Narrator / Host (mostly Dominic Sandbrook)
Appearances
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Okay, so I know I'm supposed to know what Stanconia Studios is, but I don't. So what is it?
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Oh, my God. So like Suave, a big hip hop head. I mean, he's just got to be like, wait, what? I get to go to the studio?
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
That's the first thing the parole won't say. The thing is, Suave is right. Anything going sideways here could land him back in prison. So better just to get out of there.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
When he says this, like, it really does click for me. Yeah, we're like, it's always this balance, right, of how we live out there in the world. And in some ways, I kind of think that we've gotten a little comfortable with that. The risks that Suave takes, I mean, the drinking or not paying his parole fees on time. And it's kind of like, ha ha, you know, move on, ha ha.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
But the reality is that Suave is doing constant risk assessment, deciding how much to break the rules, when and where, how much can he live with and how much of this actually gives him life. And for me, it's always like, yo, bro, why, why, why take that risk? And you can see Suave struggling. And, you know, I think about his past. Is he a rule follower? No, I mean, absolutely not.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
That has not been his identity. And I can see he's feeling this disconnect between his new friends and his old friends, his new life and his old life. He's somewhere in the middle, wrestling with this new identity.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
And this cat, she's got an adorable wardrobe of, yes, pink dresses.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
But this time, Suave is saying that maybe in some ways, it's actually parole that has led him to a lot of the good things about his life right now.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
How is it that I became the mother figure in your fucking life? Because that's not what I want to be. Well, you know what?
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
You know, I always worry about Suave's sleeping situation. It's kind of weird. It's one of the things that I'm like, is he sleeping? And lately, he's been telling me that he's sleeping even less. And, you know, he jokes about it. Actually, I think he's kind of like showing off because, you know, he's working a bunch of jobs and there's always something going on. And it's a thing.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
I worry because you're like, I've been up all night, haven't slept. And I do have some cannabis pills that will knock you out.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Now, Futuro is becoming a home for more voices than ever. Help grow this future by joining our new membership program. You'll get exclusive interviews, whole season binges, behind-the-scenes chisme, shape the future of storytelling. Join Futuro Plus now. Visit our website, futuromediagroup.org slash join plus. Y no te vayas.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
So, you know, Julieta, I don't know if this happens to you, but at this point, I've been checking in with Suave basically weekly, if not multiple times a week for years now. And, you know, it's like you can forget that this guy is still essentially governed by a very strict set of rules that keep him tethered, like emotionally, psychologically, spiritually to this prison past.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
And, you know, it's bigger than sleeping on the floor or waking up for count time. I mean, it's it's deep.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
The thing is, is that even though Suave is free on parole, he still technically has a life sentence, but he just gets to serve it on the outside.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Yeah, so we asked him to actually list some of the rules that he has to follow forever.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
And that's even though alcohol is legal for any adult and that weed has been decriminalized in Philly. But not for Suave.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Oh, yeah. Also, he has to pay them taxes. for this privilege.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
For what? For someone on the outside, just imagining living with all of these rules, it sounds entirely crazy. Suave has to be perfect 100% of the time. Because cualquier cosita, any little thing, can literally change the course of his life in an instant.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Season two of Suave was made possible by the Mellon Foundation. Mellon makes grants to support visionaries and communities that unlock the power of the arts and humanities to help connect us all. More at Mellon.org. When I founded Futuro, I imagined a home for journalism with radical transparency. I wanted a newsroom where I wasn't the only Latina behind the mic.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Good afternoon. Good afternoon. God, I haven't talked to you in a long time, man.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
So on this Sunday afternoon, Suave calls me like he usually does. And he tells me about his weekend, tells me that he was hanging out with a group of guys that he knew from prison, that they showed up to his place for a barbecue. And, you know, these are guys that he used to be locked up with.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
At that moment, I'm like, por favor, no, no, no, no, no. Because, you know, you can't be drinking. And then I'm all like, oh, my God, what happens if parole calls him right now in this precise moment? But, you know, the good news is that the story didn't end up going in that direction.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
I'm a sweaty guy. And then he tells me that, like, one of his friends had her phone out at that moment.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Oh, my God, Suave. I can't believe you got drunk. I can't believe you got drunk.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
You know, it was really sweet just hearing Suave tell this story with so much joy and happiness.
Suave
Parole & The Pursuit of Happiness - Ep. 2
Yeah, I mean, Suave tells me that he's starting to find it harder and harder to relate. And that for a long time, these were the only people in his life who could really understand him. But it's changing.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
It is indeed. Drugs are forced into the headlines really as the 60s proceed. The cannabis conviction figures go up. reflecting a wider picture, clearly what's happening is, first of all, young people have a lot more money. They're going out more often. The market for stimulants is bigger than ever before. And there's a rise in cultural cachet because of the associations with music.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
But also the supply is greater than before. People are taking more flights. They're going on ferries. It's much easier to import cannabis and cocaine from abroad. So people, particularly from Morocco or from Turkey, There's more demand for drugs and there are more of them. And people are beginning to notice by 1967.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So in 1964 and 65, the number of teenagers registered with the Home Office as addicts had gone up threefold. This is being reported. And I think what happens is that drugs becomes a symbolic issue. So it's an issue in and of itself, but it also stands for deeper anxieties about the family and The impact of affluence on established habits, on immigration, cultural change, all of these things.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Exactly. And I think no one's talking about that in 1964. No. But by 1967, people are talking about it a lot. It's in the media a lot. And of course, they're reporting the scenes from the counterculture in San Francisco and so on. I mean, the first reports of that are appearing in the British press.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So when you combine that issue, so drugs, which is already symbolic of deeper changes, and the Rolling Stones, who we established last time, are the supreme folk devils. for kind of Middle England and for the newspapers of Middle England, you get really the perfect story.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And it reminds me a little bit, obviously it's completely different, but it reminds me a little bit of the Profumo scandal, the great spy scandal and sex scandal of 1963, in that it's a very, very enticing and irresistible story that's actually about... a wider sense of a society that's in the throes of rapid cultural change.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah, which people love. Yeah, exactly. Seedy poshness, I think. If there's old Etonians and there's bad behaviour, people love it. Absolutely love it. So actually, the funny thing is the Stones are slightly hard done by because although later on they become very much associated with drugs, obviously Keith Richards, at this point they are not especially keen drug users.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts were nicknamed the straightest rhythm section in rock and roll. Yeah, they're going back to hang out and have their cocoa and... You're right, exactly. Keith Richards is not yet taking heroin. And there is an alternative story that the press could have told about the Rolling Stones.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yes, so this is the queue for one of the most famous trials in post-war British history. It's a very funny story, sort of trashy comic, and it's a brilliant window, I think, to the cultural life of Britain in the late 1960s. So last time we looked at the rise of the Rolling Stones and the way they became folk devils in early 60s Britain.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So Mick Jagger, a few months after this, my favourite Mick Jagger fact of all time, is that he joined the Country Gentlemen's Association, a landowner society that had been first founded in 1893. I mean, that's what he chooses to do with his fame. What are the benefits you get for that?
