SHALL WE TALK about sex? Don’t we have to? It’s a Rolling Stones book, after all.
The phrase itself—“rock ’n’ roll”—is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. “I’m gonna rock my baby with a steady roll” isn’t about dancing. “Rock me baby, rock me baby, all night long” isn’t a lullaby. And “Little T & A” isn’t about Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.
The early uproar about rock ’n’ roll being the devil’s music was elevated to iconic status in this 1950s sermon by the Reverend Jimmy Snow that you’ve seen and heard in countless documentaries about the evils of Elvis: “Rock ’n’ roll music and why I preach against it. I believe that it is a contributing factor to our juvenile delinquency of today. I know what it does to you. And I know of the evil feeling that you feel when you sing it. And I know the . . . the . . . lost position that you get into . . . and the beat . . . well . . . uhmm . . . if you talk to the average teenager of today and you ask them what it is about rock ’n’ roll music that they like, and the first thing that they’ll say is the beat, the beat, THE BEAT!”
A less hysterical, much more measured analysis of the same phenomenon was offered by television journalist and commentator Jeff Greenfield:
JEFF GREENFIELD: It began with the Music. Nothing we see in the counterculture—not the clothes, the hair, the sexuality, the drugs, the rejection of reason, the resort to symbols and magic—none of it is separable from the coming to power in the 1950s of rock ’n’ roll music. Brewed in the hidden corners of black America’s cities, its rhythms infected white Americans, seducing them out of the kind of temperate bobby-sox passions out of which Andy Hardy films are spun. Rock ’n’ roll was elemental, savage, dripping with sex; it was just as our parents feared. Not in the conspiracy theories of moral guardians, not that we dropped our books and molested children, but in the more subtle sense of what the music did, unleashing with its power knowledge that our bodies were our own Joy Machines. It would take years for successive generations of young Americans to work the equation out fully; it would take a disillusioning that included a wretched war, a wave of violence, and a brace of public murders of great men to spur on the rejection of reason as a tool of death, and the embrace of rock ’n’ roll not as pleasure but as salvation. But in rock ’n’ roll it began; the first tremors along the generational fault.
Doctor Fred Newman offers this explanation of the connection between music and sexuality: “Psychiatrists have long known that the source of mass hysteria springs from repressed sexual urges, composed of both sadistic and aggressive elements. The number of occasions on which pop singers are physically assaulted by their fans—Jagger himself was recently pulled off a twenty-foot platform in a Zurich stadium and almost torn to pieces—confirms the nature of the emotions involved. Essentially therefore the concert hall hysteria represents a sudden escape of the kind of emotions which the forces of Puritanism, morality, and authority—both social and parental—normally seek to contain. When a pop audience blows its top, it is in fact indulging in a communal act of defiance against a set of values which it feels to be unnecessarily and intolerably restrictive. It is a group protest against a society which it regards as impersonal, mechanistic, and money-bound. Undoubtedly Mick Jagger, purveying as he does his own brand of untamed rebelliousness, is at once a symbol and focal point of this seething insurrection.”
There was nothing new about all this, of course. The same dynamic could certainly be offered up to explain Frank Sinatra’s “bobby-soxer” hysteria in the 1940s. Witness this article from the January 10, 1945, issue of Britain’s the Guardian: “The United States is now in the midst of one of those remarkable phenomena of mass hysteria which occur from time to time on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Frank Sinatra, an amiable young singer of popular songs, is inspiring extraordinary personal devotion on the part of many thousands of young people, and particularly young girls between the ages of, say, twelve and eighteen . . . Psychologists have written soberly about the hypnotic quality of his voice and the remarkable effect upon susceptible young women.”
Even the Beatles have to be viewed through the lens of sexual awakening. In 1978, famed director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) made his directorial debut with a film executive produced by no less a cinema luminary than Steven Spielberg. The movie was called I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and it was the fictional account of that Sunday in 1964 when the Beatles debuted in America on Ed Sullivan. Six teens from New Jersey make their way to Broadway and Fifty-third Street in New York City determined to see their idols up close and personal even though none of them has a ticket to the broadcast.
One of the tag lines describing the film sets the stage: “These youngsters are suffering from a highly contagious disease called ‘Beatlemania.’ The symptoms are . . . screaming, hysteria, hyperventilation, fainting fits, seizures, and spasmodic convulsions. It isn’t fatal but it sure is fun.” It is also very sexy.
