True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth

avoided having other people tell them what to do, a serious step.
    Steckler, Sandison, Jo, and I met the Stones in Bill Wyman’s suite, where the serious question in the sitting room was whether the Stones would release a single record from their new album before the tour started. Steckler suggested they release the album’s country version of “Honky Tonk Women,” their latest single, thus becoming the first musical group to release the same song twice in a row.
    Jagger suggested releasing the title track, “Let It Bleed,” as a single “if anybody would play it on the radio.”
    â€œNot with those lyrics,” Jo said.
    â€œWell, they’re not just dirty, I mean they’re double entendre,” Mick said.
    â€œ ‘If you want someone to cream on, you can cream on me,’ is pretty single entendre,” Jo said.
    â€œWe also have to decide which press you’ll talk to,” Steckler said, and named several periodicals that had requested interviews.
    â€œSaturday Review,
what’s that like?” Mick asked.
    â€œDullest magazine in America,” I said. “Duller than the
Saturday Evening Post.
Duller than
Grit”
    â€œThat’s all right, then.”
    The meeting was short; nothing was settled, except to try living for a few more days. No blueprint, no master plan.
    After lunch of ham sandwiches and beer back at the Oriole house, Steckler, Sandison, and I visited the Laurel Canyon place. A pudgy young man named Bill Belmont, part of Chip Monck’s stage production crew, came along in the limousine with us and pointed out the sights like a tour guide who dreams of being a press agent: “That cabin there, that’s Frank Zappa’s house, used to belong to Tom Mix. This house we’re going to, where the Stones are, used to be Carmen Miranda’s house and Wally Cox’s house and then it belonged to Peter Tork of the Monkees and now it belongs to Steve Stills. David Crosby lived there for a while. I can tell you everything. You see that story in
Rolling Stone
about the Doors? I did that. I told the guy the whole article. He just wrote down what I said.”
    At a dirt road on the valley side of Laurel Canyon there was a gate, but it was open and we drove up, the dark green valley walls around us. The house was stone, with a swimming pool and big paved drivewhere two limousines and two rented sedans were parked. From the far end of the house across the pool came muffled sounds of electric guitars and a harmonica.
    A lemon tree was growing by the drive, and the clowns I was with amused themselves by tearing off and throwing lemons. I threw one or two myself, just to be sociable, but I come from a place where the people are proud but poor, and I can’t really enjoy throwing food unless I’m trying to hit someone with it.
    After a while we went into the house, a wood-leather-and-stone robber’s roost with stone floors, a big stone fireplace, no softening touches. The kitchen had a refrigerator big as one in a commissary at a turpentine camp, but it was stocked with beer instead of pigfeet and Big Oranges. We drank Heinekens and waited for the rehearsal to end. Belmont, Steckler, and Sandison were lounging in chairs around the living room. I didn’t know why any of them was here. I had come to speak to Keith and Mick about the letter I needed to get a publisher, to go on living, to write a book. I lay down on a leather couch, gazed out the window, and saw, coming down the valley-side, a small brown fawn.
    Soon the music at the back of the house stopped and the Stones came out. I followed Keith into the kitchen. He opened a 35-millimeter film can and with a tiny spoon lifted out a mound of white crystals, and didn’t see me until he had the spoon halfway home. His hand stopped, I said, “Caught you,” and he shrugged, raised the spoon and sniffed. Then I said, “Urn, Keith, what about the, ah,