Appendix A
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STONES BEGIN TOUR BEFORE ITS START
Mark Fineman, The Philadelphia Inquirer,
16 September, 1981 (reprinted with permission)
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Worcester, Mass. — A lightning bolt split the midnight sky above the
Stardust strip-tease lounge, and the sky unleashed a blanket of rain on
this seamy block of Green Street as the 30-foot motor home finally
pulled in alongside Sir Morgan's Cove.
Finally, at midnight, Blue Monday had begun. The Cockroaches had
finally arrived. But the drenched and drunken throng of more than 4,000
filling the sidewalks and street knew better.
"Stones! Stones! Stones!" they chanted in deafening unison. From the
rooftops and car tops and even the tops of the streetlights, they
whistled. They whooped. They screamed. They even launched flares. And,
as 75 Worcester policemen held their yard-long riot batons ready and
snapped down the shields on their riot helmets, the crowd craned for a
glimpse of a legend.
The curtains were drawn on the motor home's windows, but somehow even
that didn't matter. Somehow, the crowd that had spent half a night out
in the rain was too wet and too loose and having too much of its own
party to care. Somehow it was enough that they were only a few feet
from what may be the most famous rock band in the world.
They said the Rolling Stones' first public tour in three years was
going to begin Sept. 25 in Philadelphia.
It won't. The concert in JFK Stadium is still on, but the tour started
here Monday, shortly before midnight, in a small tavern in the heart of
this blue-collar city of 170,000 about an hour west of Boston.
The Rolling Stones' "private" jam session at Sir Morgan's Cove was
supposed to be just that — private — and also secret, with the
Stones attempting to pass incognito as the Cockroaches. But as the
nature of the business would have it, there was a leak. It occurred
early in the day Monday after weeks of rumors. And before the day was
over, the local media would claim that "history has been made in
Worcester."
Before the Stones finished their free two-hour concert early yesterday
morning for 300 "randomly selected" fans, local police would arrest and
charge six people with offenses ranging from drinking in public to
illegally "launching missiles" (beer cans, mostly). The Worcester
police department's already depleted overtime budget would be $5,000
more in the red. And the city's sanitation workers would be faced with
a block-long layer of beer cans, bottles and trash.
But for all that, the corporate brass of the local FM radio station
that helped organize, promote and execute the event at Sir Morgan's
would be more than pleased. In the intensely competitive hard-rock
market surrounding Boston, WAAF-FM had scored a major coup.
Still, nobody would be more pleased by the end of the night than the
owners of the eight liquor licenses on the same block of Green Street
as Sir Morgan's.
For Samuel M. Perotto, 22, Monday night was "a dream come true."
"I've sold about 100 cases of beer already," Perotto, owner of Sam's
tavern, said as he sweated his way through two more beer orders at his
packed bar just after the Rolling Stones had begun their set a few
doors down.
"Usually I have three or four customers on a Monday night, but this —
this is how I've always wanted my bar to look. I'm just upset I didn't
have more warning. We've already made a few beer runs ourselves."
Up the street at Jimmy's Pub, a gregarious, round Englishman named
Jimmy Conrad said that business at his bar was up 400 percent.
"This street has never looked like this before," he said, "and
it'll never look like this again."
Never mind that the owners of Jimmy's and Sam's care little for the
Rolling Stones or their music. Not a single Stones' song appears on
either of their jukeboxes, and Jimmy Conrad admitted candidly that the
most popular tunes in his bar are two 1950s relics, "Chantilly Lace"
and "Blue Moon."
"Me, I don't really follow the Rolling Stones or their music," Conrad
said, "and I certainly wouldn't wait hours in the rain to see them."
"Miss Strip USA of 1980" heartily agreed. Better known as Lady Dee to
patrons of the Stardust Lounge, the young woman was standing in full
costume outside the nude-dancing parlor across from Sir Morgan's.
"Naw, I don't really like the Stones," said Lady Dee, adding that she
had won her "Miss Strip" title against serious competition in Las Vegas
with the help of her "famous fire show."
"I know my show is a bit, well, on the sadistic side — I light my
arms on fire and swallow fire — but that doesn't mean I like the
Stones' music. No, I lean more toward Neil Diamond and Barbra
Streisand."
Lady Dee looked down the block and shook her head as a member of the
street crowd began shinnying up a streetlight.
"You know, one of my customers, an old-timer who has lived on this
block all his life, said he hasn't seen Green Street like this since
the day World War II ended. Man, these people are just plain crazy."
And all this because of a rumor that Mick Jagger gave a marijuana
cigarette to a teenager a month ago 20 miles away in the rural town of
North Brookfield.
The Rolling Stones have been staying in North Brookfield for about a
month now. Since mid-August, the group has been spending what reliable
sources estimated at $2,000 a day to rent a 140-acre farm. There, the
group's promotion people said, the Stones have been rehearsing and
preparing stage sets for their Philadelphia debut.
The place is called Long View Farm, and it came complete with two
ultra-modern recording studios, saunas, whirlpools, a billiard room and
even a stage the owner built especially for the Rolling Stones and to
their specifications before their arrival.
Long View's owner is Gilbert Markle, a 40-ish "college
professor-turned-entrepreneur" who in the past has played host to such
celebrities as Stevie Wonder and the J. Geils Band.
