By Harvey Kubernik Copyright 2023
PARACHUTE WOMEN: Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones by author Elizabeth Winder was just published by Hachette Books.
Winder introduces us to the four unique women who inspired and helped create the legend of the Rolling Stones. Marianne Faithful, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg.
Until this century, women in the rock ‘n’ roll books on the Rolling Stones were often cast or diminished as arm candy, consorts, groupies, and rarely given the credit and kudos for the muses who helped build the aesthetic that they brought to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Parachute Women indicates how viable and essential their role(s) might have been in establishing, informing, and enhancing the boys in the band in fashion, artistic flair and possible studio contributions.
These women who helped shape the culture and legend around the band, before the lads became a brand, gave at the office.
Elizabeth Winder is the author of Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy and Pain, Parties, and Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Antioch Review, American Letters, and other publications. She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, and earned an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University.
The Hachette Books media announcement touts the title.
“They opened the doors to subterranean art and alternative lifestyles, turned them on to Russian literature, occult practices, LSD, and high society. They connected them to cutting edge directors and writers, won them roles in art house films that renewed their appeal. They often acted as unpaid stylists, providing provocative looks from their personal wardrobes. They remixed tracks for chart-topping albums, and sometimes even wrote the actual songs. More hip to the times than the rockers themselves, they consciously (and unconsciously) kept the band current – and confident – with that mythic lasting power they still have today.
“Lush in detail and insight, and long overdue, Parachute Women is a group portrait of the four audacious women who transformed the Stones into international superstars but who were themselves marginalized by the male-dominated rock world of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Written in the tradition of Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, it’s a story of lust and rivalries, friendship and betrayals, hope and degradation, and the birth of rock and roll.
“In PARACHUTE WOMEN, readers will discover: How Marianne Faithful, Anita Pallenberg, and Marsha Hunt shaped a group of shy, slightly awkward boys into the rock icons that became known as the Rolling Stones, and how all three of the women – plus later, Bianca Jagger – provided vital emotional support and guidance in the band’s formative years.
“Personal accounts through the female lens of rock and roll – wild nights dancing on club tables, playing bumper cars with speed boats at Miami’s Fontainebleau hotel, cross-dressing on acid trips, and much more. The double standards for men and women surrounding sex and drugs in the rock and roll scene, and how those impacted the women’s own careers and public persona. Details of the band members’ intimate relationships with their lovers, other artists in the industry, and each other, plus the highs and lows in the lives of the Rolling Stones, from sold out stadiums and the height of glamour to unspeakable tragedy: overdoses, fires, and families torn apart.”
However, in Parachute Women, there are moments in Widner’s narrative where existing quote sources aren’t acknowledged and when voices emerge in her study without any sort of introduction…
Writer/music pundit/podcaster Bob Lefsetz in his August 17, 2023 newsletter cited another error in her reporting.
“I’m reading this terrible book about the Stones’ girlfriends, Parachute Women. The writer said Chris Jagger was Mick’s older brother. I winced, everybody knows Chris is the younger brother. Then again, the author Elizabeth Winder was born in 1980, long after Chris’s eponymous solo album was released in 1973, and made a dent in the chart, however minimal. I bought it, there was actually a good track on it, but that’s what we did back then, we wanted more.
“So, Winder makes the case that Mick and Keith were relative choirboys, and it’s Anita Pallenberg who corrupted them, who made them who they are. Interesting take, at least I thought so until the book became so gossipy that I wondered where the writer got her information, asked myself if she made it all up. And now I think I’m going to stop reading, after the Chris faux pas. As my old friend Tony Wilson said, how are they gonna trust you on the big things when you can’t even get the little things right?”
In August 2023, I emailed my dear friend, the photo journalist Heather Harris.
We’ve been in a 50-year music book club together.
I emailed Heather after she read Parachute Women. I asked her to set the real scene around the women of the era that Widner attempted to chronicle. A world I’ve written about for decades personally and professionally.
“There were so very many of them! Here in the States the number of incontestably hip young women in the 1960s seemed attenuated for such a huge populace of an equally gigantic nation, but vestigial Puritan forces seemed to limit our own Swinging Sixties to a select few female musicians, groupies, actresses, models and activists. Otherwise, ratted bouffants and stiff, ultra-conservative wear were all one encountered.
“Across the pond offered far better hunting grounds for new, iconoclastic young female souls carrying the banner of modernity in attitudes, fashion, creative output, nascent feminism and the sea change looks of wild straight hairstyles and clothes no one would ever mistake for that of any older generation.
“So even we American teens of the ’60s thrilled to the ‘one of ours’ recognition of British and European new icons like Jean and Chrissie Shrimpton, Pattie and Jenny Boyd, Julie Christie, Jane Asher, Donyale Luna, Twiggy, Talitha Getty, Jane Birkin, Alice, Jane and Victoria Ormsby-Gore, all of David Bailey’s favorite fashion models and the hundred plus young XX chromosome professionals and scenesters in 1967’s iconic compendium by John d Green Birds of Britain (haha.)
