True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth Page A

book?”
    â€œI’ll talk to Mick about it.”
    Time passed, nothing happened. In the living room the people were still slouching about. Keith stood with one hand loose on forward-slung hips, the other shoving a beer into his mouth, looking like a baby with its bottle. I found Mick sitting at a piano just outside the door of the rehearsal room. “What about the book?” I asked.
    â€œI’ve got to talk to Keith about it.”
    Then I went back to Keith and said, “Have you talked to Mick yet? We got to go.”
    â€œHey,” Keith said to Mick, who happened to be walking past, “what about this book?”
    â€œWhat about it?”
    They strolled into the kitchen as daylight faded. Finally we really were leaving, and I said to Keith, “So?”
    â€œYou write the letter,” he said, “and we’ll sign it.”
    So far so good, I thought, back at the Oriole house eating bouillabaisse. I had never eaten bouillabaisse before, and though I enjoyed it, I was still wondering what to do next. Write the letter and they’ll sign it. Thenwhat? Will they leave me alone to make a contract and write a book?
    I tried to digest bouillabaisse and these questions while sitting after dinner with Jo, Sandison, Steckler, and the Watts family. The night was cool, and in the fireplace four gas jets were blasting a stack of wood logs to blazes. A couple of people stopped by, one with a large vial of cocaine, so after everybody else had gone to bed, Sandison, Steckler, and I were up talking. Steckler had no coke but was excited to be away from home. He was in his late thirties, in this crowd an older man, and he worked for Allen Klein, who as the manager of the world’s two most popular acts, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, may have been the most powerful man in show business; but Steckler, so close to all that power and money, seemed naive, too earnest about the poetry and truth of rock music. He had a neat brown haircut, a baby-pink face, and sincere eyes that would do many unpleasant things but would never lie to you.
    â€œWho’s Schneider?” I asked him when the logs were white powder, the fire four blue jets of flame.
    â€œKlein’s nephew.”
    â€œBesides that.”
    â€œHe worked for Klein until a few weeks ago. They had a disagreement and Ronnie formed Rolling Stones Promotions to do this tour.”
    â€œWhat besides this tour does he do for the Rolling Stones?”
    â€œNot a thing,” Steckler said.
    After everyone else had gone to bed, I carried a typewriter from the office to the kitchen, closed all the connecting doors, and wrote a letter to myself from the Rolling Stones, assuring me of their cooperation, with their names typed below, spaced to leave room for their signatures. Then I took the typewriter back and tiptoed to bed.

4
    One night this guy comes into the bar with his cap on sideways, you know. And this is Elmore.
    W ARREN G EORGE H ARDING L EE J ACKSON :
Living Blues
    V ALENTINO , a scarred grey tabby cat who once belonged to Brian Jones, yawned and stretched on the terrace. Keith and I were sitting on a Moroccan carpet in the side yard, nine-month-old Marlon, born last year, 1969, crawling naked in the grass, little yellow babyturds shooting out his ass. His mother, the flashing-eyed Anita, was still upstairs in the tapestry-bedecked bedroom where she and Keith slept, on the dresser in a silver frame a small photograph of Brian. Inside the lid of the downstairs toilet was a collage of Rolling Stones photographs. These people didn’t try to hide things. The first night I spent at Keith’s house, Anita tossed a blanket beside me on the cushion where I was lying. “You don’t need sheets, do you,” she asked.
    â€œNo, I’ll be fine,” I said.
    â€œMick has to have sheets,” she said. “Put it in the book.”
    Redlands, a thatch-roofed house in West Witterling, near Chichester in West