BELFAST, PARIS, AND NICE, MARCH 25–MAY 21, 1971
ONE MONTH AFTER THE TOUR WAS OVER, the 5,300-word article I had written about it appeared in the April 15, 1971, issue of Rolling Stone magazine under the title “The Rolling Stones on Tour: Goodbye Great Britain.” For those who care about such matters, the cover of that issue featured a photograph of Joe Dallesandro, the underground film star who had made a career out of appearing nude in Andy Warhol films, cradling a naked baby to his bare chest.
In what I suppose you might call a nice bit of synchronicity, it was also Joe Dallesandro whose penis could be seen hanging to the right in a pair of very tight black jeans on the cover designed by Andy Warhol for Sticky Fingers, which was released on the very same day. Not that I was thinking about any of this at the time.
For me, the most significant thing about the piece was that I had finally managed to get something I had written published in the back of the magazine rather than on the news pages up front where my articles usually ran. And while no one from the Rolling Stones bothered to get in touch to tell me just how accurately I had portrayed what had happened during the tour, it was not as though I was waiting to hear from them.
Turning my attention to what I thought were definitely far more important stories, I had by then already spent what I can only describe as the single most frightening week of my life in Belfast covering the ongoing religious war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland colloquially known as “the Troubles.”
In a city where everyone was so high on revolution that the sound of automatic weapons fire and bombs going off in the distance at night seemed like music to their ears, I soon realized that unlike Ernest Hemingway, I was not cut out to be a war correspondent and returned to London as quickly as I could.
After I had filed my story about Belfast, I began looking for something new to write about. Without any idea what I was going to do when I got there, I somehow managed to persuade Andrew Bailey, the editor of the London bureau of Rolling Stone who had by then also become my good friend, to let me cover the Cannes Film Festival.
On my way there, I stopped off in Paris to interview a high-ranking member of the North Vietnamese delegation to the Peace Talks which had already been going on for years without doing anything to end the war in Vietnam. Not surprisingly, the representative had nothing much new to say and the story never ran. I was about to leave for Cannes when I got a call informing me that I had been chosen to conduct the Rolling Stone interview with Keith Richards in the South of France.
After flying to Nice on a prepaid ticket, I walked into an office at the airport to pick up the car someone from London had rented in my name so I could drive to Keith’s house to set up the interview. After signing a variety of forms in triplicate, I went back outside only to see that I had been given the keys to a shockingly expensive-looking French sports car. The car was so utterly fabulous that James Bond would not have looked out of place behind the wheel. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that unlike all the cars I had driven in America, this one had a clutch and a stick.
When I tried to exchange the vehicle for something a bit less grand, the woman in the office told me that what with the Cannes Film Festival already in full swing, no other cars were available. My choice was simple. I could either hitch a ride to Keith’s house or learn how to drive this sleek machine.
Knowing exactly what James Bond would have done in this situation, I slid suavely behind the wheel of the car, turned the key in the ignition, and stepped down on the gas just as hard as I could. Sputtering loudly, the engine immediately died. Stubbornly, I started it right up again. Again I floored it. Again the engine stalled. After somehow finally managing to jam the stick into first gear, I lifted my foot off the clutch slowly enough to ease out of the parking lot. This was my second big mistake.
Utterly unable to master the intricacies of clutching and shifting, I soon learned I could not even go from first to second without grinding the gears so loudly that the sound was painful to my ears. If I pressed my foot down too hard on the accelerator, the car would shoot forward like a bullet from the barrel of a gun. If I took my foot off the clutch too quickly, the engine would die and the car would stop right in the middle of the road.
Behind me, angry French drivers, all of whom had only recently competed at Le Mans, began to blow their horns. Roaring past me with that classic look of utter Gallic disdain on their faces, motorists of both sexes threw me the French finger while uttering curses that left no doubt as to my dubious parenthood and total lack of brains.
As soon as I reached the stretch of impossibly narrow, curving mountain road high above the sea leading to Villefranche, I knew I was going to die. One false move behind the wheel and I would go careening over the edge and plummet to my death on the jagged rocks far below.
On the spot, I made what I suppose you might call a battlefield decision. No more stopping. From now on, I would not stop for anyone or anything. I would not stop for red lights, I would not stop for stop signs, and I most definitely would not stop for all the gendarmes in blue uniforms who were directing traffic in the middle of crowded roundabouts with whistles clenched between their teeth.
Staying resolutely in second gear as I slowly cruised through one intersection after another, I began waving my hands in crazy circles to let everyone know I was no longer actually in control of this vehicle. For some reason, this technique seemed to work wonders for me and the next thing I knew, I was turning off the treacherous mountain road and on my way to Villefranche.
By the time I finally nosed the car through the massive black wrought-iron front gates of Villa Nellcôte, I was soaked with sweat. Even to myself, I smelled like a dead coyote. My hands were shaking, my self-confidence was shot, and even though the car was somehow still in one piece, I was a total wreck. Having to walk up the broad marble front steps of what looked to me like a smaller version of the Palace at Versailles did nothing to ease my anxiety.
Although I had come to talk to Keith Richards about the Rolling Stone interview, I had no idea if he would even know who I was. After all, we had not spoken a single world to one another on the entire tour. While breaking into the dressing room with him in Brighton had been great fun, dropping by unannounced at his palatial home in the South of France was something else again. For all I knew, the man might very well send me packing before I could even begin to explain why I was there.
As I stood waiting in the front hallway for the young French woman who had greeted me to go find “Monsieur Ree-chards,” all these thoughts kept churning through my head. Making it all just that much worse, the house was so big that her search seemed to take forever.
And then, without warning, Keith was suddenly standing before me. Looking much healthier and a lot happier than when I had seen him last, he cried out, “Bob Greenfield!” That Keith actually knew my name was an utter shock. This feeling was compounded a hundredfold when Keith stepped forward and hugged me like some long-lost comrade with whom he had soldiered through the war.
As absurd as this may now seem, a feeling of well-being suddenly coursed through my entire body. Like a pilgrim at Lourdes, I had just been cured by the magic healing touch of the star. The great Keith Richards, he of the get-out-of-me-bloody-face-before-I-smash-you-over-the-head-with-me-guitar persona, not only knew who I was but was actually glad to see me.
When Keith said, “So, how are you, man?” I was still so totally blown away that I began to stammer. Regaining my composure, I told Keith I was fine and that it was great to see him but I needed to spend a few days covering the Cannes Film Festival before he and I could start doing the Rolling Stone interview together, so would that be cool with him?
With Keith, it was all cool, man. Whenever I was ready, he said I could come back and stay in the house so we could “hang out together and talk and really get this thing done right! Know what I mean, man?” Despite having only a very vague idea of what he was talking about, I told Keith I most certainly did.
Before I knew it, I was back outside the house again and hopping behind the wheel of that car like it had always been my own. With the spirit of 007 coursing through my veins, I turned on the ignition, slid the stick into first, put one foot down on the clutch and the other on the gas, and sped out through the front gates of Villa Nellcôte, spewing gravel behind me in every direction.
Finding my way back to the same twisting stretch of narrow mountain road, I began driving faster than I ever had before while shifting smoothly through all the gears like my brain was now equipped with synchromesh. As I sped past one slowpoke French driver after another, I could not even be bothered to throw them the finger. Instead, I just waved dismissively at them like the great Stirling Moss on his way to yet another Grand Prix win.
When I finally clambered out of the car after arriving in Cannes in world-record time, I was still as high as a kite on an adrenaline rush of major proportions. Although I had never expected this to happen, I was now back in the charmed circle of those who then surrounded the Rolling Stones.