“Out of these hordes emerged seemingly impossible superlative stand outs, and the leading rock stars of the day snapped them up. Back in the day you were never going to see a better looking young blonde than Marianne Faithfull, she was born with the je ne c’est quoi beauty genes. (And even later. During the punk era, she stood out like a beacon in a darkened club watching her then boyfriend play. All eyes were on her, you couldn’t miss her even with no light to speak of in a crowded audience of 200. And she was wearing the metallic pink boots I had coveted on the King’s Road but couldn’t afford. She could.)
“Elsewhere, Anita Pallenberg surpassed her gorgeous European fashion model classification by seeming to be, to all who encountered her, one of the most reckless extroverts to ever stride the planet.
“It’s not surprising these young women fascinated all comers, we teens, their colleagues, peers and contemporaries, and even today continue to do so.
“Author Elizabeth Winder singled out a few of the best know cohorts of the Rolling Stones in the ’60s and early ’70s and put together a study of Faithfull, Pallenberg, Bianca Macias Jagger and Marsha Hunt, so that the reader does not have to collect the assorted Exile on Main Street volumes of Robert Greenfield and Charley Weber in their library, nor Faithful’s autobiography nor Pallenberg’s biography She’s A Rainbow, nor Hunt’s two autobiographies (Hunt’s life is far more interesting than most ever suspect.)
“So, what do you get versus what do you lack in Parachute Women? You get to immerse yourself in Winder’s research of the era and these shining humans in their prime, which is valuable entertainment and escapism in and of itself. She is capable of amusing, frisky phrasing like describing the 60’s attired, buxom Hunt as ‘bursting out of her buckskins.’
“The downside? Those in the know will question why Catherine James and all sorts of assorted key players didn’t make the author’s list. Subjective coda: yes, I was interested enough to have already owned Birds of Britain and a goodly number of David Bailey’s wonderful photo collections, so my curiosity about this brand new book was sated.
“For those interested in the singular subjects like Pallenberg, better money might be spent on purchasing photographer Dominque Tarlé ‘s superb candids of Keith Richards, Pallenberg, family and friends shot in the South of France at their villa while recording Exile on Main Street. The reader is no doubt sufficiently intelligent to read between the pixels of these copious, lush, unique photographs.”
After reading Parachute Women, I’m parading two top-billed stars of the expedition: Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg, guiding forces behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards during 1964-1977.
Reflections and my personal encounters with and about the quartet culled from my own archival interviews with Faithfull, Andrew Loog Oldham, Jack Nitzsche, Denny Bruce, Heather Harris, Keith Richards, Gene Shiveley, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Bill Wyman, Al Schmit, and Bobby Rogers of the Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.
Last century, ABKCO Records issued a collection of Faithfull’s songs of the ‘60’s, Marianne Faithfull’s Greatest Hits, spotlighting “As Tears Go By,” “Summer Nights,” “Come Stay With Me,” “This Little Bird,” and “Sister Morphine,” which she co-wrote with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
In 1994, Marianne Faithfull published Faithfull: An Autobiography, co-written with author David Dalton. I interviewed Marianne during 1995 at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. Faithfull answered the door. “Welcome to the poet’s corner!”
I looked at her for about 30 seconds. She has big green eyes. Clad in black. Not punk black, but black blouse, black pants and black nylons.
Marianne was an image out of Hollywood’s Jazz City music club circa 1958, a film noir sister of Jane Greer, Elizabeth Scott, Susan Oliver and Gloria Grahame. She wore no makeup, blonde, long hair, wonderfully zaftig, and shorter in person that I expected.
Marianne has a dancer’s body. In fact, twice during the two-hour chat, she leaped off the couch onto the rug and sort of did a move, an interpretation of “the sideways pony” dance that Tina Turner once taught Mick Jagger in the hall way in front of her in 1965 at Colston Hall in Bristol, England. She told me her mother Eva taught her to dance as a child.
I then mentioned that I briefly danced on American Bandstand and Shebang! in 1966 as a teenager.
She was rather impressed.
“Whew…Remind me to give you a kiss and a hug when you leave today and don’t worry if my boobs get in the way,” she giggled. “No problem,” I assured her.
Room service delivered Marlboro Lights. Marianne also ordered a vodka martini for our smoky conversation. I had a mineral water. The record label paid.
We talked about her memoir.
“I did it for you. (laughs),” offered Faithfull. “I felt there was something in the story that was very common to everybody. I do believe that the details and the individuals are different, but the emotions and the sort of core thing are very, very connected to all human experience. Therefore, I felt it was a valid story to tell. And then again, I felt I was very close to some of the greatest people of my time. And I had a lot of help.
“I thought it was really good for me and about fuckin’ time I learned to do that. I didn’t want to. I resisted it but I had to. I had to. David is married to a very intelligent woman Coco and she really worked very closely with him and I think it had some impact.”
“I’ve been carrying this around for a long time. And I had remembered the things that were important to me which were always the same. It was always very, very clear that what I was really interested in and always had been interested in was motive and psychic position and why. There were a million things I could not remember, which are not interesting to me.”