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Well, like you, Tom, I think he gets probably a special barber jacket of the kind that you wear when you go to your estate in Scotland. Yeah. Salmon fishing. So Keith Richards, the story you could tell about him is he's somebody who collects books about sea battles and spends his time watching old war films.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Charlie Watts, the model of loyalty to his mum and to his wife, sends his mum her favourite cake every Friday. But of course, those stories never appear in the papers at the time because they don't fit. The image that people want of the Rolling Stones is, as the critic Ian McDonald puts it, is wasted emblems of decadent hedonism. So that's the only story that people want to tell.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And I think here's where the house fits in. Richards had bought the house in cash for £17,750. from a Royal Navy Commodore. And the house appeared in the newspapers every day. And why? I think because, again, the house is symbolic of something deeper. To the critics, the Rolling Stones shouldn't be at such a house. It's like the Beatles' MBE. It's an affront to everything they believe in.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And the judge at the trial... He also lives in a 16th century Sussex farmhouse, Leslie Block. And he is also a former naval commander who was decorated for bravery in the Second World War. And I think he saw the Rolling Stones. I think he's the kind of person, undoubtedly, who saw the Rolling Stones as an affront. He's the kind of person who would say, this is not what we fought for.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They would have loved all that. Such a shame. I know. And he, because he later gave a speech, Leslie Block, to the Horsham Ploughing and Agricultural Society. Honorary life president, M. Jagger. And he got in massive trouble with the legal authorities because he spoke out of turn about the trial. And he said, I and my fellow magistrates, we did our best to cut these stones down to size.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And I think that speaks, there are a lot of people in the country who felt like that at the time. These young people with their long hair have got ahead of themselves and we need to cut them down to size.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah. But the Beatles, you see, as we talked about last time, the national media had decided that the Beatles are patriotic heroes because they had conquered America. So they won't go after them. But the Rolling Stones are the enemy. They're fair game. Yeah, they're fair game. So I think there's a degree to it. The trial, which opens on the 27th of June, is a foregone conclusion.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Robert Fraser pleaded guilty straight away. Mick Jagger said, you know, my doctor had told me it was all right to take amphetamines if I was stressed. That's right, isn't it? Because amphetamines, you know, we said are being prescribed all the time. That wasn't good enough. And the magistrate, this guy Block, directed the jury to find him guilty.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And today we're going to focus on the Rolling Stones in the last three years of the 60s. So we have the Redlands drugs case, a huge story at the time in Britain, front page news day after day. We have the tragic fate of Brian Jones, who is set up as this sort of doomed protagonist last time. And we have probably the two most celebrated concerts the Rolling Stones ever gave.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Fraser and Jagger were then handcuffed in the view of the press, kind of pushed and put into a van and taken to Lewis Prison for the night, while the court then turned to deal with Keith Richards. Now, Keith Richards' offence is incredibly minor. The charge is that he has allowed his house to be used for the taking of drugs. He hasn't dealt in drugs.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
There's no argument that he's taken them himself. But his appearance in court is probably the most exciting bit of the trial, because at this point, the police go into the witness box and tell their story about seeing Marianne Faithfull naked, but for a rug. I mean, the fact that she's just jumped out of the bath isn't really mentioned.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Richards' barrister is furious and he says this is completely irrelevant and it gives a false impression of what this gathering was like. It gives an impression of debauchery that is completely unwarranted. And the prosecutor asked Keith Richards about it and he said, fantastically, we're not old men. We're not worried about petty morals.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And this, we're not worried about petty morals, was the line that was then kind of emblazoned across the newspapers the next day. And the sentences are bonkers. Jagger got three months in prison. Robert Fraser got six months. And Keith Richards got 12 months. Yeah, that's mad, isn't it? Which seems completely mad. And they were all very shocked. Mick Jagger collapsed in tears in the court.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah, they are quite young men.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I think the satanic reputation probably comes along a little bit later.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
How dare you use such a fine English house to be... Yes. I think there's a definite element to that. So Richards and Fraser were taken to Wormwood Scrubs. Jagger, Tom, was taken to your neck of the woods in Brixton.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Now, Jagger and Richards were out the next day on bail pending appeal, but Fraser not because he hasn't really got a leg to stand on. I mean, he has had the heroin on him. Now, interestingly, the Stones themselves and their sort of fans have always had this, what I consider a mad conspiracy theory, that this was all plotted by the British establishment, by the government.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
To quote Marianne Faithfull, by the beginning of 1967, there were highly placed people in Her Majesty's government who actually saw us as enemies of the state. Keith Richards, that's why we got busted. They saw us as a threat. And it won't surprise you to know, Tom, that I regard this as absolute balderdash.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
You know, having spent far too much time than is healthy reading and writing about the Harold Wilson government, the idea that anybody in the Wilson government would have any interest in this at all is demented.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Two of the most celebrated rock concerts of all time, their appearance at Hyde Park and their appearance at the Altamont Raceway in 1969. There will be a lot of drugs involved. And perhaps surprisingly, given that this is an apparently trivial story about a rock band who are still in their mid-twenties, there'll be an awful lot of death.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
At that point, your establishment becomes very, very broad because you're including hard bitten newspaper journalists, you know, who themselves love a drink and, you know, are no strangers to debauchery. You have the provincial police. And you have random magistrates in different parts of the country. I mean, yeah, but Dominic, they're all squares. Well, maybe they are. But here's the thing.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The squarest people of all and the most establishment people of all are the people who most eagerly stick up for and defend the Rolling Stones. Jacob Rees-Mogg's dad. This is the great twist of the story that I think is often... slightly elided or confusingly told. The tabloids love the story. The tabloids were like, brilliant, this is the ultimate story.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The broadsheet newspapers, the establishment papers, the Telegraph, the Times and so on, pretty unanimous in saying that the Rolling Stones had been very harshly treated. The judge and the police had no business bringing their lifestyle into it, you know, the rug and the music or whatever.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And that it was a disgrace that they had been handcuffed on their way out of when they were clearly no threat to anyone and they weren't going to run away or anything like that.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And it's one of the most famous editorials The Times has ever run. By the way, he says it's outrageous to punish Mick Jagger because of, and I quote, the primitive prejudices of people who resent the anarchic quality of the Rolling Stones performances, dislike their songs, dislike their influence on teenagers and broadly suspect them of decadence.