The very best of the bunch. I am so pleased to have my friend rich cohen back at this table. Rich thanks for having me. First time for us at this table, but not the first time for us talking. We just noted here, one of the great things about a book like this is that so much has been written about the stones, but you bring this perspective to it that is unique. That goes back to not just when you met them in 1994, but your childhood. Rich when i was a little kid, i was the youngest brother and my Favorite Song for a long time cowboynestone by glen campbell. When i felt sorry for myself, i would go into my bedroom and listen to it. My brother had moved up to the attic and locked the door to all comers. And i heard the cowbell that was honky tonk woman. It picked me up and levitated me up into his room where i heard just enough it before he beat me back down the stairs, it ruined me for life and made me a lifelong Rolling Stones fan. I got the experience to travel around the country with the stones. Host you called the attic heaven at the time . Rich he ascended to heaven. Just because my parents are too lazy to walk up the extra flight of stairs. Host lets take it back to beyond where it began with you, where it began for the stones because this takes up so much of this book, it all comes back to the blues. Rich well, im from chicago. I got really interested in the blues going to the checker board lounge which was buddy guys club. Basically they would serve you red wine when you were 14 years old. So we started going down there when i was a kid. The Rolling Stones showed up there and played there. Muddy waters would play there. This music, when i heard, i just remembered, i wrote about it in the book, this club in amsterdam, milky way, famous club sitting there at a table and hearing muddy waters sing im a man. And it was like you can almost hear the music turning from the delta blues into rock and roll picking up all of the steel of all of the trains at the Illinois Central Railroad went through. Coming to chicago where guys like muddy waters had to plug in their acoustic instruments to be heard over the crowds. The music picking up the sound of the railroad that gets picked up by music and mick jagger in england, they try to copy it and copying it, they change it and they bring it back to chicago and record their second record at 2120 south michigan avenue, chess records, sort of bringing the music back to the city. Host and some were more comfortable with the way that got copied and changed and evolved than others. Rich well, its the whole idea. Is it theft . Is it appropriation . There was a great line by some jazz musician, i forgot, you cant steal a gift in a way. The guys like muddy waters really liked the Rolling Stones, they recognized what the Rolling Stones were doing was not what pat boone was doing. They werent making the covers of tootsie fruity like pat boone did. They were doing Something Interesting and new. So i think when howling wolf went to england for the first time and needed a backup band, they got the yard birds. They recognized that these were incredible blues bands. If you listen to the Rolling Stones sing their version of little red rooster, its up there with the original versions of it. Coast for so many, its beatles and stones. For you it was beatles and stones as well, always that competition, always that comparison . Rich early on the stones manager realized the beatles had filled the niche. They were sort of the good guys. They were wearing the white hats as Keith Richards said, who is going to wear the black hats. The stones could fill that niche. The beatles became love. The stones became sex. I heard the Rolling Stones, it was everything dirty and nasty that i wanted to try out when i was older. So to me, that was the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones were like a gang, like the outsiders or west side story. The head of the gang was mick and keith. It wasnt just the music, it was the band and the dirtiness and the nastiness, the infighting was the music. Jesus had paul. Elvis had the colonel, and the stones had andrew luke oldham. Before they met him, their name was the rollin stones, it was from a muddy waters song. Listen, nobody is buying a record from a band that cant spell their name properly. They had six members, made them lose one of their numbers. When i was a kid, i heard somebody describe that theyre so ugly, theyre attractive. That was going to be the stones and they were kind of the opposite of the beatles. Host i asked andrew this years ago, i said what was the key to the success of the Rolling Stones and he said they showed up. Rich yeah, actually, they literally showed up which there was a concert early on there was a concert that the band that became the kinks had, they couldnt show up because there was a snowstorm. The stones filled that gig. That became the regular gig which became the Crawdaddy Club which made them a bar room sensation. What is interesting to me, they didnt know if they should play the first night, there was three people. There is think thing you can take away for a performance for life. What do you do, you play. You dont punish the people who did come for the sins of the people who did not come. Host one of the people who did unfortunate have a problem showing up was brian jones. Another bandmember who was lost for various reasons, andrew was involved in those machinations as well. That was for you, that must have been difficult to revisit some of that or talk to keith and mick about that. Rich well, its interesting. To me, the title of the book is the