Marianne also writes that some of the Rolling Stones characters in their songs came to life partially owing to LSD.
“Of course they did,” she emphasized. “I don’t think acid is relative or relevant anymore. I wouldn’t do it again. But I think that it was important then, and I think it taught us a lot.
“They were all very much in love with me at that time. Not only me, but I was one of the many women they were in love with. I always thought ‘Ruby Tuesday’ was about me. [Smiles].
“Keith and I are still very close. I’m under his wing and I know I will always be under his wing,” underscored Marianne.
“Brian [Jones] wasn’t as bad as everybody thinks. Well Brian was a genius but he was a very irritating person. Keith really loved Brian. I use Brian. I have a whole lot of friends on the other side that I call up when I need them. I use Brian, Janis and now I’ve got Tony Secunda and Denny Cordell. I cut out some things about Brian Jones. David Dalton went on and on and made him much more of a worse person than he was. He could only do that really because he was dead. He couldn’t go on and on about Keith and Anita or even me because I did the classic Buddhist thing: I just did a drive all blames into one. I made that decision. That is something I learned from Allen Ginsberg.”
“I mean, I pushed them away so much. It’s my fault. The door is open completely. I had to push them away, I suppose, to find my own spot. Much too much. Mick, too. ‘Cause I couldn’t stay in that position.
“Don’t be too harsh on Mick. [Smiles]. You’d really like him and he’d support you. He’s a good guy.”
In our 1995 dialogue, Marianne and I discussed Anita Pallenberg.
“Like most of the time I don’t remember what people were wearing. And I remember one thing, I think is the White Ball and the black dress. So, it’s only on very clear demarcations like clothed, unclothed, black, white that I really know exactly.
“Like most of the time I don’t remember what people were wearing. I remember what Allen was wearing, because often, Allen would take his clothes off. So, I would know that and understand that. And that’s a very simple situation.
“Now Anita actually remembers things only through what we were wearing, ‘cause that’s what she’s interested in. I don’t mean that as a put down. But that’s how she remembers things. When I say, ‘Do you remember such and such a day…?’ The way back for Anita is ‘Oh yea… You were wearing a red velvet …and I was wearing…’ You’d dig her, man.”
In 1994, Pallenberg graduated from Central Saint Martins in London with a fashion and textile degree.
I’ve always known that the music of Motown Records resided deep in Marianne’s soul. Just the mention of Berry Gordy Jr.’s label brings her right up off the couch praising Motown vinyl.
“I can tell you that while Andrew Loog Oldham turned me on to Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche, Bob Crewe and the Four Seasons, the Mamas and the Papas, and a lot of things, the person who really educated me on the Motown level was Mick. I would have never gone that deeply into Motown without Mick. We just played the songs at home constantly. It must have been great fun for him…
“There I am at age nineteen and I’ve never listened to the Miracles before. ‘The Tracks of My Tears…’ Mick would run down the bass lines, song constructions on the label, and actually act out the songs in front of me! [Chuckles].
“It was really an amazing education. And, of course, when I wanted another type of thing, I’d go and see Keith and then it was all blues. It all kind of fitted in somehow,” she marveled.
“Mick and I wore out the grooves on the records so much we’d have to buy them again. For a long time, it was Vivaldi and Marvin Gaye in the morning. That’s how we lived. Which is so wonderful. And I had Mick telling me everything. He knew everything. He knew the names of the session musicians at a snap. So did Jack Nitzsche. Brilliant man. We never could quite get it together to do an album, but at least we have ‘Sister Morphine.'”
The Motown segment of our afternoon delight conversation became a yenta-fueled exchange when I told her I recently did a series of interviews with the Funk Brothers, the surviving Motown session men who are spotlighted in the documentary film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown.
“Oh God…I’m dying to see that movie. Oh man…Oh man…Nice to see the players get some attention. I like the idea that Berry Gordy still cares that much. He cares about the Motown legacy and we’re not just talking about money. There’s something he did there that he cares very much about. It’s incredible. Obviously, he knows what he did, but for me, it changed my life,” she happily admitted.
“I found the Stax records myself. I was lucky.
“Mick knew the Motown records already, but they knocked me for a six. That’s why I know about the Four Tops doing ‘Walk Away Renee.’ I spent years listening to Motown. Smokey Robinson…His voice…The Love I Saw In You Was Just a Mirage.’ [Sings the first two lines]. The most beautiful stuff I’ve ever heard…And to this day I’m sure some Motown songs are in the Stones’ live repertoire.”
“I really loved touring with the English groups, back in 1963 and 1964,” recalled Bobby Rogers of the Miracles in a 1974 interview we did.
“We used to tour with the Rolling Stones and people like Georgie Fame. I remember when we filmed The T.A.M.I. Show [in Santa Monica, Ca.], Mick Jagger asked me about what I’d thought of the album James Brown Live At The Apollo, which was his favorite LP.
“One time on a tour he mentioned that he’d like to record a Marvin Gaye song for the next Stones album. A month later, ‘Hitch Hike’ was being played all over Detroit radio. Back in 1965 my favorite song was ‘Get Off My Cloud.’”
