As everywhere the Stones performed in 1965, the government bared its teeth. Mounted hundreds and water cannons were standard deterrents, but their use usually tended to increase the pressure in the cauldron. In the Berlin Waldbühne in September, the lid flew off, pent-up anger was released, and as a result of the “riot night”, as the local press called it, a number of things broke, not least the Waldbühne itself. Concerts could only be held there again years later , the Stones have also used the open-air stage several times since then. I can’t offer a witness report, my first Berlin Stones gig didn’t take place until eight years later, at a different location, not half as historic, but no less exciting.
Actually, the Hells Angels did not belong to the group of people I would have ever sought to be close to. On the contrary, I usually gave the ever-violent ones a wide berth, ridiculing them for their late-pubescent motorbike rumble and other mindless trappings of masculinity and tribal arrogance. To me, these clubbing bikers were just full-grown, bull-necked specimens of a species I had particularly bad memories of when I was in school: peers who were constantly tinkering with their mopeds and rattling on with strange pride instead of devoting themselves to the really exciting things in life , like music and girls. No, the Hells Angels weren’t awesome, just terrifying.
Sweaty but happy in the front row
Nothing changed in principle at the end of October 1973, but in the years that followed I should often be indebted to the rocker gang that spread terror around the world. The location of the eye-opening first contact was the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin’s Westend, a multi-purpose box that has long since been demolished with lousy acoustics and that still offered space for 10,000 visitors. Not enough for the Stones, whose final concert of a two-month European tour naturally guaranteed a packed house. If you wanted to enjoy the gig at the front of the stage, you had to be there several hours before the concert started. Which of course I did, tested in Stone’s experience optimization strategies. Pressed against the bars of the stage barrier, sweaty but happy, I let my gaze wander to the back, filled with that anticipation flooding body and soul that tends to set in reliably when a Stones show is imminent.
The joyful expectation was mixed with a little sympathy for those who were worse off in the lower ranks. The fans crowded tightly together inside, it seemed impossible to get through. And yet, suddenly, as if at Moses’ bidding, the crowd parted the Red Sea and a few Hells Angels strode down the alley. It may have been seven or eight who positioned themselves near the stage. It didn’t take any visible violence, not even threatening gestures, to bring about the march through. No one protested, no one risked a lip, the crowd closed behind the last angel of hell, flowing together like the water in the Old Testament fairy tale after the passage of the Israelites.
An image that stayed with me forever. During the concert, I only noticed the rockers standing a few meters away in an unpleasant way, for example when they made fun of Billy Preston’s afro or sneered at his body language. Had they had bananas on hand, they would have rained down on Preston’s keyboard, that much seems certain. The Stones performance, however, must have impressed the bikers, because after the show they roared for encores when the rest of the audience had already resigned themselves to the fact that there would be none. Euphoric, people headed for the exits, albeit with a slightly exaggerated safety distance to the rocker entourage, who clearly enjoyed it.
The partnership of convenience between the Stones and the Hells Angels was never officially declared over
The relationship between the Rolling Stones and the Hells Angels is known to be extremely precarious, oscillating between respect and hatred. Whether the Angels served well as a force of order in Hyde Park or brutally cracked down on the chaos in Altamont: It was never clear how this connection came about and who had the upper hand. Had the horror on Mick Jagger’s face been played when he was shown the documentary film about Meredith Hunter’s assassination, he would have had unparalleled acting talent. In truth, however, this is rather limited, as we know not only since “Freejack”. And think of the contemptuous, even hateful look with which one of the Angels looks at the singer as he tries in vain to urge prudence and peacefulness from the Altamont stage. The trial ended with an acquittal because the court recognized self-defense. The deed remained unpunished, the fateful partnership of convenience between the Stones and the motorcycle gang was never declared coram publico over.
Since then, the Stones have received various death threats, and a murder plot against Jagger, whose mastermind was high up in the club hierarchy, was discovered just in time. No one knows more details, at least no one who would be tired enough to share their knowledge. At best, one could ask Bob Dylan, who, by means of transfiguration, succeeded a high-ranking angel who died in an accident, if I understood his ominous statements on this subject to some extent. However, the sanity of the poet prince is another matter, let’s go back to 1973 and record what the experience had taught me. On the one hand, I had already noticed this on various previous occasions, the Hells Angels habitually send delegations to Stones gigs not only for fun, but also for “bonding”, which could be loosely translated as “closing ranks”. On the other hand, the Angels come at the last minute, but easily make it to the best places. Something should be able to be towed if things get tight.
