Philip Norman - Mick Jagger

Two weeks later, the Stones set out on their first national package tour, as footnotes to a bill headed by three legendary American names, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley. As a mark of respect to their third-biggest R&B hero – and perhaps a tacit admission that their singer was not as brazenly confident as he seemed – the band dropped all Bo Diddley songs from their stage act during the month-long tour. In fact, as well as being flattered by their reverence, Diddley was impressed by their musicianship, later using Bill and Charlie as his rhythm section on a BBC radio appearance. For Mick, the main benefit was seeing Diddley’s virtuoso sideman, Jerome Green, play lollipop-shaped maracas, two in each hand. From now on, he, too, shook maracas in the faster numbers, albeit only one per hand – and even that with a hint of irony.

Touring meant staying in hotels, which for such a bottom-of-the-bill act meant grim establishments with dirty net curtains, malodorous carpets and electricity coin meters in the bedrooms, all in all not much different from home back in Chelsea. It emerged, however, that one Edith Grove flatmate was not having to endure it. As well as his leader’s £5-per-week premium, Brian had secretly arranged with Eric Easton to stay in a better class of hotel than the others.

Before long, the tour’s American headliners were facing the Beatles’ recent problem at the Royal Albert Hall. Little Richard remained oblivious, entertaining his audience with an extended striptease, then going for a ten-minute walkabout through the auditorium with a forty-strong police guard. But the Everly Brothers’ tender harmonies became increasingly drowned out by chants of ‘We want the Stones!’ In the end, the emcee had to go out and plead for Mick’s heroes of yesteryear to be given a break.

By autumn, the Stones’ word-of-mouth reputation was sufficient for them to be voted Britain’s sixth most popular band in Melody Maker ’s annual readers’ poll. Yet their future on record was anything but secure. Unless their inexperienced young manager–record producer could concoct a far bigger hit single than ‘Come On’, Decca would be looking for excuses to circumvent their contract and dump them. And the stock of likely hits in the R&B canon was shrinking all the time as other bands and solo singers dipped into it.

After a flick through R&B’s back catalogue, Andrew Oldham chose an overt novelty number, Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Poison Ivy’, originally recorded by the Coasters with voices teetering on the edge of goonery. As the B-side, weirdly, he prescribed another quasi-comedy song, Benny Spellman’s ‘Fortune Teller’. For a time Mick seemed headed for exactly the vaudeville kind of pop he so despised. However, a recording session with Decca’s in-house producer, Michael Barclay, on 15 July revealed the whole band to be deeply uncomfortable with Oldham’s choice. And, having scheduled the two tracks for release in August, Decca then ominously cancelled them.

Salvation came unexpectedly while Oldham and the Stones were at Ken Colyer’s Studio 51 Club in Soho, trying out other potential A-sides and getting nowhere. Escaping outside for a breath of air, Oldham chanced to run into John Lennon and Paul McCartney, fresh from receiving awards as Show-Business Personalities of the Year at the Savoy Hotel. Told of the Stones’ problem, John and Paul good-naturedly offered a song of theirs called ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, so new that it wasn’t even quite finished. The duo accompanied Oldham back to Studio 51 and demo’d a Liverpudlian R&B pastiche that their rivals could cover without shame or self-compromise. Their gift thankfully accepted, they added the song’s final touches then and there, making it all look absurdly easy.

On 7 October the Stones went straight into Kingsway Sound Studios, Holborn (just down the road from LSE), and recorded a version of ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ needing virtually no production and only a couple of takes. The B-side was a cobbled-up instrumental, based on Booker T. and the MG’s’ ‘Green Onions’ and entitled ‘Stoned’ – to most British ears, still only something that happened to adulterous women in the Bible.

‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ was released on 1 November, three weeks before the Beatles’ own version, sung by Ringo Starr, appeared on their landmark second album, With the Beatles . While the northerners could not stop themselves adding harmony and humour, the Stones’ treatment was raw and basic, just Mick’s voice in alternation with Brian’s molten slide guitar; not so much sly romantic proposition as barefaced sexual attack. ‘Another group trying their chart luck with a Lennon-McCartney composition,’ patronised the New Musical Express . ‘Fuzzy and undisciplined . . . complete chaos,’ sniffed Disc . Indiscipline and chaos seemed to be just what Britain’s record buyers had been waiting for, and the single went straight to No. 12.

