The Rolling Stones

:For other uses, see Rolling Stones (disambiguation)

Sex, Drugs, Death and Rock & Roll: 1967-1971

By now the band had become almost synonymous with the rebellious spirit of the 1960s, and in particular a more relaxed attitude towards drug use. Brian Jones faced several court appearances during 1967, accused of possession of drugs, and the pressure on him began to show. The British Sunday tabloid newspaper News of the World targetted the Stones and their perceived debauched lifestyles, and allegedly tipped off the police leading to a search of Keith Richard's country home, "Redlands" in West Wittering, Sussex. The February 1967 raid, now legendary in the band's mythology, occurred during one of the regular parties held there, and police discovered a moderate quantity of cannabis. The raid also served as a source of apocryphal stories, mainly concerning the appearance and demeanour of Mick Jagger's girlfriend Marianne Faithfull, which only served to augment their reputation for debauchery. It was also rumoured that the raid was delayed on police instructions to allow Beatles guitarist George Harrison to leave, who was among the guests. Richards was charged and a few months later stood trial for allowing drug use in his home. Jagger was charged with possessing amphetamine tablets, which though bought legally in Italy to combat travel sickness, were still obtained without a doctor's prescription. Amidst intense press interest they were convicted, Richards was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and Jagger to four months, prompting The Times newspaper to run an editorial criticising the verdict. Beneath the title "Who Breaks A Butterfly On A Wheel" editor William Rees-Mogg wrote:

Related Topics:
1960s - 1967 - Cannabis - Marianne Faithfull - The Times - Editorial - William Rees-Mogg

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:"If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity."

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During the furor, Decca shrewdly released Flowers in the United States. Despite being a quickly cobbled-together collection of hits and studio outtakes, it was nevertheless a hit. The Who also rush-released a single covering two Stones originals "Under My Thumb" and "The Last Time" in a show of solidarity.

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With Richards and Jagger out on bail and shortly to be acquitted on appeal, Jagger was immediately whisked off in a helicopter to appear on a BBC television programme " World in Action " taking part, along with members of the British establishment, in a live debate discussing the morals of modern society. Maybe as a result of the pressure he was feeling, he looked out of his depth and his arguments cut little ice with his fellow participants. The band then set about recording a new single "We Love You", officially as a thank you for the loyalty shown by their fans, though privately it was seen as a barbed attack on their perceived persecutors; the News of the World, the Metropolitan police force and members of the British judiciary. The record featured the sounds of footsteps and a cell door banging shut, and which it is rumoured was taken from a secret recording from within Wormwood Scrubs; the London prison where Richards was held overnight. Work then commenced on a new psychedelic album, which Jagger envisioned as the group's response to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. The record, which would eventually be released as Their Satanic Majesties' Request was recorded in difficult circumstances with various members of the band living under the threat of imprisonment, so much so, that Bill Wyman was able to get one of his songs "In Another Land" onto the album. The resulting record received lukewarm reviews observing that the songs and arrangements did not lend themselves to the band's natural style, and the increasingly strung-out Brian Jones contributed little. Despite Keith Richards later harshly pronouncing it "crap", a number of songs showcased the improving songwriting of Jagger and Richards, in particular the spacey "2000 Light Years From Home", which has been revived for recent live performances. Within the band, however, the two principal writers were steadily wresting power from their former leader Jones.

Related Topics:
Psychedelic - Sgt. Pepper

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After the excesses of Satanic Majesties, and with personal relations between Jones and Richards increasingly frayed, 1968's Beggars Banquet saw the band return to their roots. Despite the tension, and aided by an excellent sound from up-and-coming producer Jimmy Miller, Jagger and Richards produced some of their most memorable work, including the distorted acoustic guitar-driven "Street Fighting Man" and the anthemic "Sympathy for the Devil" and the Stones entered the phase that would see them billed as "The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". The songs themselves were firmly rooted in the blues, but tempered by the changes that occurred in 1960s music and assimilating the imagery of Dylan and the emergent heavy rock of Cream and Jimi Hendrix. In contrast to its predecessor, however, it was a clear rejection of the hippie ethos, replacing the platitudes of "free love" with a layer of sleaze. Two other events contributed to the change in The Stones' sound. First, Keith Richards played extensively with Ry Cooder, and was taught his open-G guitar tuning (as used by John Lee Hooker), later admitting "I took Ry Cooder for all I could get". Secondly, both Jagger and Richards befriended Gram Parsons, who introduced them to country music with which he had grown up. Music was not all the Stones and the independently wealthy Parsons had in common: "We liked drugs," Richards said later, "and we liked the finest quality."

Related Topics:
1968 - Beggars Banquet - Jimmy Miller - Acoustic guitar - Sympathy for the Devil - 1960s - Dylan - Cream - Jimi Hendrix - Hippie - Ry Cooder - John Lee Hooker - Gram Parsons - Country music

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An ever-increasing consumption of drugs, however, were making Brian Jones less and less reliable. The ill-fated Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was one of his last projects with the band and increasingly he was either absent from recording sessions by choice, or simply not invited to attend. With only a minimal contribution to Beggar's Banquet, he found himself forced out of the band for good after an infamous late-night visit to his rural home from Jagger and Richards in May 1969, to be replaced by the young, jazz-influenced guitarist, Mick Taylor, drafted in from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

Related Topics:
Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus - Beggar's Banquet - 1969 - Jazz - Mick Taylor - John Mayall's Bluesbreakers

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Jones retreated to his Cotchford Farm home in Kent, a house formerly owned by Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne, drinking heavily in the local pub and planning his comeback with a blues band. However, within two months, and a matter of two days before the new-look band were due to play a free concert in Hyde Park, London he was dead; found at the bottom of his swimming pool which was surrounded by statues of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. Although his death was recorded as being by misadventure, the cause of the drowning to this day remains a mystery. A recent death-bed confession to murder by Frank Thorogood, a builder employed by Jones at the time, has only served to cloud the issue further.

