1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything (2021) s01e02 Episode Script

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear
Some flowers in your hair
I read it in one of the papers
that you'll be giving a free concert
in San Francisco
We are doing a free concert
in San Francisco.
- When?
- On December
- Six.
- Sixth.
And the location
is not Golden Gate Park, unfortunately,
but it's somewhere adjacent to it,
which is a bit larger.
For those who come to San Francisco
It's creating a sort of
microcosmic society.
You know, it just sets an example
to the rest of America
as to how one can behave
in large gatherings.
Hello, you're on KSAN.
The main thing we saw all day
was bad trips and freak-outs.
It's really heavy.
Everybody was in a hurry
to get high now, get high fast,
have a good time now,
create Woodstock by three o'clock.
And that's kinda the spirit that
everybody was going in there with.
Get out of my way.
I'm gonna have my Woodstock.
Greatest rock and roll band
in the world, the Rolling Stones.
The Rolling Stones.
We're splitting.
You know, if those cats can't
If you th We're splitting, man,
if those cats don't stop
beating everybody up inside.
I want him out of the way, man.
Why are we fighting? Come on.
Everyone, Hells Angels, everybody.
Well, the Rolling Stones'
tour of the United States is over.
They wound it up with a free concert
at the Altamont Speedway
for more than 300,000 people.
There were four deaths
and an awful lot of scuffles reported.
We've received word
that someone was stabbed to death
in front of the stage
by a member of the Hells Angels.
Our phones are open.
We'd like to hear from you.
What was the Altamont Free Concert like?
Altamont was the Pearl Harbor of rock.
It was the death knell for the beautiful
people and the end of the '60s.
One world was ending
and another one was beginning.
The "peace and flowers" love thing
was over.
The dream's over.
- In 1971
- Music said something.
The world was changing.
We were creating the
21st century in 1971.
Lookin' at the devil
Grinnin' at his gun
Fingers start shakin'
I begin to run
II want to thank you
For lettin' me
Be myself again
Thank you for lettin' me
Be myself again
Everybody reacted in different
ways to the end of the '60s.
It was a definite transitional time.
Everything had gotten
really messed up in America.
Many of the music stars just
turned around and checked out.
It was like they all went into hiding.
And Sly Stone was one of them.
Stuffy in the place
Sly Stone was the top
Black guy in the culture at that point.
He had risen to this enormous stature
by having taken over Woodstock
from the white kids.
Woodstock was like a spell he cast
over the audience.
He could command that complete control.
It was like a gospel show.
Don't hate the Black.
Don't hate the white.
If you get bitten, just hate the bite.
He loved to manipulate audiences.
He loved to evoke responses,
but he'd still stay cool and Black.
Do you think about yourself ever
as a influence on the young?
You know, you have a great following.
They listen to your records, so
and they listen to the lyrics.
I think that everybody has
an influence on a number of people.
- Yeah.
- And I don't
I don't think in our case,
it is necessarily the young or
I think it's more the young in the mind.
In the '60s, as a group
in San Francisco, we were just happy
knowing that we got along
with each other and that we played well.
Sing a simple song
But then, we get into the '70s
and things aren't like they used to be.
There was a change.
Sly disappeared.
He was totally off the scene.
He had watched this optimistic
counterculture just disintegrate.
He was living down in Los Angeles
in this old house
with a recording studio
set up in the attic.
Cocaine was starting to come in then
in rock music circles.
Its advanced negative effects
hadn't really landed.
That would be several years to come,
but they were on track to arrive.
We were a pot-smoking, wine-drinking
band until cocaine was introduced.
And then it did to our band
what it did to almost every major act
that broke up during that time
was because of cocaine.
In the Bel Air house,
things were definitely wrong.
Without a doubt.
People would get super, super,
super high all the time, you know.
The atmosphere was dark.
You know, there was a riot
going on up at his house.
And when he started doing the drugs,
it didn't help him.
He's already a speedy
motherfucker anyway, on a natural.
He's got 9,000 things going on
in his mind at all times.
So when you turn around and start
messing with that other shit,
it takes you even faster
till it don't even make sense.
What he heard in his head,
nobody else could play
and he would just
build his tracks alone.
I mean,
it was a whole different process.
Sylvester was up in the attic,
pretty much by himself.
And he'd have the drum machine going.
Have the bass going. The guitar. Piano.
He would just write and be by himself.
