WHAT BETTER WAY TO WASH AWAY THE BAD TASTE that the fiasco at the Marquee Club has left in everyone’s mouth than by swilling as much champagne as possible at a party to which the Rolling Stones have invited a very select group of friends to help them bid farewell to the land of their birth. Adding to the allure, the gala will be taking place in a rather fashionable small hotel on the banks of the River Thames.
Just forty minutes by train from London’s Paddington Station, Skindles Hotel in Maidenhead sits right on the river by a very picturesque stone bridge. Although both Winston Churchill and Princess Margaret have stayed at Skindles in the past, the hotel has also earned itself a somewhat notorious reputation as the place where those engaged in adulterous affairs in London often go to have it off with one another in relative privacy.
The Rolling Stones will be spending their last night together in England there because Lady Elizabeth Anson has determined that Skindles is the perfect site for this particular celebration. Having spent the last eleven years putting on gala parties virtually every night of the week for those who can afford her services, Lady Elizabeth is not only really good at what she does but also a cousin of the Queen and the younger sister of one of Mick’s good friends, the well-known photographer Patrick Lichfield.
As Lady Elizabeth will later say, “Mick himself seemed to really care about the details. He explained to me that because the party might get out of control, we didn’t really want to have it in a historically listed building or some place with a fine collection of art where if people decided to trash things, we would get ourselves in deep trouble.
“And so I began thinking along the lines of ‘Where can I find somebody who is pretty desperate and would like the notoriety of having such a party because of the business it would bring them and won’t mind terribly if a bit of trashing goes on?’ Skindles was going through a very, very tough time financially, and so they were very pleased indeed to have the rental.”
After Jo Bergman goes to check out the place, she decides that, yes indeed, this is where the party should take place. Leaving all the details to Lady Elizabeth and her staff, Jo then turns her focus to a problem Marshall Chess has only just brought to her attention.
As Jerry Pompili, who worked as the house manager of the Fillmore East in New York before doing security for the Stones on the English tour, will later say, “Although Sticky Fingers had not yet been released, someone suddenly realized no one had ever bothered to write down the lyrics for ‘Bitch,’ ‘Brown Sugar,’ ‘Moonlight Mile,’ and ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,’ which meant that those four songs could not be copyrighted. Jo Bergman had me go over to Mick’s house with the acetates and drop a needle on them and try to figure out what the hell he was singing. Which was not really all that easy.
“I played the acetates over and over and wrote down all the lyrics I could understand by hand. Then I took the pages back to Jo and Mick came into the office and looked at them and that got his memory going so he was able to fill in most of the blanks. We had one disagreement and it was on ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.’ There was one line that sounded to me and everybody else like ‘Yeah, I’ve got flatted feet now, now, now,’ but Mick swore that was not what he had sung. He couldn’t remember what it was, so we just went with ‘Yeah, I’ve got flatted feet now, now, now.’”
A very tough and savvy street guy from New Jersey who often carried a Beretta in his back pocket while on duty at the Fillmore East, Pompili then begins working with Lady Elizabeth Anson on planning the party. Ignoring the fact that the two of them are as different as chalk and cheese, Pompili also begins hitting on her but to no avail. Apparently recognizing his true talents, Lady Elizabeth assigns Pompili the all-important task of setting off the fireworks display that will serve as one of the highlights of the Stones’ farewell party on the banks of the Thames.
With vintage champagne flowing freely from the bar, two hundred people crowd a ballroom where weddings and tea dances are usually held. Although John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Roger Daltrey, and Stephen Stills are all there, Keith Richards is nowhere to be seen. Considering the wild spirit of abandon everyone seems to have brought with them to this party tonight, this will in the end prove to be a blessing in disguise for all concerned.
As loud music plays over the public address system, people begin getting royally pissed. As Jerry Pompili will later say, “I don’t really remember all that much about the party because just like everyone else who was there, I got extremely fucking drunk. I was totally drenched in champagne, my shirt was off, and I kept trying to corner Elizabeth Anson all night long. Being a proper English lady, she was very polite but I got nowhere with her at all.
“At one point in the evening, I stumbled down to the banks of the river where the fireworks were so we could begin shooting them off. I don’t know what I was using to ignite them but I set myself on fire and the guy from Chip’s crew I had come there with had to roll me in the grass to put out the flames. We were all so fucked up that no one even noticed. I think I must have blacked out after that because the next thing I remember I was sitting in the front seat of my Volkswagen van when John and Yoko came by and said, ‘Are you going to London? Can you give us a ride?’ And I said, ‘Give you a ride? Are you fucking crazy? I can’t even stand up.’”
As Lady Elizabeth Anson would later recall, “The guests got ridiculously out of control. That wasn’t Mick’s idea of fun. It was the hangers-on. I can still clearly remember watching people throwing bottles of vintage champagne into the river and thinking that if anyone at Skindles was really clever, they would send a diver down there after the party and make extra money by recovering the bottles. In fact, I’m sure they’re all still there. Right at the bottom of the River Thames.”
At around two in the morning, the powers that be at the hotel decide the time has come to shut down the music. Without any warning, the PA suddenly goes dead. Wandering around the ballroom in a somewhat altered state, Bianca starts protesting what has just happened by saying, “You can’t do this to us. This is 1971. Things have progressed beyond this. We can stay up later than two in the morning.”
No doubt prompted by how distraught the love of his life feels about this, Mick gets right into it by loudly demanding to know why the music has been stopped. After being told that it was done to comply with a local ordinance, Mick decides to demonstrate his extreme displeasure with this response by flinging a chair through one of the large plate-glass windows overlooking the river.
As Alan Dunn will later say, “I’m not certain if Mick threw that chair through the window because they had shut off the power or as his last act of defiance against the English establishment.”
Forget the band’s final shows at the Roundhouse or the made-for-television disaster at the Marquee. It is with this signal gesture and the loud sound of breaking glass that the Rolling Stones finally bid farewell to England. Time to turn off the lights. This party is over.