Monday, April 22, 2019

Waiting On a Friend


The Rolling Stones : Before They Make Me Run 


On April 22, 1979 Keith Richards had some company when he played two benefit shows for the blind, as he was sentenced to do by a Canadian judge after his conviction for heroin possession. First Keith played a set with The New Barbarians (featuring Ron Woods, Meters drummer Ziggy Modeliste, Stanley Clarke on bass and Rolling Stones sidemen Ian McLagan and Bobby Keys) that included "I Can Feel the Fire" and "Before They Make Me Run". The lights went down, then came back up as Keith sat alone on a stool with an acoustic guitar playing the opening notes to "Prodigal Sun". The singer who appeared next to him drew a roar from the crowd. It was Mick Jagger. When the song ended, the test of The Rolling Stones joined them to play a nine song set drawn heavily from Some Girls.


The papers that morning suggested the beneficiary, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, would lose money from the cost of renting the hall. 

“Listen,” Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone's Chet Flippo, “the judge’s sentence was to play for the disabled. Not for money. If it’d just been a matter of charity, of providing money, we’d have just written them a check. But the judge wanted Keith to perform, so we put on a show.”

Two shows actually. Both bootlegged under the name Blind Date and Blind Date Revisited.


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