Stones Touring Party

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Music icon Paul Anka and business visionary Skip Bronson are dear friends, and together they boast two of the greatest Rolodexes in Hollywood. Now they're inviting their famous friends to sit down for intimate chats about their lives and work. You'll get to know icons of film, music, television, sports and technology in a whole new way. Listen to Our way with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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After a wild two-month tear through North America, the Stones play the last gig of the STP tour at NYC's Madison Square Garden. Their entourage work overtime to ensure that it's the craziest rock show to ever hit the Big Apple. After their final bows, the band is exhausted. What's more, they're disheartened by the overly glitzy showbiz crowd that turns up at their tour wrap party, which doubles as Jagger's 29th birthday. As they come to grips with aging, they also grapple with their gradual drift towards the mainstream. The STP trek birthed the modern rock tour, but it also hastened the Stones' transformation from a rock band to a business venture. The bonds that kept the motley 40-person crew together evaporate and everyone goes their separate ways. Reintegration into everyday life is lonely and confusing, and everyone copes in different ways as they struggle to make sense of the life-altering experience they'd just shared — one that could never be duplicated. 

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The Stones organization is rocked to its core when terrorists bomb one of the band's equipment vans in Montreal. The STP squad are relieved to make it out of Canada alive, but they soon discover that their problems are just beginning. The flight to Boston for that night's concert is diverted to Rhode Island due to bad weather. Already late, Mick and Keith get arrested at the airport after a scuffle with a photographer. With 18,000 rowdy fans ready and waiting at the Boston Garden, a riot seems imminent — until they get a hand from a higher power. 

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The STP tour has hit the midway point, and the Stones & Co struggle to stave off boredom and madness as a result of the destabilizing daily grind. Some blow off steam by deconstructing their hotel rooms, while others get lost in gratuitous sex. Drugs are a frequent refuge, which wreaks havoc on the physical and mental health of many. The tour starts to seem like a cult, with members feeling increasingly isolated from the world outside and everyday reality in general. With tempers shortened by exhaustion, tedium and drug use, tour mates feud with fellow rock star road warriors — and also each other. Ultimately, a savage beating requires an impromptu trial (with Mick Jagger as the judge!) to affirm law and order within this wild roving pirate nation. 

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So far over the course of this series, we've examined the madness and socio-political movements that made the Rolling Stones' 1972 North American tour a singular moment in pop culture. But very little attention has been paid to the music — especially the album that the Stones were on the road to promote: their moody double disc epic 'Exile on Main St.' To remedy this, host Jordan Runtagh and executive producer/co-composer Noel Brown sit down with legendary Georgia-based record maker David Barbe, a veteran of the band Sugar (with Hüsker Dü's Bob Mould) and the producer of albums from the likes of Drive-By Truckers and Son Volt. Together they throw down about all things Stones and discuss why the sound and style of 'Exile' continues to endure. 

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The Rolling Stones' gigs in Texas are hampered by the arrival of Truman Capote, who makes it clear that covering a rock 'n' roll road tour as a mere journalist is beneath him. The intrusion of the snobbish author and his entourage of Upper East Side Manhattan socialites (including Jackie Kennedy Onassis' sister) cramps the band's style, but they put up with it in hopes of crossing over into a different strata of social acceptance — until Keith finally snaps. Moving through the Deep South, the Stones have uneasy interactions with the bluesmen who inspired their music, raising questions about the fine line between appreciation and appropriation. Having embraced the rhythm and blues of the region, they were able to achieve mainstream crossover success due to the color of their skin — while their heroes toiled in obscurity. It's a tense trip, made all the more nerve wracking by the gun-toting Alabama sheriffs who aren't pleased by the presence of drug-taking long-hairs in their midst.

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The Stones accept Hugh Hefner's offer to stay at his palatial pleasure dome, delighting some members of the STP squad and offending others. It's a counter-culture clash between two generations of social rebels, as the two camps try to find common ground amid differing views of drug use and misogyny. The invitation forces the band to confront the fact that they aren't young punks anymore, but drifting ever closer to the middle-of-the-road — and middle age. Naturally the Stones take full advantage of the excess on offer — until Keith parties a little too hard and nearly burns the house to the ground. Fun and sex is had by all, but they all agree that there's something a little creepy about it all. 

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The Stones return to LA, the rockbiz capital where illusion is an industry and nothing is quite what it seems. Immediately prior to the Stones' gig at the Palladium, an unhinged Satanist appears at the stage door, claiming to be the band's dead guitarist Brian Jones. The unsettling apparition reminds the band of the high cost of their profession, and all that they left behind to make it atop the rock mountain. Later, a long night in a Hollywood Hills haunted house reminds one key member of the STP entourage about his terrifying close call with Charles Manson — who had marked him to die.  

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Chris O'Dell has been called the Zelig of rock 'n' roll. After getting her start working at the Beatles' London offices in 1968, she became a trusted confidant of practically every major artist of the '70s. George Harrison, her one time boss, immortalized her in the song "Miss O’Dell.” Leon Russell wooed her by writing “Pisces Apple Lady” in her honor. She's the "woman down the hall" in Joni Mitchell's "Coyote" and was pictured on the back cover of the Stones' Exile on Main Street. More than a muse, she was one of just a handful of professional women in rock, managing gargantuan, globe-trotting tours for the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Bob Dylan; Linda Ronstadt; Santana; Phil Collins, Earth, Wind and Fire; Fleetwood Mac; Queen and many more. But before all that, she earned her stripes on the STP tour with the Stones. Listen as she reunites with her friends and fellow STP vets Robert Greenfield and Gary Stromberg for the first time since the tour wrapped in 1972. Together they recall drug runs for Keith Richards, long nights at the Playboy Mansion, and longer days in the Rolling Stones' inner sanctum. 

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