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And William Rees-Mogg said it's an unsigned leader. So it's from the Times, and it said, British justice demands that Mr. Jagger, they used him as sort of shorthand for the defendants generally, is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. And the further twist about this story is you may say, well, thank goodness, the Times on this is speaking for Britain. But it wasn't.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Because when you look at surveys and polls from the time, a survey a couple of months later found that most young people thought that Mick Jagger's sentence was perfectly fair. It wasn't only one in four thought it was too harsh. Another survey done by ITV, their World in Action program, found that 85% of the young people they asked thought that Mick Jagger deserved to go to prison.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Some people may be surprised listening to that, but to me, that's not surprising at all, because all the data we have about young people in the 60s suggests that they had very conservative attitudes towards social and cultural issues.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah. Do you think a lot of sort of suburban young people who are not part of the cool set don't go to university, as most people don't, of course. They think, you know, they're having all this fun.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Tom, I don't want to give anything away, but I think if we saw some, you know, rival very successful historians sent to prison for having too much fun, I mean, our WhatsApp group would be going wild. No, you would.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So anyway, Richardson's conviction was overturned on appeal by Lord Chief Justice Parker at the end of July. Mick Jagger's conviction stood, but the original sentence was quashed. The prison sentence was considered much too harsh.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And actually, that very evening, this is such a 60s thing, he went on a special talk show edition of World in Action with a combination of William Rees-Mogg at the edge of The Times, the Bishop of Woolwich, and Harold Wilson's first Home Secretary, Frank Soskis. And Jagger went on this program and he made a point of saying, I'm not a rebel. I really respect the post-war time generation.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I'm really so sad to see myself at the center of all this. And the Times had special praise for him the next day, said he was articulate and thoughtful. He has much more grace of manner than one would have expected. Which is really not that surprising because, as we said last time, he's a very bright grammar school boy who got into the London School of Economics when it was really hard to do so.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
It's sort of, yeah, exactly. Exactly. He's very well dressed. So there is one aspect. It appears that all's well that ends well. But this has not ended well for everybody. Because the third man of the case is this guy, the art dealer, Robert Fraser. And his sentence was not overturned on appeal. And he spent four months in Wormwood Scrubs where he worked in the prison kitchens.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And actually, if you read Harriet Viner's biography of him, Groovy Bob, There's some lovely letters from Jagger and Richards. They're very sweet, actually. They sort of say, oh, so we're thinking about you all the time. We'll have a really groovy time when you get out. They did love him. Yeah, they did. The Beatles liked him, didn't they?
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
But he didn't have a groovy time, actually, when he got out. He became a complete and utter heroin addict. His gallery failed. He went off to India. He had a massive kind of drink and drugs hell. And he ended up dying of AIDS in 1986. So if you want a story that captures the darker side of the 60s, the casualties and so on, his is a really, really good example.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So the mood has changed since the early 60s. When we set up the Stones last time, we talked about the sort of affluent society, a lot of money sloshing around in 1963, 64. It's the end of 13 years of Toryism. Harold Wilson's Labour government are now in office, but they have kind of got into trouble. They've been in for three years or so. They're in a bit of a mess economically.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And actually, after the break, when we continue the Rolling Stones' story, this will get an awful lot darker and we will be looking a lot more at the lives destroyed by the excitement of the 60s in the second half. So join us in a few minutes and we will be painting it black.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
He was not. And just before I get on to Brian Jones, Tom, I will once again congratulate you on a superb, a really superb impression. I enjoyed that very much. So, yes, Brian Jones is without question the founder of the Rolling Stones. If you listen to the first episode, you'll remember he places the advert. He puts the band together and at first he's effectively the manager.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
But from quite an early stage, the others have realised he is fragile, he's flaky, he's very demanding, he's hard to get on with. He crucially refuses to write his own songs because he just wants to basically do blues songs. So as early as 1963, he's been marginalised by Mick and Keith and Andrew Lou Goldham, their first manager. And over time, this has got much worse.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
He has been torn between resenting Jagger and Richards and their fame and trying to suck up to them. And actually, by the time they really become internationally famous, the others have come to really dislike him. I hate to laugh because he has a very tragic fate, but they're so horrible about him in their interviews.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
There's a growing sense of anxiety about the state of the nation and about kind of social and cultural change, I think. So the mood of the 60s, it's never one thing. It's kind of shifted. For the Stones, life seems to be, superficially, it seems to be good.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So Mick Jagger, normally the way their interviews work is they always say, oh, we love Brian. Brian was wonderful. Such a shame about Brian. And then in the next sentence, they will say, and I quote, He was an extremely difficult person. There was something very, very disturbed about him. He was a very paranoid personality.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And my favourite one is by Sir Ian Stewart, who'd been their keyboardist, a Scotsman, who was basically pushed out of the band. Guy with a massive chin. Massive chin. And then he became their kind of... Kind of roadie, isn't he? Yeah, kind of roadie and a sort of Stones whisperer who accompanied them on tour and stuff and was sort of the conscience of the band.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
He said of Brian Jones, he was a very difficult person. Nobody wanted to be in the same car with Brian for any length of time. And then my favourite line, I think, in all history, being Welsh, he had a very obnoxious streak to him.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So, yes, I mean, it's important to emphasize this is an inter-Celtic disagreement here because this is a Scotsman. Yeah, of course. So as Brian Jones has been forced out of the band, he ended up moving into this muse cottage in Chelsea, had a string of girlfriends who he treated incredibly badly. I mean, there's always discussion about whether John Lennon treated women badly.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Brian Jones is in a different league. I mean, he really does beat up his girlfriends. He's drinking at least a bottle of whiskey or brandy a day, swallowing handfuls of pills. The music press start to notice that even at this point, 1965, he's disappearing and he becomes very sort of insecure. And then... At the end of 1965, he meets this woman called Anita Pallenberg. Now, she is groovy.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
She's an extraordinary person. So she's a West German model from a very, very wealthy artistic German family. She'd studied art restoration and graphic design. She speaks four languages. She's obsessed with black magic. She sort of puts it about that she's a witch. She ends up, of course, a massive heroin addict. And she and Brian have this very strange, self-destructive relationship.
