The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [40]
But my trouble with this was that especially in journalistic writing . . . au reportage . . . there has to be some element of mystery to me about it. And the problem with me with this piece was that there was no mystery. There was not a thing about it that set some mystery going into my mind as to why this should be or that should be, because it was all so perfectly timed . . . staged—I mean psychologically—I’m not talking about the performance itself. Just the whole combination of the thing was so perfectly obvious. The people were so obvious, and so they really had no dimension beyond their own. I mean, Mick Jagger has a certain mystery to him, but simply because he’s a bit of a doppelganger. I mean, he’s a highly trained performer, and on the other hand, he’s a businessman par excellence. And the whole thing is perfectly obvious, and so it had no mystery to it. Since there was nothing to “find out,” I just couldn’t be bothered writing it. Does that make sense to you?
Andy: Backstage people. You sort of talked about it before.
Truman: The only thing I have to say about it is Marshall Chess [the president of Rolling Stones Records] and all those people have themselves confused as being one of the Stones. I mean, they’re always up on the stage sort of edging nearer and dearer into the spotlight. It’s always been conceded that just something barely is restraining them from rushing onstage, grabbing the microphone from Mick and starting to really strut . . . Also, they’re very cantankerous and jealous of each other, and they’re so jealous of their relationship with the Stones, with who’s closer, who’s nearer, who’s more . . . this sort of thing. I mean it’s really sort of pathetic. Well, not “sort of.” It is pathetic.
Andy: Then the next question was, “The Plane Fuck.”
Truman: They had this doctor on the plane who was a young doctor from San Francisco, about twenty-eight years old, rather good-looking. He would pass through the plane with a great big plate of pills, every kind you could imagine, everything from vitamin C to vitamin coke . . . I couldn’t really quite figure out why. He had just started practice in San Francisco, and this seemed sort of a dramatic thing to be doing, traveling with, uh . . . I mean, especially since he wasn’t particularly, as I could figure out, a great fan of theirs.
It developed that he had a super-Lolita complex. I mean thirteen-, fourteen-year-old kids. He would arrive at whatever city we would arrive at, and there would always be these hordes of kids outside and he would walk around, you know, like a little super-fuck and say, “You know I’m Mick Jagger’s personal physician. How would you like to see the show from backstage?” And they’d go, “Oooo! Wigawigawigawa!” He would get quite a collection of them. Backstage, you know, he would have them spread out, and every now and then he would bring one back to the plane. Usually someone slightly older.
The one I remember the most was a girl who said she’d come to the Rolling Stones thing to get a story for her high school newspaper, and wasn’t this wonderful how she’d met Dr. Feelgood and got backstage . . . Anyway, she got on the plane, and she sure got a story, all right [laughs], because they fitted up the back of the plane for this. You know Robert Frank? He was on the tour. Robert Frank got out all of his lights, the plane was flying along and there was Dr. Feelgood screwing this girl in every conceivable position while Robert Frank was filming, and as the plane was flying back to Washington it was flying at some really strange angle. And the stewardess kept saying, “Would you please mind moving forward?” [Laughs] And then the plane landed and they always brought these authorities on board for checkout, and Dr. Feelgood had a terribly hard time getting his trousers on. And in the end he had to come off the plane holding his trousers in his hand . . . with Robert Frank photographing