The Rest Is History
559. The Rolling Stones: Satanic Majesties of Sixties Rebellion (Part 2)
Wed, 23 Apr 2025
"We're not worried about petty morals." What happened to the Rolling Stones in 1967 to see them on the brink of imprisonment and mass censure, while at the height of their success, with fame, fortune, mansions, world tours, and best selling albums to their names? Was Brian Jones, the band's founder, murdered, after being found floating in his swimming pool? Under what pressures and against the backdrop of what other controversies, did they produce some of the best rock albums of all time? And, what occurred during their infamously deadly concert at the Altamont Raceway…? Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the uproarious climax of the Rolling Stones’ extraordinary career: their entanglements with the law, the evolution of their sound, their personal lives; sex, drugs, death, and the birth of rock… EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What led to the police raid on Keith Richards' Redlands estate in 1967?
There's a big knock at the door. Eight o'clock. Everybody's just sort of gliding down slowly from the whole day. Freaking about. Everyone has managed to find their way back to the house. TV is on with the sound off and the record player is on. Strobe lights are flickering. Mary Ann Faithfull has just decided that she wanted a bath. and has wrapped herself up in a rug, and is watching the box.
Bang, bang, bang, this big knock at the door, and I go to answer it. Oh, look, there's lots of little ladies and gentlemen outside. He says, read this.
unmistakable tones there of Keith Richards, of course. And he was being interviewed in Rolling Stone on the 19th of August, 1971, about one of the most notorious episodes, really from the 1960s, one of the kind of iconic moments. And it is the evening of the 12th of February, 1967. The scene is Keith Richards' country house at Redlands in Sussex,
And the man at the door is Chief Inspector Gordon Dineley of the West Sussex Constabulary. And Dominic, he's come basically to search the house and to arrest as many Rolling Stones as he possibly can, hasn't he? Make an example of them.
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.
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.
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.
So we're in February 1967, 1967, the summer of love of psychedelia. So not natural territory for the Stones, certainly as they promote themselves, one might argue. And this will be a bit of the context for the story we're about to tell, isn't it? So what's the broader political context?
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.
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Chapter 2: How did the Rolling Stones' lifestyle and image contrast with 1960s British society?
Well, there's, I mean, literally a Faustian pact in that sense, isn't it?
Yeah.
That they have cast themselves as devils when, in fact, in all kinds of ways, they're not really devils. You know, they like collecting cricket memorabilia.
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.
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.
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.
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 –
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.
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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Chapter 3: What was found during the Redlands drugs raid and what charges were filed?
But that's not quite true, is it? Because amphetamines are prescribed quite regularly. Aren't they called the housewife's friend? As Theo says, mother's little helper. Rolling Stones. Yes. So the sense of what drugs actually are, I guess, is evolving as well.
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.
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.
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.
And the impact of fame as well, because isn't there by 1966, is it Donovan? There's a documentary on ITV and he's the first kind of big musician to talk about taking cannabis. Yeah. Or the Beatles, of course. But the Beatles don't kind of officially admit to taking drugs until, I think it's Paul McCartney talking about LSD in 67. Yes, I think it is 67.
So actually just before the Redlands trial, interestingly. Yeah. But there is a sense that if you want to be groovy and with it and like your heroes, then you should be smoking pot.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 4: How did the British establishment and media react to the Rolling Stones' drug trial?
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.
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.
Sure, but, I mean, the establishment isn't just the government, is it? And you could say that it's the intersection of the media, the police, and... JPs and judges.
And it wouldn't be, I mean, you wouldn't say that they'd all met up in a gentleman's club and drawn it up, but we've talked about how they, you know, people are ready to go after the stones in a way that they're not after the Beatles, for instance. So there is a sense that a sniff of an opportunity is, And various segments of the British establishment are going to go after them.
I would say that's not an exaggeration.
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 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 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.
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.
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Chapter 5: Why were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Robert Fraser sentenced so harshly?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
There was extra hassles between Brian and me because I took his old lady. You know, he enjoyed beating chicks up. Not a likeable guy. I honestly don't think you'll find anyone who liked Brian.
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.
I was worrying about the other way. Interesting.
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Chapter 6: Was there a conspiracy behind the prosecution of the Rolling Stones?
That's a Breton T-shirt, isn't it?
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?
Do you think so? Yeah, I do. Generally, in these kind of dramas where somebody's doing the building.
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.
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
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.
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.
So you're sticking to that, are you? No, I'm floating it out, but I'm saying that this is probably what would happen if this were a Sunday evening detective drama. Like Bergerac. No, not Bergerac. Bergerac's brilliant. You can't be dissing Bergerac on this show. No, what's it? The one where they're always killing each other. The Village. Midsummer Murders.
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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Chapter 7: How did public opinion and the press differ in their view of the Rolling Stones' trial?
The Battle of Cressy. Yeah. The Battle of Melbourne. And what was the other one we said? Wolves inventing Europe in the 1950s.
No, I think you said that. Yeah. But I mean, it's definitely up there with... decisive moments.
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...
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
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.
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.
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.
He didn't dig your insistence on washing machines.
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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Chapter 8: What were the long-term consequences of the drug trial for the Rolling Stones and their associates?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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