Related Topics:
Kent - Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne - Hyde Park, London

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Despite the tragedy, the Hyde Park concert went ahead, with an audience of up to half a million fans, with Jagger reading from Shelley's "Adonais" and releasing hundreds of butterflies by way of tribute to the late guitarist. The band's performance, under-rehearsed and suffering from some of the remaining members' narcotic intake, was somewhat shambolic and was captured by a Granada Television production team, later to be shown on British television as "Stones in the Park". The band had released the first recording with the new line up, a single called "Honky Tonk Women", which was recorded with Jones but had his guitar part edited out and Taylor's part dubbed in at the last minute. It was released on July 3, 1969, co-inciding with the death of Jones, and remains the band's last number 1 single in the UK. An album Let It Bleed followed in December and was rapidly hailed as another classic, featuring the slow and brooding "Gimme Shelter," "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (featuring a boys choir) and a further nod to their roots with a cover of Robert Johnson's "Love In Vain". It was to become the defining Rolling Stones album. Immediately, the band set off on another US tour, characterised by the hedonism that their position in rock's aristocracy afforded them.

Related Topics:
Shelley's - Butterflies - July 3 - 1969 - Gimme Shelter - You Can't Always Get What You Want - Choir - Robert Johnson

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This was like no other tour the band had yet undertaken. Away from the stage since 1966, they found that live performing had moved on since then. Rather than performing in small and medium sized venues to audiences of screaming girls, they were booked into huge baseball and football stadiums with crowd sizes to match. They blazed a trail for a multitude of stadium tours by the super-bands of the seventies, and which continue to this day.

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In an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of Hyde Park, and as a reaction to the Woodstock festival, the tour culminated in a free concert given at Altamont, a disused racetrack located about 40 miles east of San Francisco. Originally, the Stones' appearance was to be a surprise for the festival in San Franciso's Golden Gate Park. Jagger's decision to announce at a press conference that the Stones would be performing at the event, possibly to ensure a sufficient audience for the concert movie, resulted in the city of San Francisco denying permits. This lead to numerous problems as the event organizers had to scramble to plan the event. As a result, on-site security was provided by the Hells Angels at the suggestion of the Grateful Dead.

Related Topics:
Woodstock festival - Altamont - San Francisco - Golden Gate Park - Hells Angels - Grateful Dead

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The concert was a disaster. Jagger's refusal to perform during the day, again to ensure a better film with lighting at night, resulted in an escalation of violence between fans and security. The running battles between fans and security reached a head when Meredith Hunter, a young black fan who had unwisely brought a pistol (and a white girlfriend) to the show, was stabbed and beaten to death by the Angels during the band's performance of "Under My Thumb". The Altamont concert would be documented in Albert and David Maysles' film Gimme Shelter. Many cultural scholars of the time opined that Altamont marked the de facto end of the sixties.

Related Topics:
Altamont - Albert and David Maysles - Gimme Shelter

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The murder, coming so soon after the death of Brian Jones, had a harrowing effect on Keith Richards, and his reaction to the events was to increase his usage of heroin. He would spend the best part of the next decade as an addict, taking occasional cures in private clinics but always returning to the drug, and each subsequent tour would become a logistical nightmare to ensure a regular supply in the face of trouble from the police and customs officers. Richards has always maintained that the one facet of his life that was unaffected was his live performance. Concert tapes, however, including a time in 1976 when he fell asleep on stage, do not bear this out.

Related Topics:
Heroin - Customs - 1976

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1969 saw the end of the band's existing contract with Decca Records. The intervening years since they had signed with the record company had seen them become global superstars, and despite overtures they refused to sign a new contract. They recorded a final single as a contract obligation, the bawdy, unreleaseable ballad "Cocksucker Blues", and left to form their own record company under the financially astute eye of Mick Jagger. Sticky Fingers released in March (1971), the band's first album on their own Rolling Stones Records label, continued where Let It Bleed had left off, featuring one of their best known hits "Brown Sugar", the country influenced "Wild Horses" (which caused a disagreement between Gram Parsons and Mick Jagger over songwriting credits), the moody "Moonlight Mile" featuring Paul Buckmaster's evocative string arrangement and one of Jagger's finest vocal performances, and a version of Marianne Faithfull's "Sister Morphine" about her own ambiguous relationship with heroin. Mick Taylor collaborated heavily on this album with Jagger - probably because Richards was unable to contribute as constructively as usual due to his drug problems, and the sprawling " Can't You Hear Me Knocking' " attests to Taylor's influence. However, all the songs were credited as usual to 'Jagger/Richards' which frustrated Taylor.

Related Topics:
Sticky Fingers - 1971 - Brown Sugar - Country

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