The Rolling Stones' Redlands bust

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Front cover of the Daily Express describing the incident and trial

In February 1967, two members of

libel at the time, and which carried lurid stories regarding Jagger and his girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull. Although convicted—and having spent a night in prison—a publicity campaign by their colleagues in the music industry encouraged popular support and criticism of the decision to prosecute them. Most notably, the traditionally-conservative newspaper The Times published an op-ed by William Rees-Mogg asking Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?
, in which he criticised the prosecutions as unfounded and unnecessary.

Background

Drugs, the press and the music industry

By the late 1960s, drugs were common in the British music industry, and in 1966 the ITV documentary

beatniks and many were shocked".[1] Other outlets did similarly. London Life campaigned against Michael Hollingshead of Harvard University, who researched psychedelic drugs and introduced many well-known individuals, such as Timothy Leary, to LSD.[2]
The increased focus of the police on celebrity drug use led, in author Peter Walsh's words, to "an unholy" alliance between the News of the World and
exposés,[5][note 2] such as "celebrity scoops and sex scandals", gaining it the nickname of "News of the Screws" on that account.[7] By the late 1960s, argues Bingham, the paper had moved from traditional court reporting towards a more intrusive form of journalism based on the scoop as its centrepiece.[6] Always, says journalist Paul Trynka, "well known for its disapproval and comprehensive coverage of all kinds of sex and sleaze", the paper "fired the opening salvo of the inter-generational war on Sunday 29 January". Under the headline "Pop Stars: The Truth That Will Shock You", they revealed—and sensationalised—details from Pilcher's investigation and arrest of Donovan. Trynka argues that there was an increasing generation gap between musicians and the press, that where traditional performers had once had a symbiotic relationship with the press, by 1967 "The schism between traditional entertainers and the emerging rock aristocracy had become glaringly obvious".[note 3]

The Stones

Keith Richards purchased the Redlands estate in 1966 for £20,000 (£396,000 as of 2021)[9] and moved in with Ratbag, his dog.[10] The house was a large thatched cottage, parts of which dated from the 13th century and was rumoured to have once been visited by Anne Boleyn.[11] It had been a Grade II* listed building since 1958.[12]

Events leading up to the raid

In early 1967, Jagger, Richards and Jones began to be hounded by authorities over their

news desk received a call: 'it was enormously fortunate', recalled the editor later, 'that it happened to be an informant.'"[17]

Attendees

David Schneiderman, under the alias David Jones, known as the "Acid King" usually carried a briefcase which acted as a mobile drug dispensary.

Mord und Totschlag (A Degree of Murder).[17] Nicky Karmer, an associate of the band, also attended.[17]

Redlands party

Trynka asserts that one of the intentions of the party was to give Jagger his first acid trip. Schneiderman provided LSD to the house party goers around midday; Jagger was sick at first. They then drove around Sussex, Cooper photographing them as they travelled. In the evening Tony Bramwell—a Beatles' roadie—arrived, and was soon followed by George Harrison and his wife Pattie, although neither stayed long.[24][note 8]

Raid on Redlands

Following a tip-off from the News of the World

acid trip. In his autobiography, Richards later described how, "there's a knock on the door, I look out the window, and there's this whole lot of dwarves outside … I'd never been busted before, and I'm still on acid".[9]
The police discovered little sign of illegality: a few roaches, amphetamine pills from Jagger's Italian supplier, and Fraser was found in possession of heroin.[26] It is likely that the pills were Faithfull's but that Jagger claimed them as his own to save her from arrest.[17]

It was also rumoured that the party the police had interrupted was an orgy and that Jagger had been caught eating a Mars bar out of Faithfull's vagina.[note 10] However, it subsequently emerged that the police entered what Faithfull describes as a quiet domestic scene; "How the Mars bar got into the story, I don't know ... It shows you what's in people's minds".[9] The News of the World reported "with particular gusto", says author Fred Goodman, that when the police entered Faithfull had just had a shower and had had to put a fur rug over herself.[26] She later described how, as a side effect of their comedowns, they kept breaking into laughter while the police searched the house, "collecting sticks of incense and miniature bars of hotel soap".[31] The police told Richards that, under the DDA, he was held responsible as the property owner for any drugs discovered, to which Richards said, "I see. They pin it all on me". Meanwhile, Jones had phoned to say he had finished his work on ''Mord'' and was about to drive down; "don't bother", replied Richards, telling him "we've been busted".[17]