The universe
Needs to be a little stronger
Time
The band was no longer
really part of the process,
and he would just be doing
layers on layers on layers.
But I don't believe them
Time
But the danger of leaving him alone
was that he would do brilliant things
and then record over them and not
realize what the good stuff was.
The way I like to describe that
time is life happened for everybody.
Everybody went through their own
personal struggles,
and for some, it was drugs.
For some, it was something else.
That was just the way the world was,
and we were just a product of the world.
And what you heard in us was the way
the world was at that time.
Oh, yeah
Feel so good inside myself
Don't want to move
I feel so good inside myself
Don't need to move
As I grow up I'm growing down
And when I'm lost
I know I will be found
Yeah, yeah
Feels so good
Yeah, yeah
So good inside myself
Don't need to move
The generation that's using the drugs now,
I would say, is you can just forget it.
But I think there's a lot of hope
in the ones who are in their pre-teens.
And the very young teens now
because they get a chance
to watch their older brothers and
sisters stumble down the stairs
and make all the other mistakes
that they're gonna make.
And perhaps it's best that somebody
does the pioneering for them.
What has it done to kids?
It's taken away a lot of their ambition.
I think we have yet to reap the so-called
benefits of the acid generation,
as the burnouts begin to
turn up more frequently.
When we played Isle of Wight,
which was pretty close
to the last date they did,
Jim stood like a mannequin
with this beer belly and a big beard
and sang the set but didn't move.
Jim was a poet
who accidentally became a rock star.
He didn't like being there very much.
Yeah
Yeah, I'm a back door man
The audience got more
and more demanding.
They wanted the show.
He wasn't happy playing the puppet.
Back door man
Well, I guess the great
creative burst of energy
that happened
three or four years ago
was hard to sustain.
By 1971, he would drink
and get himself to places
nobody else had ever done
that I ever knew.
There was this weariness of years
of battle with the establishment.
It was a war between us and them,
you know.
We were the counterculture.
They were the culture.
As the president of the Greater Miami
Crime Commission,
I'm calling upon the Dade County
grand jury and State Attorney's office
to immediately take criminal action
against those that were responsible
for the deplorable
condition and situation
that occurred at the Dade County
Auditorium this past weekend,
when the group known as the Doors,
the rock and roll group,
attempted to precipitate a riot.
You're all a bunch of slaves,
letting people tell you
what you're gonna do.
We have taken out two warrants
for Jim Morrison.
One of them is for indecent exposure.
The other is for the use
of obscene languages.
You're all a bunch of fucking idiots.
During his performance
at Dinner Key Saturday night.
Well, in the realm of art and theater,
I do think that
there should be complete freedom
for the artist and performer.
The government had
started to fight back,
and now there was this fear
of going to jail.
And they were trying to
regulate us out of existence.
Well, the Top 40 records,
which are played over and over
and over again
by disc jockeys all over the country,
are pretty much an ad
for the fun of drug taking.
Take some of the lyrics like,
"Swallow that cube and fly around.
Now move to the center
with a rolling sound.
Then speed to the
farthest edge of space.
See purple paisley everywhere."
That's an LSD trip.
The government is now actually
getting into the music business
and trying to tell stations
and record companies
what music they can record and play.
They've issued a regulation saying that
radio stations should not play music
that tends to glorify the use of drugs,
and then said that if a station
didn't set up procedures
for censoring song lyrics,
that their license
might be put in jeopardy.
We just thought it was ridiculous.
But that was the atmosphere at the time.
And when we recorded L.A. Woman,
it just felt like musically
and politically
we were moving into a different era.
And by that time, Jim had lost control
of the beast he created.
I think we're
At this album we're kind of
at a crossroads here.
And so You know, we'll know
within the next five or six months
what the future will be.
This car is almost
totally destroyed now.
There appears to be vomit
for about six feet on the side
of this white Cadillac.
Horrible streaks of vomit.
That's my attorney's behavior.
The whole floor is all soaked with beer
and there's coffee everywhere
and there's horrible grapefruit juice
all over the red leather upholstery,
all over the dashboard,
all over the instruments.
Kind of sticky scum.
This elegant car has been
completely finished off
by this unnatural behavior.
The editor's note says, "After long,
heavy and occasional brutal negotiations,
Dr. Thompson is back on the payroll.
His gibberish will appear irregularly
in unpredictable lengths
on a wide variety of subject matter.
