Pete Fornatale was an award-winning broadcaster and author, and a fixture on the New York radio scene for four decades. 50 Licks was his final book.
Bernard M. Corbett is the radio voice of Boston University hockey and Harvard University football. He is the author and co-author of fifteen books. He lives in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and is a lifelong Rolling Stones fan.
Peter Thomas Fornatale is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, New York. His favorite Rolling Stone is Charlie Watts.

50 LICKS

Myths and Stories from Half a Century of the Rolling Stones

By Pete Fornatale, Bernard M. Corbett, Peter Thomas Fornatale

BLOOMSBURY

Copyright © 2013 Pete Fornatale and Bernard M. Corbett
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60819-921-1

Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………11. Start Me Up…………………………………………………….32. 2120 South Michigan Avenue……………………………………….103. Come On………………………………………………………..174. I Wanna Be Your Man……………………………………………..235. Street Fighting Man……………………………………………..286. Sing This All Together…………………………………………..377. Rip This Joint………………………………………………….428. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction…………………………………….479. Get Off of My Cloud……………………………………………..4910. Paint It Black…………………………………………………5111. Little T & A…………………………………………………..5312. Waiting on a Friend…………………………………………….5913. Let’s Spend Some Time Together…………………………………..6314. Ruby Tuesday…………………………………………………..6715. 2000 Light Years from Home………………………………………6916. Mother’s Little Helper………………………………………….7517. Jigsaw Puzzle………………………………………………….7718. Rock and Roll Circus……………………………………………8619. Let It Bleed…………………………………………………..9220. Gimme Shelter………………………………………………….10321. Honky Tonk Women……………………………………………….10522. You Can’t Always Get What You Want……………………………….10823. Sympathy for the Devil………………………………………….11424. Brown Sugar……………………………………………………12125. Like a Rolling Stone……………………………………………12326. Sticky Fingers…………………………………………………12827. Wang Dang Doodle……………………………………………….13628. Tumbling Dice………………………………………………….14129. Let It Loose…………………………………………………..15330. On With the Show……………………………………………….16131. Dancing with Mr. D……………………………………………..16532. Angie…………………………………………………………16733. Time Waits for No One…………………………………………..17034. It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll…………………………………………17435. All Down the Line………………………………………………17736. Around and Around………………………………………………18137. Before They Make Me Run…………………………………………18438. Some Girls…………………………………………………….18739. Miss You………………………………………………………19340. Send It to Me………………………………………………….19741. Hang Fire……………………………………………………..20042. Black Limousine………………………………………………..20443. Had It with You………………………………………………..21044. Not Fade Away………………………………………………….21845. Mixed Emotions…………………………………………………22246. In Another Land………………………………………………..23247. New Faces……………………………………………………..23748. Don’t Stop…………………………………………………….24549. Rough Justice………………………………………………….24950. Shine a Light………………………………………………….255Epilogue: Memory Motel……………………………………………..259Acknowledgments……………………………………………………262Cast of Characters…………………………………………………264Source Notes………………………………………………………269Image Credits……………………………………………………..273

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

START ME UP

Every great story has to start somewhere. So where does this great story start?

July 12, 1962, was the first time that an entity publicly described as “Mick Jagger andthe Rolling Stones” took the stage. It happened at the fabled Marquee Club in London,opening for the late, great Long John Baldry (known for a tune that went, “Don’t try to layno ‘boo-jee woo-jee’ on the king of rock ‘n’ roll!”).

Wait a minute. “Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones”? In the early days, the RollingStones were very much Brian Jones’s band.

DICK TAYLOR: Brian Jones pulled Mick and Keith and then myself into the band.We were definitely Stones at that point. All the elements were there, apart from BillWyman, because at various rehearsals Charlie played.

Brian’s head must have exploded when he saw that billing, but it is explainable.

BILL WYMAN: Brian was the leader of the Rolling Stones for a year and a half.He formed the Rolling Stones.

CHARLIE WATTS: He worked very hard, Brian.

BILL WYMAN: He organized the whole thing when nobody would accept us,nobody would book us in clubs, nobody. He used to write letters to the magazinesand things.

CHARLIE WATTS: I was in this very strange situation with the Rolling Stonesbecause I used to play in a band that the Rolling Stones used to knock because theyhad all the gigs: Alexis Korner. We had somewhere to play. It was a bum jazz night,which was Thursday, a no-money night, and Alexis turned it into the biggest night ofthe week financially for the club, which was a big thing in London. And there was ahelluva lot of animosity about it all. And Brian thought that the Rolling Stones wereas good as Alexis’s band and he wanted the club owners to give his band a chance.Alexis got all these people together really. He gave you a stage to play on. I didn’tknow what the hell he was talking about when I used to play with him. It was a reallygood band at one time, but you’re talking about real history now. That’s when Brianwas really fighting.

As Charlie points out above, actual Thursday night residency at the Marquee belongedto Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, but on this particular July Thursday the group wasbooked for a very high-profile appearance on the BBC Jazz Club broadcast. So Baldry wasbumped up to headline at the club, and an opportunity was thus created for this shiny newensemble revolving around Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ian Stewart, DickTaylor, and Tony Chapman. But still, shouldn’t it have been “Brian Jones and the RollingStones”? Or rather “Elmo Lewis and the Rolling Stones,” since Jones was still using hispseudonym at the time?

