Golda Fried – on studying the Stones.

Greensboro, North Carolina
November 15, 2000

Dear Heather,

I was feeling kind of blue and isolated in Greensboro, even though it had been almost a year since I moved down here from Toronto to be with my husband. In a desperate attempt to help me, he sat me down at the registrar’s office of Guilford Technological Community College on his lunch break and told me to pick out some continuing education classes. He’d say, “Do you want to do this one? Well?” And I’d say, “I don’t know.” It was that bad.

Could I really sew? Did I want to learn finances? Did I still hate computers? Then, under the music section, there was a course called “The History of the Rolling Stones.” I couldn’t believe it! Usually, the closest thing a school would offer would be the history of jazz, something like that. I couldn’t believe it was the Stones being offered and not the Beatles. I had those kinds of feelings. I went home and marked up my calendar. For the other courses, I used stars and circles, but for the Stones class I used hearts. The Stones’ “Hot Rocks” album was the first album I ever bought. I was in grade nine. I got the money off my mom. I bought it at one of those strip mall places. I remember I didn’t like it that much the first few times I listened to it and then I loved it. I don’t know how that happens.

When the Stones came to Toronto at the Dome for the Steel Wheels tour, I called up right at 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning and got four tickets. I got pretty good seats. I took my friend Mary and two of my younger brothers to “educate” them. My uncle gave us a lift down to the concert. He had gotten free tickets way up in the bleachers and was trying to emotionally blackmail me for my tickets and there was just no way. My brothers and my friend and I had McDonalds before the Stones came on. I remember stuffing the french fries into a smile. When the Stones came on, we stood on our chairs and I danced and shook my brothers from time to time. I got my period and leaked the whole time through the back of my jeans but I covered it with my lumber jacket and no one ever found out.

Who was going to show up at this Rolling Stones class? It’s been a challenge in this town to find women my age (late twenties) with no kids. My husband loves the Stones too but he wasn’t too into the idea of paying to hear about them. Going to the first class, I had that pre-concert feeling. The teacher, Rob Cassell, was in a business suit and had a briefcase and he shook my hand. He said, “I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is the class has been cancelled because there weren’t enough people and I think last time I did this class the college got some morality complaints, I don’t know. The good news is I’m going to hold it anyway in my office and you will get your money back and it will be free.”

Slowly the rest of the students piled in. They were all over forty. Three men – Mike, Bob and Scott – and a woman named Robyn. Robyn was great. She handed out big Stones tongue stickers to us right away. She even reminded me of a female version of Mick Jagger, with the layered hair and big red lips. But is this something you can say to a woman? Who were the men? It turned out that Mike leases out the storage space that my husband rents for his band studio. Bob works for one of the banks in town. All I know about Scott is that he lived for a year in Argentina in the sixties, and that’s where he heard a lot of rock music as it was coming out.

After about half an hour, we all drove over to Rob’s office on the fifth floor of an office building, which is where we still have our classes. He is a mortgage broker with baseball pictures all over the walls and he lectures us about the Stones in his leather chair behind a big wooden desk. He reads typed pages out in a very animated way. And at the end of a section, he asks us the same question, “Any questions or comments?” It’s all very familiar by now and it feels like home. I convinced my husband to come to class and he got his bandmates to come and it’s a really good time.

We’ve been going through the Stones’ history year by year for two months, and we’re only at 1969. My favourite parts are always the details, the little things. Learning that the band photo on Aftermath was achieved by smearing vaseline on the lens filter and that Aftermath was originally supposed to be called, “Could You Walk on the Water?” but that was too much for the record company. Apparently, the pool where Brian Jones died was stripped and the tiles are being sold individually to the highest bidder on eBay.

Rob went on a Rolling Stones tour in England last summer and he brought to class an album full of photos he took, including: the railway station where Mick and Keith ran into each other for the first time and bonded over the albums Mick was carrying, Brian Jones’s grave, the new Mick Jagger Center with the words “Mick Jagger Center” in bold pink and black letters taking up a third of the building, the Marquee club where the band played, Olympic Studios where they recorded “Beggar’s Banquet” and “Let It Bleed” and various houses where the band members lived at different times. The photos of Brian Jones’s house where he died all have this little white square in the top left part that none of Rob’s other photos have. We decided it is Brian’s ghost.

Last week, we had a pre-election and we all threw our votes into an empty trashcan. It was pretty close. One vote for Nader, four votes for Gore and four votes for Bush. How can a Rolling Stones fan vote for Bush? someone asked. The Stones cut across the entire spectrum, Rob assured us.

Rob has collected a lot of bootlegs over the years. For one class, he brought in the Stones doing the London pop TV show “Ready Steady Go”. In the middle of the show there was a segment with the boys doing a pantomime version of Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” with the host of the show. Keith pretended to play the tuba and made funny faces while Bill and Charlie slow-danced together. It was hilarious.

When I look around that room where we meet, I’m both very present and very transported. Scott knows the answer to every question. Bob shows up even though his neck is in a brace. Bob and Scott actually take notes. Mike’s been having weird amnesia spells lately where he doesn’t know where he is and we hope he’ll be all right. Scott brings his wife Brenda now and they’ve been married twenty-five years and she bakes us brownies. Rob is going through a long drawn-out divorce which he always shakes his head and smiles about. Every time we see Mick Jagger on video, Robyn belts out, “I’m sorry but Mick Jagger can’t dance, he’s got NO rhythm.” And I like the song, “I Am Waiting.” Somehow I completely missed that song before this class.

Love,
Golda