Free Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye by Robert Greenfield Page A

word with Keith on this tour and doubt he even knows who I am or what I am doing here, I have now become such an integral part of the Stones’ traveling party in my own mind that before I know it I am standing right beside Keith with a metal comb in my hand doing all I can to help him.
    Twist-twist-twist, out come the screws one after another. Like a pair of safecrackers working on a vault in the Bank of England, neither one of us speaks as we focus on the task at hand. Sagging backward, the door suddenly falls open before us. Hauling it into the dressing room, we fling it to the floor and then stand back so everyone can file past us into what for the Stones before a show is always a safe haven where no one but those they know and trust can ever go.
    When at long last the promoter finally shows up with a set of keys dangling from his hand, everyone just ignores him. Innocent as newborn babes, none of them has any idea at all who could have done this dastardly deed. Having just aided and abetted Keith Richards in committing the crime of breaking and entering in the name of justice, rock ’n’ roll style, I now feel certain that I do in fact belong on this tour.

    Dear old Keith. What a lad indeed he was back then. Unlike Mick, Keith seemed to have no interest whatsoever in high society, nor any real need to seek approval from anyone but what was often overlooked about him was the aspirational aspect of his personality. As working-class as he had been raised and still so often seemed to be in many ways, Keith always gravitated to the company of natural-born aristocrats who, just like him, had been born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
    Unwilling to cut his conscience to fit this year’s fashions, Keith never met his betters on any terms but his own. What you saw with Keith was what you got. If you liked it, great. You could join the party and try to hang out with him for as long as your system would allow. If not, then you could just ride on, baby, and find something else to do with your precious time.
    Much like Mick, Keith could also sometimes be truly impossible to control. Shortly before the tour began, Keith had set everyone’s nerves on edge by failing to show up at all in the studio for the session during which the Stones had cut “Moonlight Mile,” the final track on Sticky Fingers. Asked if this had caused any tension between Mick and Keith, a longtime Stones insider who was on the tour would later say, “Well, if your lead guitarist doesn’t turnup for the session when you’re cutting the final track on your new album, I’m sure there’s bound to be a bit of tension, yes. Whether Mick accepted it is another question because he’d already seen what had happened to Brian and might have thought, ‘Here’s another casualty waiting to happen.’”
    While this was in fact precisely the kind of behavior Brian Jones had exhibited before being asked to leave the band, Keith was made of far sterner stuff. Despite how out of it he had seemed at times during the 1970 European tour, Keith had still somehow made it through all those gigs intact. The man’s commitment to the Rolling Stones was so deep that even if he was at death’s door, everyone knew Keith would always be there when the show began.
    Already well on his way to developing the full-blown Pirate King persona he would refine over the coming years into a character only Johnny Depp could have played on screen, Keith had not yet ever spoken to anyone at length for publication. He was the one who made the music while Mick did all the talking. Long before they ever became known as “The Glimmer Twins,” this was an arrangement that seemed to suit them both perfectly.
    It was not until I spoke to Keith again recently for a book on which I was then working that I realized how much this aspect of his personality had changed over the years. After so many phone calls notifying me precisely when he would come on the line that I