1972
Dick
and Pat in ol' D.C.,
they're
gonna hold some...
1972
Dick
and Pat in ol' D.C.,
they're
gonna hold some...
January-February 1972: Mick Jagger,
Keith Richards and Mick Taylor continue overdubbing and mixing
for Exile
on Main Street at Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles.
Early January 1972: Bill Wyman rents a new house in France, in Vence.
January 1972: London Records in the U.S. releases the multi-platinum selling
Rolling Stones compilation album
Hot Rocks.
January 7, 1972: Rolling Stones Records releases Jamming with Edward,
a sessions of jams recorded by Mick
Jagger, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Nicky Hopkins and Ry Cooder during the
Let It Bleed sessions in April 1969.
January 21, 1972: In Los Angeles, Keith Richards gets onstage to perform
with Chuck Berry, who throws him off
the stage for playing too loud, not recognizing him.
January 22, 1972: Mick Jagger jams onstage with soul singer Bobby Bland
in Los Angeles.
Late January 1972: Bill Wyman visits the Stones' mixing sessions in Los
Angeles.
February 1972: The Rolling Stones,
including Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, attend business meetings
in Los Angeles
to try to settle legal disputes with Allen Klein.
February 1972: The Jaggers befriend John Phillips in San Francisco.
March 1972: Mick Jagger drops by The Record Plant in New York, where John
Lennon and Yoko Ono are recording
the Some Time in New York City album.
March 26, 1972: Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg fly to Switzerland
and enter a drug clinic in Vevey. Keith
Richards allegedly becomes unconscious.
March 1972: Mick Taylor, apparently also under the influence of heroin
addiction and depressed, suggests to Bill
Wyman and Charlie Watts that they form their own group.
March 24-25, 1972: Final mixing for Exile on Main Street occurs
at Walley Heider Studios in Los Angeles, probably
with only Mick Jagger of the group present.
March 28, 1972: Mick Jagger records
the promotional Exile on Main St. Blues track at Sunset Sound
Studios in
Los Angeles.
April 1972: Mick, Bianca and Jade Jagger holiday for three weeks in Bali,
Indonesia.
Early April 1972: Keith Richards starts feeling better and communicates
with the other group members from
Switzerland.
April 1972: Bill Wyman and Astrid Lundstrom return to England for a stay.
April
15-21, 1972: The Rolling Stones' lead single off their next album, Tumbling
Dice, is released.
April 17, 1972: Anita Pallenberg gives birth in Switzerland to her and
Keith Richards' second child, a daughter,
Dandelion (Angela).
April 25, 1972: Mick Jagger is interviewed on BBC TV's Old Grey Whistle
Test in London.
| Astrid
Lundstrom: Pot-smoking Bill in 1972
Bill had given up smoking cigarettes and we were told the police would never bust our houses as they had Stones homes in England. It was like pressing a button - I've never seen anhobody smoke hash like him - he woud have a joint before his morning cup of tea. And quickly he was chain-smoking pot, because Bill has a very addictive personality. He got completely into it, but his life changed from being very organized, predictable and rigid into a slide. If he'd had one or two joints a day it might have been a different story, but this was all the time! The change was extreme and after a year of substituting pot for cigarettes he realized he'd become too laid back and unproductive. He went and buried his remaining hash in the garden and said: That's it! It was amazing he could give up just like that - but that's Bill. He said he would never try cocaine or stronger drugs because if he liked them he would do that all the time too. |
Early May 1972: The Rolling Stones are advised not to go back to France
because of police wanting to question
them about Keith Richards' involvement with drugs.
May 1, 1972: Mick and Bianca Jagger participate in a march of support in
Paris for political activist Angela Davis.
May 5, 1972: Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman meet with Wilson Pickett in London.
May 10, 1972: A press release
announces the Rolling Stones have settled disputes with Allen Klein and
ABKCO Industries.
May 12, 1972: Mick Jagger, Charlie
Watts and Bill Wyman fly to Geneva, Switerland, and join Keith
Richards in
Montreux.
May 13-19, 1972: The Rolling Stones
start tour rehearsals at the Rialto Cinema in Montreux, Switerland.
May 20, 1972: The Rolling Stones
fly back to London.
May
22-26, 1972: The Rolling Stones' 12th U.S. and 10th UK studio album, and
first double album, Exile on Main Street,
is released.
May 24-25, 1972: The Rolling Stones
fly in to Los Angeles to continue rehearsals and prepare for their
North American
tour.
May 26-June 1, 1972: The Rolling
Stones hold more tour rehearsals at the Warner Brothers Studios in
Burbank, California.