Markle's main job has been security and secrecy. He refuses to even
discuss whether the Stones are at Long View on the basis of a
"gentlemen's agreement" he said he had made with Jagger.
And he has done his job well, with only a few exceptions. The most
notable exception came a few weeks ago when a local newspaper printed a
story implying that Mick Jagger had handed a lit joint to a teenage boy
while Jagger and Stones' lead guitarist Keith Richard [sic!] were
playing tennis at North Brookfield High School.
"Mick was just furious about that story — the only truth to it was
that he was playing tennis that day," said Rob Barnett, morning disc
jockey at WAAF.
"I think it was that more than anything that got him to talk to me,"
Barnett said.
About a week later, Barnett camped at Worcester Airport for five hours
one afternoon waiting for Jagger. It was Aug. 26, the day Jagger flew
to Philadelphia for a press conference to announce the group's tour.
When Jagger stepped off his private jet after his return flight to
Worcester, Barnett pounced and asked for an interview. Jagger agreed.
Barnett said his five-minute interview was aired as an exclusive on
radio stations worldwide, and "we started a relationship that never
ended."
Steve Stockman, 23, WAAF's promotions director, said he kept in
constant contact with members of the band, but "it wasn't until last
Friday that everything started to gel. Ian Stewart, the group's
keyboard player, told me the group wanted to make some small, private
night-club appearances. They hadn't appeared before an audience in
three years, and they needed to warm up to crowds before Philadelphia."
Stockman said Stewart had selected Sir Morgan's on his own. He said
Stewart had anonymously visited "every bar in Worcester" in search of a
place that seated no more than 400, had a low ceiling and a high
stage.
"All he needed was a mechanism to get tickets out to loyal fans in the
area without revealing the location of the event," Stockman said.
Together, WAAF and the Stones decided that the station would start
announcing on Monday morning that the Stones were giving such a
performance, but that no tickets could be purchased.
Instead, the station announced, representatives of WAAF and the group
would be driving the streets of Worcester throughout the day looking
for people wearing WAAF T-shirts or with WAAF bumper stickers either on
themselves or their cars.
They, and they alone, would get the mere 300 nontransferable,
laser-etched, computer-coded tickets marked, "Blue Monday" and "The
Cockroaches."
The scene in downtown Worcester on Monday was a zoo. "It was a
carnival," said Dave Goldberg, a city resident who works for a small
noncommercial radio station in town. "Traffic was at a standstill.
Everyone was running around looking for the WAAF vans. It was like a
holiday in the city."
Women plastered the bumper stickers to their chests. One man covered
his entire body with them — including one wrapped around his neck
brace. Another fan decorated every inch of his custom van in Early
Bumper Sticker.
"What can I say? Ya gotta love a promotion like this," Stockman said
yesterday. "It's just a shame something went wrong."
A Boston rock station, an arch-competitor of WAAF, was leaked the
information by either Worcester police or a member of the band that
played before the Stones were to perform at Sir Morgan's. And the
Boston station immediately began broadcasting not only where the Stones
would appear, but also that people should stay away.
"They said there'd be a riot there or something," Stockman said. "It
was awful, and the Stones were almost as furious with that station as
we were. But to tell you honestly, we did get lucky. It easily could
have turned into mayhem. All I can say is thank God for the rain."
Daniel Egan, Worcester's deputy police chief, was thanking God
yesterday, too. Egan, who was filling in this week for the city's
vacationing police chief, sat back in his leather chair, rubbed his
large red face and sighed.
"No question that Monday night was a disaster waiting to happen." said
Egan, making little effort to conceal his anger.
"Of course I'm upset. We didn't find out for sure on this thing until
noon Monday. Looking back, I should have smelled something in the wind
on Saturday when one of my lieutenants was told that Sir Morgan's
wanted 17 off-duty police officers for inside security on Monday
night.
"But it just didn't register. Who would have thought the Rolling Stones
would come to Worcester?
"We could have planned for this better if we'd had something more than
rumor."
By yesterday, a new crop of rumors had started again.
Both Stockman and the Stones' chief publicist, Paul Wasserman, refused
to say whether there would be more "secret night club shows" before the
group comes to Philadelphia. But Wasserman said the group "definitely
wanted to play several times" before their concert debut.
The hottest rumor in Worcester yesterday was that the Stones were going
to play at a Boston night club one night this week.
The rumor made it all the way to North Brookfield, but it didn't matter
too much to the folks in the 169-year-old town, a town of 4,100 where
the only industry manufactures rubber soles.
Between the rock stars and reporters, residents of North Brookfield are
accustomed to the excitement by now.
Many of the residents even got the treasured tickets to Blue Monday.
Among them was Robert Lemieux, owner of the North Brookfield News Co.,
known locally as "the news room."
"My daughter has gotten friendly with the Stones' bodyguard, and he
gave her a couple of tickets Monday morning out of the blue," Lemieux
said yesterday afternoon. "I was going to go with her, but my other
daughter kept after me until 5 p.m. I finally gave in.
"It's just as well. There'll be more up here as time goes on — more
celebrities, more attention, more excitement. In the meantime, I guess
everyone around here is just kind of sitting back and wondering. After
Monday night, what can the world possibly do for an encore?"
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