By Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano ’24
In 1972, the Rolling Stones spent two months playing 48 shows across the United States after a three-year-long hiatus following the Altamont Free Concert in ‘69. The band electrified the nation, having recently become the world’s most popular band following the decline of the Beatles. And every stop along the way of the tour was Robert Greenfield.
“Robert Greenfield was a journalist initially; he did work for Rolling Stone Magazine,” said Scott Krafft, Chief Curator of the Charles Deering McCormick Library. “He was embedded in the tour, initially hired by Rolling Stone, but wound up writing his first book S.T.P.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones.”
Greenfield had unfettered access to the Stones that summer, and that inside look is slowly being opened up to the world. Northwestern Libraries obtained his tour-related archives as an extension of the Long ‘60s collection, which focuses largely on countercultural effects.
“Northwestern first acquired the archive in 2017,” said Krafft. And while it is still being processed, exceptions have been made about the collection’s accessibility.
Jordan Runtagh, executive podcast producer at iHeartRadio, hosts the weekly podcast “Stones Touring Party” which uses Greenfield’s tapes from the ‘72 tour as a springboard for recounting the summer the Rolling Stones toured the U.S. The podcast is named after the laminated name cards that were used to identify individuals traveling alongside the band.
“Bob is a talking head interviewee narrator for [the podcast], and because naturally [iHeartRadio was] keen to get original sound for this audio podcast, they contacted me and asked if it would be possible to pay for digitizing just the tapes that were relevant to that first book, S.T.P.,” Krafft said. “So we agreed to do that and provided them with the tapes.”
Though the remaining collection is still being processed in-house, the head start on the Stones Tour collection is greatly appreciated. “These are old-fashioned cassettes and all magnetic tape material—whether it’s audio or video cassette—is inherently self destructive,” said Krafft. “So it’s imperative, for access and for preservation, for the library to digitize these materials at some point before it’s too late.”
In addition to hundreds of hours worth of interviews, the archive includes manuscript drafts, memorabilia, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, and more. Hour-long episodes recounting debaucherous and dramatic scenes with the band are released weekly on the iHeart Radio website on Thursdays.
Natalia Gonzalez Blanco Serrano is a Medill School of Journalism senior