The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Tons of drugs, putting on and off Nazi uniforms, sadomasochistic sessions. It's all happening. And it reaches a sort of climax with this disastrous holiday they go on to Morocco with Keith Richards. So Keith's in the middle of the Redlands chaos, and he wants to get away from the press. And they say, oh, come with us to Morocco. And they drive off.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They've had six British number ones, four American number ones, very famous songs, Satisfaction, Get Off My Cloud, Paint It Black, and Ruby Tuesday. They've been to the United States three times, triumphant tours. They've been twice to Australia and New Zealand. They've been often to Europe.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I mean, it's a sign of how these worked in the 60s. They didn't fly. They drive. And they get across France, and Brian Jones fell ill in Toulouse. Keith Richards and Anita said, well, we'll go on. You can catch us up. By the time he got to Marrakesh and he caught up with them, they'd started to have an affair. And there's terrible tension. I mean, it's like the world's worst holiday.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And eventually Brian Jones cracked and he beat her up really badly. And then he said, oh, I feel a bit bad about that. I'll make it up to you. Why don't we have an orgy with some local prostitutes? Because nothing says sorry like that. And Keith Richards at this point said, come on, mate, enough's enough. And he drove her all the way back to London and left Brian Jones behind.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And Jones took this incredibly badly. So he returned to Britain a complete wreck and he went around saying to people, they took my music, they took my band, and now they've taken my love. Which would be moving if he hadn't been beating her up. Keith Richards was very... Do you want to read his line, Tom, in your excellent voice?
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
If something happened to me at the rest is history and you, Theo and Tabby were saying stuff like that, Tom, I'd be gutted. I'd be absolutely gutted.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Anyway, his flat is always being raided in 1967, 68 by the police. Actually, this whole business about the establishment conspiracies. So here I think you have an example of why the establishment conspiracy stuff doesn't work. The magistrates are constantly kind of letting him off. He'll give him a sentence, then it's overturned on appeal.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Is that because it's perhaps in London and they're just groovier in London? No, I don't think so. I think it's that they're genuinely not. The silly stereotype, which is, oh, they're just hatchet-faced old men, is just not true. They're sensible, decent men.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Of course, they're small C conservative people, but they're not monsters and they don't hate young people and they don't probably even hate the Rolling Stones, a lot of them. But the judge at the Redlands trial.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I'm talking about the 60s. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I think that's, I think by and large, you know, there are always sort of parodic Daily Express reading magistrates, but also there are a lot who aren't. And actually in his case, he always gets psychiatrists and therapists and things to testify on his behalf to say quite reasonably, this bloke is on the edge of something.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
There is a slight sense, I think, by 1967, I think you're dead right, that they are out of time, that their music has, you know, the sort of the blues-edged music with which they came to prominence in 1964. It's no longer what people want in 1967. Yeah, what the kids are grieving are sitars. They want sitars. They want people laughing uncontrollably for no reason at the end of a track.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
You know, he's incredibly flaky. Prison will probably kill him. And actually the magistrates are quite sympathetic. So in 68, when he's up in front of the same people, the same panel, they said to him, you know, again, really? And they gave him a small fine and they said a third time, you really will have to go to prison, but you have to kind of be more sensible.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So he then went off to Morocco and hung around in Morocco. Yeah. So when he's off in Morocco, the Stones are trying to reboot themselves. So in late 67, early 68, they had reached their nadir with their Satanic Majesty's Request, which was this record. Do you think? I think so.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Amazing look. But Tom, this is, I mean, you like dressing, I mean, you're a fan of dressing up. You've done it on occasion for the podcast. You're basically giving it marks for dressing up.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
You and I are looking for different things than Rolling Stones. I'm looking for sort of satanic simplicity and you're looking for whimsy and humour. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm responding to the full range of their oeuvre. Are you? Okay. See, I like the fact that they release this and everybody says it's abject. It gets terrible reviews.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
It's a complete Beatles rip-off and there's too many kind of stuff being played backwards and people laughing uncontrollably. And actually... Come on, get back to your old stuff. And then they start working on the kind of blues roots stuff that becomes Beggar's Banquet. So this is the album that has Street Fighting Man and Sympathy for the Devil.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And it's more aggressive and it's more hard edged and it's more the Rolling Stones that everybody wants. So Brian Jones makes virtually no contribution to this at all because he's so off his face on drugs. And they just start on a new album in 1969 called Let It Bleed, which he basically doesn't really turn up for. Kicks off with Gimme Shelter, doesn't it? Yeah.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So they have already started to think he's got to go. And they're working with a replacement who's called Mick Taylor, who is from a band called John Mayles Blues Breakers. A lot of people will know that the Rolling Stones got into terrible trouble with their taxes recently.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And the real issue with them is they discovered that their finances had been ill-managed and they hadn't paid enough tax during the 1960s. And they are going to face colossal tax and legal bills. And to make money, they need to go on tour to America. But Brian Jones has two drugs convictions and he almost certainly will be refused entry.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And frankly, even if he got in, he will be useless because he can't play publicly. So in June 1969, the 8th of June, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts drove to Cotchford Farm, formerly A.A. Milne's house, to break the bad news. And they literally break it to him, surrounded by Winnie the Pooh memorabilia. Hush, hush, whisper who dares.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They want bits played backwards. Exactly. So there's a slight sense that the Stones are beginning to copy the... I mean, they've always been in the shadow of the Beatles, as we established last time, that they are becoming a little bit slavish to the Beatles. Their most recent album was Between the Buttons, which was released in January 1967.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
A sort of blank-faced Eeyore looking over at them or whatever. And it's a terrible scene. He pretends he's happy and they say, well, we'll put out a statement that it's musical differences. Mick Jagger said afterwards, it was difficult, but not as difficult as I thought. So they do it quite coldly.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
There were different accounts of how he spent his final weeks, whether he was some people say he was inconsolable shock. They were shocked to the sight of him. He was frail and downcast. Other people visit him and he was said they found him upbeat talking about new band and stuff. Possibly this is the effect of the drugs that his moods are all over the place.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And then on the 2nd of July, 1969, it was a lovely warm day. He's got a new girlfriend called Anna Volin, who's Swedish. And they're spending their time hanging out by a swimming pool. He's got terrible asthma, Brian Jones. So he's always taking his inhaler.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
He does. He loves a Breton.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah, Jean-Paul Gaultier. And late that night, they hang around at the swimming pool with a bloke called Frank Thorogood, who was doing building work for Jones on the farm. See, that sounds sinister, doesn't it?
