move. We were just, you know, pretty much asleep on our feet, but we did go out to Altamont and checked it out, and it seemed very nice, you know? We had no idea what was going to happen.
You had no idea the night before it seemed like a cool scene, is that what you're saying? Yeah, absolutely. Did you have a sense of the size of the crowd that was going to be there? Because what, about half a million people showed up? Well, it was like at least 300,000 people. And that night, already, there were like thousands and thousands of people. And you could see these bonfires, you know, stretching out as far as your eyes could see.
And the next day, the Hells Angels came in and everything changed. Hey man, look, we're splitting, you know, if those cats can't, if you can... We're splitting, man, if those cats don't stop beating everybody up inside. I want them out of the way, man.
Greg and I have hosted a couple of screenings through the years of the documentary Gimme Shelter, and we often point out where you are sitting on one of the amps as all hell begins to break loose. The Stones are performing, and we see a murder before our eyes. Yeah, it was right in front of my face.
Could the band see it as well? Did you have a sense that the band, as they were performing, could actually see what was going on? Because you see it clearly on the film, but it's unclear whether the Stones actually... I would imagine they would not have continued playing had they known... that someone was getting killed or maybe they did. They had no choice. Yeah.
They had no choice. They did not know what had happened. I had taken Keith's acoustic guitar onto the stage. I was the first person on that stage during the Stones set. This little Spanish-looking hell's angel led me on stage, and I think it was the same guy. Meredith Hunter, this 18-year-old black man wearing a lime green suit and a black silk shirt.
Standing in front of the stage, he was with a white girl named Patty Bridehoft. And, you know, angels don't like black people anyway. They kept pushing Meredith back from the stage. He finally snapped and... pulled out of his jacket a nickel-plated revolver, which he didn't shoot. He didn't point it at the stage. He was pointing it up in the air. And this...
little angel jumps up in the air and comes down with a knife, burying it in Meredith's carotid artery. And five minutes later, Meredith was dead, but we didn't know that. They kind of dragged him behind the stage, and we couldn't see what was happening back there. He was dead. Doctor later said if he got that injury on an operating table.
They couldn't have saved it. Wow. How did the Hells Angels get involved in the first place? It was a free concert. And all these people have said the Stones hired the Angels as security. That is total nonsense. I was with the Stones before, during, and after Altamont. We never talked to the angels. That's completely false. So there was no attempt to hire any sort of formal security? The angels just sort of showed up? No, we had security. We had Tony Funches, the greatest security ever.
He was wise and kind, strong and brave. He was great. We had New York City detectives. We didn't need the angels, you know. They just came and acted like angels. You know, it's one of the enduring myths of the 60s, the end of the utopian dream six months after Woodstock, Altamont, right? But there are so many misconceptions about that concert, Stanley, and yet we have great reporting like yours.
Here's a footnote. None of those angels were convicted. They were all acquitted by a jury of their peers in a conservative county in Northern California. How with video evidence of the murder. This wasn't a murder. Meredith Hunter pulled a gun. look, if you pull a gun in front of the angels, you are going to die. And it was not a murder. It was a killing. They're different. He did the dumbest thing you can possibly do, and so he died. I'm sorry.
But there you have it. Well, from what we can gather as well, he was being threatened, and he feared for his life. No, he wasn't. He was being pushed back away from the stage, and he didn't have to pull a gun. He didn't have to die. I mean, look, what's worth dying for, you know? proximity to the Rolling Stones is not worth dying for, I think. Well, Rolling Stone had done a whole issue on that concert. No, they did this absolute stupid...
issue in which they blame the stones for all this. And the stones, believe me, were doing their best. We were all doing our best, except maybe the angels. And they were doing their worst, which is their... usual pattern of behavior. That issue of Rolling Stone was nonsense. But Jan Winter is an idiot. He's always been an idiot. He's always going to be an idiot. When we return, we'll continue our conversation with the late Stanley Booth. That's in a minute on Sound Opinions. And we are back.