And so it happened. Not at my next concert three years later at the same place, the following ones in London’s Earls Court Arena were also comparatively luxuriously arranged thanks to valuable connections to local top dogs. But then I actually managed to capitalize on the reputation of the Hells Angels. He had hurried ahead of them to The Hague, to the Zuiderpark. Coming from London, I arrived late. Outside the stadium there was the usual commotion as a few hundred ticketless fans refused to accept their unfortunate situation. It was May, the 1976 tour was already a few weeks old and the new song material had arrived. “Hand Of Fate”, initially too bumpy, had become a tour highlight in London, “Fool To Cry” had found a warming balance between blissful melody and melodrama, “Hot Stuff” was exactly that. The Stones were on their way to being at their best once again, but it looked like I was going to have to watch the celebration through a telescope, which to cap it all, I didn’t have it.
My spirits lifted when I became aware of several Hells Angels standing chatting around their parked fire chairs and not yet making a move to the stadium entrance. Only a quarter of an hour before show time, the supporting act was already running, the group slowly started to move, dutifully showed the tickets at the entrance and then plowed through the audience without haste, Yours truly in tow. I was lucky that the last rocker in the phalanx didn’t turn around, so didn’t notice my brazen maneuver. After all, I had to stay right behind him if I didn’t want to be slowed down by angry fans who had honestly fought for their place near the stage. In short: it worked.
Disorganized bikers
And not for the last time. It was six years later, in the summer of 1982, strangely enough back in the Netherlands, more precisely: in Rotterdam, when a Hells Angels delegation came to my aid again, unwittingly and unknowingly. A rather phlegmatic bunch, unfortunately. The Stones had already started their third song, “Black Limousine”, if I remember correctly, in the Feyenoord stadium, when I caught up with the column and let myself be pulled to the front in their pull. A tried and tested method, which of course did not always work. In America, you also met organized bikers at Stones shows, but they performed unorganized.
A different kind of bullshitting was needed there: the bluff. When I and a friend were to be banished to the press box in Chicago at the start of the US tour in 1997, behind glass, a hundred meters from the stage,
we complained to the stewards of the sold out Soldier Field Stadium. The Stones office would have guaranteed us a seat close to the action, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have made the long journey from Germany. Within a few minutes, the two bitterly disappointed Germans, who also felt deceived, got the message via walkie-talkie to the main person responsible, who intervened personally. We were guests of the Rolling Stones, he welcomed us and gave us better seats. I didn’t even use mine, finding a free chair in the section reserved for Chess Studios. That also remained unused because everyone jumped up anyway when the Stones started.
Today it is hardly possible to cheat one’s way through to the artists without the appropriate authorization
The many staggered checks by professional security staff represent almost insurmountable obstacles. Anyone who does not have a triple-A backstage pass will sooner or later inevitably get stuck in the security net.
That was very different once. One fine afternoon around 46 years ago, we could easily convince the liveried porter at the stage entrance of the Stuttgarter Liederhalle that we belonged to the band. He even showed us the way to Jimi Hendrix’s dressing room, where we hung out completely undisturbed until the evening’s performance. The year before, at the Kinks concert on Killesberg, we had swindled the best seats in the hall, first row in the middle, by sticking notes on the chairs at the sound check, which we hastily scrawled “Management Kinks” and “Management Creation”. . We never dared to dream that these “reservations” could be honored by the thousands of concert-goers who stormed into the hall ahead of us. And so we could hardly believe our luck when we sat down on the two free chairs in the packed hall, while the surrounding, all older fans realized that these seventeen-year-olds could hardly be managers.
Nikki Sudden, whom I’ve met at a number of Stones gigs over the years and to whom I owe one or the other unexpected invitation to the inner sanctum of the backstage area, had similar stories to tell. Despite his friendship with Ron Wood and the privileges that came with it, Nikki, too, believed that the blurring of artist-audience lines was threatening to stifle the rapport that had once driven rock ‘n’ roll.
When Keith Richards was asked more than 50 years ago how long the Stones’ success would last, he replied: Two years, he was optimistic. Now the Rolling Stones have been guests in the Berlin Waldbühne more often, now they will be there again in 2022. Riots are not to be expected, nor are the Hells Angels. The Rolling Stones emphatically deliver on what they promise. Blessed are those who managed to get a ticket.
An article from the RS archive
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