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah. Why is he there in the evening? That's the question. They're drinking loads of vodka and taking amphetamines, and then they decide to have a swim at around midnight.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
frank thoroughgood and the others get out of the pool and go inside leaving brian in the pool and when they return tom brian is dead he's floating lifeless in the pool so they called an ambulance and whatnot and the police police pathologist said he's full of drink and drugs coroner said he's obviously drowned because he's off his face on on drink and drugs however
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The suspicion of murder, murder, has hung over this. If you go on the internet, there are demented conspiracy theories. I mean, the two best ones are one, killed by the mafia, presumably using the same team that killed Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, and that the other Rolling Stones killed him. which seems unlikely to me, actually. Improbable. So in the 2000s, they started to become allegations.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
You can find them very easily. They're in Anna Volin's own book, The Girlfriend's Book, The Murder of Brian Jones, that the builder, you identified him from the beginning, Tom. I did. I fingered him. Frank Thorogood. You're safe from being sued by him because he died in 1993. And it is said that on his deathbed, he made a confession. that he had killed Jones.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
It's a little bit more sort of folky and a bit more psychedelic than their previous records. They are, Tom, like so many blues musicians before them, they're at a crossroads. Now, they're also, of course, by this point, national celebrities and international celebrities. So in the last episode, we heard how they turned into kind of folk devils.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Midsummer Murders. Midsummer Murders. It'd make a brilliant edition of Midsummer Murders. Yeah. Well, anyway, Charlie Watts doesn't think that. He despises. I don't know what he thinks about or he thought about Midsommar Murders. He'd have loved it.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
He'd have watched the Antiques Roadshow first and then he'd have watched Midsommar. He'd have actually exhibited stuff on the Antiques Roadshow given the chance, I imagine. Yeah. He'd have lent his house as a set. Exactly. Well, Bill Wyman with a metal detector. Remember Bill Wyman used to go around with a metal, maybe still does, with a metal detector detecting things.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I mean, there's another side to Bill Wyman's life, which we don't need to go into, but well, all of them. Charlie Watts said, all that about Brian being knocked off is rubbish. I know a lot of people. This is the next line is classic Rolling Stones interview. I know a lot of people who would have willingly knocked him off, but it didn't happen. Slightly of disappointment about that, I think. Yeah.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Charlie Watts said his pool was too hot. Whenever you got there, it used to shimmer with heat. You would drive down there on a spring morning and the heat would be rising off the top. So it was too hot. And that's what killed him, according to Charlie Watts. Right.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Exactly. I think that's exactly right. Now, the Rolling Stones had already made a plan to have this concert at Hyde Park on the Saturday, the 5th of July. for the maximum publicity to unveil his replacement, Mick Taylor. So they were going to have this free concert. And the arrangements had already been made. A special souvenir edition of the London Evening Standard. Six different TV crews.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They were going to be transported to the stage from their hotel in an armoured personnel carrier. Mick Jagger had already ordered his outfit from the boutique Mr Fish. And what an outfit it is. And what an outfit. And they didn't want to scrap it. So Charlie Watts said, let's turn it into a memorial to Brian.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And so it is that on the 5th of July, this great 1960s set piece at Hyde Park, there are somewhere between a quarter and half a million people. And it is actually a lovely scene. There's no trouble at all. It's a beautiful day. There are lots of people in caftans. They're all eating ice creams by the serpentine. The police are kind of chuckling and, you know, posing for photos or whatever.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Now, there are, in a sign of things to come, 50 Hells Angels who have been hired to protect the equipment. But, you know, they get on all right with the crowd. It's all fine. Concert starts at one o'clock, various warm up acts. And then at four o'clock, the stones finally appear. And Tom, there is a bombshell as Mick Jagger unveils this long awaited outfit that he's had specially made by Mr. Fish.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And Philip Norman, the Stone's biographer, says, whatever the audience were expecting, no one could have expected him to take the stage in lipstick, rouge and eyeshadow and wearing a white frilly garment, which for all the white vest and bell bottoms visible beneath, still resembled nothing so much as a little girl's party dress. It's an amazing moment, isn't it? It is.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The Battle of Cressy. Yeah. The Battle of Melbourne. And what was the other one we said? Wolves inventing Europe in the 1950s.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Well, on The Rest is History, we only do the very, very biggest and most important historical moments, don't we? And actually, so he's also got a crucifix and a kind of dog collar, leather dog collar. And you're reading...