FILM CRITIC MIKE WHITE: The most dynamic of the group is [actress Nancy] Allen who plays Pam Mitchell, the frantic fiancée of Eddie. She’s being forced to grow up too fast and be overly responsible. Cutting loose and enjoying a Beatles song or two isn’t an option in her little world. Ironically . . . Allen’s character lucks into a trip into the Beatles’ hotel room where her world and her legs open up at the sight of Paul McCartney’s bass. Witnessing a character’s sexual awakening while moaning and licking the long, hard neck of a guitar is not standard fare in lighthearted teen romps. Without a doubt, Allen’s character’s transformation is remarkable. The once-uptight teen sheds the chains of her premarital oppression, announcing her triumph with screams of orgasmic delight at the sight of the group of crooning British youths.
There was, however, a difference between the way the Beatles aroused teenage girls’ sexuality, and the way the Stones did.
CHRISSIE HYNDE: I listened to the Stones a lot when I was between fourteen and nineteen. Somehow rock ’n’ roll music sounds different when you’re just discovering the opposite sex and all that.
Let me illustrate with two extreme examples.
Do you remember Joyce Maynard? She was the teen wunderkind who made a name for herself when the New York Times published an article she had written called An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life on April 23, 1972. She was back in the headlines in 1998 when she revealed intimate details of her relationship with author J.D. Salinger when he was fifty-three and she was eighteen.
When the Rolling Stones came to perform at Madison Square Garden in New York City during their 1975 Tour of the Americas, Maynard wrote, again for the New York Times:
JOYCE MAYNARD: The first time I heard the Rolling Stones was in 1965, when I was 12. I had seen and loved the Beatles but this was entirely different. The Beatles were round-faced and bouncy, and if they wanted to hug or kiss you, it was in a friendly way. The Rolling Stones were never cuddly, even on Sunday night TV, and in the company of Ed Sullivan, hollow-eyed, cold, looking a bit evil, they were leopards to the Beatles’ springer spaniels, and I thought they were marvelous.
The Stones touched off what were, I think, my first adult sexual rumblings. There was nothing teeny-bopperish in my feelings for the Rolling Stones. I didn’t scream at the sight of them or paste their pictures on my walls. I don’t suppose I understood what I felt when I put on “Satisfaction” and danced in front of the mirror or lay in bed at night as Mick Jagger pleaded, “Come on baby, cry to me” . . .
It is a problem for most 12-year-old girls—and certainly it was for me—that their bodies rarely match their minds. So while the young girl lies in the dark and dreams of being the one who will, at last, give Mick Jagger his Satisfaction, the next morning she must go to school and give an oral report on Bolivia.
If that’s the “good girl” version of teenage sexual awakening, then the “bad girl” version has to be this steamy recollection that rock chanteuse Patti Smith penned for Creem magazine in January of 1973:
PATTI SMITH: Look back. it was 1965. Pa was shouting from the tv room. “jesus christ! jesus christ!” . . . I ran in panting. I was scared silly. There was pa glued to the tv screen cussing his brains out. A rock ’n’ roll band was doing it right on the ed sullivan show. pa was frothing like a dog. I never seen him so mad. but I lost contact with him quick. that band was as relentless as murder. I was trapped in a field of hot dots. the guitar player had pimples. the blonde kneeling down had circles ringing his eyes. one had greasy hair. the other didn’t care. and the singer was showing his second layer of skin and more than a little milk. I felt thru his pants with optic x-ray. this was some hard meat. this was a bitch. five white boys sexy as any spade. their nerves were wired and their third leg was rising. in six minutes five lusty images gave me my first glob of gooie in my virgin panties.
That was my introduction to the Rolling Stones. they did Time is on my side. my brain froze. I was doing all my thinking between my legs. I got shook. light broke. they were gone and I cliff-hanging. like jerking off without coming . . . I can tie the Stones in with every sexual release of my late blooming adolescence. The Stones were sexually freeing confused american children, a girl could feel power. lady glory, a guy could reveal his feminine side without being called a fag. masculinity was no longer measured on the football field . . . Ya never think of the Stones as fags. In full make-up and frills they still get it across. they know just how to ram a woman. they made me real proud to be female. the other half of male. they aroused in me both a feline sense of power and a longing to be held under the thumb.
