Gimme shelter

Fifty years tonight I saw the Rolling Stones, and in a roundabout way began making my way into the rest of my life.

The Stones announced their 1975 summer tour by playing Brown Sugar on a flatbed truck rolling down Fifth Avenue in New York City, shows that included six nights at Madison Square Garden. For me, discovering pot and holding my youthful belief that rock music was a signpost on the road to illumination, seeing the Stones live was a necessity.

With 120,000 tickets available over six evenings, I drove into a deserted Manhattan around dinnertime, parked a block away from the Garden and bought seats for the June 24 show.

I chose June 24 purposely. What better way to celebrate the third anniversary of the first date with my then-girlfriend? Uh no. She seemed less than thrilled about the prospects of spending this special evening listening to songs about the Boston Strangler (Midnight Rambler), inter-racial sex (Brown Sugar) and groupie sex (Star Star).

1975 Rolling Stones live

If she’d managed any enthusiasm at all for the show, it likely began to slip away as we navigated through the scary flood of humanity that washed up on the sidewalks around the Garden on a concert night: kids out of their gourds stoned and/or drunk, guys selling drugs and bootleg t-shirts, ticket scalpers, wild-eyed city people, vendors selling their diarrhea-inducing gyros.

After fifty years, I’ve forgotten a lot about the show – how could I’ve not remembered that Billy Preston was part of the band for the tour? What I remember best was the spectacle. The giant lotus flower that opened to reveal the stage. The stupid inflatable phallus that rose up from the stage (her enthusiasm now vanished). Jagger swinging on a rope over the stage. Steel drummers accompanying the band on Sympathy for the Devil – they played Sympathy for the Devil! And for some reason, the haze of cigarette smoke around Keith Richards and Ron Wood.

The Stones, man!

(An audience tape of the concert can be found on YouTube. The band sounded a little chaotic, but it was the Stones).

While I’m fuzzy about the show’s details, what occurred afterwards remains clear. Back at her house The Tonight Show was on; Kenny Rankin was singing. Rankin was a popular singer/songwriter with a jazz influence, laid-back music perfect for Sunday brunch programming on an FM rock station. As we watched, she told me how stupid the concert had been and that she’d rather go see Kenny Rankin.

She may as well as admitted to being a Republican.

We had friends who got married out of high school and converted to Christianity. How much of an influence were they? Was I ready to take eternal vows or submit to some mysterious conversion? Or give in to a lifetime of nodding out to James Taylor? Four months later, we agreed to move on. 

In 1975, life seemed full of endless possibilities; I just needed to make the right choices and be true to myself. No crystal ball could have predicted it any better.