Life (39 page)

I realize now that
Exile
was made under very chaotic circumstances and with innovative ways of recording, but those seemed to be the least of the problems. The most pressing problem was, do we have songs and do we get the sound? Anything else that went on was peripheral. You can hear a load of my outtakes ending, “Oh well, run out. That’s the story so far.” But you’d be surprised when you’re put right on the ball and you’ve got to do something and everybody’s looking at you, going, OK, what’s going to happen? You put yourself up there on the firing line—give me a blindfold and a last cigarette and let’s go. And you’d be surprised how much comes out of you before you die. Especially when you’re fooling the rest of the band, who think you know exactly what you’re going to do, and you know you’re blind as a bat and have no idea. But you’re just going to trust yourself. Something’s going to come. You come out with one line, throw in a guitar line and then another line’s got to come out. This is where supposedly your talent lies. It’s not in trying to meticulously work out how to build a Spitfire.

Maybe I would crash out, if I crashed out at all, around ten in the morning, get up around four in the afternoon, subject to the usual variations. Nobody’s going to arrive until sunset anyway. So then I had a couple of hours to think about or play back what we did last night so I could pick it up where we left off. Or if we had it already, it was a matter of what to do when the guys arrived a little later. And you sometimes start to panic when you realize you have nothing to offer them. It’s always that feeling when these guys are expecting material as if it comes from the gods, whereas the reality is it comes from Mick or me. When you see the documentary on
Exile,
it gives an impression of jamming away spontaneously for hours in the bunker until we’ve got something, until we’re ready to go for a take, as if we’re trusting to incoming from the ether. That’s the way it’s been portrayed, and some of it might have happened that way, but ask Mick. He and I would look at each other, what do we give them today? What ammo do we put in today, baby? Because we know everybody is going to go along with this as long as there’s a song, there’s something to play. We might have occasionally lapsed and decided to overdub something we did yesterday. But basically Mick and I both felt it was our duty to come up with a new song, a new riff, a new idea, or two, preferably.

We were prolific. We felt then that it was impossible that we couldn’t come up with something every day or every two days. That was what we did, and even if it was the bare bones of a riff, it was something to go on, and then while they were trying to get the sound on it or we were trying to shape the riff, the song would fall into place of its own volition. Once you’re on a roll with the first few chords, the first idea of the rhythm, you can figure out other things, like does it need a bridge in the middle, later. It was living on a knife edge as far as that’s concerned. There was no preparation. But that’s not the point; that’s rock and roll. The idea is to make the bare bones of a riff, snap the drums in and see what happens. And it was the immediacy of it that in retrospect made it even more interesting. There was no time for too much reflection, for plowing the field twice. It was “It goes like this” and see what comes out. And this is when you realize that with a good band, you only really need a little sparkle of an idea, and before the evening’s over it will be a beautiful thing.

We did dry up. “Casino Boogie” came out of when Mick and I had just about run ourselves ragged. Mick’s looking at me, and I go, I don’t know. And it came to my mind, the old Bill Burroughs cut-up method. Let’s rip headlines out of newspapers and pages out of a book and then throw ’em on the floor and see what comes up. Hey, we’re obviously in no mood to write a song in the usual fashion, so let’s use somebody else’s method. And it worked on “Casino Boogie.” I’m surprised we haven’t used it since, quite honestly. But at the time, it was desperation. One phrase bounces off another, and suddenly it makes sense even though they’re totally disconnected, but they have the same feel about them, which is a fair definition of writing a rock or pop lyric anyway.

Grotesque music, million dollar sad

Got no tactics, got no time on hand

Left shoe shuffle, right shoe muffle

Sinking in the sand

Fade out freedom, steaming heat on

Watch that hat in black

Finger twitching, got no time on hand.