You said it, Patti. Rock was sex, and the Rolling Stones were rock. And they were brazen about it as well. Let’s do a quick survey of the ways that the Stones led the charge of the sexual revolution of the ’60s and beyond.
In the beginning, it was through the words and music of others—cover versions of the down and dirty paeans to erotica by their American blues heroes, such as two Willie Dixon classics, “I Just Want to Make Love to You” (a hit for Muddy Waters) and “Little Red Rooster” (a hit for Howlin’ Wolf). Then it was the constant flow of hits and album tracks that celebrated venery and volupté such as “The Spider and the Fly,” “Back Street Girl,” “Satisfaction,” “Stray Cat Blues,” “Parachute Women,” “Let It Bleed,” “Live with Me,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Some Girls.” Or how about the ones that were so over the top and outrageous that they had to be disguised by the record company to avoid retribution (“Star Star” and “Little T & A”)! What other band would allow a documentary like Cocksucker Blues to make its way into the public sphere?
And then what about the whole question of androgyny, unisexuality, and homoeroticism that is such a large part of the history and mystery of the Rolling Stones? From the picture sleeves for “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” to the cover of the Some Girls album to the late Guy Peellaert’s erotically charged depictions of the Stones in drag, with naked underaged girls, and in fishnet stockings and full Nazi regalia in his iconic art book Rock Dreams—the Stones have never shied away from their feminine side (They even asked Peellaert to do the cover of It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll in 1974.)
MICK JAGGER: Elvis was very androgynous. I saw Elvis as a rock singer, and obviously you were attracted to him because he was a good-looking guy. If you look at the pictures, the eyes are done with makeup, and everything’s perfect. I mean, look at Little Richard. He had a very feminine appearance, but you didn’t translate that into what Little Richard’s sex orientation was . . . As far as I was concerned, it was part of the whole thing from the beginning. It was very English—guys dressing up in drag is nothing particularly new . . . And it obviously worked and offended people, which was always the big thing, something new to offend them with. I think what we did in this era was take all these things that were unspoken in previous incarnations of rock ’n’ roll and intellectualize them . . . rock ’n’ roll mostly is a very butch thing, and it appeals to one hard side of the masculine character. But I don’t think the Rolling Stones are only a rock band. They can be other things. They can be very feminine.
KEITH RICHARDS: Oh, you should have seen Mick really . . . I’ll put it like this; there was a period when Mick was extremely camp. When Mick went through his camp period, in 1964, Brian and I immediately went enormously butch and sort of laughin’ at him. That terrible thing . . . that switching-around confusion of roles that still goes on.
One final observation about the Stones and sexuality. It comes from one of the best essays about the group, written by Michael Lydon for his 1971 book Rock Folk. Lydon traveled with the group on their infamous 1969 tour of America and recorded the following exchange. I think it best illustrates the intersection of fame, sex, mythology, and perception as reality that this chapter is really all about:
CATHY: Two years ago my girlfriend Mary and I were married and living in Ojai. It was okay, but boring, and all we ever thought about was Mick Jagger. We loved him a lot more than our husbands. So one day we decided: we’ll split, get divorces, and move down to the Strip. It was great, you know, hanging around the clubs. We got to know a lot of groups but never forgot Mick. So imagine how we felt in the Whisky one night when this guy said he was Sam Cutler and asked if we’d like to be with the Stones when they were in LA, and drive ’em around and stuff.
It was Sam who picked me up, and I felt loyal to him, but when we were up at Mick’s house the first night—well, I’m only human. We were all sitting around, and Mick said he was going to bed. I was really disappointed. But he came down again and started pouring perfume on me, and sort of whispered, “Will you come up with me, then.” I almost died, but I managed to say, “Only if my friend Mary can come too.” We had been together through two years, and had to make a pact not to leave the other out. He said okay.
It was funny, man, I could hardly get it on. He makes all the sexy noises in bed, like he does singing. I was laughing so hard, but know what was funniest? For two years I had been thinking with every guy, “He’s great, but he’s not Mick Jagger.” And then with Mick, all I could think was, “He’s great, but he’s not Mick Jagger.”