This week, we're paying tribute to the late Stanley Booth, the music journalist who died in December 2024 at age 82, a hero to both Greg and me. We're revisiting a 2015 interview we did with Stanley. And here, I ask him about what he thought of Bill Wyman and what Wyman brought to the Rolling Stones. Wyman was born in 1935. I remember Mick saying on that tour, We're so old. I mean, Bill's 33. Yeah, yeah. Wyman is, he's kind of like a dentist.
He's real straight. He never used to even smoke dope. He did finally succumb to the evil weed. He is a decent photographer. He's a member of the Royal Horticultural Society. You know, he was like the total womanizer. He lent me his scrapbooks, and in his scrapbooks, he kept a diary, and he would say, lost in fog. And what that meant was he had pulled some bird, and he was spending the night.
Yeah, Bill, he got to where he was really afraid to fly. And I think that's why he left the band. I think that's the most important reason. Wow. Hadn't heard that one before, had you? No, no. He's the one guy that seems to indicate that, yes, you can have enough money. Because you get the impression that Jagger and Richards will continue this endeavor, perhaps for different reasons.
has always said, as long as Charlie's playing, he'll keep playing. But they continue and they continue and they continue playing the same 25 songs in the arenas that they've played for the last 20 years. Yeah, but listen, they know 400 songs. Oh, I know, but we never... hear the ones that you know cotton i could both put together a hundred song set list completely different we never hear those tunes yeah i know i'd love to hear them play
Play With Fire, you know, or Round It Around. I love those great early records they did. What about Mick Taylor coming into this? You know, the newcomer to the band, you mentioned that Jagger was saying that they were really old. Well, Mick Taylor was really young. Wasn't he around 20 years old? He was 20 years old. Yeah. How do you handle that situation? Well, Mick, he was quite sweet, and God knows he could play guitar. He was very likable, very easy to get along with.
And certainly easier to get along with than Brian ever was. And I hated it when he left the band. It was... It was a great band. I'm telling you, man, that stuff they played in 1969 was really breathtaking. What was it about that band in particular? Because you were not particularly a fan, as I recall, going into this project. Obviously, you were steeped in the blues.
What was it that the Stones did that sort of turned you around on that tour? What did you see on that stage that made you a fan of their music? Well, they were just so dedicated. And very serious. We were all serious young men. And the Stones, you know, they played You Got to Move, great Fred McDowell song. You know, they just had this sincerity. And this dedication to the blues, you know, I had to go along with them because I knew they were for real.
Well, Stanley, you stayed in Keith's orbit in particular for a good couple of years after the period chronicle. No, no, until today. Oh, well, that was my question. Are you still friendly with Keith? The day after Keith's book, Life. was published. A FedEx guy came to my door and handed me this package and I opened it and it was Keith's book, very sweetly and lovingly inscribed to me by Keith.
And he's my brother, you know. I'm going to die loving Keith. What about the inscrutable other Glimmer twin? What insights did you glean from that time about Jagger that people don't understand? Well, I love Mick. Mick is a very smart, funny, good person. He really is. But the way we're talking now, we're just like two friends.
You can sit in a room with Mick and talk to him, and he's perfectly sweet and open and honest. But if one other person comes in the room, he gets really uptight, and, you know, he's hard to talk to. And Alexis Corner, who gave the Stones their first professional gigs in London, one of the first English blues guys, told me one day, Keith is a man of faith. Mick is a man of fear.
And Mick is very, very insecure. That's certainly true. I think it goes back to his mother. His mother never realized what a presence and what talent Mick had. She called Alexis one time, and Alexis told me, that she said, we've always thought Mick was the least talented member of the family. And Alexis said, you know, either you understand that or you don't.
You're listening to Sound Opinions, and we're talking with music writer Stanley Booth about the Rolling Stones and specifically their 1969 tour ending at Altamont. Stanley, you paint this image of the Stones during this tour in particular. I mean, with songs like Sympathy for the Devil, Midnight Rambler, Stray Cat Blues swirling around, these were not nice songs. And there was a sense of the Stones as being kind of these...
You know, borderline evil characters, you know, they were corrupting influence on rock and roll as opposed to sort of the Beatles who were the shiny, bright young things almost to the end. The Stones had a completely different image. Did you sense them playing into that, or did they dislike that portrayal of them? They certainly must have been aware of that. Well, I think the Beatles ruined music, but... No, the Stones used that image. Look, there's only one kind of publicity.