sun and the moon and the Rolling Stones. When i first interviewed keith and told them what year i was born, 1968. He started to laugh. You should be answering my questions. Its always been the sun and the moon and the Rolling Stones. Brian jones died in 1969. I come back from this different perspective which is a kid who grew up with the band in the postbrian jones era. This was brian jones band, he was the great musician. It was his slide guitar around which the Rolling Stones were formed. He named them and chose their set lists. What happened was, the stones became successful, he lost control of the band. One of the things i loved so much about the Rolling Stones is all the things you have with your own friends, all of the problems and feuds they had. Theyre completely human in that way. They would have a tendency to single a guy out and pick on him until he went insane. For a while, that became brian jones. Its agonizing to read about him. Because he was such a great musician and his sound is so important in that music. But you knew that it was that he was being driven slowly insane by the fact that he had lost control of the band and became a drug casualty and the Rolling Stones that i grew up is built on the remains of this brian jones Rolling Stones. To me, its like going back and discovering the antique age. So you were already so red in and listened in to the legend that is this band. You start working for Rolling Stone and obviously did some reporting beforehand, but you get the assignment. Rich right. When i first interviewed at Rolling Stone they said, listen, he is going to ask you if you can interview anyone in the world, who would it be . Do not tell him the truth. Because whoever you say you want to interview, you will never interview that person. So about 20 minutes in, you could interview anybody who would it be, i wanted to interview the Rolling Stones, i said bruce springsteen. Sure enough, six months later he , called me up and said how would you like to go on the road with the Rolling Stones. All of a sudden im on a plane. I fly to toronto in the middle of the night. I show up where keith had been busted not that long before. Jan came later. I went by myself. I got met by Keith Richards sort of personal assistant, lets go. I said its midnight. She said youre on rock and roll time. They work from 12 00 until 9 00 a. M. They took me to a great grade school in the suburbs. If you ever wonder what is going on at your grade school in the middle of the night in summer, the stones are rehearsing there. You could hear the brown sugar rift going through the school. In the grade school gym, a place of torture for many of us, the Rolling Stones had taken it over. And they just for about two weeks played through their entire catalog putting together their show. That was probably the decision to be a reporter and not to go to law school like my parents wanted was sort of justified by those two weeks of me basically being the only you audience for the Rolling Stones. Host you say that was the best performance or concert experience you ever had . Rich the best is before they went on that tour, the voodoo lounge tour, they did a popup show in toronto to play before a live audience. Keith richards said the reason we keep playing, it doesnt exist until we have it in front of a live audience. People say to me, well, you know, i saw the Rolling Stones at the meadowlands and they were pretty good, but they were not so great. I say, listen, you have not seen the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones exist at a bar at 3 00 in the morning where everyone is drunk and Keith Richards has found the groove. I got to see them in that environment in toronto and to me, you realize what they are which is the greatest bar band in the history of the world. Host you became closer or talked much more with keith than you did with mick. You write unsparingly at times about mick and you are candid in , your estimation of what his successes and failures are. What was it about Keith Richards that sort of turned on that light for you . Rich the thing that is great about the stones. Its the ying and the yang of keith and mick. Disco versus blues. Its like mick is kind of cold and distant. I worked with him later. He was one of the creators of vinyl. Even working with him hes got the pop star sense of you does not want to let you know who he is. He sort of remains mysterious and removed like prince or bob dylan. He has that incredible ability. Keith puts you at ease. To me he is a guy who seems to have found out how to live in the world and how to be comfortable in the world and comfortable about his own skin. I always say, listen, there is a Keith Richards like howto book guide to life like for frank sinatra. There is not one for mick jagger, he is a mystery. Host you say you have these interviews with mick in particular and you think you got gold and you go back and listen to it or look at the transcript and you realize he didnt say very much about anything and keith was the exact opposite . Rich when i first went up there to interview mick, im getting scoops left and right, he is saying stuff he never said before. When you get tapes back, like interviewing a pro athlete after the game, there is nothing here. I would say it is like fishing. You think you have a huge fish, you got a tire. With keith, this is a disaster, he mumbles, you cant understand him. Sometimes he would start laughing for no reason as he suddenly starts realizing how ridiculous his life is. You get those transcripts back, and its absolutely brilliant. And so to me, those two guys together are the Rolling Stones. Host and micks folks ripped you after the first article. Rich i got a funny phone call with a guy i became friends with who said that he had gone through and counted you , mentioned Keith Richards 78 times but mick jagger 32 times. This story is called on the road with the Rolling Stones. Thats not correct. It should be called, i love Keith Richards and want to have his baby. Host you acknowledge that later. Rich do i want to have his baby . I think he is right i do want to have his baby. Host so keith did Say Something to you that i think that stuck with you and really resonated. That is with respect to Charlie Watts. Charlie seemed to like you. What was it about that that made charlie, because i dont think he necessarily liked or let a lot people in like mick did. What was it about the interactions with Charlie Watts . Rich i did get this crazy access you dont get anymore to them in those years. I used to drive back to the holt to the hotel with Charlie Watts. He was really into chicago and jazz, stuff im interested in. We would have these conversations. About the civil war and American History and when i interviewed keith, he said on tape, because i saved the tape, that and my tape of Marlon Brando calling at 3 00 in the morning, my two prized possessions. He said im not going to do the accent, but its the whole thing, charlie really likes you. You get the gold medal for that. Charlie doesnt like many people. After that, it was like, im in. As the little brother always in bed listening to the party down stairs but not being able to leave my room, i figured out early you hang out with people older and cooler than you and get a sense you belong, all of those skills came into play when i was hanging out with the stones. Host when you experience Something Like that, is there a moment when you come down and sort of appreciate everything that has happened and say, my gosh rich two years later i was walking through new york city i thought what the hell, i cant believe that. At the time i was so focused on, i was young. It was a cover story for Rolling Stone. I also really idolized a lot of the Rolling Stone writers and i knew that the history of the magazine, i wanted to do a good job. I was trying to act not like a fan, but a professional. I didnt let myself reflect on the amazing experience i was having until much later. Thats what this book is to some extent. Host through your lens. Rich the idea that i had this experience, i have a 12yearold son. I was driving with him listening to his music. It suddenly occurred to me, this music sucks. Thats honestly what i thought. I thought wait a second. This is probably because im old. Im an old guy. Let me do some research and see if im right. I realized it does kind of suck. Thats how i felt about it. The way we felt about rock and roll when i was a kid, the idea was you would wait for the next record the way people wait for the new iphone. You think if it was the right record with the right collection of songs, you had a chance to have a pretty good summer. The right record could change your life. At some point, the right energy, not just of a great band or a song but a movement that was , heading somewhere ended and it died. To me personally, i felt like it died when kurt cobain died. I was working at Rolling Stone. I felt like the air went out of the balloon. I felt like this thing that was so important, like a religion, rock and roll, it kind of died and nobody has stepped back and told the whole story. Im not old enough to have been with them in 1963 or 1966, but my age is kind of advantage to step back and see the whole big picture. Its like there is a famous quote, you have to wait until evening to see how glorious the day has been. I felt like that was my perspective and that was my goal with the book was to tell the story of rock and roll through the Rolling Stones. What is next for the stones . People ask me how long will the stones keep playing . I say, well, what will happen, theyll be on stage somewhere and somebody will say, hey, guys, you died three years ago. I think theyre just going to keep going and going and going. Because thats what they do and john lennon famously said, they got to the end of the road on the road and that was like in the late 1960s and Keith Richards said theyre kind of is no end of the road. Host the book is the sun and the moon and the Rolling Stones. Rich cohen, so good to see you again. Rich thank you a lot. Really fun. Charlie president obama held a town hall meeting in washington this evening on Race Relations and policing. He fielded questions from Law Enforcement and Community Leaders to promote greater understanding. This evening, we look back at parts of a conversation i had with Brian Stevenson about race and justice in august of last year. Brian stevenson is the founding executive director of the equal justice initiative. Charlie tell me what it is that you think is the most important question for this country as it considers race and justice . Brian race and justice, how are we going to recover from our legacy of racial inequality, this history of Racial Injustice that has infected all of us, that has compromised all of our abilities to see one another fairly . I think that is the question we have never taken on. We have never really tried to confront the legacy of slavery. I actually think we need to talk about slavery. People kind of look at me hard when i say that. I dont think we have ever dealt with that legacy. Slavery was something that was really horrific in this country because it wasnt the great evil of