In our 1995 hotel room rap, Marianne and I conversed about Bob Dylan. She is glimpsed in a few hotel room scenes in the D.A. Pennebaker-directed Dont Look Back 1965 British tour documentary.
“I think that was the bit that David did best. I didn’t work the hardest on that, David did. But it was wonderful. I wish he’d written the whole book like that. And all the Bobby Newirth stuff was so beautiful.
“Never in my wildest dreams could have imagined anyone like Bob in 1965. His brain, but I was frightened. I didn’t know they were probably more scared of me. I don’t know. He played me the album Bringing It All Back Home himself on his own. It was just amazing. And I worshipped him anyway. That was where I got very close to Allen Ginsberg ‘cause Allen was the only sort of person I could recognize as being somewhat like me.”
When I was concluding my interview with Marianne, I mentioned in her autobiography that as a teenager in England Faithfull attended a Catholic School, St. Joseph’s in Reading, but I learned she was Jewish.
We hugged, and as I departed, I comically told her, “You would have fit in quite nicely on our campus in the late sixties at nearby Fairfax High School, about two miles from the Chateau Marmont.”
Marianne grinned. “My dear little Piscean. My mother and my grandmother were Jewish. My mother came from a line of Austro-Hungarian aristocrats. My mother was a doctor’s daughter. She was a Jewess, those great Jews who went out and did it from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Doctors, writers, sort of like going into Oklahoma. Allen Ginsberg now is my Jewish Mother.”
“Anita joined the group in late ’66,” Andrew Loog Oldham emailed me in July 2023.
“We had come back to the UK, sorta burnt out from 4 years on a rock ‘n’ pop world tour, and all the recordings. We did one last UK tour with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Then the psychedelic period kicked in, the result was Satanic Majesties Request.
“I left three weeks into that, probably 24 hours before I would have been asked to leave. Allen Klein may have taken over the money, but Anita, and Marianne to a lesser extent, took over the game. And the game was strong and the band moved successfully to where they stay today.”
I had the great opportunity to talk to engineer Al Schmitt in 2011 about the RCA studios. Al had worked with Sam Cooke: “Bring It On Home to Me” with Lou Rawls; “Cupid”; and “Another Saturday Night.”
In 1964, Sonny Bono and Jack Nitzsche then brought Andrew Loog Oldham and the Rolling Stones into sonic paradise.
“Studio A and B were both the same size,” remarked Al. “They were big rooms, and then there was also Studio C, a smaller room. You could mix in either room. The studios had very high ceilings and a nice parquet floor. One of the things that made them so unique was that we had all those great live echo chambers. I think there were seven of them. I taught Dave Hassinger. He was the first person to play me “Satisfaction” one day right after it was mixed.
“RCA had a great microphone collection. Plus, they had the great, original Neve Console. They were just spectacular. There was a punch and a warmth, and [it was] still one of the best consoles ever made. There were no isolation booths. None whatsoever. But we had gobos we would move around, like a separator where you could isolate things. We did have some small rugs that we would put down sometimes under the drums and things, but not too much.
“There was very little overdubbing then. The nice thing about doing everything at one time was that you knew exactly what it was going to sound like. When you started layering things, you were never sure. Then a lot of experimenting came in, and it took longer and longer to make records, and the expenses went up.”
“We all heard the telegraphic signal of the arranger Jack Nitzsche in the very early sixties from his work on Liberty Records and his solo items like ‘The Lonely Surfer,” announced Oldham.
“In 1963 the second record I produced was with John Baldwin, later to be known as John Paul Jones, and it was a version of Jack’s ‘Baja,’ the flip side to ‘The Lonely Surfer.’ I knew it was all about Jack Nitzsche. You did your homework, man. You learned to know the difference between Jack Nitzsche and Neal Hefti.
“Coming to L.A. and Hollywood in 1964 and the wonderful reality of when Sonny Bono did pick us up at the LAX airport,” reinforced Andrew.
“Because if it wasn’t a Cadillac, it had huge fins, and those cars were wonderful. And his trunk was full of Caesar and Cleo ‘Baby Don’t Go’ records. And he was dressed pretty bizarre for 1964. It was somewhere between Johnny Weissmuller and rock ‘n’ roll in a way. And he was a funny, engaging guy. Sonny picked us up at LAX and took us to a hotel. But when you walked into RCA there was sunshine.
“When you walk into a situation like RCA, suddenly you have the physicality of it. And the physicality of it is so overwhelming that I can actually see it in front of me now. I can see the corridor, the control room on the right and the studio in front of us.
“Then I got taken into Studio A. Which was huge. I went, ‘this is it. We have our home.’ I met engineer Dave Hassinger in there, Of course, he was doing a session. Dave Hassinger looked like Los Angeles.
“When I produced the band at RCA, to make them feel comfortable, I shrunk and lit the room for them. I was doing set design even then. [Laughs.] There you are. I do dreams, not business.
“I remember the later sessions for Aftermath where ‘I Am Waiting’ sprang from,” disclosed Oldham in my 2006 book. Hollywood Shack Job: Rock Music in Film and on Your Screen.