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
eccentric as it was was too good because if you watch him on youtube yeah he's worse isn't he his reading of shelly it actually improves a bit it does get better as he gets in but when he starts he's clearly i mean god he's quite young you know they're in their 20s quarter of a million people it's a bizarre situation to be in he's clearly very nervous and he makes a dreadful mess of it so he's getting all the words wrong and stumbling and stuff and and all of this
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
However, the press coverage was bonkers. That observer, from far off, you might have supposed that this great gathering had come to hear a famed religious leader or some Eastern mystic. At the end, they release all these butterflies. They're all dead, aren't they? They got terrible complaints. The butterflies had all suffocated in the boxes. Disastrous.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The concert itself was very bad, by all accounts. They're all very nervous. Mick Taylor is making his debut. He's terrified. However, as a public spectacle, a huge occasion, a great success, and as with every great 60s occasion, a mad column afterwards in The Guardian. So Richard Gott. He's a KGB agent, isn't he? He was a KGB agent of influence, I believe.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
He gave my first book, Never Had It So Good, a disobliging review. OK, well, let's diss him. There wasn't enough about the Cuban Revolution in it. And people in Britain cared about nothing so much as the Cuban Revolution.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
No. He said, what's all this nonsense about people going to garden centres and Kingsley Amis? I want the Cuban Revolution. Anyway, he said of this concert, it was a great and epoch-making event in British social history.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Anyone who wants to understand the present political malaise in Britain or who wants to have an inkling what Britain will be like in 10 years' time should have been at the park on Saturday, he said. And of course, when you do the maths, 10 years on from this concert is almost exactly the point when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They're like war films. They're like 1950s war films and things like that. So particularly Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones have become names. They've made that sort of transition to becoming names that people who are not really interested in their music will automatically recognise. They'll be in the gossip columns.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So a prediction that did not work out exactly as he anticipated.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Because actually, it's just after this concert that their tax advisor, who is, I believe, a Bavarian aristocrat called Prince Rupert Leuvenstein, who didn't like their music, had never heard of them before they took him on, but was brilliant at taxes. He said to them, you need to get out of Britain. You have been very poorly advised. You've been underpaying tax for years.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The only way you can basically escape this and not be completely bankrupt is to get out of the country. So you're two years non-resident, and that means they go to France. But of course, they still need to make money. And so in October, they fly to America for their first tour since the summer of 1966. And actually, when they get to America at the end of 1969...
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They are young, but they're not politically naive. They can tell that something has changed in the atmosphere. So listeners will remember our America in 1968 series. And we've moved on less than a year since the end of that, Nixon's election. Keith Richards said afterwards, he said, when we went to America before, it was Walt Disney and hamburger dates. But when you came back in 1969...
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
It wasn't anymore. It's darker. They've had riots. They've had Vietnam. Just the atmosphere feels, everything just feels more conflicted. And, you know, even the gigs. There was much less screaming than there was. There aren't teeny boppers there. The fans seem older. And they comment on it. Charlie Watts, people didn't scream anymore. The music was taken seriously.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Mick Jagger, he said the real surprise was that people actually listened to the music. But presumably they are older. I mean, the teeny boppers have grown up. Exactly. And the tickets are also... much more expensive. This is the first rock tour, I think, where there were a lot of complaints about the prices of the tickets.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Because, of course, they're charging as much as they can at this point because they're desperate for money because of their tax imbroglio. But also they can because both they and the fans have grown up. And I think this is actually part of a much bigger cultural shift that we often forget about.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Because right up to this point, when people talked about the Rolling Stones, the phrase they used to describe them was a pop group. They never called them a rock group. They called them a pop group. And I think it's this point, 1967 to 69, that effectively rock music is invented as something serious and grown up and not teenage and not trivial. And I think they are absolutely the centre of this.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And I think there are three elements to it. So one is that cultural shift that we just mentioned, the shift from the kind of hippy-dippy flower power, everything is fun and sweet and sunny, to the darkness of the kind of Nixon years, which just seems the perfect match to a move from kind of pop to rock, to something a little bit more conflicted and a bit heavy and a bit more serious.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They will be mentioned as sort of shorthand for youth. And in a way that perhaps is no longer the case, would you say? Yeah, because there is a genuinely homogenous culture, national culture. And to some extent, I suppose, a Western international culture has emerged really.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The musicians themselves, the second thing, they are much older. They're in their late 20s coming into their 30s. They no longer want to be pop stars. They want to be serious musicians. So you have people like Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page or Jeff Beck or whatever who pride themselves on being kind of guitar virtuosos. I don't want people to scream. I want people to listen to the music.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So there's a kind of an earnestness to it. And then the third thing, probably the most important thing, the market has changed. So if you're 16 in 1963 at the dawn of the kind of pop revolution, what are you? You're in your mid-20s now. And given what we know about the social structure at the time, you're almost certainly married and you almost certainly have a job.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
So there isn't a self-consciously adult market who don't want music anymore to dance to, which was the main thing. point of music at the beginning of the 60s, they wanted to actually listen to the lyrics, which people didn't do. Which they might start printing on the back of the album. Like with Sgt. Pepper. Exactly. Which they print on the back of the album.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And it's at this point, the singles market goes into a long-term decline and the album market begins to surge and albums are much more profitable. So it makes sense now for bands, they start to call themselves bands rather than groups. And it makes sense for them to cater to these older listeners. So you get a band like Led Zeppelin who emerge at this point.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They don't bother with the singles market at all. They just want to make albums largely for slightly older listeners who actually aren't the teenage girls who empowered this at the very beginning. There's a brilliant discussion of this in a book by Charlie Gillick called The Sound of the City. And he talks about what a contrived and artificial sort of cleavage it is between pop and rock.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