June 3-13, 1972: The Rolling Stones
open their 1972 North American Tour with a swing through the
West Coast,
performing 12 concerts in Vancouver (Canada), Seattle, San Francisco, Los
Angeles,
Long Beach
and San Diego. The band travels in their own airplane for the first time,
and Stevie
Wonder opens
the concerts.
| Mick Taylor:
A Glimmer Twin moment
I nearly saw Mick and Keith have a fight in a seafood restaurant in Seattle. Keith was really pissed off 'cause Jagger had thrown this beautiful leather jacket into the audience at the end of the gig. At the dinner table they were yelling across at each other. After that I don't think Keith lent Mick anything to wear onstage. |
| Mick Jagger
(June 1972): Playing the West Coast
It's something to go to places you've been like Seattle, which we haven't played since '66 and see it better now than it was then. More people came to see us there than when we worked there last. San Francisco... was... the people were just... dare I say, the vibrations were just SO GOOD. We've always had strange times there. Altamont, yeah, everyone knows about. But Oakland too. It was just the start of the tour then (1969) and we played poorly and Keith blew two guitars... but this time we just had fun. So far, the only problem on the tour's been with the monitors. I can't hear what I'm singing or what the band's doing. We'll keep on changing the program all the time though to stay interested. But you can't really tell yet what's gonna happen, can you? I mean, California doesn't have anything to do with the rest of America, does it? The truth of it is... the tour hasn't even really started. |
June 14-16, 1972: The Rolling
Stones tour the southwest U.S., appearing for the first time in Tucson,
Arizona, and
in New Mexico (Albuquerque); and performing again in Denver, Colorado.
June 16, 1972: Keith Richards and Stephen Stills draw knives in an argument
in a hotel suite.
June 18-22, 1972: The Rolling
Stones perform for the first time in Bloomington, Minnesota and Kansas
City, Missouri;
and play three concerts in Chicago.
| Charlie
Watts, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards (June 1972): On tour in Chicago
Charlie: You always play the same licks more or less. So it kind of depends on the crowd as to how good the show is going to be. Mick: Did you see men leaping on stage the other night? Great big men they were too. With clenched fists... shouting. I've had to stop doing that one - the clenched fist. I still like to point though. That's a gospel thing, like signifyin' - it's putting the power right on them. I see weird things out front some nights. The guy begging me to whip him during Midnight Rambler. Pleading for it and grabbing at the belt. His eyes... Another held up a burning cigarette to catch my attention, then crushed it in his palm and held it up, all black with ash and fucked up. Weird, eh? Keith: America's looser this time. I've been telling everyone that. Last time they sat and stared, real stone freaks. They're more stoned this time but... maybe it's just that school is out. We only ever see this country in November and December. |
June 18-21, 1972: The Rolling Stones spend time at Hugh Hefner's Playboy
mansion
in Chicago.
June 24-25, 1972: The Rolling
Stones perform four concerts in Fort Worth and Houston, Texas.
June 25-July 5, 1972: Bianca Jagger joins the group on tour.
June 26, 1972: The group enjoys a day off in New Orleans.
June 27-29, 1972: The Rolling
Stones perform in Nashville, Tennessee, and for the first time in Mobile
and Tuscaloosa,
Alabama.
June 30-July 2, 1972: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Mick
Taylor holiday briefly in the Virgin
Islands; Bill Wyman and Astrid Pallenberg at "Donald" Duck Dunn's home
in Memphis.
July 2-3, 1972: The Rolling Stones
hold recording sessions in Miami, Florida.
July 4, 1972: The Rolling Stones
perform an Independence Day concert in the US's capital,
Washington
D.C., at RFK Stadium.
| Mick Jagger
(July 1972): Playing DC
The Washington concert was pretty frightening and a bit weird. it's difficult for me to say what it was like for the people who were there, but I guess it sounded alright to the people who were there, if you were no further than halfway back. There was trouble in front, people sitting on the stage, grabbing at your legs, getting tangled in the mike cables... Just a few loons, really, aamong the 40 000, but still, I couldn't do my thing. .. I would have liked video blowups or something because there was no way for me to reach all them people, it being night and me unable to see them. It felt even bigger than Hyde Park, where there were more people, but at least it was daylight. |
July 5-7, 1972: The Rolling Stones
perform southeast concerts in Norfolk, Virginia (for the first time);
Charlotte,
North Carolina; and Knoxville, Tennessee.
July 8, 1972: The Rolling Stones
hold rehearsals in St. Louis, Missouri.
