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.