But we're now so used to it. We've fallen for the PR, basically, because it's ultimately about working out how to sell more records. Older people won't buy music that they think is for teenagers. So this is the way you basically say, no, it's not. It's a whole new genre. And that's how they do it.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Anyway, let's end the episode, this enormous episode, and indeed the story of the Stones in the 60s with the final act of that American tour. So all through this tour, they have had massive criticism for their high ticket prices. And they decide, because they're kindly people, that they will end with another free concert like Hyde Park.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And they say, let's do it in San Francisco, in the city of the counterculture. We'll have a little festival. We'll get the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and Californian bands to come and join us.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
But partly because of their kind of outlaw reputation, but also because the cultural and political climate has changed, swung against the counterculture with Nixon's election and so on, they don't get permits. So they decide they will do it at the Altamont Raceway, which is 60 miles from San Francisco in the absolute middle of nowhere.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
When we were on our tour, Tom, US tour last year, we drove not a million miles away from the Altamont Raceway, didn't we? And it is, you know, California is a big place. You go inland, you're a long way from the cities. It's very rural. And that's where they're going, to the kind of, just a sort of suburban scrub of nowhere.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I mean, I guess it existed in the form of Hollywood, but, you know, they could walk down the street in Chicago and they would be immediately recognised. in a way that would not have been possible for a music hall singer in the 1890s or something. So they're always being mentioned, those three in particular, and media accounts are swinging London, 1965, 1966.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And this place, it's like a bowl and the stage is at the bottom of the bowl, at the bottom of a slope. So a slightly weird arrangement. And to protect the stage, the management of the Grateful Dead, who have said they'll help to organise it, enlist the local Hells Angels and they pay them with $500 worth of beer. We mentioned the Hells Angels at Hyde Park. This is a very different atmosphere.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They have billiard cues, don't they? And motorbike chains as weapons. So 300,000 people descend on this raceway. It's a very miserable kind of grey day. Everybody gets absolutely wasted very quickly, very drunk. There's a lot of fighting. And by the time the stones come on, the mood has got very ugly.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
If you watch the footage, Mick Jagger is constantly saying, cool down, guys, cool down, and all this kind of thing. They have to stop the third song, Sympathy for the Devil. It's actually where the Stones' kind of slightly satanic pretensions are exposed. You know, they're not really as satanic as all that because they're clearly very uncomfortable and very discomforted by the fighting below them.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And then the fourth song, this fight breaks out between the Hells Angels and an 18-year-old black man called Meredith Hunter. And it culminates with this dreadful scene, which, you know, if you're desperate to see it, you can see it on YouTube. Hunter pulls out what seems to be a long-barreled revolver. And one of the Hells Angels kind of parries him and then stabs him repeatedly.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And then the other Hells Angels kind of stamp on him while he lies dying. The Stones actually finish their set. They knew somebody was hurt, but they didn't know how seriously. And then they effectively flee the scene by helicopter. And it turns out that Meredith Hunter wasn't the only person killed that day. So two fans were run over by a car and another drowned in a drainage ditch.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And at the time... it was seen as the sort of the symbolic punctuation point at the end of the 1960s. I mean, it literally is at the end of the 1960s, at the very end of 1969. But all the kind of rock critics and stuff said, oh my gosh, you could hardly find a better kind of encapsulation of the changing mood and so on.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The US rock writer Ralph Gleeson a few months later wrote, if the name Woodstock has come to denote the flowering of one phase of the youth culture, Altamont has come to mean the end of it. Now, I don't actually think that's quite right. I mean, I think it already ended. Nixon had already been president for a year. The Summer of Love was over.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
The optimism of the 60s was already a very distant memory.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think it's a different band, a less well-known band and one without the folk devil reputation, I think would not be such a big story. I completely agree with that.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They love nothing better than hanging around with old Etonian art dealers and aristocrats and things. And their success – now, you mentioned the house, Redlands. I think that's actually really important. Their success is symbolised above all by their houses. The British are famously obsessed with property. All of them by this point in the late 60s have bought –
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Oh, yeah.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Of course, for the Stones, you know, life goes on and they're in the middle of a fantastic run of albums. Two of their very best albums come in the next couple of years, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. Yeah, because they get back to France, don't they? Yeah, and they're producing amazing stuff in France.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And I mean, by this point, what they've done is effectively invented what it is to be a rock band, I would say, to an extent that we now are so familiar with it. We take it for granted. Sex, drugs, rebellion, songs about with the sort of slightly satanic pretensions, death, all those themes that people associate with rock music as opposed to pop music.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
It's the Rolling Stones who established the template. which is why I think they are the only band, actually, of that era that will be remembered as the Beatles will be. So, of course, there are lots of other fantastic outfits, but none of them quite, for me, have the same symbolic resonance as the Rolling Stones do.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Although, do you know the one person who doesn't agree with us on this? It's Mick Jacker. He was interviewed by Sounds in 1976. He said a brilliant line, which makes me think much better of him. He said, people overestimate the Rolling Stones. I don't think the Stones were as good as people think.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
All right. So that's The Rolling Stones. Shall we return next week with something completely different?
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
All right. On that bombshell, goodbye. Bye-bye.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
country houses so Mick Jagger has a place a Victorian house called Stargroves in Hampshire Charlie Watts has a 16th century house called Peckhams with staff near Lewis Brian Jones a house that we'll be returning to Cotchford Farm Sussex again 16th century most famous owner was A.A.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Milne and has a swimming pool of course Bill Wyman has a tremendous house he bought Gedding Hall in Suffolk which had been built in 1480 and that came with the title Lord of the Manor of Gedding and Thornwood
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Yeah, I get that's true. I mean, they've bought the houses that Victorian industrialists buy. I mean, this is the house that you buy, I would say, when you've made an awful lot of money from ball bearings in 1840 and you want a country house and you want a ride to Hounds and you send your son to a public school and all of those things. The Stones are very, very keen...