“There’s incredible clarity to what they were doing. It was like a linear thing. Filmic. They were vivid, and the key to that vividness was Brian Jones. The organ on ‘She Smiled Sweetly’ by Brian is just amazing. I like ‘She Smiled Sweetly’ more than ‘Lady Jane’ and ‘Ruby Tuesday.’ ‘Out Of Time’ I love. On the initial recording it’s Mick Jagger pulling off Jimmy Ruffin.
“Between The Buttons and Aftermath, without a doubt quite a few harried moments. Aftermath works. So there is a sense of humor with the songs and the records. We’re in Hollywood. Some of Hollywood came through the door and I’m one of the conduits dragging it in.”
“We walked into the RCA studio and it was too big,” summarized bassist Bill Wyman in a 2002 interview we conducted in Santa Monica.
“We were really worried. We were intimidated. We were used to recording in little places like Regent Sound. The studio was like this hotel room.
“And then Andrew arranged for us to record at Chess Records, and their studio wasn’t very big either. Suddenly we’re at RCA and it’s enormous. It was like Olympic (in England) later. But we solved that same problem. We thought ‘God, we can’t record in here. We’re gonna get the wrong sound.’
“But Andrew had this brain wave and he put us all in the corner of one room, turned all the lights down, and just tucked us all around in a little small circle. And we forgot about the rest of the room and the height of the ceiling. And we just did it in this little corner. And Dave Hassinger the engineer got all the sounds we wanted.”
“One of the great things about recording in Hollywood at RCA,” drummer Charlie Watts reminded me at a Stones’ 2016 Coachella Desert Trip tour rehearsal at Third Encore studios in Burbank, “was after a session you’d walk into the car port and literally on the other side of the building was [jazz club] Shelly’s Manne-Hole.
“I went to Shelly’s Manne-Hole twice-once to see Charles Lloyd, Albert Stinson [with Gabor Szabo and Pete LaRoca], and the Bill Evans Trio with Paul Motian on drums [and Chuck Israels]. I saw Shelly at his club.”
In 1997 I interviewed Keith Richards after attending a slew of Bridges to Babylon recording dates at Ocean Way studios and before a concert by the Stones in San Diego, California.
We chatted about recording in Hollywood at RCA, Sunset Sound and Ocean Way studios, the former United Western studio.
Faithfull and Pallenberg during 1966-1968 were occasional fixtures inside these temples of sound.
“The room is good if you know what you’re doing,” instructed Keith. “Use as few microphones as possible. All the tinkering, splitting things up can never achieve. The whole idea when you play music is to fill the room with sound. You don’t have to pick up each individual instrument, particularly in order to do that. Because a band is several people playing something. And somewhere in the air of the room, that sound has to gather in one spot. And you have to find that spot,” mandated Keith.
“When you’re recording something as seemingly simple of just drums and voices, for the first few days microphone placement is very important. We’re trying different angles. You never point the microphone actually at the instrument. You’ve got them in the corners pointing and once you’ve found those placements, you don’t really change them.”
During a 2013 interview with well-respected record producer and artist manager Denny Bruce, who represented Jack Nitzsche, he reflected on his 1966-1969 encounters with Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones and Keith Richards.
“Being in Los Angeles in 1966, Keith and Brian wanted to know if anybody, like Lowell Fulson, was playing at any blues club in town? ‘Tramp’ by Lowell was number one this week on their turntables. Jack took the whole band to Watts to see Etta James at the California Club. I went to one of the Aftermath sessions at RCA.
“In fall of 1967 I heard the final mix of Neil Young’s ‘Expecting to Fly’ recording on Buffalo Springfield Again one night at Jack’s house. Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg were there. Jack said it was ‘the perfect recording to smoke pot with.’
“Earlier that afternoon I drove Keith and Anita in my Volkswagon to Disneyland. My first Cali car. I clearly remember driving my VW bug with Keith and Anita. That was it – just the three of us. Anita got in and then Keith got in, but didn’t move the seat to get in the back. So, it was hard to drive and shift gears with Anita’s crotch on the floor mounted gear shift.
“She beamed and said, ‘This is fabulous being in a Volkswagen in Los Angeles!’
“Somewhere in the 1967 or ’68 time period Mick, Keith and Jack worked with Marianne Faithfull on ‘Sister Morphine.’ We went to a French restaurant. Keith and Anita liked getting out of the hotels. Marianne and Anita liked to swim in Jack’s pool. During their visit we went out to eat several times. A little French place that was near Fairfax High School comes into mind.
“‘Sister Morphine’ was written at Jack’s house, during the days of hanging by the swimming pool.
“What people forget was it was hard just to get into Disneyland in those days if you had long hair. I was lucky with Keith and Anita as it was a slow day there, and he was not wearing anything unusual. But showing up as 5 people, looking like a band, would have caused trouble with security. Jack and I were hassled when we went there with Buffy St, Marie, who was performing an afternoon show.”
