From the stage, there are only remembered pictures, the knowledge that Jagger pads his crotch; the star on his forehead, virtually invisible.

Boston Garden is the second ugliest empty building in the city. (The ugliest is the Boston Arena, home of high school hockey and Boston's seamier wrestling shows.) The Garden has bad acoustics, bad atmosphere, a consistent tendency to trap smoke, exposed rafters, and uncomfortable chairs. It also has more seats than most promoters can handle. Which is why there is an alert group standing by the press gate on Monday evening. Because on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, the Rolling Stones will fill the cavern with people, mostly young.

This is the first time I've ever found this gate in less than twenty minutes. We're meeting here to discuss preliminaries. The roughly 25 of us are Don Law's personal security force for both shows. Our purpose is to handle security problems quickly, to avoid reaching the crisis point where the police are required. For the Stones, the emphasis is mind over matter; we may not be big, but we're smart.

The players:

Doug: coordinator, the liason between Don and us; self-admitted "low man on the totem pole" at New England Productions. "I try to stay out of the way;" Harvard '72, as are many of the others. (Doug's Eliot House friends are the core of the group. I work for Don because Doug and I have a mutual friend.) He knows all of us, yet he's one of the few people who can talk to Don privately. He handles the smallest problems, of people placement, and logistics. He has a distinguishing pad of yellow legal paper.

Jane: birthday girl: Don Law's left hand, secretary, typist, she oversees the small problems, like the Chinese food. Jane looks like life is very nearly. Too Much, because she worries for the whole office. It was Jane who listened to the story of my first semester this year, and three months later wanted to know if I did well second semester.

Roger: Harvard '71; (and thus, the reason why the rest of us are '72 and '73--he's the direct link between Don Law and us.) Don's right hand; very efficient, but open, I know instinctively to take problems to Roger first. His openness balances Don's necessary aloofness. (Once, he remembered me from a basketball game played a year and a half ago.) Roger handles bigger problems, as well as road-managing Livingston Taylor.

Don Law: the biggest promoter on this coast, barring only, perhaps, Delsener or Howard Stein. With that in mind, I live in mortal fear of this man, a fear tinged with awe. I am afraid to talk to him; I still remember the two times I made him laugh. Don Law rarely laughs, he's too busy. Besides, the aloofness he nearly always maintains is necessary, it helps in dealing with rock stars' agents, and rock stars themselves. He's not old, but he's seasoned in this business. Still, that's all surface. I think Don Law is a very nice man. (I have the instinctive feeling that he drives too fast, which endears me to anybody). I just wish I could get close enough to make sure.

We're standing in knots at the Garden loading docks. The union crews are placing the chairs on the Garden floor, and the small mechanized transport trucks, preceded by a brusque "Watch it fellas," are shipping chairs into the main arena. The arrangement of our hiring dictates that each person knows at least two others who are also working, and we're neatly divided into threes and fours.

The union crews are an odd assortment of kids and "union types." For every toothless 50-year old veteran of hockey riots, there's a pimply-faced adolescent in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. They're setting up the orchestra chairs in blocks of four on the cement floor. The leader of a Garden union crew is easy to find. He's shouting. In fact, all pre-show vocal business at the Garden is carried out at the top of the lungs.

"You guys aren't exactly muscle beach," pretty well summed us up. It opened Don's orientation-cum-introductory speech: an outline of our tasks, purposes, and duties. It was the most I'd ever seen Don talk, he even told a couple of jokes; and I began to wonder whether it had been prepared. It had been apparent from the beginning that security was to be tighter than usual, but Don, known for secure concerts, had covered all the angles. We would be divided nto groups before the concerts. The backstage area would be covered, at all access points; the dressing rooms themselves, though locked, would also be guarded. A group would watch the ticket takers to "intimidate" them out of accepting bribes, and two people would always be downstairs checking backstage passes at the press elevator. (A word here on the backstage passes. Stones security was tighter than any known to man. Nobody, including Don, knew what the passes looked like but Peter Rudge, and on Monday, he was in Montreal. This would be significant on Tuesday night.)

Once the show started, we would be redivided. The majority of us would be stationed just in front of the stage, to catch leapers. The theory was: rather us than the cops. Five would be placed in the first balcony behind the stage, because the seats immediately behind it, great for hockey, but bad for rock shows, hadn't been sold. They were covered with burlap, and our only objective upstairs was to prevent people from sliding down the burlap and onto the stage.

He emphasized our importance. "Be calm. You need a limited vocabulary, just 'no.' We want to be able to take more abuse than the police." He laid the chances for success squarely on us. "You guys, and I can't emphasize this too much, are going to be the difference between a successful show by the Stones and trouble."

I watched the union men in a small clump by what was to be the main aisle. They were talking about us. I was thinking about them, and also my increased awareness of my importance. I had just been told to stay calm, and to expect to take abuse.

I had also been told that 140 uniformed policemen would be inside and outside the Garden. Some would have dogs. More cops, in plain-clothes, would be inside the Garden, mingling. Doug, pessimist to the end, had been telling me for three weeks to expect trouble. I had weighed myself the night before and I hadn't cracked 120 pounds. Now I was scared.