We have total confidence in him,
for good or ill."
Would you have
any other place to publish your stuff
if it wasn't for Rolling Stone?
Oh, yeah.
But there's not too many places
that would pay for it.
Hunter Thompson was
a real piece of work.
Unlike most journalists back then,
he always wanted to be the story.
He called it Gonzo journalism,
but it was just Hunter drunk,
stoned, tripping,
creating chaos wherever he went
to get the kind of story he wanted.
I used to be able to stand in the back.
You know, observe stories, absorb them.
I can't do that Now that I
I appear in the story
then I become part of it.
Hunter was asked to write
an article at the Rolling Stone.
So he and Oscar Acosta,
his attorney, went on tour,
searching for the American Dream.
And where do you go to search
for the dream? You go to Las Vegas.
Chamber of Commerce.
Oh, hello,
is this the Chamber of Commerce?
Yes, it is.
Oh, hi, this is Dr. Gonzo.
And I'm wondering if you could help me.
I'm from out of town, in San Francisco.
And I'm looking for a place,
in the Las Vegas area
called The American Dream.
And I just wondered if you might
have one listed under your directory.
Okay, just a minute
and I'll check. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Hunter was actually realizing
that everything was going downhill.
People were dishonest.
Nixon's government was corrupt.
People were destroying America,
in a way, his America.
"Strange memories
on this nervous night in Las Vegas.
Five years later? Six?
It seems like a lifetime,
or at least a Main Era
the kind of peak that never comes again.
San Francisco in the middle '60s
was a very special time and place
to be a part of."
We just want the freedom to be ourselves,
and that's for love, for experience.
Positive way of life.
Turn on, tune in, and drop out.
The young people in this country
is against war,
being oppressed by police harassment
and brutality.
"Maybe it meant something.
Maybe not, in the long run.
But no explanation,
no mix of words or music or memories
can touch that sense of knowing
that you were there.
Whatever it meant.
Being absolutely certain
that no matter which way I went
I would come to a place where people
were just as high and wild as I was.
No doubt at all about that.
There was madness in any direction,
at any hour
You could strike sparks anywhere.
There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was right,
that we were winning.
And that, I think, was the handle.
That sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.
We had all the momentum.
We were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave.
But that was some other era,
burned out and long gone
from the brutish realities
of this foul year of Our Lord, 1971."
Mike Jagger,
is it right that the Rolling Stones
have left England to live permanently
here on the Côte D'Azur?
No. But we will live here,
for a few months
in Paris,
I'll live in Paris a little, in between.
For three months I'll live here perhaps.
So, you've not left England
permanently, as was announced?
No, not how do you say it?
Not permanently, no.
1971,
the band was not in a very good way.
We'd been living
this very stoned lifestyle,
not taking care of the
business end of it.
And now, we had absolutely no money,
and we owed the Inland Revenue money.
So, for tax reasons, we realized
that we had to leave the country.
Because otherwise, we're gonna be broke.
I don't know.
You could write this, and you write
Their manager had fucked them over.
They ended up with no ownership
of their own songs that they'd written.
There was loopholes in the tax law
where they can live outside of the UK.
And then, my idea was to start their own
record label, Rolling Stones Records.
And were gonna make a lot of money.
The days of taking LSD
and inward looking,
and that whole Timothy Leary time
were definitely over.
All of us have been Stones fans
from the beginning,
and it was a very,
very great thing for us
to be able to become associated
with them, professionally.
It was a weird time.
Sticky Fingers,
which was recorded years before,
came out just as we'd left England.
Which was a kind of bittersweet thing
'cause we had to give a lot away,
for legal fees.
So the little money
that we had incoming from Atlantic
we used to start making the new record,
'cause when we deliver the new record
then we'd get the money,
and we didn't have any.
Ahmet Ertegun said to me,
"Get us an album.
That's it, we need a record,
you have to keep them together,
keep them working." And I said, "Fine."
Yeah, which amps are you coming out of?
Now we are.
We never really found a suitable
place to record in the south of France.
But the Stones had the mobile truck.
And so in the end, we chose convenience,
I suppose, over sound,
and went for the basement
of Keith's house.
So it wasn't the best conditions at all,
and I remember
we just couldn't seem to get started.
Yeah. Make it through
Andy,
could you turn the piano up just a bit?
The writing process was very,
very loose.