In October of 1969, Bruce and Richards went shopping for clothes and rare record albums. Denny schlepped Keith over to Ed Pearl’s Ash Grove music club on Melrose Avenue which housed a record section run by collector Chris Peake. Keith forked out some big bucks for a rare 1965 copy of The Cool Sounds of Albert Collins. Denny at the time managed Collins.
During 2000, I conducted an interview with Jack Nitzsche at his Beachwood Canyon home.
Nitzsche did the choral arrangement for the choir on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” from the Let It Bleed album. He phoned Merry Clayton to sing on “Gimme Shelter.” Nitzsche was a major contributor to both the Aftermath and Between The Buttons albums.
In the Stones’ recorded catalog, Nitzsche’s keyboard, harpsichord and percussion work can be heard on such gems as “Play With Fire,” “Yesterday’s Papers,” and “Sister Morphine” on Sticky Fingers. He played tambourine and piano on “Satisfaction,” and was the pianist on “Let’s Spend The Night Together.”
“I got the Stones booked on The T.A.M.I. Show. I put the band together and did all the arrangements. I was the musical director,” volunteered Jack in one of our 2000 tapings.
“It was Mick who came to me about doing the soundtrack to Performance.
“In fact, Keith and Mick wouldn’t even talk to each other during those days. The [director] Donald Cammell was close to the Stones. He knew who I was from the beginning, and they didn’t have time to score the film. Nor did they want to. So, I went to London for some reason, and saw the film during that time. They were doing Let It Bleed.
“When I was in London, the apartment they got me was right around the corner where Keith was living with Anita. There’s some pleasant moments but not many because of what they were doing to Brian.
“Anita on the screen. God damn! You saw the film. I want to see it again. I thought ‘Memo From Turner’ had a clever lyric. I felt Mick was going in another direction from the band.
“The movie blew my mind the first time I saw it. Jesus Christ. I saw Performance without music. It’s very tame without music. It doesn’t take you to that crazy place. This is the only movie I have ever done where nobody interfered. Nobody. Donald Cammell would drop by the studio once in a while. He let me do whatever I wanted.
“To this day, I’ll be in a restaurant, or walking down the street, or leaving a screening on a lot somewhere like Paramount, and someone will yell out Performance! [Director] Billy Friedkin saw me walking, and across the street yelled ‘Performance!-the greatest use of music in a motion picture ever!’ That was nice.”
In a 2008 email exchange with Andrew Loog Oldham he noted the contributions Nitzsche gave to the Rolling Stones.
“I think there are two tambourines on ‘Satisfaction.’ There’s a regular one that easily could have been Jack Nitzsche. But in the middle it was too American for that part and that’s Brian Jones. And Jack plays piano. He was brilliant, man. Come on. The piano on ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ was just turnaround Charlie. The harpsichord on ‘Play with Fire’ is Jack.
“If I were to try and define Jack’s overall contribution, I’d say he provided the melodic bond, the undercurrent to Keith and Brian’s layers of guitar brainwash. Jack was always the consummate pro. Jack gave us an understanding of tone. Which tone fits the universe?
“Jack understood microphone placement, where band members sat and instrument leakage. One other thing. Jack had a grasp of, and interest in sex. How to inject sex into the sound. That is a gift of understanding between you and your third ear.”
In the 2012 Rolling Stones documentary, Crossfire Hurricane, directed by Brett Morgen, Jagger acknowledged his influence on the composition “Sympathy for the Devil” was from French poet Pierre Baudelaire and the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita. An English translation was made available in 1967.
It was Marianne who gave boyfriend Mick the book which inspired “Sympathy for the Devil.”
It’s heard on Beggar’s Banquet, produced by Jimmy Miller and engineered by Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer in London at Olympic Sound Studios. “Sympathy for the Devil” started on June 4, 1968 and continued the next day. Overdubs were added during June 8th-10th.
Session personal for those dates were: Mick Jagger, lead vocals; Keith Richards; bass guitar, lead guitar, backing vocals; Bill Wyman, maracas and background vocals; Brian Jones, acoustic guitar and background vocals; Charlie Watts, drums, cowbell and backing vocals; Rocky Dzidzornu, congas; Nicky Hopkins, piano and backing vocals, Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull, backing vocals.
Who even knew at the time when the world first discovered Beggar’s Banquet LP, that the overdubs and the entire LP had been mixed and mastered at Sunset Sound in Hollywood by engineer Gene Shiveley.
When I first saw the back cover credits on the initial LP pressing of Beggar’s Banquet: Engineers: Glyn Johns, Eddie and Gene, I had no idea that the Eddie listed was Eddie Kramer, and the Gene cited was the sole engineer and re-mix engineer at Sunset Sound with producer Miller collaborating with Jagger on this adventure.
“Jimmy Miller and the Stones had done some rough mixes in England at Olympic when the Brian Jones thing was coming down. He had gotten busted and could not come into the United States,” recounted Shiveley in a 2017 interview we did in Sherman Oaks, California.
“Jimmy wanted to mix it here to get a fresh sound. Because Beggar’s Banquet would be a turn for the Stones, it was really a rhythm and blues album. Mick heard an album I produced by Touch done at Sunset Sound and wanted me to work together with him.