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Certainly Mick Jagger is extremely keen to embrace this lifestyle.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
These are not stockbrokers' houses. These are houses in which they can, if they want, entertain the daughter of a duke, as Mick Jagger very much loves to do.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
You could absolutely imagine that. Or you can imagine Henry James living there at the turn of the century or something of that ilk. Exactly. So the incongruity, I think, becomes an enormous part of this story. So Redlands has been in Richards' possession for a couple of years. We'll talk a bit about the house later on.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
On the 11th of February, Saturday the 11th of February, the Stones had been working on their next album, the disastrous Their Satanic Majesties Request at the Olympic Sound Studios in London. And they finish up and they all go their separate ways. And Jagger and Richards drive with a group of friends down into Sussex to Redlands. They're going to spend the weekend there.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And it's a very, very late 60s sort of coterie that they have. So one woman who's Marianne Faithfull, who's 20 years old, who had been well known now for three years. She's Mick Jagger's girlfriend. She'd made her kind of explosion onto the scene with the song As Tears Go By. Lovely song written by Jagger and Richards. Kind of sexy posh. Sexy posh, exactly. Yes.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And they've got a couple of old Etonian sort of art dealers with them, Robert Fraser and Christopher Gibbs. So Robert Fraser is called Groovy Bob, isn't he? Groovy Bob. And they have sort of various other hippies and kind of hangers-on who are called things like Acid King David and stuff like this. Camberwell Carrots all around. Exactly. So they go down there Saturday night.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Sunday, as you described in your lovely reading, they have been out kind of freaking about, as Keith called it. But actually they behave as people do behave on kind of weekends in the country. They've gone for some nice walks. They've taken photos of each other. They've gone on the beach. So it's not a bacchanal. That's the key thing.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They have been smoking dope, but it's absolutely not a bacchanal. It's actually just strolling around, chatting aimlessly. And then the police turn up at about 7.30. They've got the telly on. They're listening to records. Marianne Faith was having a bath.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And the reason the police turn up is they have had a tip off from the News of the World newspaper, now defunct, but then a colossal multi-million copy selling newspaper that specialised in stories about vicars being caught in sex scandals. The News of the World had been tipped off almost certainly from one of the hangers on inside the house.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
that the Stones were there and there were a lot of drugs. The News of the World were very keen on this story because, in a sort of complicated irony, they were already in conflict with Nick Jagger because they had falsely accused him of taking drugs openly in a London club earlier that year. What had actually happened is they'd got him mixed up with Brian Jones
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Mick Jagger was outraged and was suing them for libel. And so the news of the world were desperate to get dirt on Mick Jagger. It is the kind of newspaper that bears a grudge. It does bear a grudge, exactly. So they tipped off the police. The police had got a search warrant from a special sitting of magistrates in Chichester. And now they arrived, 18 uniformed policemen, men and women.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And actually, you know what? The raid reflects very well on Britain, I think. Everybody is extremely polite. So Keith Richards, he opens the door to Chief Inspector Diley and his officers. And he says, you know, I've only got one request. I brought these cushions from Morocco. They're very expensive. Can you please make sure you don't tread on them?
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And actually, this is not surprising because Keith Richards was very well regarded generally by his neighbours. They regarded him as a polite young man. Which he was. Yes, which he was. So the police arrived, and some of them had been, you know, golly, this is going to be an eye-opener.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And actually, they're slightly taken aback because actually all the guests are doing are listening to Bob Dylan records while getting ready to watch an old 1950s gangster film on TV. And the only woman there is Marianne Faithfull. She has been having this bath. So when they come in, she grabs this gigantic fur rug and wraps herself in it.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Salacious stories which are completely untrue, exactly. And actually, the policemen are not particularly shocked by this. PC Don Rambridge, who was later interviewed about this, gave what I think was a slightly ungallant interview. And I think untrue. He said, she wasn't anything to look at anyway. She was obviously a dropout type.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
but I don't think I mean she clearly was very pretty so this was very harsh of PC Rambridge the thing that really shocked them actually was the incongruity of the stones in this house PC Rambridge it gave us a bit of a shock from the outside it's a beautiful house oldie worldie half beamed then you go inside it's decorated in mauves and blacks all the beams painted like that it turned out to be a real ravers place it really hurt looking at the inside I mean that is 1967 summed up isn't it it's Sergeant Pepper it's
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Exactly. So I think Keith... He still owns the house. I don't believe it's still... I would be surprised if it's still painted mauve inside. I think... I imagine... Tastefully done now. Tastefully done now. I think there's... Do you know what? It would amaze me if there aren't nautical prints... Or kind of even, dare I say, a battle map of Trafalgar or something like that.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
I think that would reflect very well on him. We know he loves all that stuff. So he's got a library. He's got a very well-furnished library, by all accounts. So the police, do they find the drugs they're looking for? The short answer is, in many ways, no. They're hoping for vast quantities of LSD and all this kind of thing, and they don't find it.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
What they find are there are some amphetamines in Mick Jagger's green velvet jacket. These are actually Marianne Faithfull's. And there's quite a lot of stuff owned by Groovy Bob, isn't there? Yes. So Mick says of these tablets, well, these are actually mine. They were given to me by my doctor.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
But it's on Groovy Bob, Robert Fraser, the old Etonian art dealer, that they find marijuana, amphetamines, and 24 white tablets, which he says, oh, don't worry about those. They're just medicine or something. And actually, they turn out to be heroin. And the police are sort of... He was the one man they said, oh, he was a very nice man, very well-spoken, very polite.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And he was as good as gold, they said of him. Do you know what? He wasn't just a groovy bob. He'd been Idi Amin's commanding officer in the King's African Rifles. I mean, that's so 60s. So the news of the world, anyway, they had enough for their story. They had the amphetamines in Mick Jagger's jacket, and they had groovy bob's stash. And so the week later, they run this banner headline.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
They don't name them. They just say several stars. And then in March, the news breaks that Jagger and Fraser are going to be charged for possession of drugs under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965. And Keith Richards is going to be charged for allowing the smoking of cannabis online. on his property. Although no drugs have been found on his person. Yeah, exactly.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
There's no evidence that he has... It's never alleged that he's... I mean, I would be surprised if he hadn't. I don't want to end up in a legal battle with Keith Richards. It's very unlikely. It has been known. He's no stranger to that world, shall we put it that way. So on the face of it, listeners may say, well, this is a very trivial story. But at the time, it becomes absolutely enormous.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
And I think it becomes an enormous story because it's symbolic of deeper changes. So when the Rolling Stones were growing up in the 40s and early 50s, drugs just simply were never an issue in Britain. In 1961, a Home Office committee had been set up to look at drugs. And they basically said, there is no need for us to ever do anything about this.
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559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
There's no need for legislation or anything like that because there are no drugs. There really are no drugs in Britain. The only people who take drugs... are people who, at the very top of society, who spend their holidays in North Africa or something. Hashish. Yeah, opium addicts. Yes. But 99% of the population have no connection with the world of drugs whatsoever.