(Warning: if you’ve no interest in dad rock from the 70s and 80s, this is not for you)
In New York City itself, I walked last week from the Lower East Side across to St Marks’ Place to see what is – still – an iconic building. Anyone with any interest in 1970s music will recognise it from the cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 album ‘Physical Graffiti’.
The record itself is my favourite of theirs. As a double LP, it allows them to showcase everything they’re good at: the hard rock stuff like ‘Houses of the Holy’, ‘Custard Pie’ and ‘Trampled Underfoot’; the pompous orchestral pieces like ‘Kashmir’; jaunty English instrumentals like ‘Bron-Yr-Aur’ and greasy blues like ‘In My Time Of Dying’.
One of the lesser celebrated songs on Physical Graffiti is “Boogie With Stu”, which features and namechecks a guy called Ian ‘Stu’ Stewart (he also played on ‘Rock And Roll’ from Led Zeppelin IV). Stu was born in the tiny village of Pittenweem in Fife, Scotland in July 1938 and moved to the South of England in early childhood. He became a leading light in the emerging London Blues and Jazz scene, playing boogie-woogie piano and banjo. In 1962, he and Brian Jones formed The Rolling Stones which – for the first 18 months or so – was initially a six piece. But Stu was ruthlessly dropped from public view when the Stones started to attract attention; their management at the time (and I’m sure Mick and Keith happily acquiesced: they have always been bastards when it comes to personnel) decided that he was too normal, too square, too old-looking to remain a core member of the band. With grace, he hung around as their road manager for the next 20-odd years, and contributed some fine piano playing to many of their greatest records and live performances (albeit stubbornly refusing to play on songs with minor keys). True to his east Fife roots, he became a keen golfer, and annoyed his bandmates by always choosing hotels with golf courses attached to them. He died of a heart attack, aged just 47, in 1985.
The Stones have another connection to this picture though. It’s the location for the 1981 video for “Waiting On A Friend”, one of many god-awful promos they made at the time. There’s not much to it but I’ve always found it oddly compelling and nostalgic. It looks like the New York of the early 80s that I remember from Taxi, from Diff’rent Strokes and from Sesame Street and which were almost alien to someone from Glasgow: with that kind of hazy, steamy glaze everywhere; buildings with big steps leading up to them, and with ladders on the exterior; the constant bustling and jostling on the streets and pavements; and – definitely not the case for Scotland, let alone Glasgow – people of all different colours.
And it’s also quite moving.
As a Stones fan, it’s a real treat to see Mick and Keith just hanging out, smoking, drinking, laughing and just enjoying being buddies. Most of us know that their relationship nowadays is nothing like as close. But even if it was – after 35 years, and as they move into their mid-70s – the opportunities for them, and Charlie and Ronnie, to hang out at all are running out.
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