In the studio with The Rolling Stones (and Paul McCartney and John Lennon!) – Another excerpt from the forthcoming Fall of America Journals.
The occasion was a nighttime recording session, (on July 19, 1967), at London’s Olympic Studios, following Jagger and Richards’ drug conviction and fleeting incarceration. It was a crucial time. The band recorded the song ‘‘We Love You” coupled with “Dandelion” (originally the B-side and later reversed as the A-side). Lennon and McCartney, who brought Allen along, turned up to provide backing vocals in a show of tribal solidarity.
Dandelion Fly Away
5.30 AM – all night in glass wall Electric studio watching from coffee-cup’d consol’d Sound Room at three Graces, Mick Jagger Paul McCartney & John Lennon sat on high stools before two microphones in their Botticelli finery, rings on delicate hands clapped to violet breast for high ecstatic swooning notes, crimson satin pants & voices trembling toward the angelic at the Shabda Universe Sound machinery darkness of London’s outskirts – repeated over and over into microphone by Jagger through thin body thick lips, his genitals bulged at tight trousered youth – eyes of Clara Bow on man McCartney, round pupils tuned up listening to asa funky sweet note fade – gold round glasses sitting on Lennon’s grandfatherly nose, as je pursed his lips forward, leaning to sing – Dandelion Disappear – the flower moment of the rue, richness as amethyst & Pearl, Diamond noise for the mind., majesty of the most delightful labor of the Universe, chanting music the world, angels of the summit of mea – I stared and made mudras of Raksha prayer, Tibetan oracle-ringed & hung with fearful Rudraksha beads, adoring them or ringing Shiva Self. And they hailed hare krishna when they trooped back to the sound room to hear the finished tape crashing thru channels of black loudspeakers to high-noted harmonic sound hush.
Here’s Peter Whitehead‘s promotional film for “We Love You” (conceived as a parody of the Oscar Wilde trial) – “We love you, we love you, and we hope/ That you love we too”. [2021 update – video, regrettably, no longer available]