Welcome to week four of the music of the Rolling Stones 1962-1974. This week we focus in on that period of 1967 and 1968, picking up from where we loft, left off last week with the discussion of the release of Between the Buttons in that album in February of 67 and the drug bust that I promise to talk more about this week. And we'll take it all the way through the release of Their Satanic Majesties Request at the end of 1967, and into the album that follows that, Beggars Banquet. So let's talk a little bit about some of the issues that are going to come up as we kind of connect up, tha the period after, between the buttons leaving leading up to the period that ultimately leads into the album, Let It Bleed. I mentioned before these drug busts of Mick and Keith and then later, there was a drug bust involving Brian, and these significantly affect, The Rolling Stones. It kind of makes 1967 into a very difficult year for the group in a lot of kinds of ways. And we'll get into that in just a minute. One of the real consequences of the drug busts is that it really kind of turns Keith and Mick into outlaws, that is, they kind of think of themselves, especially Keith Richards, thinks of himself as a kind of outlaw. And Brian goes into kind of decline, kind of an emotional, mental decline, becomes very paranoid about drug busts and that, because they felt like they were being set up, and so, you know, they felt like they could be victims at any moment of these things. And so it really does have an effect on the way things happen musically in 1967 as well. Well, by early 1967 into the middle of the year, Andrew Loog Oldham is pretty much out of the picture. Their Satanic Majesties will ultimately be were ultimately produced by the Rolling Stones, and then for Beggars Banquet, Jimmy Miller will come in, and we'll talk a little bit more about Jimmy Miller when we get to our discussion of Beggars Banquet. It means that Andrew is no longer managing the image of the Stones, and I guess one can imagine why Andrew might not have been such an attractive person to the Stones at this point. Andrew after all had manufactured and pushed this image of the stones as the bad boys, and the Stones had gone along with it enthusiastically but by the time we got to the beginning in 1967, it turned out that bad boy image was what got them into so much trouble. So not really sure if that's, if, if that's what it was, probably with a lot of people who grow up together the way these guys did in their early 20s. There were a lot of issues involved, but anyway, a split there, and maybe Mick Jagger taking more of a, a role in kind of managing the band's affairs, especially with regard to their imaging and that kind of thing. Their Satanic Majesties for December 67 marks the full arrival of psychedelia and what I would call the artist approach. We talked last, last week about The Stones moving really from sort of more craftsman kind of approach to a more kind of artist approach. And so Beggars and Their Satanic Majesties really is, that record where you can really see that in full swing in addition to all of the stuff that we usually associate with psychedelia. [NOISE] Beggars Banquet is often seen by critics as a real return to blues rock roots and oftentimes critics will cast it as if it's a kind of rejection of psychedelia, as if the Stones themselves realized that Their Satanic Majesties Request was not a good album, and they were going to get back to their roots and abandon everything that had led up to Their Satanic Majesties. Now, I would like to argue that it's not really quite that way the Beggars Banquet does mark a turning point, but it's a turning point that assimilates the many developments that, that, that happened up through Their Satanic Majesties into it. And so it's really more of an assimilation of a lot of different kinds of things in the Stones' history together into kind of a trademark sound, than a rejection, and I'll make that argument when we get to this specific discussion of those records. I would say that while this a confused period for the band in terms of their personal lives and the things that are going on, I think it's a rich period, in terms of their music, and I especially think that their Satanic Majesties is a much under rated and probably wrongly maligned album. It makes all kind of sense and is, is informing in all kinds of ways with regards to the Stones as artists, as songwriters and in terms of their self image, it's, it's not quite clear to me why so many people ha, have problem with it, unless they just don't like the music so much, but as a musicologist its a very valuable album for us to look at and i think ver, very underrated. Well, let's take a few minutes to sort of survey some of the music that came out in 67 and then we'll pick up on 68 in a later video. Some of the music that come out in 67 and also some of the other events, the tours, and the trials, we'll get a little bit more in to that right now. So, as we said last week let's spend the night together with the B-side Ruby Tuesday are released in January of 67 and then the