HIGHER GROUND
THE mood at Madison Square Garden is upbeat and celebratory. It is July 26, 1972, the final date of The Rolling Stones’ STP Tour across America. Stevie Wonder has just come on stage to play an encore with the Stones and to wish Mick Jagger a happy 29th birthday.
Just a few hours before, Wonder ran through a lengthy, occasionally awkward opening set as the crowd – who included Bob Dylan, Truman Capote and Patti Smith – waited restlessly for the headliners. This late in the evening, however, even the nosebleed seats stomp and cheer as the two groups tear through Wonder’s 1965 hit “Uptight (Everything’s Gonna Be Alright)” and then the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”.
“That’s when Stevie was really young and full of energy, jumping up and down on stage,” recalls Marshall Chess, the Stones’ executive manager. “He and Mick were dancing on stage together, then somebody came out and put a whipped cream pie in Mick’s face. It was crazy. The building was actually vibrating. You could feel it in the concrete.”
The STP jaunt was the Stones’ first American tour since their performance at Altamont Speedway in 1969. Wonder, as their opening act, was likewise trying to leave that decade behind, along with his image as the clean-cut teen phenomenon behind “I Was Made To Love Her” and “For Once in My Life.”
“Motown was trying to break Stevie bigger than he’d ever been,” says Chess. “It was a great thing for the Stones, because Mick and Keith just loved Stevie. It was a great thing for Stevie because it showed him to this whole other white audience, the Stones’ audience.”
Prior to the Stones tour, Wonder had faced some difficult audiences as he struggled to redefine himself, introducing longer, heavier, funkier songs to his setlist. “Sometimes we