July 9-15, 1972: The Rolling Stones
tour the Ohio Valley/Great Lakes region, performing 8 concerts
in St. Louis;
Akron, Ohio (for the first time); Indianapolis; Detroit; and Toronto, Canada.
| Mick Jagger
(July 1972): In St. Louis
On this (tour)... the audiences have been good, haven't they? In Knoxville and such it might be a bit quiet, but they have listened and gotten up at the end and responsded when we wanted them to... what can you say, good audiences. A bit of crying now and then for Sympathy for the Devil, which I can't remember anymore. Of course, we might do a long version of it for Nixon. |
| Bobby Keys:
Fun in Toronto
One night we were bored in Toronto. So Keith and I got out the Yellow Pages and looked up escort services. We called up an agency telling them we were two businessmen dealing insurance from Omaha in town for a convention (laughs). We said we needed two lady escorts for dinner. We told them to send over two of their finest. We even taped the conversation. These chicks show up expecting guys in three-piece business suits. When they saw us they were taken aback. It ended up as a mild evening of ligthweight debauchery. |
July 17-19, 1972: The Rolling
Stones start the Northeast tour leg with concerts in Montreal and Boston.
July 17, 1972: A bomb explodes in the band's equipment at the Montreal
Forum, set off by Quebec separatists.
July 18, 1972: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are arrested for assaulting
a photographer in Warwick, Rhode
Island, and released on bail, delaying the first Boston concert for three
hours.
July 20-22, 1972: The Rolling
Stones perform three concerts in Philadelphia, followed by an
appearance
in Pittsburgh.
July 21, 1972: On the way to Pittsburgh, the infamous airplane sex scene
is shot for the unreleased film C*cksucker
Blues.
July 23, 1972: Mick and Bianca Jagger spend the day at Princess Lee Radziwill's
home in Southampton, Long
Island, New York.
| Tour manager
Peter Rudge, Mick Taylor, Keith Richards & Mick Jagger: High society
Peter Rudge: With the Stones you'll meet Mick's little gang - the Truman Capotes and the Princess Lee Radziwills. Then on the other hand you'll meet Keith's little gang - the Kenneth Angers and William Burroughs. You can be exposed to every aspect. You can meet anybody, and that tends to rub off. People want to meet you to get to the group. Everyone acts like guards for the Stones. Because they're that little jewel in the middle of the ocean, everyone gets possessive about it and defensive. Mick Taylor: 1972 was the tour where we became star celebrities and the toast of New York high society. Keith (1973): Personally I just don't want to know about 'em. I mean, how they get in there and why they're there in the first place, I don't really know. It's a difficult thing to handle anyway, because it starts with things like, Oh, Truman Capote is going to come along and write something on the Stones and he comes along and brings along Princess Lee Radziwill and some other socialites from New York and you're surrounded by those people. I mean, all those jet-setters must be loud or something. They seem to be on this massive ego trip anyway, which I just don't want to know about. All I can say is those people will not be around a second time. There's no way they're going to be in our company ever again. Mick: The whole business was very exaggerated. After all, there were only two people on the tour, and they were only there for a couple of days. I mean, REALLY. |
July 24-26, 1972: The Rolling
Stones conclude their 1972 North American Tour with four concerts at
Madison Square
Garden in New York City.
July 24, 1972: Bob Dylan attends the first New York City Stones show and
the group's party afterwards.
July 25, 1972: Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman are inteviewed by Dick Cavett
for American TV.
July 26, 1972: On Mick Jagger's 29th birthday, the group hosts an end-of-tour
party at St. Regis Hotel in New
York City, with live music by Muddy Waters and Count Basie. Woody Allen
and Diane Keaton, Carly Simon,
Stevie Wonder, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Carly Simon and Zsa Zsa Gabor are
among the guests.
| Mick Taylor,
Bobby Keys & Charlie Watts: Getting off the 1972 tour
Mick Taylor: It got a bit pathetic. I'd been on the road before and knew what it was about; surrounded by hangers-on and a lot of phony people. That's a side of the business. What I always liked about the Stones was their ability to see the funny side and never take it too seriously. It's a very absorbing occupation. And it certainly takes a lot out of you. But anything you love is a 24-hour thing. It was very hectic and chaotic, but it was fun. I don't know anyone who's ever been associated with the Stones and never recovered (laughs). But it takes a long time. Bobby Keys (c. 1979): To me the Stones were the pinnacle. Once you get there where do you go after seeing the view from Pompeii? But I was a guest. It was their gig. But the Stones have that aura. They have a free lifestyle, as free as anyeone would want it. If you can handle it, fine. Obviously I found it hard. It got the best of me once or twice. It wasn't them that did it, I was to blame. It was easy to get past the press notices but it was hard to get past the lifestyle. Charlie: I got off the plane in '72 and said No fucking more because I don't actually like touring and I don't like living out of suitcases. I hate being away from home. I always do tours thinking they're the last one, and at the end of them I always leave the band. Because of what I do I can't play the drums at home so to play the drums I have to go on the road, and to go on the road I have to leave home and it's like a terribly vicious circle that's always been my life. |
July 27, 1972: The Rolling Stones
hold a band meeting in New York City, discussing their tax problems
if they return
to England and problems in France related to drug investigations on Keith
Richards.