At year’s end, BBC television launched a new weekly music show called Top of the Pops , based solely on the week’s chart placings, that would run without significant change of format for the next forty years. The Stones featured in the very first programme, their vocalist adding a further twist to that un-Beatly Beatles song still rudely disrupting the Top 20. Motionless and in profile, buttoned into a tab collar as high as a Regency hunting stock, he seemed as detached and preoccupied as the lyric was hot and urgent. The downcast eyes and irritably drooping mouth suggested something rather tedious being spelled out to an unseen listener who was either slow-witted or deaf. To the studio audience surging round him, the clear message came straight from his recently aborted version of ‘Poison Ivy’: ‘You can look but you better not touch . . .’

Everyone knew now it was Mick, not Mike, and that – even though they might have attended the same seat of learning – he was nothing whatsoever like Mike Sarne.

CHAPTER FIVE FIVE ‘“What a Cheeky Little Yob,” I Thought to Myself’ SIX ‘We Spent a Lot of Time Sitting in Bed, Doing Crosswords’ SEVEN ‘We Piss Anywhere, Man’ EIGHT Secrets of the Pop Stars’ Hideaway NINE Elusive Butterfly TEN ‘Mick Jagger and Fred Engels on Street Fighting’ PART II: THE TYRANNY OF COOL ELEVEN ‘The Baby’s Dead, My Lady Said’ TWELVE Some Day My Prince Will Come THIRTEEN The Balls of a Lion FOURTEEN ‘As Lethal as Last Week’s Lettuce’ FIFTEEN Friendship with Benefits SIXTEEN The Glamour Twins SEVENTEEN ‘Old Wild Men, Waiting for Miracles’ EIGHTEEN Sweet Smell of Success NINETEEN The Diary of a Nobody TWENTY Wandering Spirit TWENTY-ONE God Gave Me Everything Postscript Picture Section List of Searchable Terms Acknowledgements Also by Philip Norman Copyright About the Publisher

‘“What a Cheeky Little Yob,” I Thought to Myself ’ FIVE ‘“What a Cheeky Little Yob,” I Thought to Myself’ SIX ‘We Spent a Lot of Time Sitting in Bed, Doing Crosswords’ SEVEN ‘We Piss Anywhere, Man’ EIGHT Secrets of the Pop Stars’ Hideaway NINE Elusive Butterfly TEN ‘Mick Jagger and Fred Engels on Street Fighting’ PART II: THE TYRANNY OF COOL ELEVEN ‘The Baby’s Dead, My Lady Said’ TWELVE Some Day My Prince Will Come THIRTEEN The Balls of a Lion FOURTEEN ‘As Lethal as Last Week’s Lettuce’ FIFTEEN Friendship with Benefits SIXTEEN The Glamour Twins SEVENTEEN ‘Old Wild Men, Waiting for Miracles’ EIGHTEEN Sweet Smell of Success NINETEEN The Diary of a Nobody TWENTY Wandering Spirit TWENTY-ONE God Gave Me Everything Postscript Picture Section List of Searchable Terms Acknowledgements Also by Philip Norman Copyright About the Publisher

Saturday 14th December, 1963: Beatles at [Wimbledon] Palais, Stones at [the Baths] Epsom. Went down to Palais but saw nothing but police & more police. Got to Epsom early & when we saw ‘admission by ticket only’ thought we might as well go home. Stayed for a little while chatting to 2 mods however & then that darling DARLING doorman let us in. Got right to the front & wow! Leaning up on the stage gazing into the face of Mick and he looked at me – he did! Keith glanced once, Charlie never & I don’t know about Brian & Ghost [Bill Wyman]. Mick kind of looks at you in a funny way – shy? impersonal? sexy? cold? I don’t know but it’s certainly cool & calm . . . as usual [he] commanded all the attention. He was in a pink shirt, navy trousers, Cuban [heeled] Chelsea’s & brown Chelsea cord waistcoat with black onyx cufflinks. He looked thin, cool and haggard. His hair hung in long ginger waves & his sharp sideways glances down at the audience (no – me!) made him look even more fright [crossed out] aloof and somehow witchlike . . . After the Stones had gone off, the curtains were drawn across but we got underneath them & watched the Stones standing around at the side, talking . . . Couldn’t get backstage worst luck!