I remember being a little dismayed that Charlie had decided to live three hours away. I would have loved to have Charlie around the corner so I could call him and say, got an idea; can you pop by? But the way Charlie wanted to live and where he wanted to live was in fact about 130 miles away, in the Vaucluse, above Aix-en-Provence. So he would come down from Monday till Friday. So then I had him there, but I could have used a little more. And Mick was a lot of the time in Paris. The only thing I was afraid of on
Exile
was that with people living so far away, it would break their concentration. And once I’d got them there, I wanted them for the duration. I’d never lived on top of the work before, but once I was, I said, damn it, the rest of you better get used to it. Fuck it, I’m doing it, and I’ve committed my house to it. If I can do it, you can all get a little closer. To Charlie it was an absolute no-no. He has an artistic temperament. It’s just uncool for him to live down on the Côte d’Azur in summer. Too much society going on and too much blah blah. I can understand totally. Charlie’s the kind of guy that would go down in winter when it’s horrible and empty. He found where he wanted to live and it certainly wasn’t on the coast, and it certainly wasn’t Cannes, Nice, Juan-les-Pins, Cap Ferrat or Monte Carlo. Charlie cringes from places like that.

One sublime example of a song winging in from the ether is “Happy.” We did that in an afternoon, in only four hours, cut and done. At noon it had never existed. At four o’clock it was on tape. It was no Rolling Stones record. It’s got the name on it, but it was actually Jimmy Miller on drums, Bobby Keys on baritone and that was basically it. And then I overdubbed bass and guitar. We were just waiting for everybody to turn up for the real sessions for the rest of the night and we thought, we’re here; let’s see if we can come up with something. I’d written it that day. We got something going, we were rocking, everything was set up and so we said, well, let’s start to work it down and then we’ll probably hit it with the guys later. I decided to go on the five-string with the slide and suddenly there it was. Just like that. By the time they got there, we had it. Once you have something, you just let it fly.

Well, I never kept a dollar past sunset

Always burned a hole in my pants

Never made a school mama happy

Never blew the second chance, oh no

I need a love to keep me happy.

It just came, tripping off the tongue, then and there. When you’re writing this shit, you’ve got to put your face in front of the microphone, spit it out. Something will come. I wrote the verses of “Happy,” but I don’t know where they came from. “Never got a lift out of Learjet / When I can fly way back home.” It was just alliteration, trying to set up a story. There has to be some thin plot line, although in a lot of my songs you’d be very hard-pressed to find it. But here, you’re broke and it’s evening. And you want to go out, but you ain’t got shit. I’m busted before I start. I need a love to keep me happy, because if it’s real love it will be free! Don’t have to pay for it. I need a love to keep me happy because I’ve spent the fucking money and I have none left, and it’s nighttime and I’m looking to have a good time, but I ain’t got shit. So I need love to keep me happy. Baby. Baby, won’t you keep me happy.

I’d have been happier if more came like “Happy”: “It goes like this.” Great songs write themselves. You’re just being led by the nose, or the ears. The skill is not to interfere with it too much. Ignore intelligence, ignore everything; just follow it where it takes you. You really have no say in it, and suddenly there it is: “Oh, I know how this goes,” and you can’t believe it, because you think that nothing comes like that. You think, where did I steal this from? No, no, that’s original—well, about as original as I can get. And you realize that songs write themselves; you’re just the conveyor.

Not to say that I haven’t labored. Some of them had us on our knees. Some are about thirty-five years old and I’ve not quite finished them yet. You can write the song, but that’s not the whole deal. The thing is what kind of sound, what tempo, what key and is everybody really into it? “Tumbling Dice” took a few days to get right. I remember working on that intro for several afternoons. When you’re listening to music, you can tell how much calculation has gone into it and how much is free-flow. You can’t do the free-flow all the time. And it’s really a matter of how much calculation and how little you can put into it. Rather than the other way round. Well, I’ve got to tame this beast one way or another. But how to tame it? Gently, or give it a beating? I’ll fuck you up; I’ll take you twice the speed I wrote you! You have this sort of relationship with the songs. You talk to the fuckers. You ain’t finished till you’re finished, OK? All that sort of shit. No, you weren’t supposed to go
there
. Or sometimes you’re apologizing: I’m sorry about that. No, that was certainly not the way to go. Ah, they’re funny things. They’re babies.