album Between the Buttons is released in February of 67. The group releases a compilation album called, Flowers, in the summer of 1967, released in the U.S. only. It does, it's, it's, it's a compilation record, but it has three previously unreleased tracks on it, although they were not recorded specifically for, this Flowers compilation, their leftovers and we'll talk about that in a, in a minute here when we get to talking about that album Flowers. In August in the UK, in September in the US the song We Love You is released with Dandelion as its B side that's the single coming out of the summer. There's also a promotional video that goes with that, that I want to spend a little bit of time talking about it's strange that in December the Stones released two singles. First, they released a single called In Another Land. We'll have a chance to talk more about this song in one of the song close-ups. A song written by Bill Wyman and almost record by accident. It's released as a, as a single in the U.S. with the song, another song off Their Majesties Their Satanic Majesties called The Lantern is the B-side, but then almost immediately after that they released the song She's a Rainbow with 2000 Light Years from Home on the B-side, but, a, again, having been released in December in the US, and that, a track goes to number 25 in the tra in the US charts. Also in December as we mentioned before, Their Satanic Majesties Request is a, is released and goes to number two in the US, number three in the UK. We can also think about the Tours and Trials of 1967. As I've mentioned a couple of times already this week and, and last week as well there was a big drug bust at Keith Richard's home out in the countryside on February the 12th, 1967 at that dru, at, in the house at the time Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Mary Ann Faithful, a friend of theirs named Robert Fraser, others were in the home, and Keith, Mick, and Robert Fraser were all charged, brought up on drug charges. Now the story that goes with this is that there was a periodical or a, a newspaper, a kind of a, a, a tabloidish kind of newspaper called News of the World. And they, they would have a tendency to kind of maybe make the news a little bit like kind of get things to happen so they could then cover it. And they had th, th, they had advanced information that there was going to be this party at Keith's place and all of these rock celebrities were going to be there, George Harrison had been there, Brian Jones was supposed to be there but he was busy working on another project and couldn't get there in time for the party. And the, the newspaper tipped off the police that this party was going to be going on and so the police came in, and they knew they were going to find something, and they did. The charges that they ended up bringing Fraser Mick and Keith up on were really pretty small compared to what, what they, they might have otherwise been. But there are famous stories about Marianne Faithfull, you know, sitting on a couch wearing nothing but a rug, you know, and this sort of scandalous idea of hippy sort of sex orgy drug fest kind of deal. Well it, it may seem romantic in some ways now but I can guarantee at the time it was bad news for the Rolling Stones. It really was a kind of a, a culmination of the bad boy thing. And as I suggested last week it was an instance of the of the authorities really kind of coming after the Stones because they set a, a bad example. Their involvement with the law, this isn't the first sort of involvement they had with the law, in fact, we can all, go all the way back to March of 1965, and this almost seems like a comical story by comparison. When Mick Bill Wyman, the bassist, and Brian Jones were at a gas station, the group was coming back from a gig late at night, and Bill Wyman, who usually is not the kind of guy who has to stop to, to use the bathroom. He just had one of those moments where it's guys, we really got to stop. I really have to use the bathroom. So they go to this gas station and the guy who's the, who's running this gas station won't give them the key to the, restroom because he doesn't like the way they look. He's not going to let these scrung scroungy rock and rollers use the bathroom and dirty up the facilities, right? So, Rolling Stones get a little bit belligerent, and they make faces at him and, you know, the way young men are wont to do with when it comes to authority, and they go around the corner, and they take care of their business against the wall there. Well, oh, scandal of scandals. In come the police. Do, do, do, do, do, do. And and they're brought up on charges and they end up having to pay a small penalty. A small fine for this sort of disorderly conduct. But it really, the, the, what, what ended up happening is that then the notoriety around around getting busted. It just goes to show you how, what, what it took to be a bad boy [LAUGH] in 1965 in the UK but nevertheless the notoriety around them really kind of enhanced their image at this point. But now we fast forward to February 67. This drug bust, it's