Paranoia

Uncertainty as to the identity of whoever had informed on them—yet certain that someone had—increased Jagger and Richards' paranoia about those surrounding them.[32] The latter suspected his chauffeur, Patrick;[33] Nicky Kramer was beaten up in an effort to make him speak, to no avail. Gibbs calls this "very unpleasant, awful. I'm sure [Kramer] had nothing to do with spilling any beans."[34] By now Schneiderman—the "most likely suspect", argues Trynka—had "disappeared" to California.[34] On the other hand, notes Trynka, some more recent commentators have argued for the informant being Keylock, as he had a brother in the Metropolitan Police. In any case, he says, the fact that the News of the World somehow knew that Harrison had been at the party earlier in the day indicated to the Stones that it was them that the police wanted to catch, not the member of the more family-friendly Beatles.[34]

Days following the raid

Internal band problems

Goodman describes the situation as "an obvious call to arms" for their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, noting that "It was his job to devise a strategy, hire the proper legal and public relations firms, and defuse the situation". In the event, Oldham travelled to the United States to avoid possible arrest himself.[26] He believed, suggests Trynka, that having arrested the bandmembers, police would start coming after their management. His business partner Tony Calder later commented, "I never saw a man pack his bags so quickly. He was terrified." As a result, Oldham was mostly out of the country over the next three months: the Stones, says Trynka, "saw this as cowardice".[17] Instead, Allen Klein attended to the publicity surrounding the arrests, coordinating the group's defence, while the band went to Morocco to escape the press.[26] Oldham later explained that "I was already not dealing with a completely full deck, but if you have five policemen in your house, you’ve got a good reason to think you're going to end up in jail. So I left the country".[26]

The raid also worsened Jagger and Jones' relationship, with the former increasingly blaming the latter for its occurrence. If Jones had not been overheard in Blaise's bragging about his drug usage, Jaggers reasoned, the ''News of the World''—and hence the police—would have had nothing to go on.[33] Jagger ignored the fact that it had been Richards who had organised the party originally and who, argues Trynka had chosen to invite unknown outsiders such as Schneiderman into their close-knit group.[33] Gibbs agrees, stating that, in his view, the bust had been "to a degree brought upon themselves by themselves. Obnoxious behaviour at one time or another. It was all in the stars. So there's no point looking for villains".[33]

Coverage

The headline of the Evening Standard was "Naked Girl at Stone's party".[18] In the immediate aftermath of the raid, the News of the World did not name the celebrities involved, but on 18 March—a couple of days after the group returned from Morocco—the Daily Mirror named Jagger and Richards ahead of their court appearances.[32]

Morocco

To escape the press, the group decide to take a holiday in Morocco. The trip started in Paris, badly, when they were nearly arrested for attempting to leave their hotel without paying. Driving Richards' blue Bentley was his associate-cum-bodyguard, an ex-paratrooper called

Guardia Civil involvement.[33] In Tangier, Jones and Anita broke up, she beginning—or possibly already having begun—a relationship with Richards. As a result, Jagger, Richards and the rest abandoned Jones in the hotel, penniless.[32]

Charges and sentencing

Although Jagger, Richards and Fraser were released the following day, it soon became clear, argues Goodman, that "the government was serious" about sending them to prison.

trial by jury.[18]
The case was heard at Chichester Crown Court before Judge Leslie Kenneth Allen Block. They were
Lewes Prison to await sentencing on 27 July.[18]
The subsequent arrest of Richards and Jagger put them on trial before the
Wormwood Scrubs Prison in west London. Fraser received a year and did not appeal.[26] Both were released on bail the next day pending appeal.[37] They were represented in court by the barrister Michael Havers.[38]

Trial

The first trial – the only one involving a prison sentence[39] – resulted from a February 1967 police raid on Redlands, Richards's Sussex estate, where he and some friends, including Jagger, were spending the weekend.[40] Faithfull recalls the rug she had worn at Redlands being exhibited as evidence.[31] She also thought that "one of the few pleasant things about the whole scaly business was that we got to see Mick and Keith wearing such beautiful clothes": the former wore a green velvet suit with a pink shirt while the latter wore black and grey silk and a white cravat. Faithfull believes that this choice—encouraging an impression of being romantic figures rather than depraved—aided their publicity campaign.[41]

Campaign

The case was a cause célèbre.[36] Goodman argues that "their eventual saviour" was one of the most surprising elements of the entire episode.[26] On 1 July[42] the traditionally conservative editor of The Times, William Rees-Mogg—inspired by Alexander Pope[26]—wrote an article critical of the sentences,[43] which questioned whether "Mr Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man".[36] In her autobiography, Faithfull says that up until this point, they felt that "a mysterious and menacing enemy pursued us at every turn"; there was a degree of paranoia on account of Jones' bust the day of their release. It was only with the publication of Rees-Mogg's editorial that they began to feel positive about the outcome.[44] The following month the Times carried a full-page advertisement stating that "The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice", which, comments Barnes, "further outraged the establishment", to the extent that it was discussed in the House of Commons. The advert was signed by, among others, Graham Greene, David Bailey, Jonathan Miller and the Beatles.[36]