“Many tapes and tracking sessions from Olympic studio in London of the Beggar’s Banquet sessions had just arrived to Sunset Sound. Jimmy Miller had sent the tapes over. Keith could not get into the country because of a drug thing. They sent everything to Sunset.
“The minute Jimmy and I actually started working Mick was there. We had a lot of things to do before we even started mixing.
I had worked for Syn Nathan an King Records. In the very beginning Mick didn’t really know about my training and work at King Records and working with James Brown. I came from funk. Then he found out later and we talked about it.
“Then, Sunset Sound got an 8-track machine. ‘Mick and Jimmy. Would you like to use this 8-track machine out?’ Mick was like ‘wow!’ His eyes lit up.
“Sunset Sound had custom speakers that Tutti Camaratta had built. JBL components. It was as state of the art as you could get.
“Mick and Marianne Faithfull were going together at that time. She was there on an off, and Mick and I ended up working together with Marianne, including ‘Sister Morphine.’ This turned into a pretty long relationship. We later worked with Ry Cooder on all of his parts. Marianne was gorgeous.
“We went out quite a few times and I went up to the house Mick was renting up above Sunset Strip. One Saturday morning he called me and asked me to come up and wanted to listen to some things. Mixes and other things that he had. We had a lot of other pieces of material that didn’t make Beggar’s Banquet. So we were sifting and making a production that was just all coming together.
“To be really honest as far as working and knowing him during Beggar’s Banquet, I would drive and go pick Mick up and take him to the studio. He didn’t have a car. I had a blue Volkswagen bug. There wasn’t a lot of partying going on.
“I remember with Jimmy the first rough mix I threw up. He was floored. Because of the way I mixed was brilliant. Because bass and kick predominant and then the back beat filling everything around it. I’m coming from funk. I’m looking at it from a very different way.’ So, Jimmy is hearing this whole thing develop and that was what he was looking for. That is why he pretty much wanted to get out of England. To get the kind of bottom that you can get here.
“It was mastered at Sunset Sound. It really was the equipment and you could get things louder and it was just the state of the art.
“Marianne Faithfull. Wonderful. A very smart girl. I remember Jimi Hendrix, Grace Slick and Ringo coming to the studio. I later met Anita Pallenberg when the Beggar’s Banquet project was over. She was very opinionated about everything. (laughs).”
In 2018 ABKCO issued The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus on DVD, a landmark 1968 event directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg just prior to directing the Beatles Let It Be.
One of the highlights is Marianne Faithfull singing “Something Better,” a Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin tune, arranged by Jack Nitzsche and produced by Mick Jagger. Charlie Watts introduces Faithfull on screen.
In a 2019 interview I asked Michael Lindsay-Hogg about Marianne’s sequence in the film and his sweeping directorial pan displayed on screen.
“It goes back to the song,” he explained. “It goes back to Marianne and the years when she and Mick were going out together. She was a beautiful girl with a lovely figure. And she was the only girl except for Yoko Ono.
“Marianne appeared and I thought ‘this has to be about her and the camera work,’ a one of a kind beauty. And the way Tony Richmond lit her with her hair on her face. She was a beautiful young woman. It was partly celebrating her. And, then there is that long musical break where the camera circles around and ‘what would we cut away too?’ And so I thought ‘let’s do the unusual thing of just holding on her when she is not singing. Just move the camera around.
“I also wanted contrast with her because there were a lot of men on the show. Everyone on the show, except for Yoko, were guys. At the time there weren’t a lot of women in the rock ‘n’ roll world yet. There was wonderful Dusty Springfield, but mainly guys.”
“As far as photographing the Rolling Stones in 1963 and ’64, they seemed more like five individuals,” stressed the acclaimed photographer and CBE Terry O’Neill in a 2010 interview we did. “And Andrew Loog Oldham, who managed them and produced their recordings, understood. When I worked on a newspaper, if I couldn’t get over to his office to photograph someone, he’d bring them over to The Daily Sketch office and I’d photograph them there. Marianne Faithfull came over one afternoon. Can you imagine that happening today?”
(On October 16, 2023, ACC ART BOOKS LTD is publishing THE ROLLING STONES: ICONS. 312 pages. $75.00. Introduction is penned by author Harvey Kubernik. Spanning six heady decades, and countless tours and album covers, this thrilling portfolio features imagery from some of the most eminent names in photography, alongside the photographers’ own memories and reflections. Includes photographs by Terry O’Neill, Gered Mankowitz, Linda McCartney, Ed Caraeff, Ken Regan, Dominque Tarle and founding member, bassist and photographer, Bill Wyman. Each photographer has selected images for their chapter and written an introductory text about their time working with the band
Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015’s Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016’s Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017’s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.
Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. For 2024, the duo is working on a book for Insight Editions, Images That Rocked the World (The Music Photography of Ed Caraeff).
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters.
Harvey’s writings are in several book anthologies. Most notably, The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski. Harvey wrote the liner notes to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.