not so good for them. It's serious stuff. They're facing some real charges and some real time in jail. Well also in, in 1967 we've got Brian working on film music. To a film that a, a german film, and working with people like Jimmy Page and others. Where Bill kind of created an out lift for Brian with really fantastic that he was doing that time he was so busy working out that he couldn't get to Keith's party with where the drug, drug bust was. We should also mention that, throughout the most of the time we've been talking about, going back at least to 1965, maybe to 1964, Bill Wyman has been producing other artists and finding outlets for his own songs and his own productions outside of The Rolling Stones, so he's got kind of this side career going on. You can, if, if you want to check out some of this music, there's an album, a CD that's out there, a collection by a group called Moon's Train that has a bunch of kind of rare recordings from 1965 through 68. And one record that often brought up and talked about a bit is an album by a group called The End. The album is called Introspection. It was begun in the summer of 1967, but somehow didn't end up getting released until late 69. So it was a, it was a psychedelic record. It was already late 69. Psychadelia was kind of out of fashion so they kind of, kind of missed the boat on that one, but it reminds us that Bill Wyman continued to be active outside of the Stones. And it won't be long in our story before we see that he's bringing out his own solo album and his own, his own act as a way of sort of getting his, his own musical expression out. Well, March through April of 67, the Rolling Stones do a European Tour. No gigs in the U.K. on that one. In June of 67, there's a trial and conviction of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Robert Fraser. I mean, seriously, convicted, into jail you go. Now, they didn't have to spend much time in jail, that is, Mick and Keith didn't have to spend much time in jail, because they're, they were they were let out on bail and other kinds of things that to, to, to pay for their, pay their debt to society. Robert Fraser who wasn't a rock star, he was an art dealer, was not so lucky. He actually, I think ended up having to do most of his time. But what got The Rolling Stones out of this sentence, of this, of this conviction really was an article that appeared, and a big London newspaper entered by William Rees-Mogg, and it was called, Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?, And this coming from a respected member of the, a, newspaper business. Basically shamed the authorities into kind of letting Jagger and Richards off the hook, okay, but again, Robert Frazier, not as lucky in that regard. But never the less, the whole argument was really, is this the way you deal with young people minor infractions? You're just making it, it's unfair, and so Jagger and Richards got out of it. But they were very, very shaken by this experience. Mick Jagger was reduced to tears in court Richards was stoic but you know it left, this stuff did a very, very, a strong mark on the group. Well, by September of 1967 there, the official split between the Rolling Stones and Andrew Oldham occurs. they, they had, as I said before during the course of the year, been rather distant anyway, but there was an official split at least that's the date that the Rolling Stones in their their book According to the Stones give as the official split for The Stones and Andrew Luke Oldham and then in October 67 Brian is also convicted and then released but does have to spend some time in jail, and so you got three very nervous perhaps bitter in the case of Brian, a little bit paranoid, Rolling Stones now, and so maybe being a bad boy, it's not the same kind of thing anymore. The interesting thing about this bad boy thing, is that I've said a couple of times during the course of of our lectures here that what it took to be a bad boy was not really very much back in those back in 65, 64, 66, I mean, you could be impolite. You looked a little bit scruffy you know, maybe you relieved yourself on the side of a building late at night you know, that's all it took really to be a bad boy. And and the image was somewhat constructed. There's no sense in which the, the Rolling Stones were anymore bad boys than The Beatles say. But it's the image they had. And Keith Richards has famously has said, you know, The Beatles already had the white hats. You know, in the Westerns the good guys wore the white hats and the bad guys wore the black hats. And so Keith Richards has said, the Beatles already had the white hats so we wore the black hats. But before the drug bust, those hats were kind of grey. But after the drug bust, they were definitely black. And so that gives you a sense that there was really a change. A kind of a change in attitude. And, and as you'll see the Rolling Stones continue to try to flaunt and provoke, flaunt authority and, and, and provoke as these next few years go by. Well let's turn in the next video now to the summer of 1967 to Flowers into some of those singles.