On appeal, Richards' sentence was overturned and Jagger's was amended to a

conditional discharge.[45]
The Who rush-released two Stones’ songs—"The Last Time" and "Under My Thumb"—which was intended to be part of a sequence of releasing their material "to keep their work before the public until they are again free to record themselves".[18]

Release

Richards spent a night in jail and said that other inmates treated him respectfully. As a result, though, suggests Goodman, he "soon turned wryly philosophic. 'The judge managed to turn me into some folk hero overnight', he said. 'I've been playing up to it ever since.'" The day he and Jagger were released, Pilcher arrested Jones and his girlfriend for possession.

London Hilton suite to celebrate. Klein became angry, however, when Marianne Faithfull produced some covertly-stored hash: incensed at the trouble he had gone to gain their release, he threw the container out of his window and flushed the drugs down the toilet. Comments Goodman, "'you people are stupid!' he snapped. Marianne just pouted. 'You didn't have to throw it away.'"[26]

We Love You

Six months after the arrest of Jagger and Richards, the Stones released the single "We Love You", intended as a message of appreciation to their fans and other musicians for supporting them throughout the controversy. The single featured fellow musicians John Lennon and Paul McCartney on backing vocals and received positive reviews from music critics. It reached No. 8 on the UK charts and No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100.

A promotional film for the single, directed by Peter Whitehead, depicted a reenactment of the 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde, with Jagger, Richards and Marianne Faithfull portraying Wilde, Marquess of Queensberry, and Lord Alfred Douglas, respectively. It has been suggested that this was a satirical reference to their recent trial.[48]

Aftermath

In December 1967, the band released Their Satanic Majesties Request, which reached number 3 in the UK and number 2 in the US. It drew unfavourable reviews and was widely regarded as a poor imitation of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[49][50] Satanic Majesties was recorded while Jagger, Richards, and Jones were awaiting their court cases. The band parted ways with Oldham during the sessions. The split was publicly amicable,[51] but in 2003 Jagger said: "The reason Andrew left was because he thought that we weren't concentrating and that we were being childish. It was not a great moment really—and I would have thought it wasn't a great moment for Andrew either. There were a lot of distractions and you always need someone to focus you at that point, that was Andrew's job."[52] Satanic Majesties became the first album the Rolling Stones produced on their own. Its psychedelic sound was complemented by the cover art, which featured a 3D photo by Michael Cooper, who had also photographed the cover of Sgt. Pepper.

Richards said in 2003, "When we got busted at Redlands, it suddenly made us realize that this was a whole different ball game and that was when the fun stopped. Up until then, it had been as though London existed in a beautiful space where you could do anything you wanted".[53] On the treatment of the man responsible for the raid, he later added: "As I heard it, he never walked the same again".[27]

The Rolling Stones continued to face legal battles for the next decade.[54] Richards believed that he and Jagger had been "stitched up" by the News of the World and the establishment together, as the former's best defence in the lawsuit from Jagger was that they were all on drugs, which their conviction would imply.[26] Rees-Mogg later commented on the case:

Nobody else would have been sent to prison for what was essentially a sea-sickness tablet. If I had landed at Dover with those pills in my pocket, or even if it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, we would have been given no more than a fine.[36]

Faithfull believes that the trip they took at Redlands laid strengthened the bond between Jagger and Richards and laid the ground for their subsequent inseparableness.[55] She also considers that it helped mould their image to their advantage.[56]

Cultural impact

Anthony Barnes, writing in the Independent, suggests that "to some it is a defining moment in history, the point at which a moribund establishment started to disintegrate. To others, the Rolling Stones drugs trial was another nail in the coffin of old-fashioned British values." Either way, he says, very publicly "the establishment turn[ed] on itself". It was the first "pop stars and drugs story" of the tabloid press.[36] This image was enhanced by the role of Havers, who has been described as being, at the time, "the most expensive silk in the country and the pinnacle of the establishment".[38][note 12] Trynka describes the case as "the defining moment of the decade".[24]

