I keep a notebook where I write down sketches and song ideas, and it contains this:JUKE JOINT... ALABAMA? GEORGIA?Finally I'm in my element! An incredible band is wailing on a stage decorated with phosphorescent paint, the dance floor is moving as one, so does the sweat and the ribs cooking out back. The only thing that makes me stand out is that I'm white! Wonderfully, no one notices this aberration. I am accepted, I'm made to feel so warm. I am in heaven!
Most towns, like white Nashville, for example, by ten o'clock were ghost towns. We were working with black guys, the Vibrations, Don Bradley, I think his name was. The most amazing act, they could do everything. They were doing somersaults while they were playing. "What are you going to do after the show?" This is already an invitation. So, get in the cab and we go across the tracks and it's just starting to happen. There's food going, everybody's rocking and rolling, everybody's having a good time, and it was such a contrast from the white side of town, it always sticks in my memory. You could hang there with ribs, drink, smoke. And big mamas, for some reason they always looked upon us as thin and frail people. So they started to mama us, which was all right with me. Shoved into the middle of two enormous breasts... "You need a rubdown, boy?" "OK, anything you say, mama." Just the free-and-easiness of it. You wake up in a house full of black people who are being so incredibly kind to you, you can't believe it. I mean, shit, I wish this happened at home. And this happened in every town. You wake up, where am I? And there's a big mama there, and you're in bed with her daughter, but you get breakfast in bed.
The first time I stared into a gun barrel was in the men's room of the Civic Auditorium (I believe) in Omaha, Nebraska. It was in the fist of a big grizzled cop. I was with Brian, backstage at a sound check. We used to drink Scotch and Coke at the time. Anyhow, we took our paper cups with us and answered the call of nature, cup in hand. Happily we splashed away. I heard the door open behind us. "OK, turn around slowly," a voice wheezed. "Fuck off," Brian said. "I mean now," came the wheeze. Shaking off the drips, we looked around. A massive cop with a huge revolver in his huge fist fixed us with a menacing regard. Silence ruled as Brian and I stared at the black hole. "This is a public building. No alcoholic beverages allowed! You will tip the contents of your cups into the john. Now! No quick moves. Do it." Brian and I cracked up but did as we were told. He did have the upper hand. Brian said something about heavy-handed overreaction, which only infuriated the old bugger to the point that the barrel began to tremble. So we blabbered about being unaware of the city ordinance, to which he barked out something about ignorance not being a defense in the eyes of the law. I was about to ask how he knew we were drinking booze but thought better of it. We had another bottle in the dressing room.
It was soon after that that I picked up a Smith & Wesson .38 special. It was the Wild West, and still is! I picked it up in a truck stop for twenty-five dollars, plus ammo. Thus began my illicit relationship with that venerable firm. I'm not on their books! Quite a few of the guys we were traveling with were carrying shooters. They were fucking hard cats who I worked with. I remember that other side of it. Pools of blood oozing out of dressing rooms and realizing there's a beating going on and you don't want to get involved. But the biggest horror of all was seeing the cops turn up. Especially backstage. You should have seen some of the bands run, baby. A lot of the cats on the road were on the run for one reason or another. Probably minor offenses, like not paying their alimony or auto theft. You were not working with saints here. They were good players and they could pick up a gig and disappear amongst the minstrels. They were streetwise like motherfuckers. Backstage, a squad of cops would arrive with a warrant for somebody that was playing guitar in some band. It was kind of like the press-gang had arrived. Oh, my God! The panic... You'd see Ike Turner's piano player zooming down the stairs.
By the end of that first American tour, we thought we'd blown it in America. We'd been consigned to the status of medicine shows and circus freaks with long hair. When we got to Carnegie Hall in New York, we were suddenly back in England with screaming teenyboppers. America was coming around. We realized that it was just starting.
Mick and I hadn't come all the way to New York in '64 not to go to the Apollo. So I hooked up again with Ronnie Bennett. We went to Jones Beach with all the Ronettes in a red Cadillac. The desk rang up, "There's a lady downstairs." "Come on, let's go." And it was James Brown's week at the Apollo. Maybe Ronnie should describe what nice English boys we were--contrary to popular belief: Ronnie Spector: The first time Keith and Mick came to America, they weren't successful, they slept on my mother's living room floor up in Spanish Harlem. They had no money, and my mom would get up in the morning and make them bacon and eggs, and Keith would always say, "Thank you, Mrs. Bennett." And then I took them to see James Brown at the Apollo, and that's what made them so determined. Those guys went home and came back superstars. Because I showed them what I did, how I grew up, and how I went to the Apollo Theater when I was eleven years old. I took them backstage and they met all these rhythm and blues stars. I remember Mick standing there shaking when we passed James Brown's room.
The first time I went to heaven was when I awoke with Ronnie (later Spector!) Bennett asleep with a smile on her face. We were kids. It doesn't get any better than that. Just more refined. What can I say? She took me to her parents' house, took me to her bedroom. Several times, but that was the first time. And I'm just a guitar player. You know what I mean?
James Brown had the whole week there at the Apollo. Go to the Apollo and see James Brown, damn fucking right. I mean, who would turn that down? He was a piece of work. So on the button. We thought we were a tight band! The discipline in the band impressed me more than anything else. On stage, James would snap his fingers if he thought somebody had missed a beat or hit a wrong note, and you could see the player's face fall. He would signal the fine he had imposed with his fingers. These guys would be watching his hands. I even saw Maceo Parker, the sax player who was the architect of James Brown's band--who I finally got to work with in the Winos--get fined about fifty bucks that night. It was a fantastic show. Mick's looking at his foot moves. Mick took more notice than I did that day--lead singer, dancing, he calls the shots.
Backstage that night, James wanted to show off to these English folk. He's got the Famous Flames, and he's sending one out for a hamburger, he's ordering another to polish his shoes and he's humiliating his own band. To me, it was the Famous Flames, and James Brown happened to be the lead singer. But the way he lorded it over his minions, his minders and the actual band, to Mick was fascinating.
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When we got back to England, the big difference was seeing old friends, mostly musicians, who were already amazed that we were the Rolling Stones, but now "You've been to the States, man." You were suddenly aware that you had been distanced just by the fact that you'd been to America. It really pissed off the English fans. It happened with the Beatles' fans too. You were no longer "theirs." There was a sense of resentment.
Other excerpt from Keith Richards' Life to be found HERE