But a song should come from the heart. I never had to think about it. I’d just pick up the guitar or go to the piano and let the stuff come to me. Something would arrive. Incoming. And if it didn’t, I’d play somebody else’s songs. And I’ve never really had to get to the point of saying, “I’m now going to write a song.” I’ve never ever done that. When I first knew I could do it, I wondered if I could do another one. Then I found they were rolling off my fingers like pearls. I never had any difficulty in writing songs. It was a sheer pleasure. And a wonderful gift that I didn’t know I had. It amazes me.

S
ometime in
J
uly,
Gram Parsons came to Nellcôte with Gretchen, his young bride-to-be. He was already working on the songs for his first solo record,
GP
. I had been hanging with him for a couple of years by then and I just had the feeling that this man was about to come out with something remarkable. In fact, he changed the face of country music and he wasn’t around long enough to find out. He recorded his first masterpieces with Emmylou Harris a year later, with “Streets of Baltimore,” “A Song for You,” “That’s All It Took,” “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning.” Whenever we were together we played. We played all the time; we’d write stuff. We’d work together in the afternoons, sing Everly Brothers songs. It’s hard to describe how deeply Gram loved his music. It was all he lived for. And not just his own music but music in general. He’d be like me, wake up with George Jones, roll over and wake up again to Mozart. I absorbed so much from Gram, that Bakersfield way of turning melodies and also lyrics, different from the sweetness of Nashville—the tradition of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, the blue-collar lyrics from the immigrant world of the farms and oil wells of California, at least that’s where it had its origins in the ’50s and ’60s. That country influence came through in the Stones. You can hear it in “Dead Flowers,” “Torn and Frayed,” “Sweet Virginia” and “Wild Horses,” which we gave to Gram to put on the Flying Burrito Brothers record
Burrito Deluxe
before we put it out ourselves.

We had plans, or at least great expectations, Gram and I. You work with somebody that good and you think, we’ve got years, man, no rush, where’s the fire? We can put some really good stuff together. And you expect it to evolve. Once we get over the next cold turkey, we’ll really come out with some good shit! We thought we had all the time in the world.

Mick resented Gram Parsons. It took me a long time to discover that people around me were much more conscious of this than I was. They describe how he made life uncomfortable for Gram, hitting on Gretchen to put pressure on him, making it plain he wasn’t welcome. Stanley Booth remembers Mick being like a “tarantula” around Gram. That I was writing and playing with somebody else seemed to him to be a betrayal, though he could never put it in those terms. And it never occurred to me at the time. I’m just expanding my club. I’m getting around, meeting people. But it didn’t stop Mick from sitting around and playing and singing with Gram. That’s all you wanted to do around Gram. It would just be song after song after song.

Gram and Gretchen left under some bad feeling, although it must be said that Gram wasn’t in great physical shape. I really don’t remember the circumstances of his departure clearly. I had insulated myself against the dramas of the crowded household.

I’ve no doubt, in retrospect, that Mick was very jealous of me having other male friends. And I’ve no doubt that that was more of a difficulty than women or anything else. It took me a long time to realize that any male friend I had would automatically get the cold shoulder, or at least a suspicious reception, from Mick. Any guys I got close to would tell me, sooner or later, “I don’t think Mick likes me.” Mick and I were very tight friends and we’d been through a lot. But there is a weird possessiveness about him. It was only a vague aura to me, but other people pointed it out. Mick doesn’t want me to have any friends except him. Maybe his exclusivity is bound up with his own siege mentality. Or maybe he thinks he’s trying to protect me: “What does that asshole want from Keith?” But quite honestly, I can’t put my finger on it. People he thought were getting close to me, he would preempt them, or try to, as if they were girlfriends rather than just friends.