August 1972: Mick and Bianca Jagger holiday in Ireland; Bill Wyman and
Astrid Lundstrom holiday shortly in
Bermuda, then return to France.
| Charlie
Watts & Keith Richards: Transitioning back to "normal" life
Charlie: When I go home I switch directly to normal 'cause that's the way I like to live. I can go from one or the other where Mick and Keith do it slower. I indulge in crazy hours when we record or when we're on the road. The hours are conducive to making music and the way we live on the raod. But there is another world out there which is great. I like to see both sides, but you can't without knocking yourself out so I live one or the other. Keith: I cleaned up for that tour. But not for the whole tour. I did take a bit (of heroin). Playing wasn't quite as much fun on smack. But that's a difficult one 'cause it's not always true. It's coming OFF the road and dealing with the withdrawal and expenditure of energy that does it. That absolute cut-off after two or three months on the road is difficult to adjust to. Coming back to a completely different rhythm was hard. And I found that smack made it very much easier for me to slow down, very smoothly and gradually. Otherwise I'd find I'd be glad to get home but I was still so hyper. I really wanted to enjoy relaxing at home. But I'd spend months wanting to enjoy, trying to enjoy but I couldn't. The one thing I can't handle very well is that sudden change in pace of living. I can handle it through slowing down or speeding up; that's easy. But I just haven't got any brakes. And THAT became the easiest way to put my foot down and just whew... |
August 9, 1972: Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg and their children move
into a home in Villars, Switzerland, the
country that will become their homebase for much of the next four years.
Keith Richards learns how to ski.
| Anita Pallenberg:
Switzerland
It was actually quite nice. We had this little chalet and we used to ski to the front door. We had the drugs and a good connection in Geneva, and we had friends in Geneva, and we used to drive around in Ferraris and Bentleys... It was fun. We always had people in the house and friends would come and visit us. |
September 1972: Mick Jagger records backing vocals on Carly Simon's You're
So Vain at Trident Studios in
London.
Mid-October
1972: Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman spend time in London, performing
overdubs on recordings of the 1972 North American Tour, for a never-released
live album.
| Keith Richards
(1973): A live 1972 album nixed
Another reason for us not doing old songs (onstage) is that Decca have stopped us from releasing new live versions of material recorded on their label. A whole live album with Stevie Wonder on it recorded on the American tour has been scrapped because they've ballsed that up. They've got those songs for six years or something. I mean, if we're recording a liev show with old numbers on it, we just can't put the motherfucker out in the first place because recordings of those songs belong to them until 1976 or whatever. |
Early November 1972: The Rolling Stones are interrogated individually in
Nice by a French judge on drug
suspicions.
Early-mid-November 1972: Mick Jagger and Mick Taylor spend time in Ireland,
to escape both France and British
taxes.
November 22-24, 1972: Mick Jagger records with John Lennon and Yoko Ono
in New York City at The Record
Plant for Yoko Ono's Approximately Infinite Universe album.
November
25-30, 1972: The Rolling Stones start recording sessions for Goats Head
Soup at Dynamic
Sound Studios in Kingston, Jamaica.
Late November 1972: Keith Richards purchases Point of View, an estate overlooking
Cutlass Bay in Ocho Rios,
Jamaica.
December 1-2, 1972: The Rolling Stones hold a band meeting concerning the
French investigation problem, and
all except Keith Richards fly back to France.
December 4, 1972: Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor
appear before a judge in Nice, France,
and are cleared of potential charges.
December
6-13, 1972: The Rolling Stones continue recording sessions at Dynamic Sound
Studios in
Kingston. The songs started during the Jamaican stay include Angie,
Doo
Doo Doo Doo Doo,
Through the Lonely Nights, Winter, Coming Down Again,
Tops,
Short
and Curlies and Waiting on a
Friend.
December 14, 1972: Heroin and other drug possession charges are laid on
Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg in
France. Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor fly to the Bahamas for a holiday.
December 26, 1972: Mick and Bianca Jagger fly to Kingston, Jamaica, after
an earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua,
three days earlier, to find out that Bianca Jagger's mother survived.
December 27, 1972: Mick and Bianca Jagger arrive in Managua to distribute
typhoid injections and medical
supplies.