Since earlier in the year, Mick had been a regular vocalist with Korner’s ensemble band.But the BBC budget only allowed for a total of six musicians, and Mick was the odd manout for Jazz Club and didn’t make the trip. Since his name was already known to theMarquee Club regulars, it was slapped onto the blurb about the gig. It signaled some senseof Thursday night continuity: in Korner’s absence, the club would be serving up businessas usual. Needless to say, it was anything but “business as usual.”

So how does a band get from one good gig to the biggest stages in the world—for halfa century? Well, it’s a process of mix and match, trial and error, charisma and chemistry.Let’s not forget addition and subtraction. For instance, subtract Chapman and Taylor; addCharlie Watts and Bill Wyman.

DICK TAYLOR: There were various little things which nudged me towards notcontinuing. Basically, the bass thing was one of them, because I felt I always wantedto play guitar. I think if I had been the guitarist in the Stones … But I must say, therewas no personality clashes or anything like that. We all got on very well. That’s oneof the things that I think everybody should know, that while I know that they hadtheir problems later between Brian and Keith, in that time everybody got on very,very well.

The early days were not easy. Keith Richards tells a story about collecting cans for theirdeposits so he could buy guitar strings.

BILL WYMAN: Those first six or nine months it was really hard to get gigs.

CHARLIE WATTS: Then you joined, then I joined and we had nothing, man.

Brian, Mick, and Keith lived together in a flat in Edith Grove (along with anotherroommate, James Phelge, who would go on to provide half of the Stones’ nom de plume inthe early days, Nanker Phelge). The place was a notorious dump.

DICK TAYLOR: I couldn’t believe it. I’d been to a few places that were a bitsqualid. I think Edith Grove really took the biscuit.

BILL WYMAN: Nobody would book us, they were all into traditional jazz. Andsome blues groups. Brian used to write to the BBC to ask for auditions. And we wentdown for an audition, to play, and afterwards they rejected us. They said the bandis OK, we could use them for American musicians that come over, blues musicians,but the singer’s no good, he sounds too colored. That was the reason they rejectedus. And Brian would write to the music papers letters saying what he thought blueswas, and he was in a band that played a Chicago form of blues, and he would reallyget involved in all that when everybody else was almost giving up. And nobody hadany money. The band was almost breaking up at different points. There were peoplecoming and going, different musicians.

CHARLIE WATTS: I was out of work at the time. Because me and him are theonly two people who actually had jobs. And I was out of work and I used to hangaround with Brian and Keith, and their days used to be mad. They’d just sit aroundall day, actually they’d sleep all day, and sit around all night listening to Jimmy Reed,the same record. I can remember listening to these records. And I’d never heard ofJimmy Reed at that time. Well, I had but it was very new to me. They showed mehow good those people were.

BILL WYMAN: I used to borrow records, learn them by heart, and sell themfor breakfast.

The hard work and blues obsession eventually started to pay off as the new lineup, includingCharlie and Bill, started to build a following.

JOHN MAYALL: I heard them first on a Sunday afternoon at a club where theyhad a residency. It was very professional. They had a really good repertoire. Theywere a really exciting band and they had it all together. The thing that struck me wasthe reaction of the audience. They were really getting off on it and everybody knewthere was something happening.

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, though.On this first night of going out publicly in front ofapproximately 150 people, most of whom could bedescribed as middle class bohemian blues purists, stickto the basics. Build on the shoulders of the masterswho got you here in the first place. No one expectsany original compositions from a fledgling entry onthe R&B circuit. No one wants attempts by someonewith future songwriting potential to slow downanother blues-drenched Thursday. In fact, quite thecontrary. They want tried-and-true classics to propelthem into the last workday of the week, so they canpick up their paychecks and make their plans to partyfor the entire weekend ahead. That means selecting arepertoire that leans heavily on those acknowledgedmasters, and covering the hell out of them for yourentire time on stage.

The Stones took the stage, and opened up with an internationally known rock ‘n’ rollhit 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 sevenyears later to “Kansas City,” and a new version by Wilbert Harrison made it all the way tonumber one on the popularity charts. The Stones (and for that matter the Beatles) probablybecame aware of it from a cover version by Little Richard that became a hit in the UnitedKingdom 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 theend of 1964.

Not surprisingly, the Stones also covered selections from the sacred blues canon, byRobert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and no fewer than six songs (fully onethird 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 notsurprisingly, they did the Chuck Berry hit “Back in the USA.” But very surprisingly, MickJagger and the Rolling Stones covered a song called “Tell Me That You Love Me” that waswritten by Canadian teen heartthrob Paul Anka. (As he proved once again on a recentPBS tribute to the late Buddy Holly, Anka earned his street cred in the formative days ofrock ‘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 theoriginal 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 theRolling Stones in 2012?

Absolutely.
(Continues…)Excerpted from 50 LICKS by Pete Fornatale. Copyright © 2013 by Pete Fornatale and Bernard M. Corbett. Excerpted by permission of BLOOMSBURY.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.