We tried throwing this
whole mishmash in.
Country music,
acoustic blues music, gospel.
But it was a slightly difficult birth.
And we were stuck in the south of France
in Keith's house,
which is a bit out of the way.
It wasn't the most ideal setup.
But in that particular period,
the situation was the same
for loads and loads of other musicians.
Charlie. Did you get that?
Gonna try that
I don't think there'll
ever be a time again in the world
when there was so much interest
in music and musicians.
These were not just players,
they were cultural icons.
They were creating the culture
on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ooh, baby, baby
It's a wild world
And I'll always remember you
Like a child, girl
My kids are just getting to the point
where they just say,
"Forget you, Mom and Dad.
I don't want your society,
I want my own society
and I wanna build my own society
and I don't care about your money.
I'm looking for some other things now."
Once you dissociated yourself
from mainstream culture,
you stopped reading those newspapers,
you stopped watching
those television shows,
your entire imaginative life came
from the music you were listening to.
That was your world.
And the people who
were making that music
were talking about things
that you cared about.
And you were high, and they were high.
Everybody felt like they were going
in a certain direction together.
But in 1971 it all starts going
in different directions.
And we learned that the last people
you wanna follow anywhere are musicians.
- Daddy!
- What's What?
What did you do?
I don't think there's any problem there,
Marlon.
You just dropped something in there.
Can you stay with him for a bit
and play by the pool with him, Charlie?
He's just there. Play with the boats.
Go on, you're all right.
People say, "Why the south of France,
you know?"
France was just the
closest place that
a place where really you could relax
for a bit and then
if you've been playing every night,
you can record so quickly.
That's why we're trying
to live so close together.
Because being out of England, you know,
being out of where you're all laid-back
and where the central thing is, and
And to transfer all that here is
I hope it's worthwhile, yeah.
I was chosen to do
the Rolling Stone interview
with Keith Richards.
And so I took a trip to his villa,
and Keith was relaxed and chilled out.
He was clean when he came to France.
He was having a great time.
Shall we eat?
I don't know. What does Marlon want?
Marlon, do you want to eat?
Come and eat.
What's that?
Where?
I had never seen people live like this.
Lunch went on for three hours outside
with countless bottles
of blanc de blanc wine
and joints going around.
People would drop in.
They're all liggers and groovers
and party people.
And they're just happy
to hang out with Keith and Anita.
It was the center of the hip world.
A scene of major proportions.
There were so many people
visiting Keith's villa.
And French people living in Nice
or not far away.
When they discover Keith
was living there, they came.
They help washing the dishes
or doing a little work in the garden.
One of them became
the cook at the house.
And, of course, when those people
were going back home,
they spoke about spending the day
with the Rolling Stones.
It's not for me it's for
Yeah, but he purchased this bag for you.
For me? I wasn't even with him!
I saw you all together.
I see enough here to make 10 wraps.
It was a crazy time
in the south of France.
All the labs were in the south
making heroin.
It was like an industry.
Before long, one of those people
gave the kid from Keith's villa
a little bag.
He said, "You tell them if they
want more, it's not a problem."
Now from the top-selling
album in the nation this week.
This is the album that, at first, drew
a hostile reaction from many Christians
because they thought it was an irreverent
treatment of the Passion of Christ.
But those who heard the entire album
know what a devout
and perceptive portrayal it is
of Jesus' last days on Earth.
Every time I look at you
I don't understand
Why you let the things you did
Get so out of hand
You'd have managed better
If you'd had it planned
Why'd you choose such a backward time
In such a strange land?
If you'd come today
You would have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4 BC
Had no mass communication
- Don't you get me wrong
- Don't you get me wrong
- Don't you get me wrong now
- Don't you get me wrong
- Don't you get me wrong
- Don't you get me wrong
- Don't you get me wrong now
- Don't you get me wrong
- Only want to know
- Only want to know
- Only want to know now
- Only want to know
- Only want to know
- Only want to know
- Only want to know now
- Only want to know
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ
Who are you?
What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you're
What they say you are?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you're
What they say you are?
Some people are shocked by it deeply,
others find it magnificent.
Indeed, one critic has called this
"the single most important recording
of our time."
The name of the album
is Jesus Christ Superstar.
Let's meet the young man
who wrote the lyrics.
First of all, let's establish
the popularity of the record.
Where does it stand now in America?
Well, there's an awful lot
of different charts,
but I think we're in the top five
in most of them.