In 2004, the BBC reported that HBO had commissioned a 2-hour-long film—provisionally titled Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?—of the bust and the events that followed. Nigel Havers was lined up to play his father in a script written by Nick Fisher.[38] Ten years later, Newshub reported that the film was "in the works", and that Nigel Havers—who as a child was sworn to secrecy about the case—had a script ready.[58]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Prosecutions—and convictions—for drugs increased between 1965 and 1967, the latter by 50%.[4]
  2. Moors Murderers, Brady and Hindley, for paying a witness a grand in cash for a story when the paper was aware that he had a vested interested in securing a conviction. Atkinson called this, in his view, "a gross interference with the course of justice". The paper's approach was discussed in parliament and author Adrian Bingham argues that a "single-minded pursuit of a story ... led journalists to disregard ethical considerations".[6]
  3. The People, had enjoyed a series of scoops.[8]
  4. Mord und Totschlag.[8]
  5. Everley Brothers.[16] At the time, says Trynka, acid was "virtually unknown" in Britain.[8]
  6. ^ Paul McCartney called Fraser "one of the most influential people of the London Sixties scene".[20]
  7. ^ Jagger had previously attended one of Gibbs’ dinner parties, where he told a fellow attendee "I'm here to learn how to be a gentleman".[22]
  8. ^ Bramwell later explained his presence as being due to his having a sort in Selsey, but apart from that "when I got there, there was just a lot of shit people that I really didn't like. Robert Fraser always got up my nose. So I wasn't there for more than ten minutes before I left".[24]
  9. ^ Stephen Abrams, editor of the International Times, suggested [Scotland Yard] were unwilling to act on the paper's tip, believing that busting Jagger for marijuana possession would only increase its popularity among youth, but they passed the information on to the local force.[24]
  10. drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother."[30]
  11. conspiracy to pervert the course of justice after it was alleged he had committed perjury.[47]
  12. ^ Havers went on to become Attorney General—a post he occupied longer than any individual since the 18th century—and was elevated to the House of Lords.[38][57]

References

  1. ^ Walsh 2018, p. 27.
  2. ^ Conners 2010, pp. 91–92.
  3. ^ Walsh 2018, p. 28.
  4. ^ a b Walsh 2018, p. 29.
  5. ^ Hoggart 1967, p. 186.
  6. ^ a b Bingham 2016, p. 230.
  7. ^ BBC News 2011.
  8. ^ a b c Trynka 2015, p. B.
  9. ^ a b c Dolan et al. 2019.
  10. ^ Bockris 2013, p. 134.
  11. ^ Trynka 2015, p. A.
  12. ^ Historic England & 1026078.
  13. ^ Wells 2012, p. 110.
  14. ^ a b Paytress 2003, p. 116.
  15. ^ Cohen 2016, p. 153.
  16. ^ Norman 1984, p. 101.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i Trynka 2015, p. C.
  18. ^ a b c d e Andersen 2012.
  19. ^ Gerber & Lisanti 2009, p. 48.
  20. ^ Greenberg 2010, p. 70.
  21. ^ Reynolds 2006.
  22. ^ Andersen 2012, p. 68.
  23. ^ Patterson 2008, p. 78.
  24. ^ a b c d e Trynka 2015, p. D.
  25. ^ a b Green 1998, p. 174.
  26. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Goodman 2015, pp. 139–140.
  27. ^ a b Meltzer 2010.
  28. ^ Rolling Stone 2015.
  29. ^ BBC News 1967.
  30. ^ Kiszely 2020, p. 221.
  31. ^ a b Faithfull 2000, p. 103.
  32. ^ a b c Trynka 2015, p. F.
  33. ^ a b c d e f Trynka 2015, p. E.
  34. ^ a b c Trynka 2015, p. G.
  35. ^ a b Booth 2000, p. 276.
  36. ^ a b c d e f Barnes 2004.
  37. ^ Booth 2000, p. 277.
  38. ^ a b c d BBC News 2004.
  39. ^ Flippo 1985, pp. 177–178.
  40. ^ Booth 2000, pp. 243–245.
  41. ^ Faithfull 2000, p. 111.
  42. ^ a b Wyman 2002, p. 286.
  43. ^ a b Andersen 2012, pp. 148–149.
  44. ^ Faithfull 2000, p. 115.
  45. ^ Booth 2000, pp. 278–279.
  46. ^ Travis 2005.
  47. ^ Walsh 2018, p. 108.
  48. ^ Richards, Will (26 August 2022). "The Rolling Stones share 1967 'We Love You' video online for the first time". NME. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  49. ^ Davis 2001, pp. 224–227.
  50. ^ Norman 2001, p. 293.
  51. ^ Wyman 2002, p. 290.
  52. ^ "The Rolling Stones Biography". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 30 April 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2006.
  53. ^ Jagger et al. 2003, p. 112.
  54. ^ Booth 2000, p. 271.
  55. ^ Faithfull 2000, p. 101.
  56. ^ Faithfull 2000, p. 118.
  57. ^ Lyell 2004.
  58. ^ Newshub 2014.

Bibliography

• Wells, S. (2012). The Great Rolling Stones Drug Bust. Omnibus Press.

ISBN 978-0-857-12711-2
. • Wyman, Bill (2002). Rolling With the Stones. DK Publishing.
ISBN 0-7894-9998-3
.

External links
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