And the Stones, you know, they saw what people were saying about them and thinking about them. And I tell you, man, English people hated the Stones. I was driving across town with London with Brian one day in his roles, and these people were like bowing down in irony, you know, in sarcasm. I was sitting there with Brian with his long blonde mane, you know. But, I mean, people would see the Stones in London, and, I mean, they reacted with just utmost hostility and hatred.
I mean, and, you know, the Stones, what evil have they done? Tell me. They drove the ticket price for concerts up past 300 bucks. Well, now, yeah. I mean, I remember when Ralph Gleason... Took him to task in San Francisco for charging $7 a ticket. Yeah, outrageous, yeah. What was the dynamic like between Jagger and Richards? You know, we constantly go back and forth in this...
This power play kind of approach that has been played out in the press, maybe to exaggerated effect. I did an interview with Richards 20 years ago where he referred to Jagger not by name, but kept calling Mick she. throughout the interview. And you wonder how much of this was sort of playing up the rivalry.
Brenda, yeah. Yeah. What's the reality of that relationship? I mean, they seemed close, thick as thieves at one minute and the other, they couldn't stand each other. What was your perception? No, when I was... traveling with the Stones. Keith and Mick were very close. They used to go off in a bedroom together, and Keith would sit and play the guitar. And Keith would make these noises. And Mick somehow could understand what Keith was saying.
And Keith was not speaking English, and Mick would listen to the noises Keith was making, and that's how Wild Horses got written. Keith is a very strong person. And a deep person, a wise person. Mick is, you know, I love Mick, but Mick is, I have to say, somewhat more superficial than Keith. Yeah.
The songwriting collaboration, you were witness to that as well. They went to Muscle Shoals in Alabama to record in that great studio that produced all those great soul and blues songs in the 60s and on into the 70s.
And they had that great little period there where, you know, they record Wild Horses, Brown Sugar, You Got to Move, which appeared on Sticky Fingers. So they do this, like, great, amazing recording session in the middle of this incredible tour. What was that recording session like at Muscle Shoals? It was really heavenly. I called my friend Jim Dickinson in Memphis, and I told him we were in Muscle Shoals and told him to come down, and he drove down.
from memphis and the first night of that session We were there like three days. And the first night was You Got to Move. And then the next night, Brown Sugar. And Stu pounded the piano so hard that it went wildly out of tune. And then the third night... They want to cut wild horses, which Keith had started. And Mick took a few lines from Keith and went in the office and wrote the rest of it.
And I was sitting on a piano bench smoking a joint with Jim, and Stu wasn't there for some reason. Stu didn't play in certain keys. He was a boogie piano player, and there were certain keys he just didn't play in. And apparently Wild Horses was in one of those keys. I don't know what key it was. But they said, we need a piano player and a keyboard player. And Jim says, I'm a keyboard player. And we're sitting on this bench together.
And I said, there's another piano up front. It was a tack piano. Somebody put tacks in it to give it that kind of ragtime, ricketyk sound, you know? And... Jim said, it's got tacks in it. And I said, I know it. And so he got up and went and sat down at the piano, and they started playing wild horses. And I think it's one of the most beautiful stone songs ever.
We've been talking to Stanley Booth, the author of one of the great rock and roll books, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, on its 30th anniversary edition. Stanley, it's been an honor to talk to you. Thanks for coming on the show. Well, it's been my pleasure speaking with you guys.
That concludes our conversation on the Rolling Stones with the late, great Stanley Booth. What a book. You gotta read it if you never did. The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. But as always, we want to hear from you. Leave your thoughts. via a voice message on our website, soundopinions.org. Mr. Cott, what do we have on tap next week?
Next week, Jim, we welcome back one of our favorite artists, raconteurs, all-around good guy, Robin Hitchcock, to the show. He's written a book, a memoir, about a turning point year in his young life. fascinating read and a fascinating conversation with Robin. And don't forget to check out our bonus podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for our Monday podcast, Everything Else.
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