Did you know your message
It would be a record breaker
We wanted to make a show
for the theater,
but nobody wanted to do the show.
So, reluctantly, we signed a
deal with MCA to make an album.
And by early '71
it was number one in America.
It sold something like
seven to ten million double albums.
In recent years, the more experimental
of America's young
have gone through
Oriental religions and mysticism,
long hair and offbeat clothing,
drugs and sex.
Now, in surprisingly large numbers,
they're turning to Jesus.
The timing was right. We were at
heart of a new wave of culture.
There was a Jesus trend.
And it wasn't just Jesus,
it was all religions.
George Harrison
was promoting Hare Krishna.
You could talk about Muhammad or Buddha.
It went back to the hippies
in San Francisco.
The hippie movement died, but it was
going off into different directions.
And it kind of expanded weirdly.
But I don't think we were ever
interested in the Jesus movement.
I thought basically they were,
on the whole, a load of nutters.
God is no respecter of persons.
We want anybody to come,
but we usually know that it's
the kids that are really feeling lost
and really unloved
that are attracted to us
because we love them.
Jesus just loves you so much.
And all he wants you to do
is just live for him now.
He grows you. He grows you,
and you go on and on and never stop.
You grow and grow.
Can you imagine that? To grow and grow.
And to be to love and love
and love and love.
Forever. Forever.
What do you think of them?
Well
if you really wanna know, they should be
pushed off the nearest building
or out the closest window.
Why do you feel so strongly about it?
Well, like, you know, people, they
they have their own ways
on how they believe in God, you know.
And, like, I just
I just don't dig people trying to make
me get into their religion, you know.
Like, it's just a heavy trip, and I
You know, it bugs people for them
to take their problems out on us.
You know, tell us about it.
Because we all know about God, you know.
And, like, God isn't my thing, Satan is.
I'm
You know, I believe in witchcraft.
I believe in the Manson's cult,
you know. And they have it here.
And I would rather You get further
with witchcraft than you do with God.
You really do.
- You love Jesus?
- He's the revolution!
For Jesus!
- And again!
- Power!
- Power to the Lord!
- Power to the Lord!
Lord, we worship you right now.
We thank the in the name of Jesus.
Praise him.
Let this music relax your mind
Let the music relax your mind
Stand up and be counted, yeah
Can't get a witness
Sometimes you need somebody
If you have somebody to love
Sometimes you ain't got nobody
And you want somebody to love
Yes, all right
Then you don't want to walk and talk
About Jesus
You just want to see his face
You don't want to walk and talk
About Jesus
You just want to see his face
You just want to see his face
You just want to see his face
- You just want to see his face
- Oh, yes, oh, yeah
You just want to see his face
It was a really weird time
in America at that point.
And people were trying to work out
what the fuck is going on.
Some people are taking
tons and tons of these heavy drugs.
Some people are taking
absolutely no drugs
and then going off
on some religious bent
which is such a bizarre scene.
And that's why I wrote
a kind of gospel song about religion,
but it was also about living
in a druggy kind of world.
The place is called the Hinge.
Give George Harrison my best wishes.
- Yes.
- Not to mention his old lady.
I saw the magic happen
in that basement. It was great.
But it was very erratic.
A lot of the nights
they played like shit.
They would just jam around.
People react irritable.
Late again, Richards.
People fall asleep at the microphone.
I thought,
"What the hell's going on? Why?"
And then one night
the chef that worked there at the house,
Jacques, offered me heroin.
He said, "Oh,
you don't want some smack, Marshall?"
And I realized that
that was the fucking problem.
Every time I'm walking
All down the street
Some pretty mama
Starts breaking down on me
Stop breakin' down
Baby, please, stop breaking down
Stuff is gonna bust your brains out
Baby
Yeah, gonna make you lose your mind
Once Pandora's box has been opened,
you can't put the lid back on.
The pressure was now on them
to come up with an album
even better than Sticky Fingers.
But they were all on their own
as they had never been in their lives.
And no one knew
where it was all going to end.
In 1971,
I don't think Bowie was Bowie yet.
For me, personally,
I wanted to do something more
something broader,
which brought in other art forms.
Unforgettable television experience.
This will either knock you out
or offend you.
It was getting
progressively more messed up.
The drug dealers
were some really bad people.
So I had a bodyguard.
It was a lot of trouble.