During 2006 Harvey spoke at the special hearings initiated by The Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 Harvey Kubernik appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, as part of their Distinguished Speakers Series.
During 2022, producer/director Ron Chapman interviewed Harvey and hired him as a consultant for his music documentary, REVIVAL69: The Concert That Rocked the World, which celebrates and chronicles a 1969 rock festival in Toronto, Canada that spotlighted the debut of John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band along with the Doors, Alice Cooper, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bob Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent. Shout! Factory has picked up the title for North American distribution.
In 2023, Harvey, photographer Henry Diltz and authors Eddie Fiegel, Barney Hoskyns and Chris Campion were filmed by French director France Swimberge for her Mamas & Papas documentary. Broadcast scheduled on the European arts television channel, Arte. Kubernik is the consultant for the film.
In 2020, Harvey served as a consultant on the 2-part documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time directed by Alison Ellwood co-produced by the Warner Music Group and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin’ Entertainment. Kubernik, Henry Diltz and Gary Strobl collaborated with ABC-TV in 2011 for their Emmy-winning one hour Eye on L.A. Legends of Laurel Canyon program hosted by Tina Malave.
Kubernik was an on-screen interview subject for director O’Casey in 2019 on his BBC4-TV digital arts channel Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird. The cast includes Christine McVie, Stan Webb of Chicken Shack, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Christine’s family members, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Mike Campbell, and Neil Finn.
Harvey was lensed for the 2013 BBC-TV documentary on Bobby Womack Across 110th Street, directed by James Meycock. Bobby Womack, Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones, Regina Womack, Damon Albarn of Blur/the Gorillaz, and Antonio Vargas are spotlighted.
Kubernik served as Consulting Producer on the 2010 singer-songwriter documentary, Troubadours: Carole King/James Taylor & the Rise of the Singer-Songwriter, directed by Morgan Neville. The film was accepted at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in the documentary category and PBS-TV broadcast the movie in their acclaimed American Masters series.
In 2014, Kubernik was a consultant and interview subject for an hour-long examination of the musical legacy of Los Angeles for the Australia television series Great Music Cities for Australian subscription television broadcaster XYZnetworks Pty Ltd (www.xyznetworks.com.au). Slash, Brian Wilson, Steve Lukather and Keith Richards were also filmed. Senior Producer is Wade Goring for Australian music television channel MAX.
Kubernik was a featured talking head in director Matthew O’Casey’s 2012 Queen at 40 documentary broadcast on BBC Television and released as a Blu-Ray DVD, Queen: Days Of Our Lives in 2014 via Eagle Rock Entertainment.
In May 2014, filmmaker O’Casey filmed Kubernik in his BBC-TV documentary on singer Meat Loaf, titled Meat Loaf; In and Out of Hell, broadcast in the US market in 2016 on the Showtime Cable TV channel. It was subsequently issued as a DVD via Sony Legacy.
In 2019 Harvey appeared as an interview subject in the David Tourje-directed short documentary entitled John Van Hamersveld: Crazy World Ain’t It. The landmark colorful career of illustrator, designer, artist and photographer Van Hamersveld is discussed by Harvey , visual artist Shepard Fairey, world champion surfer Shaun Thompson, Jeff Ho of the legendary Zephyr Surf Team, graphic designer Louise Sandhous and others. Van Hamersveld designed the iconic Endless Summer visual image properties and album covers for the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, John Hiatt, PIL, Blondie and the 2005 Cream reunion concert.
Kubernik also appears as a screen interview subject for director/producer Neil Norman’s GNP Crescendo documentary, The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard. Jan Savage and Daryl Hooper original members of the Seeds participated along with Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, Iggy Pop, Kim Fowley, Jim Salzer, the Bangles, photographer Ed Caraeff, Mark Weitz of the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Johnny Echols of Love. Miss Pamela Des Barres supplied the narration.
During 2023, Harvey Kubernik and director Christopher M. Allport are co-producing, co-writing and co-editing a music documentary, The Sound of Gold.
The film chronicles the landmark
Dave Gold and Stan Ross Gold Star recording studio in Hollywood and the over 100 hit records created on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Vine Street in the 1951-1984 era.
Interview subjects include Herb Alpert, Chris Montez, Michael Lloyd, Brian Wilson, Jim Keltner, Don Peake, Russ Titelman, Carol Kay, Clem Burke of Blondie, Slim Jim Phantom from the Stray Cats, Eric Bobo of Cypress Hill Gang, Marky Ramone, Al Jardine, H.B. Barnum, Stewart Levine, Andrew Loog Oldham, Don Randi, Donna Loren, Dave Gold, Steven Van Zandt, the Honeys, David Kessel, Donna DeLory, Charles Wright, Darlene Love, Barry Goldberg, Gene Aguilera, Bill Medley, Henry Diltz, and Thee Midniters’ Little Willie G.).
Harvey has done stage lectures and movie analysis at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, about filmmaker and pioneer cinema verité director and Oscar-winner D. A. Pennebaker examining his Bob Dylan Dont Look Back (1965), and David Bowie Ziggy and the Spiders From Mars (1973), films for instructor Dr. David James.
