S.T.P. Quotes

“For the Stones were taking a definite chance. Despite the overwhelming ticket demand and the avalanche of media interest in them, they were going on the road with essentially the same kind of show they had done in 1969. What nobody could forecast was how the kids would react to it. The Stones would do a classic rock and roll set, composed of twelve or fifteen separate and distinct numbers, each with a beginning, middle, and an end, starting out hard and fast, calming in the middle, then all-out rocking at the end designed to leave the audience up and dancing when it was over. When the set ended, so did the show. The Stones rarely did encores. They worked like stars . . . come out, hit ‘em hard, zonk ‘em, then run to the limos before the cheering stops, out of the building and on to the plane. Strictly 1966 Beatles-type stuff that made the distance between the musician and the customer unbridgeable. In the spirit of P. T. Barnum, the Stones always left ‘em wanting more. But”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“A year before the Stones’ tour, while Peter Rudge was in America shepherding the Who through a tour, he began making inquiries about rock and roll PR firms. Everywhere he went, he heard the name Gibson-Stromberg. Rock writers in countless cities proudly pulled up their shirts to reveal Gibson-Stromberg t-shirts. Rock moguls like Denny Cordell (Shelter Records), David Geffen (Asylum Records), who at one point was going to handle the tour by himself, and Peter Asher (James Taylor’s manager) sung the praises of Gibson-Stromberg. As did Chris O’Dell. So when Rudge brought the Who to L.A., he decided to check their operation out, something which made both Gibson and Stromberg happy. Far out, they thought, we’re gonna get the Who. Another group to add to their bulging stable of the top seventy rock acts.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“The Strip is America’s main street of hype and promotion, where Dick Clark and Phil Spector are acros the-street neighbors, and Tower Records, which bills itself as “the largest record store in the known world,” is the closest thing to a true community center L.A. has.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“Still Rudge worried. He worried like a campaign manager with a candidate to protect. He worried like a Secret Service man, assigned to guard the president. The week before the tour, his worries centered on the Palladium gig in L.A. The Hollywood Palladium is the home of Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers, a-one and a-two, a low, conventional-looking, L.A. stucco building that accommodates about forty-five hundred people for a rock concert. Over fifteen thousand letters requesting sixty thousand tickets to the Palladium concert were received. The Stones specified they wanted to play the hall because it is a smaller place, with some feeling to it, a welcome break from the antiseptic hockey arenas and sports stadiums they would be playing in most cities. But the Palladium has a history of easy access, of broken-in doors for Alice Cooper concerts, and bikers cruising on the street. It is a place kids can get next to and hang out around, and even a little girl I pick up hitchhiking on Ventura Boulevard tells me, “The Palladium, man? I know there’s going to be a riot there. That’s a walk-in concert. Everyone’s goin to that one, ticket or no ticket.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“That week in L.A., a ticket to a Stones’ concert was better than a negotiable bond. You could get anything you needed for it. Seven grams of hash and a twenty-dollar lid was not considered an unreasonable asking price. Nor were offers of fifty dollars and over. With the Stones playing three places in the L. A. area, the Forum, the Long Beach Arena, and the Hollywood Palladium, the Palladium immediately became the hottest ticket, the Panama Red of admission slips. One kid spent a day on the phone looking for a way into the Palladium, making offers, raising and raising the ante with each call until he finally got one ... in exchange for two tickets to Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin at the Forum and the Grateful Dead at the Hollywood Bowl and twelve new albums. All he had to do then was wait in line outside the Palladium for eight hours and he was home free.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“In the San Francisco area, for instance, eighteen thousand tickets are available at two hundred Ticketron outlets, with a limit of four per customer. Roughly this breaks down to the first twenty-two and a half people on line at each place getting satisfaction.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“Rudge exits and Chris O’Dell sweeps in. She is a straw-thin lady with wide surprised eyes and blond, stuck-out Orphan Annie hair who is secretary to Marshall Chess, president of Rolling Stones Records.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“Beginning with the sale of tickets. Tickets will cost six dollars and fifty cents each. A reasonable price. They will go on sale by mail in some cities and in California by Ticketron, an L.A.-based computer firm.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“In England, where some tradition still exists, a royal coronation is a signal event, a moment in time that people date their own lives around. They bundle up their children in scarves and woolies and take them out to see the parade so they may tell their children about it. They buy plates and cups and silver spoons with the date and portraits of the royal family on them to commemorate an event they know will not soon come again. No one thought to merchandise china with the faces of the Rolling Stones on it as they toured America during the summer of 1972. It was one of the few business oversights made.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“Unlike the Broadway stage, the rockbiz does not bestow commercial favor on revivals of great old bands. Comebacks are usually unsuccessful and no band that has ever been number one has slipped and then made it all the way back to the top.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

“The rockbiz is perfectly L.A., totally American, transitory, hard, cruel, full of paranoia, with all of it going on in the monstrous present only, the great now, and with such extreme rewards for those willing to accept its challenge and go out on the edge to make it.”
― Robert Greenfield, S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones