Why I said “get even with Ed Sullivan”: As I stated earlier, there was a few hour battle at the show as Ed and his producers did not want Mick to sing the lyrics–’let’s spend the night together’-and wanted them to be changed to ‘let’s spend sometime together’-network TV in those days did not allow anything sexual, so for hours, Mick wrestled with his artistic integrity and that of commercial success..it was very tuff, but Mick decided to go with the revised lyric. Prior to the decision as I wondered thru the rehearsal I noted a ‘covy’ of Nuns, there were about 10 of them. They were the ‘Singing Nuns’and they were doing the Ed Sullivan Show. I thought it would be great to have a picture of the Stones with the Nuns..and started to try and organize that. Seems Ed and his producers didn’t find it apropos so they tried to have me thrown out. We prevailed on my remaining and Mick sang.
When they aired the show, you couldn’t hear any of the lyrics as they seemed to have laid in a very loud audience track. It seemed to me that they didn’t trust Mick and put in the track so no one would hear either way. Really pissed us off after the long ethical fight.
Fade back into 1969, Ed’s ratings have dropped and he needed a boost for the show, so they wanted to book the Stones.. I was not that cooperative and said that the only place that we had the time to do the show was in Los Angeles, Ed filmed in NY and was prohibited from filming in LA but finally agreed and we set up a date in LA..one of his provision’s was that he was not to announce that the filming was in LA, union problem–Ed’s mind seemed to be a bit out of it and when he came on stage to greet Mick,he said ‘what to you think of Los Angeles?’ the director yelled cut and they had to redo the greeting… Six times Ed said the same thing and six times the director yelled cut and start over. Further to making the mountain come to the us, part of the revenge was having Ed pitch the album and we made him say the album title..”Let It Bleed”. Just having Ed say that balanced out the ‘spend some time together’ BS I never signed the release for the show and am waiting for it to ever air again..actually would like to see it..
